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PAGE 4—The Southern Cross, August 22, 1963 What’s Happening In Vietnam? Civic disturbances and disorder in South Vietnam has been building up at a great pace in recent weeks. Three Buddhist bonzes and a Buddhist nun have burned themselves to death in what has been publicized as dramatic protest against “religious persecu tion” allegedly raging in the hapless Far East outpost. The problem has been extended to the point where American foreign policy is called into question. The impression has been created that it is the Catholic Church which is responsible for the alleged persecution of the Buddhists in South Vietnam. U. S. papers constantly refer to the fact that President Ngo Dinh Diem is a Catholic. Practically every article pub lished on the crisis makes reference, subtly or openly, to his “Catholic-dominated” gov ernment. There is too consistent a pattern to call it accidental. Certain Americans, including groups that thrive on their anti-Catholicism, have seized the opportunity and are wringing from a lot of dubious reporting all that they can. Not only President Diem is under at tack, more deliberately the attack is on the Catholic Church. Some of the most bitter articles have been written not from Vietnam but from the safety of U. S. newsmen’s armchairs far removed from the center of activity. The curious part of it all is that Frederick E. Nolting, Jr., the retiring U. S. ambassa dor to South Vietnam, about two weeks ago declared: “Frankly, after almost two and a half years, I have never seen.any evi dence of religious persecution.” Similar testimony was provided by members of our government services who have been in a posi tion to observe the Vietnam situation for some time at close range. Over the past several months, this news paper has published reports from Father Patrick O’Connor, the very able correspon dent for NC News Service in the Far East. This Columban Father has presented the Vietnamese story dispassionately and in depth. He has presented a picture of the situation that differs greatly from the emo tionally charged persecution story given in the general American press. Father O’Connor is no special pleader for President Diem, but by his detailed reports, he smashes the charges that Diem’s govern ment is “Catholic-dominated,” that the Church and Catholics have received spe cial consideration by his regime, and es pecially that the present disturbances under his rule are motivated by protests against religious persecution. They are politically inspired, he says, and aimed at the over throw of the Diem government. During his almost 20 years of reporting from the Far East, Father O’Connor has acquired a very enviable record for his painstakingly accurate work—accurate because he wants the facts and he gets the facts, right on the scene. His careful re porting contains the fruit of his own long years of experience and observation in that area. And he has bluntly stated that the “United States has been sold a bill of goods on Vietnam.” South Vietnam has had a turbulent his tory since gaining its independence 10 years ago. There have been pressing economic and political problems plus the powerful pres sures of Communist encroachment. President Diem has emerged as the leader and has held out against this Red attack. He has kept his country free, and a determined roadblock against the Red march in Asia. If he has been harsh and repressive in his efforts to maintain political order and sta bility, then that should be the focus of criticism, but with full evaluation of all the facts. Diem is a Catholic, but he is not the Catholic Church. It serves no useful purpose to over-simplify the troubled situation by unfounded charges of religious persecution by the Catholic Church. - (STANDARD AND TIMES—PHILADELPHIA) . Why Drag Our Feet? God’s World It seems strange that most of us show so little eagerness to get to heaven. We all have a great desire to be happy. We look forward with keen antici pation to each approaching holi- d a y when, freed briefly from .hum drum rou tine, we can ‘ ‘have a lit tle fun.” The thought o f heaven, how ever, leaves us compara tively unmoved. We experience no stirrings of pleasurable ex citement at the prospect of what awaits us after death. One reason for this impassive attitude towards the joys of heaven is the fact that to get to heaven, we first of all must die. For most of us, too, death will be preceded by suffering. Our minds are so preoccupied by the thought of suffering and death that we seem unable to raise our eyes to what follows after. Suffering and death are the grime on the window which obscures the view of the beau tiful world which lies outside our present shabby quarters. It is not discreditable that we shrink from a confrontation with death. God has made us that way. If death were too at tractive, we might not take pro per care of life and health. We might expose ourselves too easily to physical dangers. Our aversion to death is the built- in mechanism by which God en sures that we shall reach the term of years He has set for us. It is, in short, the instinct of self-preservation. Nevertheless, in spite of our understandable reluctance to die, it does seem that heaven should exert more of an at traction upon us than it does. It will not, unless and until we force our minds to bypass the ugly specter of death and . to meditate often on the ecsta tic future that shall be ours. We cannot, of course, reach a true understanding of hea ven in this