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> FAG-ti 4—i'nJi EuLLETlN, May 16, 1959 JOSEPH B RE IG SMALL SOHO FOR MAY God is like a father who wants his children to rise to the summit of accomplishment and nobility. In simplest terms, He is like a parent who with draws his fin ger from a tiny hand so that a toddler may learn to walk for him self, even at cost of a bump or two and a few tears. He is like a father and mother who bless their sons and daughters and send them forth to work, to dare, to aspire and to achieve greatly. God wills each of us all the true success of which we are 'capable. His desire is to praise us for eternity even as we praise Him. We sing His wisdom and goodness; He will sing (if I may so express it) our struggles and strivings, our courage, our get ting up and going on, our pa tience in adversity, our humili ty in triumph. He has told us that He wants to say to us; “Well done, good and faithful servant.” God could do everything Himself and leave nothing to us. But then we would own no merit; we could not have the humble pride of having made something of ourselves with His help. God, you might say, has a profound respect for our dig nity as beings who can know good from evil, and choose good. He made each of us to be king over the complex king dom of self; to be emperor in the empire of thoughts and emotions and talents that each of us is. GOD COULD HAVE RE DEEMED us from sin merely by willing our redemption. He chose instead to take up the burden Himself, and yet to lay it on the shoulders of man — first of all upon the Man who was God incarnate but human too; second upon the woman He selected for mothering Him in the flesh, and after that upon every one of us who will have the courage and love to enter into this unthinkably noble work of God and man together. Herein lies an answer to the mystery of St. Paul’s saying that he filled up in himself what was wanting in the suf ferings of Christ. From Adam to the last child who will be born into the world, there is a glorious role for every one who will not refuse it. All this seems hidden from us until we stop to look steadily at Mary the Virgin. When we do that, a clarity comes upon us, and we feel a kind of derring-do about embracing the inscrutable goodness of God’s plan for man kind. OUR ADMIRATION and af fection for Mary ■—■ call it rev erence or veneration too—tends to take childlike forms in the month of May. This is because most of us are not given to deep thought; also because •we are happily surrounded by children and are lifted up by their in nocence, and because finally May is a child of a month, bringing new flowers. As May comes, we think of Our Lady as young; as a maid en not yet mother. But Mary is immensely more than our vision of her as slender, ex quisitely lovely, and good in great simplicity. She endured far more for God and for us than we can begin to grasp with our little knowledge, our little holiness, our small experience of tribulation. She towers spi ritually so far above us that we can hardly see the tips of her toes; and yet she bends and puts her arms around us. MARY ROSE to stature that pierces the skies because in her fullness of God’s grace she was not afraid to walk with God wherever His unthinkable good ness led, even to the shocking reality of God her incarnate Son tormented to death. Everything that God asked of Mary, she gave until nothing was left to give. In that giving she earned what God had willed for her — splendor forever as queen of all creation beside Christ her King and ours. In perceiving this secret of Mary’s sanctity, we perceive the secret of our own. We pierce the mystery of God’s desire that we achieve all that He made us ca pable of achieving. Sometimes it seems that He stands apart and leaves every thing to us; we plod through mists and darkness; we fail and try again; we fall and rise and stagger on. All the time, God is there with us and in us, loving us with a boundless love and lead ing us toward a triumph that He wants to be our triumph as much as possible. May is a month for innocence and rejoicing; but like all oth er months it is a month for courage also. Theology T”i mi For The Layman ( By F. J. Sheed ) SANCTIFYING GRACE (2) A soul with sanctifying grace in it is indwelt by God. Here the reader may raise a question. Since every created thing has God at the very center of its being maintaining it in exis tence, surely all things w h a t s oever are indwelt by God: in what can God’s indwell ing the soul by grace dif fer from