Deep wounds are not easily healed. But the Good Samaritan poured oil and wine into the wounds of the stranger who lay helpless on the road to Jericho, and set him on the road to recovery. Each one of us can go and do likewise.

A parish is no longer a really Catholic parish in spirit if on the grounds of race it bans any people from its ministrations or treats them in matters that belong to the parish as minors or unequals.

In our own generation, as never before, there is need to demonstrate that Christianity is capable of bringing mankind into a truly universal society based not on fear and compulsion but on mutual love. To manifest the unitive power of Christian charity we must make faithful use of the means of unity which Christ has provided for His church. Among these the Eucharist holds a place of honor as the supreme source and symbol of Catholic unity.

The Mass is the re-enactment of the cross’s mighty onslaught upon human differences: the breaking down of the wall of partition. We participate in common, as in one family, in the holy Eucharistic offering. We are united with one another through our union with Jesus Christ in Communion.

It is just as reprehensible to practise a racism in reverse as it is to show the more familiar type of racial prejudice. The individual must lay aside not only his dislike of people of another culture or appearance but his own sensitiveness and clannishness as well.

It is anomalous, for instance, that in our big cities we think nothing of living next door, possibly in the same apartment house, to person whose family life is completely reprehensible according to our Catholic or Christian standards, as long as they do not molest us personally. Yet we become acutely disturbed at the presence of a well-bred, educated, law-abiding, neighborly family, merely because of the color of their skin.

Some years ago I talked to a clever young Northern businessman, who prides himself on his culture, yet was shocked that Yale’s football team had chosen a Negro, Levi Jackson, as its captain. Such a mind, with all its outward trappings of modernity and elegance, is completely out of tune with the real world.

Those who live, racially speaking, in a fool’s paradise will one day suffer from a painfully rude awakening.

Certain roads lead nowhere; they are dead ends and blind alleys. Such a dead end, such a blind alley, is the path of racial segregation. Despite all fine talk and attempts to idealizing, despite any use or justification it had or may have had in earlier times and under earlier conditions, today it leads but into a cul-de-sac. Its pursuit breeds disorders infinitely greater than any evils which it seeks to avoid.