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i f 9 PAGE 4—The Southern Cross, June 22, 1963 Of Art And Pornography There are many mavericks running in the human race, but none limps along quite so awkwardly as the relativist. He is the fellow who tells us with appar ent sincerity and seemingly no fear at all of the booby hatch that "all truth is relative,” or that "tastes differ,” or—in a tone more assertive than inquiring—"who’s to judge?” He glories in what he calls "the open mind,” for it passes his understanding that the mind functions only when it closes. But not so for the relativist, of course. He tells us that the mind must be sharp at the edges, open wide enough to admit everything, and never close on anything. Picture a bear-trap with a broken spring and you have his intel lectual ideal to life. The relativist often poses as an intellec tual, but in this posture he is a fraud. In fact, he is anti-intellectual in the true sense of the term; he has no faith in the power of the intellect to conclude to the true answer to a question and thereby close the question. It is certainly no mark of respect for the in tellect to deny its power to close on the truth, to assert instead that the difference between truth and error is merely relative. No, far from being an intellectual, such a fellow is a veritable kamikazi pilot of the mind, utterly dedicated to wrecking his ship. Take as an example the relativist view that "truth is relative.” Any fellow who pro poses this is obviously so open-minded that he admits even contradictions into his think ing. For he proposes for other people’s ac ceptance a truth that is, in his own view, not relative, namely: "It is absolutely true that truth is relative.” Now if he is right, then he is wrong, for he takes a position that cannot even be stated without presupos- ing the truth of its own denial. The case is little better with the rela- vist slogans "tastes differ” and who’s to judge?” "Tastes differ” is a phrase that has legit imate meaning and application on the level of simple sensation, as at the dinner table some persons prefer pickles, and other pre fer olives. But it is not as a piece of do mestic wisdom ever kept in mind by the thoughtful hostess that the relativist uses the statement. He tears it out of the limited field of its proper application and uses it broadcast over the fields of human con cerns. Do you prefer pornography to art? Well, we are told, "tastes differ”—with the implication that all tastes are not only dif ferent, but equally good. At this point, the domestic proverb be comes an aesthetic slogan employed by those who have no "taste” themselves and who cannot bear the idea that others do. It thus becomes the pithy apologia of those who have surrendered all claims to objective stan dards of criticism; who have taken refuge from the cruel, cruel objective world by embracing what the late William Dean Howells scorned as the view "which instructs a man to think that what he likes is good, instead of teaching him first to distinguish what is good before he likes it.” "Who’s to judge?” is possibly the most absurd slogan in the relativist’s repertoire. The obvious answer is: "I am, since you have abandoned all standards for judging and claiming a true verdict on anything, includ ing my capacity to judge.” But the relativ ist’s question is only rhetorical. What he really means to convey is the absolute as sertion that no one can really judge and claim an absolutely true verdict on any question. "Who’s to judge?” is merely an alternative version of "tastes differ.” They both intend the sense: "Do not presume to make an objective true judgement.” Yet the two slogans are used in different areas. "Tastes differ” is most often employ ed as a way of avoiding having to answer criticism in the arts; "who's to judge?” (THE TABLET) Child Psychology Is Love God’s World If you are a parent, par ticularly a young parent, you may experience some anxiety as to your adequacy in the field of child psychology. Be com forted! The chances are that you are a better p sy chologist than you •think. Infancy through childhood is the time of greatest vul nerability in the develop ment of human personality. Pa rents who bring their child safe ly to the age of puberty without serious psychological damage, can then sit back and relax. Their future parental respon sibilities may not be wholly free from concern, but the most crucial stage is past. By the age of twelve or so, the human personality is quite solidly set. It cannot be greatly altered thereafter. From the moment of his birth, a child’s one great psychologi cal need is for love. It is love which gives him a feeling of self-worth. He is loved; there fore he is lovable; therefore he is a worth-while person. It is love, too, which builds in a child a sense of security. He is a stranger to tension since, being loved, he knows that all his needs will be cared for. The child, of course, does not reason this out. In his early years, particularly in infancy, a child operates pretty much on the level of instinct. But his instinct is sharp and perceptive. It is hard for us adults to rea lize how acute is the sensiti vity of an infant to the presence or absence of love in his en vironment. Rejection, or denial of love, is the most severe psycholo gical wound which a human being can suffer. A child who feels himself to be unloved will be emotionally nandicappeq for life. In his mature years he inevitably will exhibit