that? That first presence of God by which we exist is not called in dwelling: for this word means God making Himself at home in the soul, and it is not merely fanciful to think that this can only be by invitation. About the first presence we have no choice: we did not invite God to bring us into being, and it is not because we ask Him that He keeps us in being. The choice is wholly His. No request of ours would move Him to withdraw His presence: in the depths of Hell He is there, maintaining each spirit in existence. It is a fearful thing to have nothing of God but His presence, to have existence from. Him and nothing more, refusing all the other gifts that the creature needs and only God can give. But the indwelling is by in vitation. If we receive sanctify ing grace in infancy, the sponsor extends the invitation on our behalf; as we come to the use of reason, we make the invita tion our own; at any time we can withdraw it, and God’s in dwelling ceases, leaving us only His presence. The God who in dwells is the Blessed Trinity. Father and Son and Holy Ghost make the soul their home, act ing upon the soul, energising within it; while it reacts to their life-giving, light-giving, love-giving energy. That essen tially is the process of Sancti fying Grace. By it the soul has new powers—the theological virtues Faith, Hope and Charity; the moral virtues Prudence, Justice, Temporance and Fortitude; the Gifts of the Holy Ghost. We (Continued on Page 5) Question Box Ey David Q. Lipiak Q. Why is the Church so flat ly opposed to the use of the ver nacular in the mass? It seems to me that people would under stand ihe Mass better, and hence revere it more, if it were said in English instead of Lat in. Isn't it possible that more non-Calholics might become in terested in the Church if the Mass were not in Latin — wasn't the use of Latin one of the chief objections by Martin Luther and the first Protest ants? A. The Church is not opposed in principle to the use of the vernacular in the Mass or any other part of the liturgy. Essentially the Mass is inde pendent of the need for any particular language, provided that its form is expressed ac curately and with due dignity. The same is true of every other liturgical rite (Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, the Di vine Office) and the ceremonies surrounding the administration of the sacraments. That the Church does not ob ject to the vernacular in the liturgy is obvious from the fact that Latin was originally adopt ed for the liturgy principally and precisely because it was the vernacular. Up to the fourth century, when the Latin Mass became official in the Western Church, Greek was the accept ed tongue for public Church worship. This was so even in the See of Peter, Rome itself. The concession in favor of Latin was made chiefly because Greek had become unfamiliar to the average Christian. As one scho lar has put it: “The Greek, though it was the liturgical language of the time of the apostles, and the martyrs, was definitely abandoned in favor of the language of the people.” Furthermore, Latin (at least in a modified form) remained (Continued on Page 5) Jottings.. (By BARBARA C. JENCKS) • GOD ALWAYS raises up saints among us for our time and need. Soldiers, patriots, kings, beggars, scholars -— there is a saint for each crisis. There are always a few who walk with us who show by their lives their intensity and love of Christ. St. Joan teaches us loyal love of country in days of trea son; Mother Cabrini gives us the example of dedicated wo manhood among the poor of our nation and there is Maria Gor- etti who teaches us the power ful lesson that without fortitude “virtue cannot long endure in this age of sensuality, lust and violence.” Maria Goretti is in deed a teen-ager for our times. Canonized in June, 1950, within the memory of those who need her example most, Saint Maria Goretti’s story should be told and retold and her assistance sought as an antidote to the scandalous headlines which tap their infamous epitaph for to day’s youth. It takes heroic vir tue for a youth today to sur vive when on every side there are those who would corrupt him. Saint Maria Goretti suf fered fourteen stabs and gashes from her attacker rather than to submit to his advances. Her answer was “It is a sin!” • I HAVE ALWAYS had deep personal devotion to Saint Maria Goretti. I remember the press releases coming in on her canonization and the interesting human interest stories which accompanied them. Her mother, Assunta, was alive to see her raised to the altars and so was her murderer. Therefore, this postscript to my interest was especially pleasing. In my class of aspiring writers is a student who is a second cousin to Maria Goretti. She is Elaine Freitas from San Rafael, California, and she has within her possess ion six letters from Assunta Goretti, Maria’s mother. They were written to the student’s aunt. Elaine’s “holy-link” as she calls it runs like this: Nicholas Goretti, her grandfa ther and Maria Goretti’s father were first cousins; Maria and Elaine’s grandfather were sec ond cousins, once removed. That made my student Maria Goret ti’s second cousin, twice remov ed. