Religion: Words & Works

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¶Up to 5,000 years ago man's work—agriculture—was part of his religion, says Historian Arnold J. Toynbee, and man has been trying to get back to that happy state ever since. Speaking to the 250 members of a "Church and Work Congress" of the Episcopal Diocese of Albany, N.Y., Professor Toynbee cited two major Christian efforts to reconsecrate work—the Benedictine Rule and the Puritan way of life. "The problem as I see it," he said, "is to keep our work, when once we have consecrated it, in that subordinate relation to our religion to which the very act of consecration has dedicated it." So far, the driving force religion supplies to work has always "drain[ed] away out of our religion as it pours into our work . . . and then work breaks away from religion and comes to be an end in itself."

¶The Laetare Medal, considered the most important annual award given to U.S. Roman Catholic laymen, was presented by the University of Notre Dame to the American Federation of Labor's President George Meany in Washington, D.C. "The Church believes that unions are desirable and necessary," said Washington's Archbishop Patrick A. O'Boyle in conferring the medal, "not only for the protection and advancement of the worker's interest, but even more important, for the development of a sound social order."