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PAGE 4—THE BULLETIN, October 28, 1961
In God We Must Trust
How's That Again?
AS AN ATHB/ST, / SO NOT
BBL /El/E /A/ PtWA/EPNOmENCE!
Wladyslaw Gomulka’s statement that
deeply rooted religious belief in Poland
is a serious obstacle to the advance of
communism in that country is a telling
admission.
Particularly is this true when one
takes into consideration that the acknowl
edgement followed closely upon the party’s
latest clash with the Roman Catholic
Church in Poland. Especially, too, is it sig
nificant ' in light of the fact that it was
uttered by a man who is chief of the Com
munist Party in that enslaved country.
By the manner in which he worded the
admission, however, Gomulka indicates his
own belief that communism will eventually
eliminate religious conviction and emerge
victorious in the battle for men’s minds,
hearts and souls.
“. . . It is difficult to say how long
religious belief will persist in Poland—cer
tainly for tens of years and possibly even
longer,” he told a Paris newsman in a rare
interview with a Western journalist.
But the intimation is there that in the
course of time religion will disappear.
* * *
Each of us knows, of course, that this
need not happen, should not happen and
must not happen if the restraining forces
of communism are to be stayed in their re
lentless efforts to control the destiny of
man.
What is being witnessed in its attack on
the Catholic Church is symbolic of the
communist drive to eradicate all belief in
a Supreme Being.
What many of us may not know—and
what the Communist may know even more
fully than we—is that it is religion itself—
the belief in and allegiance to God—that
must be the ultimate deterrent to the pro
gression of communism.
Deprived of that belief in and hope for
salvation and the dignity to being with
which both cloak mankind, men might well
spurn the compassion, the graciousness and
the love engendered by an acceptance and
resolute exercise of Christian principles.
They might turn, instead, to communism
and the depravity it generates and nour
ishes.
The hope for man, therefore, lies in
God.
Nikita Khrushchev knows that. Appar
ently, Wladyslaw Gomulka does too.
Were it not so, their bitter feud with
the Church would not be waged, nor would
the effort be spent to obliterate the deeply
rooted religious belief that Gomulka has
found to exist in Poland.
How deep do the roots run here in
America?
The probe has not yet been made.
And that gives us time to undertake
our own before the Communists conduct
one themselves.
Strengthening our religious armor by
pushing ever deeper the roots we have in
the faith we hold will serve to force a po
tential American Gomulka to utter some
day—as the Polish one says now—: “Re
ligion is deeply rooted in a major part of
our population.”
And that is the Achilles heel of Com
munism.
—THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE.
RICKOVER'S LATEST BLAST
The Backdrop
WHY WAR WON'T COME
It Seems to Me
Vice Admiral H. G. Rick-
over, doughty critic of Ameri
can education, recently resum
ed the offensive with the
charge that “a strange anti-
intellectualism permeats our
e d u cational
officialdom.”
The atom-
i c expert,
who played
a major role
in the de
velopment of
the atomic
submarine, is
deeply con
cerned about what he consid
ers the inferior quality of
American education. Repeated
ly, he has warned that spend
ing vast additional sums on
public education will achieve
no appreciable results unless
the quality of education is im
proved.
FANTASTIC EXTREMES
Rickover’s quarrel is chief
ly with the educational theo
ries of the so-called progres
sive educators who still dom
inate the school system, al
though in some quarters their
philosophy is beginning to be
questioned.
In his latest blast, delivered
at a Congress of the American
College of Surgeons, Rickover
complained that the progres
sive educationists have carried
to' fantastic extremes “the ega
litarianism that entered our
educational thinking in the
Jacksobian era.”
f" Rickover does not question
the American belief that all
Apnericans are equal in the
sight of the law, but he does
insist on the obvious fact that
all individuals are not in the
intellectual sense, equally en
dowed. Some are more intel
ligent than others, but, as he
points out, the idea of pro
viding one kind of education
JOHN C. O'BRIEN
for the intelligent and a dif
ferent kind for the less intelli
gent seems to be repugnant to
the progressive educators. The
educators seem to believe that,
such a procedure would be
“undemocratic.”
