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PAGE 4—The Southern Cross, November 7, 1963 Guest Editorial Men And Manners We will always have our extremists—those excitable people who have become so taken up with a cause as to lose their perspective on the rest of reality. They seem to exist in almost every area of human activity, but for some reason or other they flourish in the world of politics. They are always saving the world from something, or for something— and if this is not clear to all others, the extremists do not suffer under any such handicap in vision. They are confident and convinced—and pretty generally insuffer able. Last week two incidents made evident how extreme the extremists can get. The United Nations Ambassador to the United Nations was struck with a placard as he left a gathering in Dallas and the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court was pelt ed with pamphlets in a similar context in New York. Since neither Mr. Stevenson nor Justice Warren are, strictly speaking, political figures it may be hard to under stand at once how they can arouse this sort of reaction from any group. The answer, we suppose, is that they are both symbols— active, productive symbols—of points of view not universally popular in American life. The Supreme Court regularly has its critics, which is a healthy democratic sign, but assaults on the Chief Justice and absurd calls for his impeachment are simply lu natic. At the same time some Americans may be thoroughly dissastified with the United Nations as an international agency, but an attack on the U.S. Ambassador is hysterical. Perhaps it is the hopeless nature of the extremist’s cause that makes actions like these more or less inevitable. When it is obvious that Americans are not going to get out of the U.N. and are not changing the direction of the Supreme Court on state’s rights, what can the extremist do? He loses his temper and whatever shred of rational ity remains to him, and he resorts to vio lence. These are essentially the gestures of the unintelligent and the immature, of those who have abandoned civil debate in favor of civil disorder. They are, in this sense, the worst sort of subversives, seek ing to upset the good society by demon strations of physical fury. The pitiful aspect of the picture is its futility. If the extremists really wished to persuade others to their own convictions, they have chosen the worst possible way. The public is shocked by insult and attack on two of the most respected men in public life; they cannot fail to turn away, in revul sion and protest, from those responsible. Whenever we lose our temper, we have pro bably lost our argument; when we replace reason with assault, we have come close to losing our mind.—(The Pilot - Boston) Aid Amendment Foreign WASHINGTON — A one- sentence amendment to the for eign aid billpending in Congress has raised numerous problems in a variety of fields. The amendment to the For eign Assistance Act of 1963 would make U. S. funds avail able to promote birth control studies and programs in coun tries obtaining aid. The proposal raises prob lems that are moral, practical and political, It raises problems at home and abroad. Artificial birth control is regarded as intrinsically im moral by Catholics and others in this country. To them, it is highly offensive to have the U.S. foster such programs as a matter .of government policy. It is not a question of such persons trying to force their beleifs on anyone else, as has been pointed out to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In a pluralistic society, they have a right to be considered. In this instance, it would seem, they are being forced to stand for something which is repulsive to them, because others are, for the most part, indifferent to the moral issues involved. On the practical side, many feel that artificial birth con- By J. J. Gilbert (N.C.W.C. News Service) trol is not the cure for prob lems confronting countries with rapidly expanding populations. Increased production, dis covery of new foods and ma terials, irrigation and emigra tion offer more solid hopes of improvement, and undoubtedly will have to be resorted to whe ther birth control is practiced or not. Meanwhile, to the ex tent that artificial birth con trol is encouraged, the real and unobjectionable solutions are likely to be neglected. Politically, the program giv es a colorful weapon to those who would inflame the colored races against the white race, the underprivileged countries against the rich, notably the U. 'S. They can picture the pro gram as a deceptive maneuver, planned to bring about the de cimation of populations in colored and poor countries. In fact, it has already been done. The so-called foreign aid bill already is having a rough time as a piece of legislation. Many oppose it for political, econo mic and allied reasons. For its supporters to burden it with the distrust of those who will now dislike it for purely moral rea sons, seems completely ill ad vised. Some of those who speak for the amendment profess to be astonished that it should stir up such moral indignation. Per haps they have heard too much from those who steadily promote the cause of artificial birth control, and too little from those who oppose it. In 1959, President (then Sen ator) Kennedy said it would be “a mistake for the U. S. gov ernment to attempt to advocate the limitations of the popula tions of underdeveloped coun tries.” He also said it would be a “great mistake” for this country to appear to promote “the limitation of the black and brown peoples whose popula