April 22, 2011

What was in the news on April 21, 1961? Nuns asking for more education

By Brandon A. Evans

50 Year LogoThis 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, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Here are some of the items found in the April 21, 1961, issue of The Criterion:

  • Tells how to judge anti-Communist groups
  • Bias is still vote factor, election survey shows
  • Nuns need education equal to the clergy’s, school head contends
    • “CHICAGO—Sisters today need education ‘equal in intensity and degree’ to that given to priests, a sister told a symposium at Loyola University. Sister Mary Bertrande Meyer, president of Marillac College, in Normandy., Mo., urged some 300 priests attending the fifth annual ‘Priest in the Modern World’ conference to be patient in their demands for more sisters to staff parish schools. She said that sisters should get a full college education and professional training before entering the classroom … ‘There was a time when a sister who knew her catechism, and Three R’s [reading, writing and arithmetic], could do a good job of teaching in a parish school. She can’t today in this space age. She’ll be stumped by the questions even first graders ask her if she hasn’t had the equivalent of a college education.’ ”
  • Role of teacher aides lauded
  • Pope consecrates bishop in Byzantine liturgy
  • Interfaith talks held in Boston
  • Vatican newspaper expresses elation over space feat
    • “VATICAN CITY—Osservatore Romano, Vatican City newspaper, declared in an editorial that Russia’s successful launching of a man into space ‘neither surprises nor disturbs our religious vision, but brings us joy and comfort.’ ‘The fact remains,’ the editorial said, ‘that each superior gift of intelligence and life tends to make us believe, adore and thank the Divine origin of life instead of refuting it.’ Written by Raimondo Mazzini, director of Osservatore Romano, the editorial quoted excerpts from statements by Popes John XXIII and Pius XII on the subject of man’s conquest of space.”
  • The ‘new approach’ to the Scriptures
  • Wide variation is noted in Canada school aid
  • Question Box: Curious about life on other planets
  • Dangers of going steady, early marriages cited
    • “LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—Teenagers who go steady and those who marry while in their teens are on dangerous ground, Bishop Albert L. Fletcher of Little Rock warned in a pastoral letter. … ‘With the increase in opportunities for education … our youths have more and more come to depend on parental assistance until they have completed high school or college. … As a result … that time when the adolescent boy becomes a man of responsibility [and] the adolescent girl becomes a woman of responsibility arrives for youth at a later age than it once did in our country.’ ”
  • Anne Culkin: Boys with long hair
  • Sees no compromise in interfaith talks
  • Academic freedom ‘dying’ in Cuba
  • Protestant leader lauds pontiff’s unity efforts
  • Rome demands accuracy in liturgical calendars
  • Report: Trujillo henchmen attacked Bishop’s house

(Read all of these stories from our April 21, 1961, issue by logging on to our special archives.) †

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