“Our determination that ev
ery child must get the same
education, at least during his
first 12 years, is at the root of
most of the defects in our
school system,” Rickover
maintains. “We are apparently
incapable of accepting the in
controvertible fact that after
the first few elementary grades
children’s mental inequalities
make any kind of genuine ed
ucation impossible if we force
them to move in lockstep
through the single-track com
prehensive school. This sort of
school is a defective instru
mentality, yet we cling to it
because it looks so ‘democrat
ic’,”
European countries, which
have had far more experience
than we with public educa
tion, Rickover points out, do
not consider it undemocratic
to provide parallel courses to
accommodate for differences
in ability and educational ob
jective. When the child reach
es the age of 12, the European
systems divide their classes ac
cording to aptitudes, critical
judgment and ability to think
in abstract terms and give each
group an education adapted to
its capabilities.
“We reject all this,” Rick
over notes, “as ‘aristocratic’ or
‘class’ education — though for
the most part it is free — and
we pride ourselves on our
‘mass’ education, no matter
how little genuine education
it contains. Eventually our
brighter children who want to
prepare for careers requiring
a foundation of basic know
ledge must be given special
schooling. We consider it more
democratic that this should be
at age 18 when college be
gins, though this means rob
bing them of three or four of
their best learning years.”
SOVIET EDUCATION
Because American educators
do insist upon gearing the high
school curriculum to the capa
bilities of the average student,
Rickover maintains that
American high schools are not
the equivalent of secondary
schools in Europe and that the
course given in some of our
colleges are little more ad
vanced than those given in
many European secondary
schools. European colleges, he
insists, set a pace for their stu
dents comparable to that set
for graduate students in
American universities.
While emphasis in the Sov
iet Union is solely on teaching
skills and professional train
ing, Rickover points out that
Soviet schools do a better job
in achieving these ends than
the American school system.
Russian pupils have a vocabu
lary of about 7,000 words in
the fifth or sixth grade, while,
according to the World Book
of 1961, the average American
high school graduate has a vo
cabulary of but 3,000 to 5,000
words.
The United States needs all
the professional and technical
experts it can train, Rickover
insists. Therefore, he main
tains, it is foolish for Ameri
can educators to deprecate
Russian schools because the
students are unfree subjects. It
is equally foolish, he argues, to
continue one-track education,
when European systems have
proved conclusively that ev
ery child — below-average and
above-average — can be edu
cated better in homogenous
groups.
UNINFORMED PACIFISTS
Sum and Substance
The Catholic pacifist is not
a coward but I fear that, in
many cases, he is irresponsible.
Not that he adopts his position
frivolously without a sense of
deep com
mitment or
is convinced
that “it’s bet
ter to be
Red than
dead.” Rath
er, he is ear
nest and sin
cere in his
opinion that
love should be the force by
which we overcome evil, not
the force of arms. But it seems
to me that in opposing all
wars and in arguing for total
disarmament, he is grossly
negligent. He fails to take into
account all the relevant facts
of the problem.
WIERD NOTIONS
Ernest W. Lefever delivered
REV. JOHN B. SHEF.RIN, C.S.P.
a talk on arms control at a
meeting of the Church Peace
Union in New York on June
22nd. He pointed out that the
general public is vastly unin
formed on the whole problem
of disarmament. He singled
out “morally concerned
groups” of Christians who pre
sume to speak about the sub
ject even though they don’t
know and understand all the
facets of this highly complex
problem.
He cited the instance of the
World Council of Churches
which, several years ago, ask
ed all Christians to urge their
governments to enter into
pacts for international control
of nuclear tests, and failing in
this attempt, Christians were
to urge their governments to
cease tests unilaterally.
“What would have happen
ed,” said Lefever, “if Ameri
can Christians had taken seri
ously this statement and had
been successful in getting their
governments to adopt this pol
icy?” It would have amounted
to national suicide.
To know the facts on this
total problem means to know
the psychological, military,
and political features of our
present problem. There are
many who take a “tough” line
toward Russia who are poorly
informed but I believe the
pacifists are peculiarly weigh
ed down with weird notions in
spite of their good intentions.
I might cite a few pieces of
misinformation which are cur
rent today and which Mr. Le
fever dwelt upon in his talk.
