The bulletin of the Catholic Laymen's Association of Georgia. (Augusta, Ga.) 1920-1957, March 02, 1957, Image 7

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The bulletin of the Catholic Laymen's Association of Georgia., March 02, 1957, Image 7

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Newspaper Page TextMARCH 2. 1957. THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA SEVEN Youth Club At St. James SAVANNAH — The February meeting of the Saint James Coun- cil of Catholic' Women was held in the school library. The Youth Committee announced that a Youth Club had been organized. At its first dance held in the Church basement, there were ap proximately .. 100 teen-agers pres ent. Plans for the chicken supper, which was held recently, were completed at this meeting. The proceeds will help defray ex penses incurred in furnishing the new Saint James School. Meeting Of St, Anthony’s Parents Club BOOK REVIEWS EDITED BY EILEEN HALL 3087 Old Jonesboro Road. Hapeville. Georgia Each issue of ihis Book Page is confided to the patronage of Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces, with the hope that every read er and every contributor may be specially favored by her and her Divine Son. FICTION PRIZE STORIES 1957: The O. Henry Awards, selected and edit ed by Paul Engle, assisted by Constance Urdang, (Doubleday $3.95). First prize this year in this collection of quality magazine fiction went to Miss Flannery O’Connor of Milledgeville, Ga., for her short story “Greenleaf,” ATLANTA — At the night meeting of St= Anthony’s Parents Club. Tuesday, February 12, a most successful business meeting was held and also a most unusual and entertaining program was presented. The meeting was opened with prayer by' the Vice-president, Mrs. Ben Waldron. Mrs. John Schaaf, president, presided. Mrs. Herlong Averette, Ways and Means Chairman, thanked the la dies for their donations and help for a most successful bake sale. Mrs. H. J. Duffy, Civil Defense Chairman, reported that every child in our school should have an identification tag or bracelet. The bracelets are available now and are fifty cents each. Mr. Sullivan, guest speaker for the March meeting, will speak on Civil Defense and show a film on the same. Mrs. S. H. Dillard, Hospitality Chairman, thanked Mrs. R. W. Rvckeley, third grade mother, and her assistants, for the tasty refreshments and the lovely table decorations. Mrs. T. J. Sutherland and her committee re ported that in the future the uni forms for the school children will be of a better quality and more satisfactory to the buyer. Mrs. W. J. LeinmiUer, Chair man of Foreign Relief, talked on helping in the Drive for China and the Parents Club made a mo tion to send a five dollar Care Package to Feed a Family. A special request was made for First Holy Communion dresses to be made or donated by anyone in terested in doing so, for the chil- ren of Hong Kong. An announcement was made on the St. Patrick’s Parade for this year and a film of last years parade was shown. We will par ticipate in the parade as usual and a float will be entered. :The third Sunday of every month is Holy Communion Sun day for the members of the Par ents Club. We have invited the Fathers to be present with the Mothers and we hope that a bet ter attendance will be shown for our Club. The door prize was won by Mrs. Jerry Beckbar and the attendance prize was won by the third grade. The meeting was closed with prayer by Father James E. King. Ned Baker, S. J. Keith, Gordon Moss, Tom Bergen, Andy Guy, John Schaaf, John Thompson, Bill McAdams, Mark Lundy and Joe McCaffrey took over the pro gram for the remainder of the evening. They undoubtedly will be remembered for a long time in their mock presentation of a Parents Club Meeting. Dressed in ladies attire, each one represented the officers and. committee chair men of the club. Need; I say more, if you missed this hilarious eve ning, it is your regret. The next meeting will be held fphon Tuesday, March 12, at noon in the Church Auditorium. FLANNERY O'CONNOR the first in the book .That is rea son enough for BULLETIN read ers to be interested, because Miss O’Connor’s book reviews have been a feature of THE BUL LETIN'S book review page this past year. This volume is the 37th in the O. Henry Awards series. “Greenleaf” originally ap peared in The Kenyon Review. One of Miss O’Connor’s stories was included in “Prize Stories 1954” and her “A Circle in the Fire” won second prize in the 1955 series. Miss O’Connor Is author of a novel, “Wise Blood,” published in 1952, and a book of short stories, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” published last year by Hareourt Brace and Company. “A Circle in the Fire” also appeared in the lat ter collection. In the. current issue of “Books on Trial,” a large part of Miss O’Connor’s review of “All Man ner of Men,” written for THE BULLETIN and originally print- St. Mary’s Council Meets AUGUSTA, Ga.