The Current is a handsomely designed magazine published four times a year by the Harvard-Radcliffe Catholic Club. Although describing itself as "A Review of Catholicism and Contemporary Culture," Current will disappoint those who search its pages for articles and stories of Catholic concern. In its first issue this year, Janus-faced Current focuses its attention mainly on secular affairs.

"Discrimination in Boston," the lead article, turns out to be an appeal by the chairman of Boston CORE for Harvard volunteers to wage the battle against Negro discrimination in the local area. Writing with much urgency but less skill, Alan Gartner has nothing new to say about the difficulties of Negroes looking for jobs and homes. Indeed, his concern is not to enlighten, but to win recruits. He includes no more information than is necessary to soften up the reader for the inevitable appeal in the final paragraph: CORE needs you.

If Gartner's article were an intelligent, objective survey of the problem, the reader might accept that it has a place in Current. But as it stands, "Discrimination in Boston" contributes nothing to a fuller understanding of Catholicism or Contemporary Culture.

The primacy of Gartner's article raises the larger question of the proper function of Current as the magazine of the Harvard-Radcliffe Catholic Club. According to editor Michael Novak, in his opening editorial: "No practical issue is so important to the Current at the present time as the speedy assumption by Negroes of full and equal dignity as citizens of America." Novak's central concern seems curiously irrelevant to those of us who hoped to find in Current discussion of Catholicism and its concerns, contemporary and historical, at Harvard and elsewhere. Of course discrimination against Negroes is an immense problem of American life and deserves our attention, but nobody turns to a magazine of Catholic interest to read about racial discrimination.

Current's political articles are as disappointing as the Gartner piece. John Ratte's "The Rumored College Right" ridicules the claim of a resurgence of student conservatism on American campuses in a fruitcake style that has to be read to be believed. Paul Sigmund's warnings about the Communist-sponsored Youth Festival to be held in Finland next July are well taken; but couldn't he have saved these remarks for a letter to the CRIMSON sometime next May, and have found something more immediately compelling for this issue of Current?

David Riesman is represented by a lively article on "The Uncertain Freshman," which represents a master observer at his intuitive best. If you're having an identity crisis and you'd like some justification, Riesman's warnings against "too early closure" will serve well.

In the only article by an undergraduate, Michael Murphy investigates the constitutional questions involved in the debate over federal aid to parochial schools. Murphy interviewed three prominent Law School professors to get his story, and the effort was worth it. "Secular Unity in the Schools" is an interesting, informative piece that helps to clarify a murky issue. And one is grateful finally to come upon something that has to do with Catholicism.

Robert J. Kiely's editorial "Minds on Retreat" challenges Catholic students not "to hide their brains behind the skirts of Holy Mother Church. Faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to the moral law do not mean subjugation of the mind." Kiely's clear-headed argument is the only piece in Current that touches on the unique problems of Catholic students in a secular university. As such, it redeems much of the irrelevancy and triviality of the rest of the magazine.

In commenting on one of the critical dilemmas of the committed Catholic, Kiely has opened the way for more discussion of what it means to be a Catholic at Harvard. Hopefully the next issue of Current will pick up the trail. Surely it is in discussing such questions that Current best fulfills its unique function.