It is commonly assumed that
brushfire wars must inevitably
develop into frightful nuclear
wars but Lefever shows that
all-out nuclear war is the least
likely contingency. “Local
(Continued on Page 5)
The power of prayer has
been quietly but powerfully
demonstrated to us in the past
15 years. Russia, it is true, has
not yet been converted, as she
cei’tainly will be. But at least
she is still
there to be
c o n v e rted.
And we are
still here to
welcome her
back into the
family of na
tions after
her long and
bitter so
journ with the pigs and husks
of godlessness.
What but divine providence
can explain the fact that the
accident has *not happened, the
mistake in judgment has not
been made, that in one instant
could have triggered the sui
cide of Europe. America and
the Soviet Union, if not of the
rest of mankind? How is it
that Pope John can be optimis
tic about the future, as Pius
XII was before him?
Most of us, perhaps, have
forgotten, or did not notice,
how buoyant Pius became in
the closing years of his life.
Before that, he was a man of
almost iron seriousness: he
drove himself unmercifully, he
prayed in anguish for his fel-
lowmen, and he seemed to hold
himself unyieldingly erect lest
he break under the weight of
the world’s forebodings.
Then two supernatural
events, of which we know,
came into his life. He saw re
peated, in the sky above the
Vatican Gardens, the miracle
of the sun which had been
shown to the three shepherd
children and the throng ac
companying them at Fatima in
1917. And during a serious ill
ness, Christ appeared to him
briefly, not speaking, but
seeming to say silently that the
illness would pass and Pius
would be pope for a little long
er.
I NEVER SAW the Holy Fa
ther: I can judge only from
his words, and from how he
looked in news pictures. But
he said something extraordi
narily significant; in one of his
most moving public messages
he cried out that “a new
springtime for the world” was
approaching. And in his pic
tures, he appeared to be filled
with a joy, almost a giety, that
seemed to speak of huge bur
dens suddenly lifted from his
heart.
The same kind of cheerful
serenity was voiced by Pope
John a few weeks ago in the
course of the. peace appeal he
delivered at his Peace Mass in
Castelgandolfo. He warned
rulers about their responsibili
ties before mankind and before
God; he called for an end to
threats, and said that nothing
will be lost by peace but ev
erything would be lost by war.
In those statements he was
serious, but I was struck by
one sentence which got little
attention in the public prints
and on the airwaves. Pope
John said:
"By the mercy of God, we
are persuaded thai up io ihe
present time there is no sen-
JOSEPH BREIG
ous threat of either immedi
ate or remote war."
He was speaking in the
midst of the Berlin crisis and
in face of Soviet brinkman
ship; he must have had the
best of reasons for so much op
timism. What they were, we do
not know, but we can make
some educated guesses about
some of them.
At Fatima, where she pre
dicted World War II and the
persecution of religion, the
Virgin Mary gave us, from
God, a peace program. We
were to pray the Rosary; to
consecrate individuals and na-
toins — especially Russia — to
her Immaculate Heart; to re
ceive Communion on first Sat
urdays in reparation for sin.
The program has been wide
THE LOURDES STORY
Jottings
By BARBARA C. JENCKS
“Her children shall rise vp and call her blessed
BY THE time this column appears, I will have visited
the Holy Shrine at Lourdes in France and participated in
the ceremonies on the Feast of the Holy Rosary. In subse
quent columns, I will write of some of my thoughts and
experiences at this hallowed shrine. My devotion to the
Blessed Mother has been one of the strongest and longest
in my heart and soul. Yet my interest and devotion in her
shrine at Lourdes dates back to but four years when I first
went to Notre Dame. A few years after Notre Dame was
founded in 1842, word crossed the ocean of strange happen
ings in France. A peasant girl in the mountains claimed to
have been visited by the Blessed Mother. Many in France
and the rest of the world refused to believe the child’s stoi’y.
Across the ocean at a man’s college dedicated to Our Lady,
many did believe. Our Lady at Lourdes was quickly ac
cepted at Notre Dame and honor to her under that title be
came and still is the dominant Marian devotion there. In
1895, the first grotto replica of Our Lady of Lourdes was
built at Notre Dame and remains the most famous in Ameri
ca. In my own parish of St. Mary’s, Pawtucket, there is also
a lovely shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes built two years ago.
I am never far from the grotto’s shadow wherever I go.
