To mark America’s 5,000th issue, we reprint below a reflection by John LaFarge, S.J., our sixth editor in chief, which originally appeared in the 2,000th issue on Sept. 13, 1947. In the words of Father LaFarge, “the reader can attach to this interesting item whatever importance he wishes.”
Matt Malone, S.J.
By the help of the most recently devised electronic calculator we figured out in the sixteen-thousandth part of a second that we have put down 54,000,000 words on paper during the thirty-eight years of America’s existence. The reader can attach to this interesting item whatever importance he wishes....
America’s one-thousandth number described what was going on in that Europe: That world had only the vaguest possible inkling, if any at all, of the terrible catastrophe that in less than twelve months’ time was to engulf the whole of our Western civilization in the icy claws of the depression, and all the consequent disasters....
Those issues of November 24, 1928, were fewer and, in general, simpler and easier to handle than those of the present day. And yet those of today are somehow blended into one great issue about which we were then already warning...the issue of the Christian concept of liberty, as opposed to totalitarianism....
All this makes us very humble as we approach the issues of the present day...because we realize now something that only partly, at the very best, could be realized in 1928—the terrific responsibility of the United States for the welfare of the world—and consequently the severe obligation that rests upon us of this country today, somehow to understand the issues and look into their inner and permanent meaning.
But when we undertake to gauge these issues there are certain cautions which we need to observe....
The first caution is not to confuse the transitory with the permanent. A transitory event rouses us from our lethargy and is a challenge to our courage and intelligence. But the permanent issue remains as a subject for study and an ever-greater clarification of objectives and methods....
Our second rule is that we should not confuse various levels at which the issue is posed. It is all too easy to shift from one level to another and try to make religion do the work of politics, or make politics do the work of religion....
If I say it once more, I think that one of the outstanding weaknesses of our religious thought—or at least of our religious handling of the issues—is precisely our difficulty in reconciling ourselves to the fact that there are so many different levels on which an identical problem can be treated. Those who speak one language—whether the language of the psychologist or the political scientist or of the moralist or the theologian or of the day-to-day journalist or of the labor analyst or whatever you wish—find it difficult and almost intolerable to have to listen to the language of those who speak a different tongue. Yet we should all be working together and we should all be intelligent and broadminded enough to appreciate the contributions to the same problem which are suggested by those who enjoy another approach, another background of experience....
[W]e hope that America’s readers will be patient with us.... We know that thousands of you penetrate into secrets which we ourselves with our own limited minds and souls have not fully fathomed. We know that you can help us with your thoughts, your ideas, your prayers, your suggestions. We depend on you.... If any world at all will survive, it will be the result of our collectively envisioning the “issue”—that is to say, the consequence, the result, the unfolding of those things which have now become the “issues of decision” in the year 1947.
