Letters, Jul. 29, 1957

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In this candid admission of scholarly shortcomings among the American Catholic community, Father Weigel has struck a telling blow at the differences dividing that community from its American Protestant brethren. He establishes a sympathetic bond with one of Protestantism's basic tenets—that responsible religious teaching must be intellectually free of disciplines that result in new questions being answered with outworn and inadequate, abstract verbalisms.

H. T. WHIPPLE Bronxville, N.Y.

Sir:

How can objective scholarship flourish in an atmosphere of book banning and miracles ?

(S/SgT.) CHARLES E. BAUMGARDNER New York City U.S.A.F.

Saints at Work

Sir:

Congratulations for the fine coverage on the Franciscan convention at Assisi. However, I must correct you on the information supplied that St. Anthony of Padua is "the patron of motorists." St. Christopher has a great deal more to say in matters of motorists than St. Anthony. The work of this great Franciscan saint is to find lost articles.*

WILLIAM C. SIMS St. Catharines, Ont.

TIME got lost along the way.—ED.

Chiang's China Sir:

Your June 24 review of Chiang Kai-shek's Soviet Russia in China makes me question whether he has learned the really important lesson from "broken China" and whether, in view of your sympathetic review, we have learned that lesson. If Asia is to be liberated, let us first win the hearts of Asians by more realistic and efficient foreign aid. Let's put these people on their feet in such a way that they won't need our help indefinitely. Then we shall have self-reliant, se_lf-respecting partners in the fight against Communism.

W. L. HUSBAND Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

In Touch with TIME

Sir:

I'd like to express to you the work done by TIME in the international field. I know of no publication in any country today giving such varied and accurate information on a multiplicity of subjects—not only world politics and social movements but literature, music, painting and sculpture, archaeological and historical research, judicial decisions, aviation and scientific developments—in fact, every subject about which anybody who wants to keep in touch with a broad scope of world interests must keep accurately informed on, if he is not to appear to be a fossil survival of bygone days.

WARRINGTON DAWSON Versailles, France

^{* The pious belief in St. Anthony of Padua's (1195-1231)
special power of restoring lost objects originated early in the 13th
century when a rich traveler, who lost a bag of gold, asked for St.
Anthony's intercession. The gold turned up the next morning, hanging
from an elm tree.}