—At the Feb ruary meeting of St. Mary’s Coun cil of Catholic Women, Mrs. Lawrence Ward, president, told of the newly formed SO Ann’s Club which meets on the first and third Friday evenings of the month at the. St. Ann Clubhouse on St. Mary’s parish grounds. Catholic boys and girls in the ninth and tenth grades of both parochial and public schools are eligible to join the club. Mrs. Ward read a letter from the Most Rev. Thomas J. Mc Donough, D. D., J.C.D., newly ap pointed Auxiliary Bishop of Sav annah, thanking St. Mary’s Coun cil for its letter of congratulation on his appointment. A representative number of members plan to attend the an nual convention of the Savannah Diocesan Council of Catholic Women. During the sewing hour, 138 ar ticles were completed for Our Lady of Perpetual Help Free Can cer Home in Atlanta. ed on this page, is reproduced. “All Manner of Men” is a recent collection of fiction from Catholic magazines, much after the. pattern of the O. Henry Awards series. Miss O’Connor’s fiction has aroused much comment. Some find her stories “disturbing.” Cer tainly they are extraordinary. In our opinion, a perfect appraisal of them was written by Frank X. Steggert and printed in the De cember 1955 issue of “Books on Trial:” “In Miss O’Connor’s sto ries there is no vulgarity. Both the characters and their involvements may be appalling, but in all cases they are honest and convincing. Her artistry goes far beyond simple sensationalism since the shock value of her work is the result of the truth of what she has to say.” REMEMBRANCE ROCK, by Carl Sandberg, (Hareourt, Brace $5.00), reviewed by Margaret G. Smith. Only a poet like Mr. Sand berg, after a full life and in full maturity, could have woven such a theme as "Remembrance Rock” so perfectly. This is a rich, dra matic and provocative novel of “The Dream of America,” its, char acters telling the story of Amer ica, past and present. Its people live, love, hate, blaspheme, suffer, fight, kill and worship. In fact, all the human frailties and great nesses move in. on The Dream of America, leading always to. the unknow future. Still young, im mature and still searching for . . . “the spirit of liberty . . . the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught that lesson nev er learned but never quite for gotten; that there may be a king dom where, the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.” Each of us has a “Remembrance Rock” around which is planted all that shapes our destinies, as we the people give shape to The Dream of Amer ica. We the people, past and pres ent, are Remembrance. Rock — or is God in heaven Remembrance Rock and we the buried triumphs and failures of God’s great mas terpiece, the World? The reader must decide — each for himself. SING NO SAD SONGS, by John Hazard Wildman, (Exposi tion Press $3.00), reviewed by Frances Alexander: “This is a timely novel, written by an ima ginative. novelist. Mr. Wildman, of Mobile, Alabama, is a convert to the Catholic Church. This story is told in the first person, by the protagonist, Mary Brandon, whose husband Carl, a rising young poli tician, has allowed his former high ideals to be compromised by the local political boss. Mary’s disapproval drives her almost to murder and suicide. BROTHER PETROC'S R E - TURN, by S.M.C. (Image 50c), reviewed by Martha Fowler: The story begins in the year 1549 with the death of Brother Petroc a Benedictine monk. His brother monks, forced to flee their monas tery, place his body in a vault, hurry to their boats and are never seen again. Four hundred years later the body is discovered and everyone is shocked, to say the least, when Brother Petroc opens his eyes and returns to life. The story is warm, tender and gently humorous. You won’t forget it soon. refrain is “all for Jesus” and Assunta is Sister Mary Assunta or Blesed Assunta Pallotta (1878- 1905). The biography of this humble and holy Italian girl is a simple, one because of the Mary- like hidden life she led. She achieved no worldly success but she attained the one thing alone that is important: eternal salva tion. Her story, like that of St. There.se, the Little Flower of Jesus, is one of “little things of fered for Jesus”—a "little way” that can be copied by anyone. Sister Assunta’s vocation was to live for God, first as an obedient, hard-working daughter, later as a Missionary Sister. She was bea tified by Pope Pius XII in 1954. Simply written, this book is easily read. Each chapter has a musical phrase for its title and is enhanc ed by an ink sketch of the subject matter. land and then back to the isolated English village where, slowly con secrating himself to a life of pray er, he reads Newman. He soon contacts a Catholic priest who ac cidentally suggests a nearby Ben- dictine Abbey for a retreat. The result is dual and swift; Griffiths is received into the Church and and then into the Abbey itself. The facts of this autobiography certainly lack the flamboyance of Merton’s conversion. But the last chapters which deal with the in ner life of the monk are of great beauty. The author states here the results of much thought and study on a variety of subjects (notably the relation of Catholic ism and the Eastern religions) and, although the statements sometimes border on religious clinche, they