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[This anecdote from Catholic publisher Frank Sheed’s book The Church and I, 1974, suggests that Orwell’s observation that ‘there is one law for the rich and another for the poor’ was a principle accorded as much respect among the Princes of the Church as anywhere else. Cardinal Hayes was Archbishop of New York from 1919 until his death in 1938, and his friend, George MacDonald, was a rich Roman Catholic “promoter.” (Two gentlemen of Manhattan who professed themselves friends of MacDonald agreed with his secretary that they do not know what he does, or why he maintains an office at 149 Broadway where rents are high.) In 1929 MacDonald accompanied the Cardinal to Rome where he met with the Pope and where MacDonald was elevated to the Papal peerage. The various banquets and celebrations were followed by a cruise round the Mediterranean aboard the British yacht Icanara, chartered by George MacDonald.]

I was at a public dinner for Cardinal Hayes on his return from a journey round the Mediterranean on the yacht of George MacDonald. There had been much pulpit emphasis at the time on the duty of Catholics to send their children to Catholic colleges, with quotations from the Code of Canon Law about excommunication. It was not of this that Cardinal Hayes spoke but of the journey he had just had. He was quoting Byron, I remember—“The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome”—when there came a loud interjection: “Why doesn’t George MacDonald’s son go to a Catholic college?” There was a kind of stunned silence. MacDonald’s son was indeed at Princeton. But no one interrupted bishops in those days and I fancy there was a confused feeling that the interjector was being disrespectful to the Pope, who had made George MacDonald a Papal Marquis. All those around me agreed afterwards that the man must have been drunk. Four men carried him out of the room. Cardinal Hayes went on with his Byron.

[Catholic teacher Ted Schmidt tells a similar tale of hypocrisy in his autobiography, Shabbes Goy: A Catholic Boyhood on a Jewish Street in a Protestant City, 2001.]

Around 1937, before my mother had any children, she would dutifully accompany my dad out to Tessie and Harry’s mansion in the west end. Harry was a tough Irishman who set a rare festive board on Sunday evenings and like the wealthy often do, loved to have the clergy along to bless their enterprises. This one particular evening Monsignor Farley (not his real name) the “Dean of Catholic Education” was present as was his wont on most Sundays. Basking in the glow of the wine of the evening, Farley became voluble in his praise of Catholic education. My mother stopped him cold with a simple question.

“How can you go on like this when you know what is going on in this house?”

Mom was referring to the fact that Tessie and Harry sent their kids to private, non-Catholic high schools. Farley tried to insist that this was “different.” In her quiet, dignified way, Eileen would have none of it, much to the amusement of my grandfather who was present. From that day on, mom was persona non grata with Harry and she never went out to the big house again.

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