life. The intensity of heaven’s happiness is so far beyond our wildest imaginings that even God cannot get across to our limited minds the nature of the bliss He has in store for us. If an advertiser were to invent a slogan for heaven it well might be,“It must be ex perienced to be appreciated.” A mother could more easily ex plain to a five-year-old child the nature of conjugal happi ness, than God could explain to us the happiness of heaven. We are not so naive as to think of heaven as a beautiful placid, park where we sit around at our ease and chat with rela tives and friends, while God walks by occasionally to give us a benign nod of recognition. But we do ever try to grasp, even faintly, what it will be like to be caught up in the wild, raging torrent of God’s love for us, as this barrier of human flesh is dissolved? Do we ever try to apprehend what it will mean to find ourselves fairly exploding with love as our unsealed eyes now perceive Him who is infinitely good and infinitely lovable? In this life we find our great est happiness in the company of people whom we love and who love us. But we never have (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 news paper. Buddhist Spokesman Says No Quarrel With Catholics By Father Patrick O’Connor Society of St. Columban. SAIGON, Vietnam, (NC) -- Vietnamese Buddhists have no thing against the Catholics, a spokesman for the Inter-Sect Committee for the Defense of Buddhism said here. His com mittee is the group involved in the three-month-old quarrel with the government of the Re public of Vietnam. "We have no dispute with the Catholics,” Thich Due Nghiep, 34-year-old bonze (monk) who acts as public relations officer for the committee, told N. C. W. C. News Service. “The dispute is only between the gov ernment and the Buddhists.” He made the statement in Xa Loi pagoda, now the busy headquar ters of the Buddhists’campaign. Leading bonzes have made similar statements before to foreign journalists and others. As proof of their attitude towards Catholics, Thic Due Nghiep cited the radiograms sent by their superior bonze in Rome, expressing sympathy on the death of Pope John XXIII and congratulating His Holi ness Pope Paul VI. He also showed a copy of another ra diogram sent to the Pope on August 10. In this message the superior, Thick Tinh Khiet, thanked the Pontiff on the basis of a news agency report that “His Holiness had advised the South Vietnam government to make an equitable settlement of the Buddhist problem.” The message referred to “our purely religious movement.” Thich Due Nghiep repeated that their movement is "pure ly religious, not political as the government alleges.” One hour earlier the crowd massed in the street had been addressed by a saffron-robed monk speaking into a micro phone from a porch roof inside the pagoda yard. He led the crowd in Buddhist prayers and spoke of the bonze who had burn ed himself to death. Then he turned to strong denunciation of the government and Madame Ngo dinh Nhu, calling on the crowd to raise their arms to show agreement. It was pro bably the most vehement public utterance made by a Buddhist bonze in Saigon since the dis pute began. (Well - informed Buddhists have said that the aim of the present agitation is the collapse (Continued on Page 5) 'THEY TRIED RELIGION TO DEFEAT ME TOO' As John The Good Said . . . It Seems to Me JOSEPH BREIG known such love, and therefore such happiness, as will all but tear us asunder when we possess God, and God us. Yes, we shall know our family and our friends in heaven, and re joice (in an absentminded sort of way) that they are with us. But we and they shall be so ab sorbed in the piercing joy of loving God and being loved by Him, as to have little time or thought for one another. Best of all, the happiness of heaven can never pall or lessen. It can only grow and grow and grow through all eter nity. And eternity, let us re member, is a long-drawn-out time. Eternity is just one single moment of exquisite rapture— a moment which never ends. In heaven there is no sense of going on and on. After we have been in heaven a billion earth- years, if a recent arrival were to ask, “How long have you been here?” our answer would be, ' ‘Why, I just came!” Yes, it is to be feared that we do not get from our faith in heaven the spiritual mileage that we should. Temptations would lose much of their power and life’s troubles would lose much of their weight if we could realize, even dimly, what things God has prepared for those who love Him Prejudice is irrational. Pre judice is even a bit mad. Pre judice is a kind of witches’ brew of ignorance, fear and pride. It does not examine the evidence, and then judge. With out consider ing the evi dence, it pre judges; this unreasoning pre - judge ment is the origin of its name. P rejudice does not say, "Here is a person; let us see what kind of person he is.” What prejudice says is, "Here is a person who is a Catholic, or a Negro, or a Protestant, or a Japanese” (or whatever) and then it summons up all kinds of bogies in the mind. PREJUDICE can be for or against. Prejudice can say, "Ah, here is a fellow Irish man. Obviously he is a wonder ful chap.” It can say that about a Frenchman, a Jew, a Catho lic, a Mason. Prejudice can pre judge instantly in favor of, or in opposition to, anybody. The I’m-for-you type prejudice, by and large, i merely annoying. The harm i does in minor, at least by com parison with the anti-kind prejudice—the pre-judgement that says, "Here, this man has a dark skin. I must