Sunday Baseball and Church Authority
WITH the opening of the baseball season the question of Sunday playing of the national game again becomes prominent, and will be agitated before city councils and State legislatures. The question is complicated in Brooklyn, N. Y., by the fact that the Catholic Church there has assumed an attitude favoring Sunday ball playing, which does not interfere with the Catholic view of a proper observance of the day, this view being that Sunday observance is primarily to honor the church, the Sunday being a church institution. This honor is accorded by attendance at mass and by such other observances as the church directs, but there is nothing in these requiring the puritanical conception of the day. There has been formed in Brooklyn a baseball league among the lyceums connected with the Catholic churches in Brooklyn, consisting of ten clubs, with the avowed intention of having Sunday games. The church is after the revenue derived from these games, and it is Sunday games that draw the crowds. It remains to be seen what action the civil authorities will take in the matter.