person ality difficulties. He must defend himself, somehow, against the deep-buried feel ings of rejection and insecurity which are too painful to admit to his conscious mind. It is not only a lack of love for himself which will under mine a child’s sense of security. The same result, in a less pernicious form, will be effect ed by chronic discord within the home. The loud and angry voices of quarreling parents will leave their impress upon the infant’s brain and nervous system and upon the child’s personality pattern. These an tagonists are the two people upon whom the child must de pend for survival. Their quar reling instills a fear that his home may break up; a fear, too, that he may be forced to choose between the two people whom he most loves. Such a child lives under continual tension. As an example; it has been discover ed in classroom research that an intelligent child who fails in his studies, quite often is the victim of discord at home. Considering how complex is the process of personality de velopment, we can be grateful that God has made the princi ples of parenthood so simple. There really are only two basic rules of child psychology which are of surpassing importance. The first is: Parents, love your child. By word and by action, give him frequent assurance of your love. You never can tell your child too often, "1 love you.” You never can love your child too much. A so-called "spoiled”_ child is not the vic tim of too much love. He is the victim of rejecting parents who, feeling guilty, try to make up by lenience for the love they cannot give. Love is quite consonant with discipline. If love is there, it will be evident even in punish ment. "It is because I love you so and so much want you to have a happy life that I must punish—not you, but your mis behavior.” The parent may not put this into words, but the message of love will come through. The second basic rule is: Parents, love each other. Let your children see that you love each other. There is no greater assurance that you can give to your children, that theirs is a secure and stable world. A wider knowledge of child psychology will be helpful in coping with many incidental problems of parenthood. But, if two parents genuinely love each other and both love their child ren, they already have 90% of child psychology solidly at work. (Father Trese welcomes let ters from his readers. The in creasing volume of letters pro hibits personal answers but problems and ideas contained in such correspondence can be the basis of future columns. Ad dress all letters to Father Leo J. Trese, care of this newspa per.) What Number In Succession Will VATICAN CITY, (NC)~Will the new pontiff soon to be elec ted be the 260th or even the 264th pope? The answer is: nobody is sure. The current issue of the offi cial Vatican yearbook, the An- nuario Pontificio, lists 259 popes, including John XXIII. It no longer, however, numbers the popes as it did until the 1946 edition, when it listed Pope John’s predecessor, Pius XII, as the 262nd pontiff. At that time, the yearbook listed two early popes as Cletus and Ana- cletus. Since then it has been discovered that these names applied to one person. Also a number of popes included in the 1946 list are now consider ed to have been antipopes. In a note explaining the drop- New Pope ping of its practice of number ing the popes, the yearbook sta ted that there are difficulties and uncertainties in listing the 1,900-year line of succession of the pontiffs. The conductor of the investi gation which resulted in the revised listing was the late Msgr. Angelo Mercati, prefect of the Vatican archives, who emphasized that his findings did not contradict the Church’s teaching of an uninterrupted line of popes. He also noted that the list of popes which had been in use for some 200 years had never been regarded as absolutely accurate. He explained that the list used by the Vatican yearbook had previously been based on the series of portraits of the pontiffs in the Roman basilica Be? of St. Paul’sOutside-the-Walls. But historians had cast so many doubts on the traditional list ing, Msgr. Mercati said, that he had been given permission by Pius XI to begin a historial inquiry into the records of suc cession. Among th% problems making it difficult to ascertain who was in legitimate succession to the Chair of Peter, it was pointed out, are the cases of Diosco- rus, who died 22 days after his election in 530 and who may or may not have been legiti mate; the succession of John XII, who was deposed by Em peror Otto I in 963 and who died in 964, and certain elec tions around, the middle of the 11th century,,* Prayerful Waiting Father, send us a Father Orthodox, Protestant Prelates Popes Were Pastors PITTSBURGH, (NC)—Ortho dox and Protestant clergy at tended a Solemn Pontifical Re quiem, sponsored by the Pitts burgh diocese in St. Paul’s cathedral, for the late Pope John XXIII. Present in their robes were Bishop Theodosios Sideris of VATICAN CITY, (NC)—Of the 1 15 popes who have reigned in; the past two centuries, eight' were ordinaries of residential Sees at the time of the election. Seven were officials of the Roman curia, the Church’s cen tral administration. Of the six pontiffs who have reigned during the present cen tury, four were ordinaries and two were curial officials. Ancona, of the Sixth Archdio cese of the North and South America Districts (Greek Or thodox); Bishop Austin Pardue of the Pittsburgh Episcopal dio