Integrity: Volume 1 (October - December 1946)

This book is Volume 1 of a multi-volume project featuring the complete issues of "Integrity", the lay Catholic magazine founded by Carol (Jackson) Robinson (pseudonym: Peter Michaels) and Ed Willock. These issues are relatively difficult to find but more importantly they show that Catholics after WWII were attempting to engage modernity in the light of the Faith. Whether they were successful or not is besides the point because what these issues indicate is that it is possible to critique modern society with intelligence and seriousness guided by the principles of the Faith. These issues can serve as a vehicle for a larger discussion on contemporary society. Object to their approach and some of their insights, fine, but do not dismiss them lightly!

The magazine itself ran from 1946 to 1956 -- a long run given the lack of business acumen and use of advertising!

The foreword has been written by a Maronite priest, Rev. Fr. James Doran, who knew Carol Robinson personally. 

Here is an excerpt from the editorial for the first issue:

"In this first issue we are elaborating on the theme of our whole magazine, which is: WE MUST MAKE A NEW SYNTHESIS OF RELIGION AND LIFE. Possibly the Church has other tasks yet more urgent today, but this job is certainly high up on the agenda. It looks like the basic problem for us, who are lay people. Anyhow, we have chosen it as our special work to help solve it, and every issue will bear on the main thesis....

Integral Catholicism is already becoming a popular expression. It does not mean piety so much as wholeness. It means that what we profess to believe is consistent with the assumed principle by which we live out our daily lives. It suggests a consistency of theory and practice; a unity of public life and private morals; a reconciliation of commercial ethics and religious dogma, of individual conscience and statutory law. It means a cessation of the uneasy Sunday-lipservice-to-God-and-40-hours-a-week-with-time-and-onehalf-for-overtime-devotion-to-Mammon by which so many of our lives are compromised. The relationship between “wholeness” and “holiness” is as direct as the derivation of the second word from the first. It becomes daily more difficult to lead holy lives in disregard of the contradictory nature of the circumstances thereof.

The guiding policy of contemporary society is expediency. Don’t act from high moral principles (it’s impractical). Don’t commit yourself either to thorough-going villainy (it isn’t nice). Just compromise, adjust, submit, water down, and make the best of a bad situation (after all, we have to eat). Our expediency looks less and less like the “sane policy of realistic leaders” and more and more like the degrading opportunism of ignoble men. Integrity is at the opposite pole from expediency. It is a quality which does not look first to the financial consideration involved, does not calculate its actions to please high worldly powers, or with an eye to the coming elections. It does not hold that the end justifies the means, but that we must do what is right, come what may. We hope to achieve it ourselves and in our magazine."