Southern cross. (Savannah, Ga.) 1963-2021, May 18, 1963, Image 4

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Southern cross., May 18, 1963, Image 4

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Newspaper Page TextPAGE 4—The Southern Cross, May 18, 1963 The Pushers A few weeks ago Monsignor John J. Egan, director of the Chicago Archdiocesan Con servation Council, in an address at Washing ton, D.C., charged that "anti-Negro” and "anti-poor” bias is behind much current opposition to tax-supported welfare pro grams. The present drive in several States, not ably, Illinois, to provide tax-paid birth con trol information and devices to welfare recipients would seem to bear out Monsig nor Egan’s contention. These efforts to eliminate poverty by eliminating the poor are spreading, and last week promped an expression of alarm from Monsignor George A. Kelly, of the New York Archdiocese’s Family Life Bureau, at what appears to be a drive to make gov ernment "a subdepartment of the Planned Parenthood Federation.” But a communication received by The Southern Cross (and probably hundreds of other papers throughout the country) from Lobsenz and Company, Inc., a New York Public Relations concern, suggest to us the presence of a far more cynical moving force behind the increasing efforts at the Federal, state and local levels to establish tax- paid birth control programs—the manu facturers of contraceptives. Among the clients of Lobsenz and Com pany is the Emko Company, St Louis maker of an aerosol foam contraceptive which bears the name EMKO. They have hired Lob- enz and Company to distribute to news media a "suggested editorial, on the "Population Explosion.” This editorial, after blithely ignoring the compelling moral arguments against the Illinois birth-control program, which in ef fect subsidizes adultery and fornication, then dismisses the opposition as coming merely from "political and legal forces, believing that family planning assistance is not the duty of government.” Then, after making the unqualified and misleading statement that "even Protestant, Catholic and Jewish religious leaders agree there are circumstances when birth control is advisable” the editorial declares that the "disagreement” is on "whether the respon sibility of helping families plan their child ren belongs to government or to private agencies. Such falsification of fact certainly cannot be considered editorializing. It is simply and solely a "sales pitch” for Emko Company and its product, EMKO, a contraceptive de signed for feminine use, and according to Lobsenz and Company one "found effective in mass birth control programs. Protestants will be interested to know that according to this public relations firm, "In terchurch Medical Assistance, a private agency of American Protestant churches and welfare organizations, is shipping to medical missions and hospitals "in India, Congo, Pakistan, Korea, Malaya and Indonesia” 500,000 units of this contraceptive agent. There can be no doubt that Emko Company has "cashed in” on at least one massive birth-control program and, judging from their propaganda, they would like to cash in on a lot more of them. Apparently they have decided to do so by promoting them. There is little point in remonstrating with those who would ‘ build their fortunes on the poverty, misery and deprivation of others, but to all who may read so-called "editorials” ground out by public relations concerns at the instigation of contraceptive manufacturers masquerading as humanitar ians, we offer the Christian solution to poverty and deprivation suggested by Bishop Francis F. Reh, of Charleston, South Carolina, com menting on a proposed county birth-control program. The Christian solution to the problems of the economically indigent is to be found in working for just wages, fair job opportuni ties, decent housing and better medical care, not by proposing programs which "dis criminate against the poor by trying to move them not to have the children which, in justice, they have a right to be able to have, and may want, but cannot decently have be cause of our injustice.” You Cannot Lose Heaven Easily God’s World By Leo J. Trese You are fairly sure that you will go to heaven, are you not? You should feel secure on this score. The divine virtue of hope was implanted in your soul when you were baptized. You began to exercise this virtue when you be- c a m e old enough to un derstand the meaning of God’s love for you. You learned that God made you because He want ed you with Himself in heaven. You learned that God has prom ised you whatever graces you may need, throughout your life, in order to come to Him in heaven. You