“That was some swell doings at the County Club Friday night, hey ho!” said the Soda Jerker to the Bank Clerk the next morning.
“Nothing particularly swell about it,” said the Bank Clerk: “It was more a friendly, sociable, informal affair to which a real friendly, social, decent lot of folks turned out and enjoyed themselves. I don’t think so many of the real folks in this town and section ever met together for a social evening before in a life time. We walk about everybody else in a small town knowing everybody else; it isn’t true by a long shot. Small town folk live to themselves very much like folks in the big cities. They see each other on the streets every day and sit in church and look at one another, but they don’t get together for a good social time f it at night. That Country Club will be a great thing for our folk if it brings them together often enough and enables them to really get acquainted with one another.”
“Well, you needn’t plan too many big doings,” said the Soda Jerker, “because I’ve already got wind that the preachers in this town are not at all crazy about your Club and they’ll be down behind you before you know it. They tell me there wasn’t a single preacher at the reception Friday night.”
“And that’s where our ministers made a grave mistake,” said the Bank Clerk. “Our ministers have a way of holding aloof from the young people of the town and frowning down upon their amusements. They don’t encourage the young folks in their sports and amusements, they don’t mix around with the young folk or grace any important social event with their presence. They make the young feel that they are a lot of criminals and then deplore the fact that the young folk shy off at church and Sunday School.
“When a preacher does crawl out of his shell and get around with the young folk and let ‘em see that he is human, the youngsters will eat out of his hands. That’s why the Catholic priest always has such a hold on his people; he mixes with them in their sports and social affairs, encourages them to have a good time an his very presence has a wholesome and helpful effect on everybody. You bet your Catholic priest doesn’t let his crowd run off by themselves to have a high old time in their own careless way; he goes right along with them and lets ‘em know he’s on the job all the time. And his people don’t resent it; they love him. They ae glad to have him along and he has an influence with his crowd that is the envy of our protestant ministry.”
“You talk as if the Cross-Backs had about you won you over,” sneered the Soda Jerker.
“Not a bit of it,” said the Bank Clerk: “I’m only stating a fact. If we are ever going to successfully combat the spread of Romanism in this country our Protestant ministers have got to employ something of the tactics of the Roman priesthood. You can’t win men to Got or anything else by eternally damning them. I should like very much to see the ministers in our town patronize the County Club. They’ll miss a great chance to make the acquaintance and win the respect and confidence of the young folk if they don’t.
From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, Nov. 13, 1925. There was a good deal of prejudice against the Roman Catholic faith, which was associated with unamerican immigrants. The Ku Klux Klan was in a resurgence 100 years ago, and it also was anti-Catholic.
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn83025812/1925-11-13/ed-1/seq-1/
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