IT WAS THE CENTENNIAL year of the proclamation
of the Immaculate Conception dogma and Lourdes, the year
I first came to Notre Dame’s Lourdes Shrine. I have made
numerous pilgrimages from the woman’s college across the
highway to this lovely shrine—in golden October, fragile
May and snow swept December and February on Marian
feasts. I heard a dying Dr. Tom Dooley tell of his love
for this grotto “where snow must be everywhere and the
lake is ice glass.” I knew of the Notre Dame students who
knelt in Arctic temperatures to pray for him there the night
of his death. As I walked over to his requiem Mass two days
after his death, I stopped at the grotto for him. Last fall,
Tom went to Lourdes and as he left, he wrote: “I have all
the confidence in the world that Our Lady will take care
of me.” She did for no one goes away from Lourdes without
some miracle, spiritual or physical. He said the miracle was
that his program was continuing and that despite his cancer
he was still able to carry on as he was doing. At Saint Mary’s
—Notre Dame, I heard much about Lourdes; five students
have given their summers to working in the hospitals there,
carrying stretchers, scrubbing floors, working in the baths
and shops there. All return transformed with the inner peace
and joy of giving to those “who don’t have it so good,” as
Tom Dooley would say.
THERE ARE other reasons for going to Lourdes too
personal to explain—“the heart has its reasons of which
reason knows nothing.” There is a friend who used to walk
with me to the Lourdes shrine but no more, whose intentions
will be remembered. There are two shut-ins who have meant
much to me who cannot go to Lourdes themselves but who
will be remembered there. There is a mother whom I miss
with deep pain who surely would send me to the Mother of
All for comfort and solace. She believed in the-miracle of
Lourdes. I, too, have promises to keep at this grotto.
'ashincflon nCetter i
Speech By Russian Premier
Sentinues ‘War Of Heroes’
ly followed. Millions have been
praying the Rosary, thanks to
Father Patrick Peyton’s cru
sades. Nation after nation has
been consecrated as requested.
Pius XII himself consecrated
Russia, in a message not to the
Soviet rulers, but to the peo
ple. Millions have been observ
ing the first Saturdays.
IT WOULD BE a poor sort
of trust in God that did not
lead us to hope, with much
confidence, that nuclear catas
trophe will be averted, that the
Russians will overthrow athe
ism, and that, as the Virgin
promised, “an era of peace will
be granted to mankind.”
Considerations such as these
caused me to overcome a re
luctance to ask for one more
(Continued on Page -5)
By J. J. Gilbert
WASHINGTON — Premier
Khrushchev’s speech opening
the 22nd Soviet Communist
Party Congress in Moscow
(Oct. 17) has a special interest
as a part of a pattern.
His marathon talk in the
Palace of the Congresses, new
ly built within the Kremlin
walls, was hailed in the West
as being milder than might
have been expected. To the ex
tent that it was mild, it was
regarded as one of the relax
ations which follow periods of
Moscow-induced crisis. The
communists seem to gain as
much, if not more, through
easing tensions as they do
through creating them. But, of
course, they must first bring
about a crisis before they can
appear to ease it.
The Reds from time to time
stir up the fears and anxie
ties of the non-communist
world, and then suddenly re
lax the tension they have cre
ated. While the West is en
joying a sense of relief, Mos
cow makes a bold new step
toward world domination, or it
consolidates an advantage it
seized during the crisis.
Khrushchev’s latest party
speech had a built-in shocker,
sort of one-shot crisis of its
own. It was the announcement
that Soviet Russia would, on
October 30 or 31, detonate an
atomic bomb equal in explos
ive force to 50 million tons of
TNT. It will be the biggest ex
plosion of a nuclear weapon in
history, 2,500 times as power
ful as the first atomic bomb
exploded. It could add twice as
much radio-active fallout to
the atmosphere as all the other
atomic weapons exploded by
the communists since Septem
ber 1.
The project is firmly believ
ed here to have no other pur
pose than to terrorize the rest
of the world. Authorities are
agreed that the whole current
series of communist atomic
tests produced no new infor
mation for the Reds, and were
wholly unnecessary.
The announcement of the de
termination to detonate so
awesome a bomb as a climax
to a series of unnecessary tests
may have been an attempt on
the part of Khrushchev to pile
a new crisis upon an apparent
relaxation-of tension, a demon
stration to the world that he
feels he can manipulate things
to suit himself.