learned that God is all powerful; whatever He wants to do, He can do. You learned that God never breaks a promise; what He has said He will do, He will do. You probably were not con scious of any formal chain of reasoning. Yet, at some early point in your spiritual develop ment you wrapped all these truths together and made an act of hope. You knew then, as you know now, that if you do your reasonable best to cooperate with God, He will bring you safe ly through all dangers. He will bring you to Himself in heaven. It is easy to see why an act of hope is also an act of adora tion. By hope we acknowledge God’s infinite goodness, His in finite power, His absolute fidel ity. Conversely, we can see why despair is such a grave sin. Despair (even undue anxiety) questions God’s power—His ability to help us conquer our temptations—or questions His trustworthiness. What is worst of all, despair questions God’s love; questions whether He really cares what happens to us. We can miss heaven, of course; but if we do so, it will be only because we have neglec ted to use God’s grace. It will be only because we have not really tried. The sole uncer tainty is the uncertainty of our own perseverance. It is good to have a healthy mistrust of ourselves and our own strength. We should be idiots to think our selves incapable of sin. Yet our mistrust of self is compen sated for, over-whelmingly, by our trust in God He wants us in heaven far more than we our selves want to get there. Short of taking away our free will, there is just nothing God will not do to get us there. It is a rare thing for a per son to sin by despair. It is a rare thing for a person to de cide, "I am lost. I cannot possi bly get to heaven.” It even is rare for a person to entertain grave (as opposed tc reason able) fears for his salvation. Such states of mind do occur. However, more often than not such morbid feelings are symp toms of mental or emotional illness. Rational thought has been blocked or seriously dis turbed. In such a state of unwill ed depression the sufferer is not guilty of sin. He needs a psy chiatrist much more than he needs a priest. Against the virtue of hope, sins of presumption are much more frequent than sins of des pair. Presumption occurs if we expect God to do, not only His own full part in getting us to heaven, but to do our part as well. Figuratively we twist God’s arm, trying to force from Him graces to which we have no right. We may neglect pray er. We may neglect the sacra ments. We may expose our selves unnecessarily,to temp tation. We may read books which we should not read, see movies which we should not see, cul tivate friendships (perhaps a divorced person?) which can only spell danger. When sin ensues, as inevitably it must, we assure ourselves that God is good, God understands our weakness, God will not cast us off. What we really are saying, in such an instance, is that God does not care whether we love Him or not. God will have us on any terms, even our own. In short, we say that God is a fool. This is the sin of presumption. If God had to make a choice, doubtless He would prefer that we expect too much of Him, than that we have no confidence at all. However, the golden mean of hope—secure but not pre- sumptous—must be our aim and practice. We shall make our mistakes. Spiritually we may dawdle, wander, stumble, even fall. If we fall a dozen times, still we reach for God’s out stretched hand and rise again. We do not give up. That is the important point: we do not give up. We keep trying. We do our honest best and trust God to bring us safely to the end of our zigzag path. He will. (Father Trese welcomes letters from his readers. The increasing volume of letters prohibits personal answers but such correspondence can be the basis of future columns. Ad dress all letters to Father Leo J. Trese, care of this news paper) Rome Jottings " ‘Tis the centre To which all gravitates. One finds no rest Elsewhere than here. There may be other cities That please us for a while, but Rome alone Completely satisfies. It be comes to all A second native land by pre dilection, And not by accident of birth alone.” -Henry W. Longfellow * * * Rome has been in the news a great deal the past few years. The past year has seen an even greater increase because of By BARBARA C. JENCKS the Ecumenical Council. Mil lions of words and pictures on Pope John’s Council have found their way into almost every sec ular magazine printed—even the Russian press has not ig nored the event. Khruschev’s own daughter and son-in-law were recent Vatican visitors. It is still a little unbelievable now, although I have lived with the news for a month, that when the Council