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it, but when you think of what is involved to prove member ship in the Daughters of Ameri can Revolution or Mayflower decendancy, I’d hunt or climb the family tree anytime if there was a saint-relation involved. The saint relationship kind of dazzles my student who said that it was hard for her to think of saints other “than a kind of holy space people.” “Be ing related to one certainly helps prove the reality of them,” she says. Letters veri fying the California Freitas family tie with the Italian Gor etti family were sent from Rome along with two seats of honor for the canonization ceremony. But Saint Maria Goretti belongs to us all in the great family of Christendom in the brotherhood of God. • IN MARIA GORETTI vein, I would like to quote a passage in an article in the current “America” written by Rev. Terence L. Connolly, S.J., of Boston College. In eulogizing the late Irish playwright T. C. Murray, Father Connolly pays tribute to the clean-mindedness of the writer who he says is “a regrettable loss to Irish letters, the loss of an open window in a room- stale with the air of O’ Connor, Joyce and others.” He then quotes a highly dramatic incident in Murray’s semi-bio graphical novel entitled “Spring Horizon” which fits perfectly the plea today for which Maria By Brian Cronin 1. Who was the saint beheaded at the request of Salome?: (a) St. James the Less? (b) St. John the Baptist? (c) St. Bar tholomew? (d) St. Philip? 2. Which is the oldest order of Catholic laymen?: (a) The Knights Templar? (b) The Knights of Peter Claver? (c) The Knights of Malta? (d) The Knights of Columbus? 3. The only Englishman ever to become Pope (Adrian IV) was: (a) The Venerable Bede? (b) Cardinal Wolsey? (c) Cardinal Newman? (d) Nicholas Brakespeare? 4. Our Lady revealed herself to Bernadette at Lourdes as: (a) The Virgin of the Poor? (b) The Immaculate Concep tion? (c) The Lady of the Rosary? (d) Our Lady of the Scapular? 5. The Ordo is another name for: (a) Sacred Music? (b) The ecclesiastical calendar? (c) A Papal enclyclical? (d) A relig ious order? 6. The smallest sovereign state in the world is: (a) The Vat ican? (b) Monaco? (c) Panama? (d) Switzerland? 7. Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar are generally regarded as having been: (a) The three Magi? (b) Angels of the Old Testament? (c) The first Christian Martyrs? (d) The crim inals crucified with Christ? 8. Superstition is considered: (a) One of the Seven Deadly Sins? (b) A sin against the First Commandment? (c) A harmless, human trait? Give yourself 10 marks for each correct answer below. Rating: 80—Excellent; 70—Very Good; 60—Good; 50—Fair. Answers: 1 (b); 2 (c); 3 (d); 4 (b); 5 (b); 6 (a); 7(a); 8 (b) Political Refugees Or Common Criminals? THE BACKDROP SHARING OUR TREASURE Scientist Tells How Pamphlet Kindled Interest By REV. JOHN A. O'BRIEN, Ph. D. (University of Noire Dame) ——————— During his visit to the United States, Dr. Fidel Castro, leader of the revolution in Cuba, com plained bitterly about the granting of asylum to about 400 pro-Batista Cubans by the Unit ed States. g| Castro’s own govern ment is giv ing asylum to r e v o 1 ution- aries from other Latin A merican countries. And the charge has been made by the governments of those coun tries that from their haven in Havana the refugee revolution aries are plotting the over throw of the governments of their respective homelands; Castro did not deny that he was harboring refugees from other countries, but he explain ed that what he was doing was different from what the United States was doing. He maintain ed that the men and women he had taken under his wing were political refugees entitled to protection under the doctrine of asylum, which, in some de gree or other, is recognized by most civilized nations. A COMMON CRIMINAL? On the other hand, he con tended, the