Pipe smokers of the world, unite! To paraphrase Karl Marx, “you have nothing to lose but your stains.” A subtle attack is being made on the very essence of our secret. So--called friends have sold out, and now the enemy is telling a smirking world what only the true pipe-smoker knows: Why does he smoke?

In an ad, the House of Edgeworth piously states: “More and more executives are discovering: somehow decisions come easier over a pipe.” Another tobacco company supposedly our ally, recently used a cult-jargon ordinarily found among Zen philosophers and those charming New Guineans who chew betel nuts. “The whole mystique of pipe smoking connotes a maturity, wisdom and responsibility.” A lot of naive, foolish and irresponsible men smoke pipes, but they’re smart enough not to look like an Ersatz executive, junior grade. Mystique, anyone?

Now a book called The Pacifiers appears at the hole in the wall of the pipe-smokers’ inner city. Dripping with sarcasm and possibly snuff, the author rolls on:

“The ritual of scraping the pipe bowl and tapping it show how thoroughly he’s getting ready. Then he unfolds the pouch and fertilizes the bowl. We have to admire the skill.”

Most pipe-smokers we know aren’t skillful at all. They spill tobacco, light, relight and try again; they puff away with the enthusiasm of a bubble-gum addict.

But he’s a real cheat, continues The Pacifiers. Ask him a question, and “he’ll always manage to be puffing on the pipe.” Even if he’s caught pointing with the pipe stem at the chart, “he can usually get the pipe back to his mouth fast enough for one more puff” --and a few more moments of hedging.

Want to know something? Pipe-smokers are not concerned with mystique, the executive image or the professional stall. Most of us smoke a pipe for the same reason that others sail yachts, write poetry, go for capital gains or run for president.

We like it.

Pardon Us, --The South Again

Very soon, world-renowned liturgists of all faiths will be finding their way to a spot near Boca Raton, Florida. Right in our Province, in the progressive Diocese of Miami, will be located the new World Center for Liturgical Studies. I visited there last week with Canon Copeland, director, an Anglo-Catholic scholar and clergyman who has, almost single-handedly, launched the project.

Bishop Coleman Carroll and I, as well as Abbot Marion Bowman, OSB, and Father Fred McManus, are members of the advisory board. It is a thoroughly ecumenical venture--uniting men in the two great themes of our times: God’s worship and God’s plan for unity.

We sat on the veranda of his pleasant home near St. Andrew’s School, listening to the alligators honking in a nearby canal, and talking of liturgy. The center will be a place of conferences, research, studies and especially the post-ordination training of clergymen-in-service.

The library is small but impressive bearing a heavily Catholic proportion, “mainly because Catholics are doing the most pioneering now.” But the Protestant concern for the center has provided most of the interest and funds so far.

Our archdiocese is blessed that the Canon selected this spot in the South as the nucleus for liturgical work on this continent. Paris, Rome and Trier in Germany have similar centers.

It is hoped that as the center is built and used our priests and laymen will attend some of its conferences. As the renewal of our own Catholic liturgy grows into a dynamic center of our life, it is imperative that we demonstrate it to our separated brethren, and that we learn from them. With true Catholic intent and precautions, there is much that we find inspiring in Episcopalian ceremonial, the Baptist message of the Word, Methodist singing and the Lutheran sacramental liturgy.

One does not become a lax Catholic by studying ecumenically the worship of others. If his own faith is sure and his obedience solid, he will become a better Catholic.

“He Knows What He Is About” Cardinal Newman wrote that God created us to do Him some special service: “He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission--I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.”

“I am a link in a chain,” he continued, “a bond of connection between persons.”

“Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him...He does nothing in vain...He may take away my friends; He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me...still He knows what He is about.”

Paul J. Hallinan

Archbishop of Atlanta