tion is increasing no faster than the United States.” That same year, the Soviet Russian delegate told the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East: “The imperialists want to cut down your growth because they are afraid of your increasing num ber s and because of the inad equacy of their economic sy stem. We shall feed you no matter what your numbers are.” For Soviet Russia, he offered education, loans, technical as sistance and trade. What We Know About Purgatory God’s W orld Our knowledge of purgatory is rather limited. We do know that it is the place or state where a soul receives its final fur bishing, if needed, in prepara tion for heaven. The word “place” is s o m ewhat ambiguous as this word means a par ticular posi tion in the created uni- verse, wherea s a d i s embodied soul is not subject to the limitations of ma terial creation. As far as the soul is concerned, purgatory would be “any place” where the soul cannot see God. The inability of the soul to see God is the essence of the suffering of purgatory. Housed in its physical body, the soul in this life is shielded from the powerful attraction which God exerts upon the human spirit. Released from the body by death, the soul feels the irre sistible pull of God’s attractive ness. Like a rocket from its launching pad, the soul tries to go to God with all the power of its being. But, although God is every where, no soul with the least taint of self-love can see Him who must be the total object of our love. One who dies free from grave sin has not rejected God. Yet, even unreprented ven ial sin or unfulfilled penance for sin constitutes a barrier be tween the soul and God. This is (By Leo J. Trese) not a permanent barrier, as mortal sin is; but this tem porary barrier must somehow be demolished before the soul, completely purified of self, is fit for union with Him Who must be our all. As the soul “strains at the leash” to reach God, yet cannot find Him, it experiences inde scribable anguish. It burns with a consuming but frustrated de sire for God, and this agony of frustration is the very suffering which purges the soul of the last traces of self. There comes the moment when the soul, restored to its pristine purity, receives the spiritual vision which theo logians call the Light of Glory. Suddenly God bursts upon the soul in all His infinite beauty and goodness and lovability. The soul possesses God and is pos sessed by Him. The soul is in heaven. Time as we know it — hours and days and months — is a measurement of the physical universe. A disembodied spirit is outside the limitations of terrestial time. Therefore it seems pointless to ask how long purgatory may last for any particular soul. Even in this world, suffering is measured by intensity rather than by time. One hour of excruciating pain can seem like a year. As mea sured by our worldly time, the suffering of purgatory may en dure for but a moment — a moment which, to the suffering soul, may seem like an eternity. Whether we speak in terms of “shortening the time” or of “lessening the pain,” we who are still upon earth can help the souls in purgatory. They cannot help themselves. Their time of personal merit ended at death. They only can suffer with patience, awaiting the blessed moment of heaven's thundering dawn. However, God in His goodness has given us the privilege of helping these, our brothers and. sisters, in their distress. God gladly will accept our prayers and pen ances in their behalf. How populous is purgatory? No one can know, but purga tory is probably not as crowd ed as some persons think. I remember that when I was a child in catechism class, the good Sister said that almost everyone, even saints, will at least have to “pass through” purgatory. I suspect that Sis ter’s appreciation of God’s holi ness somewhat overshadowed her understanding of His love and mercy. Since the sacrament of Ex treme Unction removes all the “remains of sin,” a person who has worthily received the Holy Annointing in his last illness would be in no need of purga tory. This would be true also of anyone who has gained a plenary indulgence just before death, or who was able to make an act of perfect love for God in his final moments. Nevertheless, love dictates that we take no chances in pre maturely canonizing those who have gone before us. Many or few, the souls in purgatory plead for the charity of our remem brance. And He Did! ~' r '~ I want to /ef some /res/? air into Me C/?urc/? The Trial Of Mark Twain It Seems to .Me JOSEPH BREIG “What a pity that some one did not reach this bitter dis illusioned old man with a vital Christianity instead of the dull theological hellfire type which he ighorantly confused with the real thing.” That para graph is taken from Dr. Nor- man Vincent Peale’s com ment on Mark Twain’s “Re flections on R e ligion, ” published in the Hudson Review, a literary quarterly. Twain (Samuel Clemens) wrote the “Reflections” in 1906, but directed that they not be published until the year 2406. His daughter, Mrs. Clara Samoussaud, lifted the ban on publication a short time before her death. Previously, she had forbidden publication for fear of giving “aid and comfort” to the anti-religious Soviet Union. TWAIN DENOUNCED the Old Testament as depicting a God “overcharged with evil im pulses . . . He is always punish ing — punishing trifling mis deeds with thousandfold sev erity.” Twain ridiculed the Immacu late Conception (he meant the Virgin Birth). He blamed Christianity for the world’s wars, misery and suffering, and said that God’s only interest in “man or the other animals” is to torture and slay them, and “get out of this pastime such entertain ment as it may afford.” THESE REFLECTIONS strike me as a confused and angry sort of “Out of the depths I to Thee, Lbrtf.