supporters of the Batista regime now in this coun try are not political refugees but common criminals. The United States, he argued, in re fusing to send them back to Cuba to be tried by his drum head courts, and probably exe- By JOHN C. O’BRIEN cuted, was obstructing justice. The United States, however, takes the position that all per sons who flee from their home lands because their lives are in jeopardy by reason of political activities against the regime in power are entitled to asylum. Cardinal Mindszenty, whom the communist Hungarian gov ernment had denounced as a common criminal although his only offense was that he op posed communism, was given asylum in the United States Embassy in Budapest because the United States realized that he would be put to death if he fell into the hands of the Hun garian Reds. Large numbers of Jewish ref ugees from Nazism, whose of fense was that they were “de filing the Nordic bloodstream of the Germans,” were admitted to this country in the 1930s. And when the Hungarian free dom fighters were forced to flee to escape communist firing squads, although the Hungarian communist regime branded them criminals and enemies of the state, again the doors of the United States were thrown wide open. Some 6,000 were admitted under the expiring Refugee Act, and when that quota was ex hausted, an additional 31,869 were admitted under a special provision of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952. More recently, on March 28, 1958, the dictator of Venezuela Perez Jimenez, sought refuge outside his country when his government was overthrown by revolutionaries — first in the Dominican Republic and later in the United States. He is now in this country in the status of a temporary non-immigrant. TRADITIONAL POLICY Castro himself, it may be not ed, took a different view of the propriety of asylum when he made his first unsuccessful at tempt to seize power in Cuba in 1952. At that time he took refuge in the Mexican Embassy in Havanna and subsequently was granted a safe-conduct out of the country by the very gov ernment his forces were later to overthrow. In common with most coun tries, the United States refuses to grant protection to common criminals who flee to its shores. We have an extraordinary trea ty, with Cuba, for example, un der which we agree to surren der a Cuban charged with mur der rape, abortion, bigamy, ar son, counterfeiting, forgery, em bezzlement, kidnapping, larce ny and perjury. But the treaty specifically exempts from ex tradition persons whose offenses are of a political character. So, clearly the United States in refusing to return the 400 pro-Batista Cubans is merely pursuing its traditional policy of granting protection to ali ens forced to flee their native lands because they were mark ed for death on account of polit ical activities against the regime in power. Have you ever given a Cath olic pamphlet to a non-Catholic friend? If not, you are neglect ing an important means of shar ing the Faith. A small ten cent pamphlet has not infrequently been instrumental in kindling the interest of a non-Catho- lic who ulti mately em braced our holy Faith. This is illu strated in the conversion of Albert W. Overhauser, Ph.D., a research physicist at Ford Scientific Laboratory, Dearborn, Michigan and a daily communicant. On a visit to Notre Dame Dr. Overhauser, along with his for mer Cornell colleague, Mr. Rob ert Brannan of the English fac ulty here, called at my study. “I was reared as a Methodist in San Francisco,” related Dr. Overhauser, “and attended Sun day School quite regularly. Af ter attending the University of California for two years, I join ed the Navy in 1944. “One day I was sitting in the U.S.O. center in San Diego. Next to me was a pamphlet rack. I reached over and took a couple of pamphlets. One was on the Blessed Virgin and the other on Sunday observance — reprints of chapters from “I Be lieve” by Father Wilfred Hur ley, C.S.P. “Like many other'"Protestants.. I had scarcely heard of the Blessed Virgin and she meant nothing to me. But the state ment of the Catholic Church’s reverence and veneration of her was so transparently reasonable that it gripped and stirred me as no religious article had ever done before. The reading of that little pamphlet kindled a spark of interest which grew ever larger and ultimately led me into the Catholic Faith. “I took those two pamphlets back to the barracks and read them ten times. Reading them marked the turning point in my life. I knew little about the Catholic Church and was