What was in the news on Nov. 11, 1960?

By Brandon A. Evans

This week, we continue to examine what was going on in the Church and the world 50 years ago as seen through the pages of The Criterion.

Here are some of the items found in the Nov. 11, 1960, issue of The Criterion:

• An Editorial: The election [of President John F. Kennedy]
  • “Chet Huntley and David Brinkley got a wry smile out of many U.S. Catholics when they observed in the late hours of their election coverage that the Catholics of this country must be ‘pretty tired of being poked, prodded and analyzed on the so-called religious question.’ Everyone will be happy to hear the end of that issue, they opined, and one of them remarked that he thought Catholics had taken the whole unpleasantness very well. We think so, too. Catholic Republicans were getting mighty tired of being considered somewhat strange this election year, and Catholic Democrats were equally uncomfortable about being suspected of voting their religion.”
• Heroic bishops, priests risk death behind the curtain
• Lutheran group lays plans for reunion
  • “ROME—A German Lutheran theologian said here that the time for groups of Lutherans to join the Catholic Church may be at hand. The Rev. Mr. Max Lackmann … is one of the leaders of the new German Lutheran league that promotes [the] reunion of Protestants and Catholics. … He said in his Unitas lecture that the new reunion league will be a community with its own form of worship, incorporating into the Catholic liturgy all that is true and good in the Lutheran tradition. Catholic elements that have been lost as a result of the Protestant Reformation will be regained, he said. Among them, according to Pastor Lackmann, are the acceptance of the Holy Eucharist as a true sacrifice, confession, and the apostolic succession.”
• Challenge of 1960s: Priest charts program for racial integration
• Top Mason stops showing of movie, calls it bigotry
• ‘Dialogue’ on move in Toledo
• Hoosier writes from Italy: Do we really appreciate our Catholic schools?
• Two test cases decided on religion in schools
• Urges Catholic groups to support Civil Rights
• Democracy’s greatest threat
  • “PITTSBURGH—The greatest threat to democracy is irreligion, the Bishop of Pittsburgh told members of the legal profession attending the second annual Red Mass in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Bishop John J. Wright said that the basic concept of democracy, ‘it’s very foundation, was when God said to man: “Subdue the earth and rule over it.” ’ … Bishop Wright said that if over the centuries ‘the democracy that was in the beginning ceased to exist,’ it was always because man forgot two basic principles: his right to choose his rulers, and the divine source of his rights.”
• Hungarian Church still persecuted, Vatican Daily says
• Catholic effort urged for poor nations

(Read all of these stories from our Nov. 11, 1960, issue by logging on to our special archives.) †