His Holiness the Pope last week swelled the ranks of the Knights of Malta by the appointment of 14 Americans, some of them famed. The knighted: President Clarence Hungerford Mackay of Commercial Cable Co.; President John Jeremiah Pelley of New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Co.; President Lawrence Aloysius Downs of Illinois Central System; Lawyer Jack Johnson Spalding of Atlanta, Ga.; Vice Chairman of the Executive Committee Angus Daniel McDonald of Southern Pacific Co.; Banker Joseph Henry O'Neil of Boston; Banker Elisha Walker of Manhattan; Philanthropist Dennis Francis Kelly of Chicago; President Bernard Joseph Rothwell of Bay State Milling Co., Boston; Paul E. Fitzpatrick of Brown, Durrel Co., Boston; John Duff of New Bedford, Mass.; John F. Tensley of Worcester, Mass.; Vice President Michael Lester Madden of Hollingsworth & Whitney Co., Boston; Theodore F. McManus of Detroit.— Soon after making these appointments, His Holiness issued a mighty interpretation of the will of God, a 16,000-word encyclical addressed to his flocks, to the Knightly and the benighted. Its opening words: Casti Connubii ("Of Chaste Wedlock"). Justly did the Catholic world regard it of utmost importance. It was the first encyclical on marriage since Leo XIII delivered himself 50 years ago. It expounded the Church's entire attitude on the connubial life. Its preparation involved a score of Vatican Scholars. Its Latin text, edited and approved by the Pope, was, for the first time in papal history, immediately issued in English, Italian, French, German, Spanish.**
His Holiness defined marriage as a union primarily for the propagation and education of children, a pact of mutual faith and honor, an inviolable, indissoluble sacrament between its partners. Fervently he assailed the moral laxities, the intellectual theories, which tend to demolish this ideal. Said he: ". . . As Christ's vicar upon earth and supreme shepherd and teacher we consider it our duty to raise our voice to keep the flock committed to our care from poisoned pastures. . . . For now, alas! not secretly or under cover, but openly, with all sense of shame put aside, now by word, again by writings, by theatrical productions of every kind, by romantic fiction, by amorous and frivolous novels, by cinematographs portraying in vivid scene, addresses broadcast by radio telephony, in short by all the inventions of modern science, the sanctity of marriage is trampled upon and derided; divorce, adultery, all the basest vices either are extolled or at least depicted in such colors as to appear to be free of all reproach and infamy."
Birth Control. Especially did His Holiness inveigh against birth control: "The Catholic Church, to whom God has entrusted the defense of the integrity and purity of morals, standing erect in the midst of the moral ruin which surrounds her, in order that she may preserve the chastity of the nuptial union from being denied by this foul stain, raises her voice in token of Divine ambassadorship and through our mouth proclaims anew:
"Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offence against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin. . . .