keep him out of this place, this job, this of of organization. I will blackball him.” What is the Christian atti tude? Take up your copy of Pope John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth) which to my view is a very great encyclical —great above all for as sembling in forthright terms, the essence of the Chris- tain treatment of fellowman. LOOK AT PART 1, under "Rights.” Every man, says Pope John, has the right to life and to bodily integrity. No body, in other words, has any right to throw things at any body; to threaten anybody. Every person further, has the right "to the means which are necessary and suitable for the proper development of life. These are primarily food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care and finally, the necessary social services.” So far, it is pretty elemen tary. What else? "By the nat ural law,” wrote Pope John, "every human being has the right to respect for his person.” Right there is something we can think about, without ever ex hausting its meaning. "THE RIGHT to respect for his person.” What is person? As Pope John says, a person is one "endowed with intelligence and free will.” Respecting a person, then means respecting the other fellow’s intelligence, and respecting his right to choose for himself, free of co ercion. Some people have wondered why Negroes object to the "Mis ter Bones” stage representa tions of their race. Here is the answer. If we are brainwashed into thinking of Negroes as unintelligent, we will hardly re spect their intelligence, as Pope John says we must. "From the dignity qf the human person,” Pope John’s encyclical continues, "there also arises the right to cafry on economic activities accord ing to the degree of responsi bility of which one is capable. "FURTHERMORE— and this must be specially emphasized— there is a right to a working wage. . . to give the worker and his family a standard of living in keeping with the dignity of the human person.” Keeping people in slums and ghettoes by preventing them from buying or renting homes in suitable neighborhoods, is, clearly, a direct violation of Pope John’s directives. And if further evidence is needed, the Holy Father said specifi cally, "Every human being has the right to freedom of move ment and of residence. , .” Such are the basic Catholic principles in this matter. Either we accept them, and live up to them, or we don’t. If we don’t, we’re not very Catholic, no mat ter what Catholic organization we may belong to—or be an of ficer in. Things I Don’t Like? Jottings By BARBARA C. JENCKS "Although some people seem on the surface to be quite awful through and through, Lord, I know that this can’t be so. There must be something tremendously worthwhile in the worst of us or thou wouldn’t ever have bothered to create or redeem us. Let me then, see others as thou seest them, let me look for those sides in their characters which are attractive and even—unlikely as it may seem—beautiful.” From "Prayer for a Person One Dislikes” by Dom Hubert Van Zeller. Which Promises to be Dull,” . . ."Prayers before an Interview Which Promises to be Unpleasant”. . . "Prayer before visiting the Dentist.” These prayers set themoodfor a listing of things not liked. SHORTLY after writing "Summer Litany,” a listing of some of my favorite summer associations, I received a letter from a reader asking isn’t there anything or anyone you dislike? It would seem much more interesing to me if you wrote a column on the places, people and things you didn't like. There are few people or places which I can truly say that I dislike. Since this letter came, I’ve been trying to record some of the things that I don’t like. On hot days and days that are "hot” with pressure at the newspaper, things do not look too appealing to me but listing things disliked is a big order. Quoted at the start of this column is part of a prayer from the book, "Come Lord” by the English writer, Dom Hubert Van Zeller. In this book besides the "Prayer for a Per son One Dislikes,” there are also prayers with such titles as "Prayers Before a party THINGS I DON’T LIKE? Burnt toast, cold coffee, articicial flowers, bills, political speeches, cold weather—maybe I shall alter this dislike after this summer’s unpre- cedneted temperature—snow, confustion, late parties, wrinkled clothing, dirt, traffic jams, milk, beets, casseroles, TV westerns, long- involved conversations, gossip, having to ex change things in a store, changing typewriter ribbons. I don’t like waiting in line at supermarkets or banks. . . going shopping, going to the dentist, playing cards or parlor games like charades, speaking in public, formality, details, telephone calls, bores, perfectionists, specialists, machinery, washing or wiping dishes, carrying packages, technical reports. I don’t like the high noon of day, wearing hats, front seats, bulky clothing, rock and roll music, sentimental religious art, crowds, dull pencils,- leaky pens, custard, ungraciousness, discourtesy, home movies, statistics, movie magazines, cranky bus drivers or sullen waitresses or salesgirls, Sunday nights, Monday mornings, hospital smells, taking medicine, flies in a restaurant, windows that stick and doors (Continued on Page 6) U. S. M issioners Role Of Government DAVENPORT, Iowa—The Catholic Church in the United States will have some 5,000 priests, Brothers and nuns plus more than 1,000 volunteers from the laity working in the mission fields of Latin Ameri ca before the close of the 1960s. This estimate came from Fa ther John