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PAGE 4—The Southern Cross, August 24, 1967
Rev. Francis J. Donohue, Editor John E. Markwalter, Managing Editor
Phone 234-4574
Second Class Postage Paid at Waynesboro. Ga.
Send Change of Address to P. D. Box 180. Savannah, Ga.
Published weekly except the second and last weeks
in June, July and August and the last week in December.
Subscription price $5.00 per year.
W elcome!
Ten newly ordained priests will soon take up
their duties as “other Christs” in the Diocese
of Savannah.
These young men have given up family, home
and familiar surroundings, to journey thou
sands of miles to a strange country to devote
their lives ministering to the needs of the
people of South Georgia. They will arrive on
September 1st, and following a pastoral insti
tute to familiarize them with the diocese, they
will receive their assignments.
Our diocese, like most others, has been
hampered by a severe lack of vocations to the
priesthood. Ireland has been blessed by God
with an abundance of priestly vocations and
to this great Christian Nation we owe a tre
mendous debt of gratitude. Many of her sons
are already laboring in the diocese and this
year, primarily through the good office of Bi
shop Cornelius Lucy of Cork, we have ten more
Irish priests. An additional ten students will
be ordained next year bringing Ireland’s contri
bution to twenty priests in two years.
It was foretold by David that Jesus would be
a “priest forever according to the order of
Melchisedech.” It would be impossible for
Christ to be a priest forever without His use
of others. He ordained His first priests on the
night before he died when, after they had received
Communion at the first Mass, he commis
sioned them “Do You this in commemora
tion of Me.” On the Day of His Resurrec
tion, Christ empowered the Apostles to for
give sin with the words, “Receive the Holy
Spirit: whose sins you shall forgive, they are
forgiven, and whose sins you shall retain they
are retained.”
Priests are the means God has chosen to
administer the Sacraments-the means of con
ferring sanctifying grace-the means of renew
ing, daily, his sacrifice at Calvary in the sac
rifice of the Mass.
The task feeing Savannah’s newly ordained
priests is not an easy one. It is a life de
voted to the service of others. But there is
no dignity higher than that of the priesthood
and no other service to mankind, which can
compare to it. It is the highest calling.
The approaching weeks will be strange to
our new priests, it will be a period of adjust
ment to a new life. We would like to take the
opportunity to assure them of the prayers of
the faithful of the diocese and to extend to them
a most sincere welcome.
(J. E. M.)
Learn To Love
Learn to love. This phrase may seem par
adoxical—one contrary to the national im
pulses of the human heart. Instead, judicious
young people, who want to live their Catholic
feith, are convinced that love needs great
schooling.
Thus it is necessary to learn in this field
too. We must not love through instinct, pas
sion, out of interest, amusement or whim.
If we truly want love to fulfill its defini
tion and be the good fortune, the glory, the
happiness of the present and future life, it
must be rich in countless virtues.
It is not sufficient to love only because we
are inclined toward such a sentiment. We must
train ourselves to love well and we will find
so many spiritual wonders on this path, be
ginning with a reciprocal respect, a reverent,
watchful and prayerful expectation.
In the end, we will come to the conviction
that we cannot truly love unless we are dis
posed to the gift of a total giving, which means
abnegation and sacrifice. And those who build
their own rule of life, on these foundations are
in the right. —Pope Paul
AN UNSUNG ECUMENIST
Sum And Substance
Rev. John B. Sheerin, C.S.F*
Who was Charles Finney? Few Catholics know
anything about this noted Protestant revivalist
of the last century and this lack is indicative
of our general ignorance of Protestant history
in America. The Council decree on Ecumenism
urges Catholics to study up on Protestant be
liefs, Protestant spiritual and liturgical life,
Protestant religious psychology and cultural
background. But one of the most significant
recommendations of the decree is that Catho
lics should acquire
a more adequate un
derstanding of Pro
testant history.
It is a cardinal
principle of ecu
menism that Catho
lics and Protestants
should do all things together except those things
that conscience demands we do separately. Why
not courses in American history inwhichCatho-
lics and Protestants learn together about the
Circuit Riders as well as about the Jesuit
missionaries? We know all about the Protes
tant rioters who burned down the Charlestown
convent in the 1840s and about the anti-Catholic
riots in Philadelphia in 1844. But historically
there was a bright side to the history of Catho
lic-Protestant relations in the 1840s and we
ought to know something of this as well as the
ugly truth about instances of Protestant bigo
try.
There was, for instance, John W. Nevin who
taught theology at the College and seminary
of the German Reformed Church at Mercers-
burg, Pa, A minister of the Dutch Reformed
Church first brought the story of Nevin to my
attention about 10 years ago. Nevin’s life and
work is also recounted, along with the frext
of some of his sermons, in “The Mei^fers-
burg Theology”, edited by James Hastings
Nichols. He was unquestionably a pioneer Amer
ican ecumenist.
