Religion: Worldly Rotary

Into the international organization of 7,200 businessmen’s groups called Rotary,* the Vatican last week dropped a stick of ecclesiastical high explosive. No Roman Catholic priest, decreed the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, may henceforth be a member of Rotary or attend Rotary meetings. Furthermore, laymen, while not forbidden Rotary membership, were exhorted to bear in mind Article 684 of canon law. Excerpt: “The faithful . . . must guard against associations which are secret, condemned, seditious, suspect, or which try to escape legitimate church vigilance.”

The 342,000 Rotarians in 83 lands, who hold luncheon meetings once a week, call each other by their first names and fraternize under the motto Service Above Self, are not used to thinking of themselves as secret, seditious or suspect. Founded 45 years ago, Rotary was the brain child of a young Chicago lawyer, Paul P. Harris, who thought of it as a social club of businessmen with “an especial advantage in each member having exclusive representation of his particular trade or profession. The members would be mutually helpful.”

Condemnable Monopoly. Rotary could take in its stride the lampooning it got in Babbitt from the late novelist Sinclair Lewis (see p. 36), but the Vatican’s blow was something else. Puzzled Rotarians in the U.S.­Catholic as well as Protestant­reacted with a stunned and unanimous “Why?” Some remembered a campaign against Rotary waged in 1928-29 by Rome’s potent Jesuit magazine, Civiltà Cattolica. In many countries, the magazine charged, Rotary was altogether too friendly with the Masons, and was dangerously prone to the error of treating all religions as of equal value.

In answer to newsmen’s questions, the Vatican last week indicated that the ban did not apply specifically to such other groups as Kiwanis, Lions, and Elks. Priestly membership in such clubs was merely discouraged because they are “worldly” and a possible source of “distraction from the priestly mission.”

As for laymen, a Holy Office spokesman noted: “Though in many cases, especially in America, [the clubs] are carrying on the laudable activity of assistance, nevertheless sometimes there is undue devotion to monopolistic capitalism, and monopoly is condemnable, on both Christian and social grounds, as an offence against charity. The fact that non-members of Rotary Clubs are sometimes excluded from the benefits which Providence meant for all men . . . amounts to a condemnable monopoly.”

When the Pope Speaks. Most U.S. Rotarians felt that there must be some mistake. Said the president of Rotary International, Arthur Lagueux, a Quebec investment broker and a Roman Catholic: “Rotary is not a secret organization. It does not seek to supplant or interfere with any religious or political organization. It assumes that its program of service is in accord with all religions, and it does not concern itself with a Rotarian’s politics.”

Indiana’s Bishop John F. Noll, a charter member of the Huntington (Ind.) Rotary Club (whose current president is a priest), said he was certain the Vatican had been misinformed about Rotary in the U.S., and that it would withdraw its ban on ecclesiastical memberships once the matter had been explained. Father John Fullerton, director of Toronto’s Catholic Charities, said he would not drop his membership in Rotary until officially informed of the decree. Father Thomas F. Nenon of Memphis said: “I can’t understand it at all. I can’t see anything in Rotary contrary to the laws of the church.”

Meanwhile, at least one member of the North American hierarchy began to put the new order into effect. Montreal’s Archbishop Paul-Emile Léger, said to be slated to be Canada’s next cardinal, forbade priests in his archdiocese to participate in any Rotary or “neutral” club, explained: “It is not up to me to interpret the Pope’s announcements. When the Pope speaks, Catholics have nothing else to do but accept his directives.”

* From its original custom of rotating meeting places, and the practice of rotating business among members.