Like many preachers, this critic has quoted Theodor Geisel extensively in sermons. Who represents the Magnificat’s claim that God ”has humbled the mighty” better than Yertle the Turtle? What illustrates Herod’s panicked response to the Magi better than “Horton Hears a Who!”?

Ron Lamonthe’s excellent new film “The Political Dr. Seuss” tells how Geisel (a. k. a. “Dr. Seuss”) was harassed as a German-American child during World War I. Persecution could have made him bitter, but instead he became the class wit and a crusading comic muckraker. Like Joseph, who told his brothers “You meant it for evil, but God used it for good,” Geisel turned painful experiences into a passion for lifting the downtrodden.

Beginning in January, 1941—before America entered the war, Geisel drew 400 editorial cartoons for the New York afternoon paper “PM,” many of them lampooning anti-Semitism, something rarely discussed then. He chose “PM” because it excoriated Hitler and Mussolini more ferociously than any other daily newspaper. Its motto was Geisel’s: “We’re against people who push people around.”

Two years later, he joined Frank Capra’s film production unit in the U.S. Army. His “Private Snafu” cartoons helped train American troops. His Oscar-winning film “Your Job in Germany” prepared them to occupy a defeated but still dangerous nation; would that our current leaders had such foresight.

His commanding officer called Geisel “a personable zealot with a gift for delivering a message,” and that he had. By 1953 he had given up his career in advertising to turn out allegorical works for children. He later looked back with shame on the way he had stereotyped the Japanese and Japanese-American citizens during World War II, but under the pen-name “Dr. Seuss,” he pled for understanding the Japanese in “Horton Hears a Who!” His book about the Sneetches likewise ridiculed anti-Semitism and all other forms of racism.

Teachers hated “The Cat in the Hat,” but kids loved this feline rabble-rouser who both revolts against authority and cleans up his mess. Word of mouth reviews on playgrounds across the land made it the best-selling children’s book of all time.

Success did not come easily, though. Geisel was a dogged perfectionist who spent hours on everything he wrote or drew. He connected profoundly with children but he and his wife Helen were unable to have any of their own. When she committed suicide in 1967, he found himself stricken by both grief and a serious case of cataracts.

A year later, Geisel married Audrey Stone, and she encouraged him to focus on longer books intended for adults as well as children. “The Lorax” (1971) was his favorite, an allegory about deforestation that attacked materialism and called readers to strive to make a difference in the world. In 1974 he and humorist Art Buchwald rewrote a reader about Marvin K. Mooney, pleading, “Richard M. Nixon, will you please go now?” Eight days later the impeached president resigned.

An idealistic curmudgeon, Geisel spent his life using his gift for “logical insanity” to improve a society he loved but knew firsthand was deeply flawed. In 1984, on his 80th birthday, published his biggest and most controversial work, “The Butter Battle Book,” which parodied the nuclear arms race and Cold War demagoguery. “I’m not anti-military,” he told one interviewer, “just anti-crazy.”

Adults criticized lovable Dr. Seuss for frightening kids, ignoring the fact that the book was intended for adults, who had for years required students to “duck and cover.” In “The Political Dr. Seuss” some articulate young readers disabuse us of any illusions that Geisel scared them more than the world we have bequeathed them. His final message to the world was a profoundly moral one: “we can and we‘ve got to do better than this.”

“The Political Dr. Seuss” airs on PBS on October at 10 p.m. (Eastern Time) as the first film in the new season of “Independent Lens.”

The New York State Court of Appeals struck down the state’s death penalty law on a technicality. Supporters of the death penalty want to amend the law to allow New York State to execute criminals. Sr. Helen will tell us why we should continue the ban on capital punishment.

Sr. Helen Prejean is author of the best-selling Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States (1993), which became an Academy Award-winning film as well as an opera. Sister Helen is a leading American advocate for the abolition of the death penalty. Her forthcoming book, The Machinery of Death, is an account of two wrongfully convicted men.

October is Respect Life Month in the Catholic Church. Time and time again, Pope John Paul II has urged clemency and the end of capital punishment. Nearly every major Protestant denomination either opposes capital punishment or has grave reservations about the way it is being imposed.

Sr. Helen Prejean has a unique ability to help us connect with those affected by this issue – both people on death row and the families of victims.

Directions: Take Southern State Parkway to Straight Path north. The church is on your left about 1.5 miles north of the Parkway. From the LIE or Northern State, exit at Rte 231 south (Deer Park Avenue). Proceed about 1 mile south of the LIE to Straight Path (across from the Upper Tabernacle Church.) Proceed south about 5 miles. The church is on your right about 1 mile past the LIRR tracks in Wyandanch.

For information contact: Richard Koubek, Ph.D., Coordinator, Public Policy Education Network at Catholic Charities, 516-733-7078.

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