Religion: Shatterer

• Share

One of the milk-mildest exhibits in the New York World's Fair is the $250,000, garden-cloistered Temple of Religion. Carefully not consecrated by any churchman, studiously avoiding any favoritism among faiths, the Temple has scheduled only sacred concerts, non-controversial discourses on "Religious Freedom" and "God's Place in Man's Life," by priests, rabbis and ministers, in rotation.

Horridly shattered one night last week was the Temple's careful neutrality. Shatterer was the Rev. Edward Lodge Curran, florid, bald, horn-voiced, hammer-handed president of the International Catholic Truth Society. His "discourse" touched on the dedication, a few hours before, of the Soviet Pavilion. Famed for his anti-Communist campaigns, a specialist in picturesque "and" invective, Father Curran raised his and to a new high, thundered against "a ranking city official" who had greeted the Soviet Pavilion with "fulsome unAmerican praise." Asked whom he meant, Father Curran rasped: "The audience knew whom I meant." A few listeners recalled that he had once before taken a crack at New York City's Mayor LaGuardia two years ago in a speech on New York's "unwashed liberals."