*'’ It is not at all unusual for a person who is hurt and bewildered to yell senselessly at those to whom in fact he looks for love and under standing. And knowing some thing of the goodness of God, we need not doubt that Mark Twain found what he did not even real ize that he was seeking. As Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Pres byterian Church U.S.A., ex pressed it, “Redemption, re conciliation, reunion of man with God are the ingredients missing from Twain’s relig ious reflections.” He notes that Twain, at the time of writing, had lost his wife and two daugh ters, and “these harsh events he seemingly could not under stand ...” NOR CAN ANY ONE under stand the evil and pain and sor row in the world—not fully. But without God there is no possible explaining the good ness, beauty, unselfishness, sacrifice that we see all around us. Indeed, without God there is no explaining how or why any thing exists at all. An d so we' live in faith, often not compre hending, often wondering why God permits this or that, but Visit To Knock Jottings By Barbara C. Jencks ’ ‘Mary of the Gael, reveal to us thy face When comes the ending of our earthly day. Bring us His pardon for our sins last trace, And lead us safely on the homeward way.” Brian O’Higgins KNOCK, THE LEAST known of the Marian shrines, was an appropriate last-day stop on my recent European trip. This weary pilgrim spent the last day visiting the Irish shrine where in the years following the infamous Potato Famine, it is believed that Our Lady appeared to comfort the people who had such great devotion to her. LORETO, LOURDES and now KNOCK. The faith of the Irish is proverbial and it is found even today that the devout of this nation speak of Our Lady as if she lived next door. For those in County Mayo—which is immediately followed by the words, “God Help Us” because of the great poverty of the area—it is almost as if Our Lady were next door neighbor for they boast the presence of the nation’s only Marian Shrine. The day our group stran gled from the big green bus into the shrine to begin the de votions was a misty day, much like every other Irish day. But the mist coming down seemed this day an over-generous douse of holy water. The Knock Story had its be ginning on the evening of August 21, 1879, the eve of the Octave of the Assumption. It was one of those evenings that suddenly beset a summer’s day. A misty rain was falling and twilight was coming early to this small village in County Mayo, in the West of Ireland. The narrow streets were deserted and the stillness of the evening was broken only by the footsteps of an occasional villager hurry ing through the rain to say a prayer at the simple little Par ish Church. Hungary “Abandoned” NEW YORK (NC)—A Hungar ian refugee leader, preaching at an anniversary Mass mark ing the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, said his country has “again been abandoned to its fate.” Msgr. Bela Varga, chair man of the Hungarian Commit- Mexico Suppresses Truth About Tito tee, spoke scathingly of “those people in the free world who can be so easily misled by the blan dishments of Red propaganda or by the temporary gains of busi ness transactions. He disputed claims of relaxa tion in the policies of the pres ent Hungarian communist re gime and said the Hungarian people are experiencing star vation and the Hungarian Church is subject to persecu tion. MEXICO CITY (NC)—T h e Catholic weekly Mundo Mejor has strongly denounced police confiscation in Acapulco of one of its issues shortly before the arrival of President Tito of Yugoslavia. Issues of another Catholic weekly, Union, and the political review Nacion, were confis cated the same day (Oct. 4).. Mundo Mejor said (Oct. 26) that it tries to give its readers the truth on national and world events and therefore could not hide the truth on * ‘crimes com mitted against the Yugoslav Catholics by Tito.” Pope Stresses Need For Grace Anti-Semitism In Russia trusting Him because He is in finitely (and therefore myster iously) good and merciful. As Dr. Peale said, it is a pity that Twain’s reflections were not about religion as it really is, but about a carica ture of the real thing. IT IS CARICATURE of one kind or another that basically good people attack when they think they are attacking relig ion; and the author of Huckle berry Finn and Tom Sawyer surely was a basically good person. As Charles Neider, a biographer of Twain, remarked, “He didn’t like injustice.” Rabbi Theodore Friedman, president of the Rabbinical As sembly, noted that Twain wrote that “man is a machine.” But, said Rabbi Freidman, “No ma chine ever waxed indignant with righteous wrath, as does Twain, over man’s inhumanity to man.” WHEN ALL IS SAID and done, there is mystery in religion too deep to be entirely penetrated because divine goodness cannot fully be encompassed by creat ed mind. It is enough for us that God, in His Incarnation for our redemption, suffers boundless ly more than we, and suffers in each of us because He infinitely loves us. We are never alone. He is always with us, and never more so than when we feel most de serted. It is heartbreaking that Mark Twain did not, at the time he wrote his reflections, realize that. CLEVELAND (NC) — Msgr. Lawrence P. Cahill, president of St. John College, joined three others here in a letter to So viet Premier Nikita Khrushchev protesting persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union. The