cese; Dr. W. Sproule Boyd, chairman of the committee on interchurch relations, Pitts burgh Council of Churches, and Dean Basil Gregory, rector of the Greek Orthodox cathedral. Pope’s Gift To U. S. VATICAN CITY, (Radio, NC) —A golden stole, the deathbed gift of Pope John XXIII to the U. S. Bishops, will be delivered to the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D. C., following the election of a new pope. The stole was a gift to Pope Jewish Mother On Pope John Lonely And Not Lonely It Seems to Me JOSEPH BREIG One of the paradoxes of our planet is that although there is nobody who is not in some way lonely, there is nobody who is not in some way companioned. We are lonely for God, all of us, whether or not we realize or admit it, be- cause He alone can fill our every ca pacity. And yet He does not show Himself to us directly. All the same, He is with us by the faith and grace He gives us if we are believers, and by His power and glory for those who do not believe—or rather those who imagine that they do not believe; for atheism is a faith surely filled with recur ring doubts about its own vali dity. God’s companioning of us seems to ebb and flow accord ing to our disposition and the circumstances of the moment. Sometimes we can almost take Him in our arms. Sometimes, in intolerable pain, we are mov ed to wrestle with Him. And sometimes it is as if He were hiding Himself inaccessibly. Even then, we know that He is around somewhere and some how; there is an easing of lone liness in the knowledge that we are in His hands, and will see Him sooner or later. THE MOST IN-LOVE hus bands and wives can be lonely together. Communication, even in the tenderest times, is less than perfect. Nobody gets to the core of anybody else. Nobody, indeed, gets to the core of him self; we are ultimately strang ers to ourselves, astonished, sometimes mildly and some times violently, in the presence of our own impenetrability. Everything, ultimately, comes to mystery, whether it be the numberless universes, the heart of the atom, the ripen ing of a tomato on a vine, or our own inexplicable personali ties. We reach out gropingly for comradeship, and there is no greater service that we can do to our fellowmen than to attend to their loneliness—to ap proach, to listen, to love. The students at the Univer sity of Mississippi are lonlier than the one Negro student with whom they will not associate. "I’ve had friends everywhere I’ve ever been,” said James Meredith to a reporter. "But at Ole Miss those who would be friendly to me are still ham pered and aren’t allowed to openly befriend me.” THIS IS a terrible failure in education. This makes every thing the students learn at Ole Miss turn sour in their mouths. It is a terrible burden to carry around with one the determina tion to pretend that somebody else isn’t there. James Meredith is willing to be friendly, and the others aren’t; there is no one more lonely than he who forbids him self to recognize another. That is why a home in which a hus band and wife will not speak to each other is a more frightful hell than one in which they yell at each other. Federal troops remain in Ox ford to protect the constitutional right of James Meredith to at-*., tend the university. As a citizen, hejs entitled to the same rights as every other citizen. If it were not so, the nation would be a mockery of itself, of its found ing fathers, and of its basic law and reason-for-being. IT IS A TRAGEDY, it is rea son for tears, that students at Ole Miss are so sunk in igno rance about humanity that they can carry on this farce, and must be restrained by the pre sence of soldiers from harming James Meredith, who like them selves, is a human being and an image of God. Meredith is less lonely than the others because Meredith is large-hearted and they are small-hearted; Meredith is serving a true ideal, and they a false ideal; Meredith’s mind is open to them, and theirs are closed. “They gave my car a little going-away present Sunday afternoon,” he said with rancor. * ‘They threw eggs and trash on it.” All this—all this to the South’ s and to America’s horri ble embarrassment—at a time in humanity’s history when hit- lerism and Stalinism-and other organized stupidities are disap pearing in the swamps whence they emerged, and the sun of love is shining through all our differences. Salute To “Father” Jottings By BARBARA C. JENCKS LAST SUNDAY we observ ed Fathers’ Day, we would sa lute all the men in our life. "Father” is not a term confin ed to physical paternity alone, it is a state of showing fatherly and paternal concern. It is for this reason we call our priests "father.” They are spiritual fathers, fathers of our souls, so to speak. There is perhaps no one who so truly fulfilled the title "father” in all its most sacred connotations than Our Holy Father—he was so truly a father to the world. His was both a human and spiritual concern for the people of the world, he did not seem to see the thousands and millions of people before him but the dis tinct personality of each soul. On Fathers’ day, while prayers went up for Pope John, we also saluted those many others who have been spiritual fathers to us during our lifetime—the priests who bless, absolve, preach, teach. We also salute the men in our reading audience and the many others whom we meet each day at work. Also the men who have come and gone in our lifetime—relatives, friends, business associates. A boquet of three Fathers’ Day meditations