as free of prejudice as any of the gui nea pigs born here in your fam ous germ-free laboratory was free of germs. “I began to visit Catholic churches and always looked for a pamphlet rack in the vesti bule. When there was one, I came away with more pamph lets. They increased my know ledge of the Catholic Faith and deepened my respect for the reasonableness of its doctrines. Sent to the Philippines, I con tinued my study of the Catho lic religion, and there I read The Faith of Millions and sev eral other books on the Catho lic Faith. “I was already convinced of the truth of the Catholic re ligion when I went to Chaplain C. Henri Tessier on the island of Samar and asked for system atic instruction. Father explain ed the credentials and doctrines of the Church clearly and log ically. “The marvelous world-wide unity of the Church, the un broken line of pontiffs from (Continued on Page 5) Father Wharton’a View from the Reetory MYSTERY TALES Did you know snakes have no eyelids? Or that it takes 15 years to train an elephant? Or that a turkey can get a head cold? Or (I hope you’re sitting down for this breathtaking piece of news) that a camel has a double row of eyelashes? I didn’t know, either, and the information has not really en riched my life. But I accept the truth of these statements be cause reputable authorities have announced them. I can’t under stand why it takes 15 years to train an elephant; you would think they could send him to night school or something to speed up his education. And I would never have guessed that turkeys can get head colds, just as I would never have guessed that they can’t. Why camels should have two rows of eye lashes is a mystery to me—un less the added mark of beauty is supposed to make up for the hunchback. Mysteries, mysterie s—the world is full of them. I don’t know anything about electricity Southern Presbyterians Hit Oatholic-Protestant Marriages Is Unwholesome For Family Goretti is champion. The inci dent is of an Irish country school master’s reaction “that awful day when some fellow scrawled obscenity on the wall of the playground.” He speaks: “There is one among you who is rotten—rotten to the core. What wrong has he done? Sometimes that makes my soul sick. The eyes are the soul’s windows. Through these windows good and evil enter the mind. Into the soul of each of you whose glance rested for one moment on the work of this boy’s hands the seed of evil was born. Better for that boy’s hand that it had never been trained to hold a pen, better for him that he, had never been born to live to do this vile thing. . . Good God what must his mind be if this is the foul thing that it casts up!” The last exclamatory ques tion, Father Connolly observes, might well be asked of many contemporary novelists. (N.C.W.C. News Service) ATLANTA — Leaders of the southern Presbyterian church reaffirmed here their 1946 stand that Catholic attitude toward mixed marriage makes whole some family life impossible. Five hundred commissioners of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (South) approved re-issu ance of the 13-year-old state ment. The commissioners govern a body of Presbyterfans which separated from other groups of the denomination at the time of the War Between the States. Their membership is about 850,- 000 persons served by about 4,000 churches. The assembly originally had before it an overture, or resolu tion, on the subject of church- state separation which voiced Presbyterian disapproval “of the Roman Catholic principle of union of church and state and its (the Church’s) system of propaganda.” In their final action on this resolution, the commissioners dropped specific mention of Ca tholicism and instead voiced their belief in church-state sep aration. The 1946 letter, whose re distribution the assembly ap proved, stated the Catholic at titude toward mixed marriages “makes- it impossible for a wholesome family religious life to exist and continually re quires the Protestant to sur render or compromise his per sonal conviction.” The letter continued that “what is even more serious (is that) it involves the signing away of the spiritual birthright of unborn children by denying them the possibility of any re ligious training in the home oth er than that prescribed by the Roman Catholic Church.” “It is far better that the par ties concerned should not marry than that these tragic results should follow,” the letter said. The general assembly also called for Christians to keep safe the right of Negroes and whites to meet voluntarily