The callousness of the de
cision, and its announcement,
cause concern here. There are
those who believe that ex
plosion of the 50 megaton
bomb will shower the earth
with such radio-active debris
as to shorten the lives of hun
dreds of thousands of persons,
and to affect adversely the
lives of perhaps millions of
others. In addition, the cyni
cism of Moscow in resuming
tests unilaterally, in utter con
tempt of the rest of the world,
and its decision to explode a
monstrously powerful bomb to
close the tests, casts serious
doubt upon the possibility of
any reliable agreement with
Moscow regarding nuclear
tests and weapons.
The current crisis over Ber
lin and Germany is one which
Nikita Khrushchev has creat
ed deliberately.
Has the pitcher gone to the
well once too often?
Defying the rights of the
West in Berlin, ignoring pro
visions of the four-power
agreement for the occupation
of Berlin, Khrushchev has
forced the West into a position
from which it cannot honor
ably retreat.
The peace of the world —
the future of the world — de
pends to a great degree upon
whether or not Nikita Khru
shchev sees in time that this
is a fact. It is not known here,
at this time, whether he does
or not.
By David Q. Lipfak
Q. Where is heaven? Gould
if be here on ihis earth
somewhere? Must I believe
that I and other human be
ings will spend heaven
standing in one place with
folded hands?
A. Heaven — the word dep
rives from the Anglo-Saxon
heofon — is both a state and a
place. As a state it comprises
the ultimate end of man’s
yearnings. As a place, it consti
tutes man’s only true and fin
al homeland — in heaven ev
eryone “belongs” in the most
perfect sense.
SO MUCH is known from
the few facts God has reveal
ed about heaven or paradise.
Known with like certainty is
that the principal source of
man’s happiness in heaven
will be his ability to see God
directly, face to face as it
were, and not merely medi-
tately as in this life, through
faith in God and the manner
in which he mirrors himself in’
creatures.
SUBJECTIVELY, the happi
ness each person will enjoy in
heaven can be epitomized —
in a term readily understand
able to the modern world —
as “fulfilment.” Indeed, “ful
filment” could be taken as a
descriptive synonym for para
dise.
BY THE same declension,
the means of experiencing
heaven’s fulfilment will neces
sarily be commensurate with
man’s capacity to enjoy him
self as a human being. The im
age of heaven as an ethereal
garden peopled with winged
choirs floating atop clouds —
a common artistic accommoda
tion — is therefore no more?
than symbolic. Equally as un
founded is the image of robed
individuals standing around
with folded hands.
WHERE HEAVEN IS has
not been revealed. It has been
made known, though, that
there will be a new heaven
and a new earth, at the end of
time. This, St. John tells us in
the Apocalypse, wherein he
also mentions some details
about the after-life:
"AND I SAW a new heaven
and a new earth.
For the first heaven and the
first earth passed away, and
the sea is no more . . . And I
heard a loud voice from the
throne saying, ‘Behold the *
dwelling place of God with
men, and he shall dwell with
them. They will be his people,
and God himself will be with
them as their God. And God
will wipe away every tear
from their eyes. And death
shall be no more; neither shall
there be mourning, nor crying,
nor pain any more . . (XXI:
1-4)
AS FOR the duration of hea
ven — eternity is incompre
hensible to time-creatures such
as ourselves — another mys
tery arises. One key to a shal
low understanding of this phe
nomenon is the difference
which exists in this life be
tween moments of pain and
moments of joy. Thus, a day
of pain passes here as so many
years, whereas a year of un
mitigated happiness is as but
an hour.
©If? SttUrtin
416 8TH ST.. AUGUSTA, GA.
Published fortnightly by the Catholic Laymen’s Association of
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REV. FRANCIS J. DONOHUE REV. R. DONALD KIERNAN
Editor Savannah Edition Editor Atlanta Edition
JOHN MARKWALTER
Managing Editor
REV. LAWRENCE LUCREE, REV. JOHN FITZPATRICK,
Associate Editors, Savannah Edition.
Vol. 42 Saturday, October 28, 1961 No. 11
ASSOCIATION OFFICERS
GEORGE GINGELL, Columbus President
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