letter told Khrushchev that Americans are “shocked” at the wave of anti-Jewish per secution now under way in your country.” “We prayerfully hope you will repudiate and terminate the show trials, the press vi lification, and other incitations to public anti-Semitism,” it also said. In addition to Msgr. Cahill’s signature the letter had the signature of Rabbi Philip Horo witz of Brith Emeth Congrega tion; Rev. B. Bruce Whittemore, executive director, Cleveland Area Church (Protestant) Fed eration, and Cleveland Councilman Leo A. Jackson. The four formed a Cleve land Committee on Anti-Sem itism. Its aim is to keep peo ple here informed about perse-j cution behind the Iron Curtain. VATICAN CITY (NC)--Pope Paul VI stressed the existence of and need for grace in the holy lives of Catholics during his weekly general audience here (Oct. 30). The English text of the Pope’s remarks is as follows: “We welcome your visit in these days particularly devoted to the thought of holiness. Holi ness is the theme of the ecu menical council. It is exempli fied by the great and good men We have recently beatified. It will be celebrated by the whole 1 Church on the feast of All Saints. “By your Baptism you are already as the early Chris tians used to say ‘saints.’ That is blessed, dedicated to God and members of the Church. And We exhort you to be aware of your Christian dignity and to pre serve it by living always in the state of grace. * ‘Nothing can be higher than grace, the divine principle of supernatural life. Nothing can promote our spiritual growth more than faithfulness to the state of grace. We pray that you may always have a life of 1 grace and use every occasion/ to increase your sanctity and perfect your holiness. By David Q. Liptak Q. Are all Catholics eligible for indulgences? What about persons who are excommuni cated? Isn’t some specific in tention required before one can gain an indulgence? A, To be eligible for gaining indulgences, for oneself, a per son must be baptized, not ex communicated, and in the state of grace, at least at the end of the works required for gaining them. For those indulgences granted only locally or to a special group, one must also be subject to the authority granting the indulgencies. Actually to gain an indulgence a Catholic must 1) fulfill the an nexed works prescribed and precisely in the manner and at the time required; and 2) have the general intention of receiv ing the indulgence (the reason here being that favors are not granted except to those desir ous of them). The intention of gaining indulgences need not be directed to a particular in dulgence. It should, however, be at least a habitual intention (i.e., one once actually made and nev er revoked). formance of the strict penan ces of the early Church. DURING THE FIRST Chris tian ages, extremely severe penances were frequently im posed for sins. Some of them, dictated by the official Church canons or laws rather than by individual confessors, were- styled “canonical penances”, and were often public. Notable exambles: three days’ fast on bread and water for disecra- tion of the Sabbath; a lifetime of public humiliation, including debarment from the main body of the church for murderers. A PLENARY (Latin plenus: “full”) indulgence is dis tinguished from a partial indul gence in that it has the capa city to remit all the temporal punishment due to sin. In order to gain a plenary indulgence in all its fullness, a person must be free not only from sin but also from all affection for sin. The Pastor of the Church, Very Reverend Archdeacon Bartholomew A. Cavanagh, sat reading in the rectory, occa sionally glancing up at the rain outside. His housekeeper, Mary McLoughlin, had a “day off” and Archdeacon Cavanagh was remaining at home in case any sick-calls or other emergency might arise. It was now about 7:30 and the archdeacon ex pected that his housekeeper would be home shortly and then, perhaps, he’d take a good-night stroll around the village. He heard the sound of voices from over in the direction of the chapel, thought he heard some one shouting, listened for a mo ment and then resuitned his reading. Archdeacon Cavanagh was to regret for the rest of his life that he did not pay more atten tion to that shouting, for out in the chapel-yard, had ho gone to investigate, he, too, might have seen an apparition ofthe Bless- (Continued on Page 5) Q. Exactly what does the phrase “partial indulgence of 500 days” mean? A. A partial indulgence is so called because it has the capa city to remit part of the tem poral punishment due to sin af ter the guilt of that sin has already been remitted. A “par tial indulgence of 500 days” signifies that as much satis factory efficacy is granted as would be gained if the person receiving this indulgence real ly spent 500 days in the per- Q. If one’s dispositions were ’ not noble enough to receive a a plenary indulgence which he wished to obtain, would all his efforts be in vain? A. A plenary indulgence is granted in the sense that if a person cannot gain it in full, he nonetheless can gain it par tially, in proportion to the pur ity of his dispositions. Q. Is it possible to gain indul gences for other living per sons? A. No one gaining an indul gence can apply it to other liv ing persons; but all indulgences granted by the Holy Father are applicable to the souls in pur- (Continued on Page 5) The Southern Cross P. O. BOX 180. SAVANNAH. GA. Vol. 44 Thursday, November 7, 1963 No. 18 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 Rqv. 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