in unhampered assembly and gen uine fellowship. It also liberalized its stand ards for remarriage of divorced persons. The assembly said a minister can now perform the marriage of divorced persons if the clergyman is convinced there is evidence of sorrow for past wrongs and a desire to avoid such actions in the fu ture. Previously, adultery and willful desertion were the only grounds for remarriage. except that it costs money and is shocking when you touch it. Spring follows Winter, bees al ways build hexagonal cells, and birds join all the people in fly ing to Florida each Winter. A scientist could tell me that a certain species of fish chews gum and, except for wondering what flavor, I’d accept the state ment without question. The visible world we’ve been studying for thousands of years is still a mystery. Look how long everyone thought the earth was flat. Then we discovered it is round. Now they tell us the satellites show that the earth is sort of pear-shaped (I thought so long ago, but didn’t like to say anything). So we come to today’s 64c question: If we accept so many mysteries in our visible world, why shouldn’t there be myster ies in the invisible and spiritual world? So often objection is thrown up to us: “I can’t believe in the Church because it wants me to accept incomprehensible mysteries. My reason lets me believe only what I can under stand.” Talking about mysteries can be confusing. These days the average person thinks of Ellery Queen and Sherlock Holmes when you mention the word. Or we use the term rather loose ly, like when we say, “It’s a mystery to me what’s sleeping across the foot of my bed every night since I really don’t own a dog.” The word mystery, however, is a technical term of our reli gion, meaning a truth which we couldn’t figure out for ourselves. And something which we can’t fully understand even after it is revealed to us by God. Our doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the classic example. Our reason would never tell us that there should be three Persons in one God—and we have trouble grasping the truth even after we have been told it’s true. Because we adhere to these mysteries so firmly, some peo ple get the idea that Catholics are supposed to abdicate reason and blindly accept these things. It’s true that our doctrines go above and beyond reason. But we insist that it is most reason able to accept such doctrines as the Trinity. It is quite sensible to believe them if God has re vealed them to us—and rather foolish to deny them, for that matter. It’s smart, for example, to be lieve in miracles when we have such reliable testimony that they have happened. Much smarter, in fact, than the man who proclaims miracles impos sible, without even examining the evidence. There are many people, you know, who say that God’s revelation, the Trinity, the Holy Eucharist, original sin—anything supernatural, in fact—are just impossible. Being proud of our exalted reason, we like to understand everything completely. That’s why faith requires some humili ty. But why should God reveal things we could figure out for ourselves? We should expect God’s truths to he above our limited intelligence and experi ence. “But I‘m from Missouri. I accept only what I can see and understand.” Nonsense! we be lieve germs exist because scien tists tell us they do; we believe George Washington lived be cause historians tell us he did. Very few of us—if any of us—' can explain electricity or cen trifugal force or photosynthesis^ Yet we accept them as true. It would be more reasonable to feel like the honest Newton, ( Continued on Page 5 ) 416 8TH ST., AUGUSTA, GA. Published fortnightly by the Catholic Laymen’s Association of Georgia, Inc., with the Approbation of the Most Reverend Arch bishop-Bishop of Savannah, The Most Reverend Bishop of Atlanta and the Right Reverend Abbot Ordinary of Belmont. Subscription price $3.00 per year. Second class mail privileges authorized at Monroe, Georgia. Send notice of change of address to P. O. Box 320, Monroe, Georgia. REV. FRANCIS J. DONOHUE REV. R. DONALD KIERNAN Editor Savannah Edition Editor Atlanta Edition JOHN MARKWALTER Managing Editor Vol. 39 Saturday, May 16, 1959 • No. 25 ASSOCIATION OFFICERS FOR 1958-1959 GEORGE GINGELL, Columbus Px - esident MRS. DAN HARRIS, Macon Vice-President TOM GRIFFIN, Atlanta Vice-President NICK CAMERIO, Macon Secretary JOHN T. BUCKLEY, Augusta Treasurer ALVIN M. McAULIFFE, Augusta Auditor JOHN MARKWALTER, Augusta Executive Secretary MISS CECILE FERRY, Augusta Financial Secretary