present a modern consciousness of great depth. Es pecially, the epilogue is a near ST. IGNATINS' OWN STORY, j masterpiece in its lucid, brief statement of the religious impulse in the modern world. At the mo- BIOGRAPHY THE THEME SONG OF AS SUNTA, compiled by one of her Sisters, (Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, 399 Fruit Hill Avenue, North Providence, R.I.. $2.00), re viewed by Margot T. Atwood. The theme song is love of God, the as told to Luis Gonzalez de Cama ra, with a sampling of his letters, translated by William J. Young, S.J., (Regnery $2.50), reviewed by Rev. Schroder, S.J. Here we have one of those rare things, the auto biography of a canonized saint. The ex-soldier agreed to its ; writ ing only after constant pressure from those, surrounding him. He dictated the chief events of his life to a faithful disciple. Ignatius pulls no punches. He refers to the sins of the flesh in his former life, to. his love for a Spanish lady of the highest nobility, to his hectic life at the University of Paris. He describes the battle at Pamplona, where he was wound ed and captured, and his spiritual conversion as he. convalesced in a neighboring castle. We watch Ig natius during his long vigils at Manresa, his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and his gathering of his early companions, Xavier, Faber and Leynez. The autobio graphy ends with his arrival at Rome in 1537. “The Story” is supplemented by a selection of Ignatius’ letters to various per sons, e.g., to a man who was tempted; to Francis Borgia; to a religious who threatened to burn every Jesuit he found between Perspina and Seville. A SHEPHERD WITHOUT SHEEP, by E. Boyd Barrett, (Bruce, $2.75). Reviewed by Margot T. Atwood. The re turn of the stray shepherd to the fold, although a joyous event, isn’t the end of the story. Dr. Bar rett told that story, his own ex perience, in his earlier book “Shepherds in the Mist.” In this one. he tells, also from his own experience, what a reconciled priest without a parish can do to continue growing closer to Christ and to help his fellowmen. It is addressed to a wide group of pos sible readers and should prompt all to a greater understanding and prayerful sympathy for priests who have made mistakes. “Stray shepherds,” Dr. Barrett says, “are won back from bondage today on ly when a price has been paid, though the coinage is not gold but prayer and sacrifice.” THE GOLDEN STRING, by Bede Griffiths, O.S.B., (Kenedy $3.50), reviewed by William A. Sessions. The great value in this autobiography by an English Ben edictine monk lies not in its curi ous account of how an intellectual evolves into a monk but rather in the scope of its meditations on the. place of the religious man in the modern world. Griffiths, a young intellectual at Oxford in 1930, rebels against contempora ry materialism and ventures into the fantastic experiment of living in the English countryside, in conditions deliberately similar to the. Middle Ages. The experiment fails but, in the process, Griffith discovers a depth that reveals the intrinsic failure of modern civilization: its denial of God. His conversion, from this point, leads first to the Church of Eng- ment, Griffiths is in India, es tablishing a Benedictine Abbey and following, even beyond the pages of this book, Blake’s “golden string” which is as the author states, finally. Christ Him self. ST. THOMAS MORE, by E. E. Reynolds, (Kenedy $6.00). Let ters, writings and accounts of contemporaries, gathered by the author, emphasizing the religious rather than the literary or poli tical value of More’s life, are the basis for this scholarly work. Complete with illustrations, bioli- ography, genealogy tables and notes, it is the most comprehen sive biography of More now in print. CARDINAL GASQUET, by Shane Leslie, (Kenedy $3.50). Al though put together rather dis- jointendly, this biography of Gas- quet, scholar, diplomat, Cardinal and monk, gives a picture of the varied and brilliant career of the English Benedictine, prior of Downside Abbey, who rendered valuable service to the British Empire in 1914 as a staunch de fender of the allied cause in Rome and who was active in the strug gle over Anglican Orders. THE SPRINGS OF SILENCE, by Madeline DeFrees, (Prentice- Hall $2.95), reviewed by Mar garet G. Smith. Who of us hasn’t counted among our acquaintances a' girl who lived the same sort of life as, we, attending the same parties, taking part in the same activities, and then stunning ev eryone with the announcement that she was entering a convent? This book was written by just such; a girl. She tells how she ar rived at her decision, her feel ings and the reactions of others, her impressions as a postulant, novice and professed religious, her agonies of indecision and doubt, her work as a member of her chosen community. All is told with deep sincerity, warmth, humor and great humility. (Additional Reviews, Page 15> Small Appliance Repairing Use our new pick-up ami delivery service Prompt, Efficient, Reasonable GENERAL LIGHTING & ELECTRIC CO. 2800 Piedmont Ave. CE 3-6202 PIT COOKED BARBECUED A ■/y " "