are given them all. FOR THOSE who have been discouraged or who struggle too long and too hard in the market place for a place in the sun, meditation upon this anony mous offering by an anonymous writer. ONE SOLITARY LIFE He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in still ano ther village, where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty. Then for three years he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a house. He didn’t go to college. He never visited a big city. He never traveled two humdred miles from the place where he was born.. He did none of the things one usually associates with great ness. He had no credentials but himself. He was only thirty- three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. He was turn ed over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race (Continued on Page 5) MIAMI, Fla., (NC)--A letter from a Jewish mother, who con sidered it a "privilege to share the same world” with Pope John XXIII was among messages of condolence from non- Catholic religious leaders and laymen received by Bishop Coleman F. Carroll of Miami. Mrs. Bertha Cohan Salzman, wife of an attorney and a mem ber of the congregation of Tem ple Beth Am, sent a $25 check from herself, her husband and their five children in "loving memory” of the Pope. * ‘It does not matter how you disburse this offering in his memory,” Mrs. Salzman wrote, "but if it means ‘bread’ for someone who is hungry, that would be nice. I think it pleases his soul that peoples of all faiths will do good deeds in his name, so that he may ‘live on’ in our hearts.” John from Francis Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York, on the Pope’s 80th birth day. He wore it on the opening day of the ecumenical council. Flags At Half Staff TAIPEI, Formosa, (NC)—By government order, flags on all government installations and schools throughout Formosa were flown at half staff on the final day of official mourning for Pope John XXIII. Married Deacons PILAR, Argentina, (NC)—In hopes that the ecumenical coun cil will resume, eight Argentine Bishops approved a series of recommendations to present to the next council session,' in cluding a proposal to restore" married deacons. Job Bias Study Zasu Pitts LOS ANGELES, (NC)—Re quiem Mass was offered here for Mrs. Zasu Pitts Woodall, movie comedienne. She is survived by her hus band John; a daughter, Mrs. John Reynolds, and a son, Don ald M. Gallery. The Mass was offered (June 11) in the chapel of Holy Cross Mausoleum. TRENTON, N. J., (NC)—A priest was named by Gov. Rich ard J. Hughes to a 20-member committee named here to study discrimination in job opportuni ties in New Jersey. He is Fa ther Aloysius J. Welsh, direc tor of the Pope Pius XII Insti tute of Social Education of the Newark- archdiocese. Hughes said the committee’s task will be to call attention to areas of employment discrimination, public or private. QUESTION BOX (By David Q. Liptak) Q. In my daily missal there are several terms which I don’t understand. What’s the differ ence, for example, between a "feast day” and a "ferial day? What does "Paschaltide” mean? And why is it that dif ferent prayers have different conclusions? A. A feast day, in liturgical usage, is one on which the Church’s public worship is di rected in a special way to cele bration of a mystery of Christ, or to veneration of Our Blessed Lady or the angels or saints. Feasts "of the first class” are the most solemn in the Church’s calendar. Examples are Christ mas, the Epiphany, Easter, Pentecost, the Immaculate Con ception, All Saints’ Day. SECOND CLASS feasts rank a degree lower in solemnity. Among them are all Sundays which are not of first class rite, and lesser feasts of Our Lady, such as the Seven Sor rows (September 15). MOST FEAST DAYS are of the third class. Examples: St. Anthony (January 17), St. Philip Neri (May 26), St. Pius X (Sep tember 3), St. Raphael, Archan gel (October 24); etc. FERIAL DAYS or ferias are the individual days of the litur gical year which are neither feasts, nor Sundays, nor vigils. (Vigils are days preceding cer tain feasts and by their nature « look forward to such feasts.) Ferial days are divided into four classes. Ash Wednesday and the ferias of Holy Week are in the first category. Most ferias are third class; i.e., most of the days of Lent and Advent. (Older designations such as "double” and "semi-double” feasts are no longer employed. In this sense, some missals are dated.) "PASCHALTIDE” refers to one of the several major Church seasons; specifically, the one which extends from the Easter Vigil through to the Saturday following Pentecost. Other ma jor seasons are:Advent,Chris- tmastide, Septuagesima, Lent, and the season ‘ 'throughout the year.” THE ENDING of missal pray ers differs, in general, accord ing to how God is addressed in the opening of the prayer. THUS, IF the prayer is di- t rected to our Divine Lord, the conclusion begins: "Who livest and reignest with God the Fa ther in the unity of the Holy Spirit. . .” But if the prayer ! is addressed to God the Fa ther, the termination starts: "Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and areigneth. . .” And if the Holy Spirit has been mentioned i in the prayer, the phrase "in (Continued on Page 5) The Southern Cross P. O. BOX 180. SAVANNAH, GA. Vol. 43 Saturday, June 22, 1963 No. 40 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 i 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, 4 Associate Editors a