Los Banos Rotary Club History
Father Copeland Praises Rotary For World Fellowship

The Rev. Father Raymond Copeland, S. J., of San Francisco, in an address to members of the Los Banos Rotary Club Tuesday noon, commended the Rotary International organization for the work it is doing to encourage and promote fellowship and understanding among all the peoples of the world as a vital link in the preservation of peace and lifting the standards of life everywhere.

Calling attention to the fact that this is Rotary Fellowship Week, Father Copeland said "I feel that Rotary's belief in basic objective truth and its endeavors to inculate truth and understanding among all peoples is a vital force in the preservation of peace. I have great admiration for the work your organization is doing in this field and exhort you to give your full support to this meritorious work."

Criticizing this country's state department, Father Copeland said that in the past we have been preoccupied with the peoples and lives of Europe to the exclusion of the Orient, a fact which at least partially accounts for the Orient's present misunderstanding of our way of life, our ideals, and our avowed declarations of peaceful intentions. Asians, he pointed out, are highly individualized, with many differing religions, ideals and concepts that influence their cultural patterns and sense of values.

This inability to understand each other, Father Copeland stated, stems at least partially from within the State Department, who personnel in too many instances are poorly equipped for the job they are assigned to do and particularly when such personnel are unable to speak the language of the people in the country where they are working.

Father Copeland also complimented Rotary's program of student exchange, emphasizing the benefits that accrue when students of one country visit and actually live with the peoples of another country, learning their ways, customs and language and in turn transmitting our own way of life and our own thinking to the people of the land in which they are studying.

The speaker called attention that Rotary is banned by law in Russia and its fellow communistic countries. However, he said, there is a slowly changing concept as the commissars recognize the demands of the "have nots" within their own country and make concessions toward increased liberty among their own people. There is also evidence, he said, of a religious ursurgance within Russia and its dependent countries, which may well lead to the return of religious freedom to the people.

Concluding, the speaker urged that we, as a people, be proud of our country and the things we stand for that we endeavor to understand the thinking, the habits and customs of other peoples that all may live together in common peace and understanding.

Father Copeland, who is Professor of History and Theology at Santa Clara University and University of San Francisco, was introduced to local Rotarians by Manuel Calderon, local cleaning house proprietor and Rotary program chairman for the day.

October 24, 1958

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