J. Considine, M. M., director of the Latin America Bureau, National Catholic Wel fare Conference, in an address (Aug. 21) at the annual Study Week of the^ Apostolate spon sored by the Davenport diocese. GORMANSTON, Ireland, (NC) —Prime Minister SeanLemass told an organization of Irish farmers that the country should determine the proper role of government in the light of Pope John XXIII’s encyclicals. Social activity must develop as much as possible through "intermediate bodies enjoying effective autonomy” which should recognize that they have to "make their specific con tributions to the national wel fare and. . .bring their own interests into harmony with the needs of the community,” he said. Israeli Carmelite Billy Rose Drops Play NEW YORK, (NC)—Variety has reported that producer Billy Rose has decided to forego plans for his Broadway production of the controversial German play, "The Deputy.” The show business weekly magazine gave no additional de tails on Rose’s action to drop the play which is an attack on Pope Pius XII, alleging he was indif ferent to Nazi persecution of Jews during World War II. JERUSALEM, (NC)—Israel has naturalized a Jewish-born Carmelite monk who last De cember lost a legal battle for automatic citizenship under Is rael’s Law of Return, an In- Bible Reading O. K. In Delaware terior Ministry spokesman said (Aug. 16). The Law of Return admits automatically Jews as citizens. Israel’s high court turned down a request by Carmelite Father Daniel, a 40-year-old Polish Jew, that the court make the government recognize him as a Jew. New Peru Head DOVER, Del., (NC)—Bible reading and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer will continue in Delaware public schools if state Attorney Gen. David Buckson has his way. Buckson argued that the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision out lawing the practices affects only the states involved in the cases before the court, Maryland and Pennsylvania. The court's decision did not automatically make similar laws in other states unconsti tutional. LIMA, Peru, (NC)—Presi dent Fernando Belaunde Terr> asserted on assuming office that "only by the immeasurable goodness of God and the under standing of my fellow country men” can he succeed. The new President announced a program stressing public housing andprovision of schools for the close to one million Peruvial children without them. "We must channel public and private funds for the solution of the most urgent social pro blems,” Belaunde said. But Not In Kentucky FRANKFORT, Ky., (NC)— Kentucky’s Attorney General has said he will issue shortly an opinion advising public schools they must drop daily Bible recitation. Asked for his opinion of the U. S. Supreme Court’s June 17 decision against religious practices in public schools, Atty. Gen. John Breckinridge told the state school board that Bible reading must stop. Kentucky law required public school classes to open with the reading of Bible passages. 50,000 Christians In Israel JERUSALEM, (NC)—Chris tians in Israel numbered 50,- 543, 2.3 per cent of the coun try’s population in the 1961 cen sus, the Central Bureau of Sta tistics has announced. Melkite Rite Catholics from the largest single group, with 20,313. Greek Orthodox num bered 15,473; Latin Rite Catho lics, 7,048; Maronite Rite Ca tholics, 2,644; and Protestants, 1,704. The remainder belong to various small Oriental Church es. QUESTION BOX (By David Q. Liptak) Q. When the recitation of Our Fathers and Hail Marys is re quired in order to gain an in dulgence, must these prayers be said perfectly—by paying strict attention to each syllable of every word? Or is it suffi cient to say these prayers in the ordinary manner one is used to pray? A. The principle that God only expects human beings to act in a human way applies to gaining indulgences as well as it ap plies to anything else. Involun tary distractions are part and pracel of the human condition; so long as they are not deli berately entertained, they do not mitigate sincerity in prayer; and consequently, do not lessen prayer's efficacy. FOR GAINING an indulgence, the traditional prayers "for the intentions of the Holy Father” (when they are required) must be said vocally; i.e., the words must be uttered exteriorly, al though they need not be audible. INSOFAR AS DISPOSITIONS are concerned, such prayers should proceed from a proper intention and with sufficient at tention. A proper intention ap plies the will to render honor and glory to God and to acknow ledge our absolute dependenc upon him—all of which is pre sumed whenever Christian prayer is meant. Sufficient at tention is secured when on directs his mind and will either (1) to the correct pronunciation of the words or (2) to the mean ing of the words or (3) to th object of prayer: God. THERE IS A paragraph in Father Winfred Herbst’s book on indulgences (Indulgences, Bruce, 1955) which succinctly covers this whole matter: "WHEN IT IS SAID that de vout prayer is necessary for the gaining of an indulgence, it is not meant that any new or special obligation is thereby imposed. All that is required is that one pray with the proper intention and attention, in other words, that one pray from the heart and try to avoid distract ing thoughts. The same holds good with respect to partial indulgences.” (There are many indulgences for which vocal prayer is not (Continued on Page 5) °)j The Southern Cross P. O. BOX 180. SAVANNAH. GA. Vol. 44 Thursday, August 22, 1963 No. 7 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