convenes next Fall, I will be there in Rome, the Eternal City, absorbing the excitement and the color of this event of a lifetime. Bishops have called their attendance at the Council ceremonials the ex perience of their lives. What then could a reporter- tourist have to say? Other visi tors to Rome during the Coun cil have reported that the air was electric with excitement as thousands of Bishops, prin ces of the Church, in their colorful robes- representa tives of every nation under the sun--walked the n'arrow cob bled stone streets, hallowed by the foot-steps of Peter and Paul more than a thousand years ago. That a layman will have opportunity for just a glimpse of this moment in and out of time is almost too much to (Continued on Page 5) Rockefeller Marriage Not Private Affair It Seems to Me JOSEPH BREIG The character of a public figure is public business. And something about a man’s cha racter is indicated when he separates, after more than 30 years of marriage, from his wife, the mo ther of his children, and enters into a union with a woman who, as another man’s wife, was a family friend and a member of his political entourage. Msgr. George Kelly of the Family Life Bureau in the New York archdiocese says rightly that this behavior of Gov. Nel son Rockefeller of New York State is not a private but a public affair. It is public be cause Rockefeller holds public office and aspires to the high est office in the United States, the presidency. He wants our votes, and we have a right and a duty, in deciding whether to give them, to take into account all the fac tors involved in judgment of his integrity and maturity. We need not apologize for having serious doubts about the matur ity and dependability, especially in a crisis, of a man who at 54 does what Rockefeller has done. The general press has had its say, and by and large what it has said is the slop we have come to expect from it in such matters. The general press will consign a public official to outer darkness for accepting a gift of a vicuna coat or a re frigerator. But the general press has almost no under standing of what marriage is, and little reverence for it. The general press always glamorizes, or at very least lords over, violations of the loyalty and oneness of marri age. The general press refers to affairs like that of Rocke feller and Mrs. Murphy as "ro mances,” and gives us such slush as this, taken from an editorial in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "At any rate, Gov. Rocke feller did not premit the pos sible politcal reprecussions to prevent him from following the inclination of his heart. We wish him and the new Mrs. Rockefeller much happiness.” I could be equally gooey and cloying by remarking that Pub lic Official Jones "did not per mit the possible political re percussions to prevent him from following the inclinations of his heart” in attaching him self to a bundle of the people’s dollars. This is not to judge Rocke feller. This is simply to say that there is an objective moral ity about marriage, as about lo yalty to country or honesty in office; that the general press ought to grow up and stop con doning in one field of human responsibility what it denounces ferociously in other fields; and that both the press and politi cians are very badly mistaken if they imagine that the public, by and large, cannot see these things straight and clear. As James Reston recognized in his syndicated New York Times column, "Newspapers are not a very reliable guide to the true feelings of the peo- From All Sides pie on such things. Newspapers pride themselves on being‘mo dern’ and ‘understanding’ in such matters, but the voters do not necessarily take the same view.” No, they don’t. For all the prowling that goes on among some movie people, and for all the glamorizing of prow ling that goes on in the press, America remains a nation in which most marriages and homes are successful, stable and loyal; and Rockerfeller’s separation from his wife after her years given to him is not going to sit well with millions. Methodist Bishop Fred Pierce Corson of Philadelphia spoke the truth, I felt confi dent, when he said that Rocke feller’s behavior was "an ap palling shock to the sensibili ties and the sense of fair play of the rank and file of Ameri cans.” Bishop Corson added: "For professional politicians to assume that the Rockefeller divorce and remarriage might affect the Catholic vote but will not affect the Protestant vote is totally to misread the Pro testant mind. "The American public is awakening to the terrible and tragic damage which easy di vorce is inflicting upon per sons as individuals, in com mon life and in society.” Bishop