Word: pious
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...celebrated shrine at Lourdes is the No. 1 pilgrimage center in Christendom, but the town of Lourdes exploits the shrine's fame with a brazen tastelessness that is alarming French churchmen. Chief offenders are the dealers in pious objects. In Lourdes, a Pyrenees town of only 16,000 inhabitants but more than 600 hotels, some 580 of the total 710 businesses deal solely in these gimmicky souvenirs of St. Bernadette Soubirous. Samples: neckties that glow at night with Bernadette's image, washable plastic Virgins in every size, corkscrews in the shape of Bernadette adoring the Virgin, fountain pens...
...church gets a rake-off from Lourdes merchants, "there is absolutely no collusion between the bishop and the city." (The church's only income from the shrine: $500,000 yearly from Grotto collection boxes and sale of religious books, all used to maintain the buildings.) As for the pious objects, "we cannot suppress bad taste," said Father Gabel. "But we will advise against them, trusting that Lourdes businessmen, like film producers in America, will see the error of their ways...
...with a bold scheme that was tactically watertight-and morally as leaky as a sieve. The plan was to buy up defaulted North Carolina railroad bonds for pennies, lobby or bribe the legislature into redeeming them, and sell on the rise. Littlefield found a ready ally in a pious, serpentine North Carolina banker named George W. Swepson...
...including a Pope) in the foreground, while Christ sits on high in judgment, flanked by the Apostles and the Virgin Mary on one side and John the Baptist on the other. Il Borgognone, in St. Benedict's Miracle of the Sieve, shows his central figure moving through the pious story then popular: at prayer (left), displaying the flour sieve he had miraculously mended (center), and finally leaving in displeasure and disappearing into the distance (right) after the maids prattled about his power...
...more specific. Though Krock never mentions Reston by name in his critiques, there can be no doubt of his target. Items: ¶ Last week Reston cited in glowing terms the "serious and thoughtful" commencement address of Yale President Whitney Griswold, who said that "we have had enough of the pious cant that says the Sputniks were a good thing because they will wake us up. This is worse than making a virtue of necessity. It is making a virtue of disaster." Next...