Talk:American Freedom and Catholic Power

Einstein Comment at Princeton, Corrected

The page says that Einstein "put an anti Blanshard heckler in his place". I followed the links (5 & 6) and Einstein wasn't in either of those articles. Peppermintschnapps (talk) 16:20, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

AF&CP, Second Edition, Paul Blanshard writes on page 10.

One night, in 1951, at the end of a crowded meeting in Princeton, a frail old gentleman with towering brow and white bushy hair stood up in the audience and said: "I wish to express my gratitude to a man who is fighting the abuses of a powerful organization. We are grateful to him for his efforts." For that one brief comment, Albert Einstein was hounded continuously in the Catholic press until his death. He did not waver in his view. In reply to a letter of violent protest from a Catholic devotee, he wrote:

I am convinced that some political and social activities and practices of the Catholic organizations are detrimental and even dangerous for the community as a whole, here and everywhere. I mention here only the fight against birth control at a time (1951) when overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organize peace on this planet . . . Reading your letter I cannot help to doubt whether you have really studied Mr. Blanshard's publications.

Einstein's doubt has been verified in my own experience in hundreds of other instances. Probably nine-tenths of the hostile criticism I have received from Catholic correspondents has revealed by internal evidence that the writers never read a line of this book.

The necessary revision is that Albert Einstein corrected a written correspondent, and apparently carbon copied Paul Blanshard on the rejoinder. Ed Chilton, 28 April 2010.

Precursors to Article Neutrality

Wikipedia entries for "Paul Beecher Blanshard" and "American Freedom and Catholic Power" can make progress towards Neutrality once: 1) The Catholic Encyclopedia and all Catholic literature, historical and otherwise, treats Mr. Paul Blanshard with equal neutrality (N.B. see what they did to Albert Einstein just for admiring Blanshard), 2) Pope Benedict XVI renounces from the throne the dogma that "Error has no right". Chances of that? An unrecognized corollary of that dogma is that the Church - as the supreme authority on Earth - has no obligation to battle "Error" by any social rules of fairness, principled conduct or debate, hence phenomena such as Inquisition. Apostate priest Joseph McCabe reported extant Canon Law that, if the Church ERRED during the diplomacy of making a Covenant, no obligation befell the Church to honor the terms of that Covenant. Whispered: This case, however, would not be revealed to the Other Side during negotiations. Presently, this is as neutral as I can get.--Ed Chilton 28 April 2010

"Our Sunday Visitor"

I've opened a discussion at RS Noticeboard, here. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:19, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

at this point it appears that the consensus is that

Catholic author Robert Lockwood states that the book remains "quite popular" in some atheist and humanist circles..

is not an appropriately sourced claim to include in the article - so I have removed it to the talk page. If there is further discussion and the consensus changes, it can be returned. Active Banana (^bananaphone 16:20, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

References

Better sourcing

Thanks to User:Active Banana for his great work. Now that this article has better sourcing would it be appropriate to removed the refimrpove and clean-up tags? - Haymaker (talk) 16:26, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

there are still some claims such as "The book was kept under lock and key in Catholic seminaries and institutions of higher learning" which need sourcing and (if true) are very interesting facts that would be good to have in the article. Active Banana (^bananaphone 16:30, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Fair point. - Haymaker (talk) 16:35, 7 January 2011 (UTC)