Corson added that when people marry, they "take a vow before the altar of God that their marriage will con tinue until ‘death do us part,’ and they sould not take lightly nor bless the putting away of one wife and the breaking up of another marriage to satis fy personal desire or passion.” Vietnam Chief Under Fire By Father Patrick O’Connor Society of St. Columban SAIGON, Vietnam—Presi dent John Baptist Ngo dinh Dienji and his government of the Re public of Vietnam are targets for critics communist, anti communist and what may be called confusionist. There is plenty to criticize, as there is in most govern ments, especially those recent ly developed and under enemy fire. But there is certainly far more to criticize in Red-ruled north Vietnam. One way to evaluate current criticisms of policies and prac tices in south Vietnam is to evaluate the critics. Communists are now notori ous for deceit. Their criticisms are significant, however, in showing what they find to be worth exploiting in propaganda among the masses. Anticommunist critics usu ally intend to do good by show ing up weaknesses that should be cured. Many of President Ngo dinh Diem’s critics, Viet namese and foreign, are anti communist, well-meaning and intelligent. Then there are the critics of neutralist tint, hazily hopeful that some sort of compromise will save everybody and every thing. Last month 62 Americans published an open letter add ressed to President Kennedy, calling on him "to halt U. S. military intervention” in south Vietnam and to “utilize diplo macy and international negotia tion as was done successfully in Laos.” That "success” in Laos must have looked better to those let ter writers in the U. S. last month than it does here in Vietnam, next door to Laos. I do not recall having heard that any of the 62 signers of that open letter visited Vietnam during the last few years—the period of intensified guerrilla warfare and increased U. S. military advisory and material aid. Indeed, I suspect that few of them have firsthand know ledge of Vietnam or of any where else in East Asia. Their open letter to Presi dent Kennedy was warmly wel comed by Radio Hanoi (north Vietnam communist station), which has been quoting it and praising it, in Vietnamese and English, for weeks. An American journalist who visited Saigon early this year published a series of articles in which he presented views he at tributed to “the American newspaper corps in south Viet nam.” He declared that “there is not an American newspaper man in south Vietnam” who accepts President Kennedy’s "policy line” on the situation here. As a visiting reporter, he said, he could not affirm "with any show of authority whether the American newspaper corps in south Vietnam has correctly analyzed the course of the war or not,” but apparently he had adopted and was propounding the pessimistic views he attri buted to the American corre spondents. Many U. S. correspondents come and go in south Vietnam. Only about half a dozen can be called in any sense permanent (Continued on Page 5) All Wars Civil Wars CHICAGO, '(NC) — Adali E. Stevenson said here younger people are especially sensitive to the conviction "that nowa days all wars are civil wars and all killing is fratricide.” He addressed 1,100 guests Thursday night at DePaul Uni versity’s annual Scholarship Dinner. "The movement takes many forms—multilateral diplomacy through the United Nations, the search for world peace through world law, the universal desire for nuclear disarmament, the sense of sacrifice and service in the Peace Corps, the grow ing revulsion against Jim Crow- ism, the belief that dignity rests in a man as such and all must be treated as ends, not means,” said the U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Approves Migrant Bills WASHINGTON, (NC) ~ The Senate Labor and Public Wel fare Committee has approved: a package of bills designed to help migratory farm workers. The action by the full com mittee (May 9) followed approv al of the bills by the Senate subcommittee on migratory la bor whose chairman, Sen. Har rison A. Williams, Jr., of New Jersey, introduced the legisla tion. Antibias Measure WILMINGTON, Del., (NC)— Bishop Michael Hyle of Wil mington has urged support of a proposed antibias bill for Delaware. The bill, now in the Senate Judiciary Committee, would make it illegal for a person to refuse service to another in a public place because of race, religion or nationality. Bishop Hyle said: "Let us hope that Delaware, the first state of the union, will not be the last one to uphold the Dec laration of Independence by fail ing to adopt this needed law.” 65,000 In Processions ST. PAUL, Minn., (NC)— Some 65,000 persons took part in two May Day Family Rosary processions here and in Min neapolis. An estimated 35,000 participated in the 15th annual rites at the Cathedral of St. Paul, while 30,000 joined in the 13th procession at the Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis. Sisters’ Choir SEOUL, Korea, (NC)—A sur prise appearance by 19 Sisters led by Korea’s best known com poser was a highlight of Seoul’s International Musical Festival. The Sisters are the Caritas Sis ters of Kwangju, whose choir was heard by composer Richard Eaktay Ahn in May, 1962. Ahn then asked them to appear in the Seoul festival and he personal ly directed them in six hymns here. Flying Priest BONN, (NC)—A climax to the flying career of Father Paul Schulte, O.M.I., is his journey from Bonn to Windhoek, South west Africa, to deliver a six- passenger Dornier plane to a missionary bishop there who is also a pilot. The Dornier plane was a gift to 68-year-old Father Schulte from German bishops and in dustrialists to mark his 40th jubilee as a priest and his retirement as a flyer after years of activity as a pioneer in their field. The plane is called "Der Kleine Paul” (Lit tle Paul) and bears the coat of arms of His Holiness Pope John XXIII. Albanian Reds MUNICH, Germany, (NC)*— Communist Albania, longtime champion of Red China and be- deviler of the Soviet block, is now berating the "modern re volutionists” of the Kremlin for moves toward rapproach- ment with the Holy See. Radio Tirana, official voice of the Albanian government, de clared in a broadcast monitor ed by Radio Free Europe that the Soviets were "dressing the Pope in sheep’s clothing.” “We now find people who, al though they call themselves communists, believe in the ef forts of the Pope for preserv- . ing peace and mankind,” the broadcast said. Indian Mail Course POONA, India, (NC)—A cor respondence course in religious instruction operated by the Ca tholic Enquiry Center has drawn applications from 10,000 non- Catholics. These enrollees are being sent an introductory course in 50 "Know-Christ” letters, which are written eith er in English or in one of two Indian languages. The center has 370 volunteer helpers to work with the mailing list. QUESTION BOX By David Q. Liptak Q. In the wake of Pope John’s new encyclical, "Pacem In Ter ris,” an old question has re appeared: Namely, what is the binding force in conscience of papal encyclicals and similar formal pronouncements? Could you elucidate? A. Papal encyclicals or any other formal papal pronounce ments having to do with faith, morals or Christian living in general are issued by virtue of the Church’s ordinary magis- terium (i.e. teaching authority). The binding force of this magis- terium stems from Christ’s admonition, "He who hears you, hears me.” Much of the doctrine con tained in encyclicals and special papal statements is of itself part and parcel of Catholic belief, proposed as such from time immemorial. But—to quote Pius XII’s great encyclical, Hu- mani Generis—"if the supreme pontiffs in their official docu ments purposely pass judge ment on a matter debated until then, it is obvious to all that the matter, according to the mind and will of the same pontiffs, cannot be considered any longer a question for dis cussion among theologians.” What is required of an offi cial papal pronouncement con cerning faith or morals, then, is positive assent, even though the specific issue declared upon was not handed down solemnly in the manner of an infallible statement. This positive assent, referred to by theologians, as "religious assent,” means just what the phrase implies; even a respectful silence coupled with interior dissent is not a proper disposition. Yet, as Father A. C. Cotter remarks in his commen tary on Humani Generis, the ac ceptance required “is not the assent of either divine or ec clesiastical faith; its motive is not the authority of God speaking, nor the infallibility of the magisterium, but the offi cial position of the living magis- terium in the Church assigned to it by Christ. Common sense indicates that religious assent need not be given every single papal (Continued on Page 6) The Southern Cross P. O. BOX 180. SAVANNAH. GA. Vol. 43 Saturday, May 18, 1963 No. 35 Published weekly except the last week in July and the last week in December by The. Southern Cross, Inc. Subscription price $3.00 per year. Second class mail privileges authorized at Monroe, Ga. Send notice of change of address to P. O. Box 180, Savannah, Ga. Most Rev. Thomas J. McDonough, D.D.J.C.D., President Rev. Francis J. Donohue, Editor John Markwalter, Managing Editor Rev. Lawrence Lucree, Rev. John Fitzpatrick, Associate Editors