Nevin began his work at the peak of anti-
Catholic feeling in the United States in the
1840s. He advocated an “evangelical Catholi
cism” that was to a degree not unlike the
“evangelical Catholicism” of Hans Kung. He
believed in reaffirming the principles of the
Reformation but he also insisted that the
Reformation could be understood only in re
lation to Catholicism from which it developed.
He believed strongly in the Real Presence.
Nevin engaged in a continuing discussion of
Catholicism with Orestes Brownson but the men
who seem to have had the most “Catholic”
influence on Nevin were the German, Adam
Mohler, and Cardinal Newman. He admired
Brownson’s vehemence but felt that the view
of infallibility espoused by Brownson was more
mechanical than correct. Roman Catholic news
papers ran campaigns of prayer for Nevin’s
conversion but he never abandoned his hope
and belief in the possibility of an “evange
lical Catholicism.”
Nevin’s address to the joint Convention of
the Reformed Dutch and the German Reformed
Churches at Harrisburg, Pa., on Aug. 8, 1844,
contains passages of superb ecumenical spirit.
It deals with “Catholic Unity”. He chose as
his text the section of St. Paul’s Epistle to
the Ephesians in which he said that there
is one body and one Spirit, one Lord, one
feith, one baptism, one God and Father of
all. Nevin asked the rhetorical question; “Can
anyone suppose that the order of things which
now prevails in the Christian world, in the
view before us, is destined to be perpetual
and final? Does it not lie in the every con
ception of the Church that these divisions
should pass away and make room for the reign
at last of catholic unity and love?”
He went on to say that “our Protestant
Christianity” cannot continue to stand in its
present form. “A Church without unity can
neither conquer the world nor sustain itself.”
Nevin was no lover of sects. He said that he
would not for the world found a new sect even
if millions joined it but he affirmed that he
would feel that his life had been a rewarding
one if he were instrumental in some small
way in helping to pull down “a single one
of all those walls of partition that now mock
the idea of catholic unity in the visible Church.”
John Nevin never saw the promised lana
of ecumenism but he did not live in vain and
his name should be written large in any history
of American ecumenism.
A. Nations Shame
If you must use the highways over the Labor Day Holiday—please be care
ful—The life you save may be your own!
WITHDRAW FROM VIETNAM?
It Seems To Me
Preaching in his cathedral
on a recent Sunday, Bishop
Fulton J. Sheen of Rochester,
N.Y., said that the U.S. should
immediately withdraw all its
troops from Vietnam so that
we might be “reconciled with
our brothers” there.
§ This is a bit
like suggesting
that we do away
forces and
courts and be
reconciled with
with our bro
thers the bur
glars, the hold
up men, the gangsters, the
bombers and the murderers.
Every person of good will
wants to be reconciled with
everybody . But reconcilia
tion is a two-way street which
the criminal, so long as his
heart is hardened, declines to
travel. And the brotherhood
of man does not mean that
God wants His world handed
over to thugs.
We are more than ready to
be reconciled with our bro
thers in North Vietnam and in
the Vietcong guerrilla move
ment the moment they will
stop kidnaping, torturing and
killing our brothers, the South
Vietnamese.
Our South Vietnam bro
thers, we may be sure, would
Joseph Breig
not consider it at all brother
ly of us to withdraw our mili
tary presence and leave them
at the mercy of Mao-type com
munists who have made mur
der and terrorism their pro
fession.
Memories are short; and it
seems to be widely forgotten
that in the ‘50s, when the
Vietnamese people were
briefly given the opportunity
of choosing sides, more than
one million of them left ev
erything they owned and mi
grated to South Vietnam ra
ther than live under Ho Chi
Minh.
Almost nobody went from
the south to the north; and
there is no telling how many
would have moved south had
not Hanoi, alarmed at the mi
gration, stopped it by force.
Those were the heart
touching days when tens of
thousands of families—fathers,
mother, children - trudged
endless miles southward
through jungles and rice pad
dies, and then waited hour
after hour, waist deep in sea
water, to be picked up by Na
vy ships after the land routes
into South Vietnam had been
closed by Hanoi’s armed for
ces.
Hundreds lost their lives
trying to escape from North
Vietnam, just as people risk
their lives to get out of East
Germany through the brutal
communist Berlin Wall.
To whom should we be bro
therly first-to the oppressed
or to their oppressors? To
the killer or to those he is
trying to destroy?
To love one’s fellowmen
does not mean closing one’s
mind to realities. It does not
mean liquidating the forces
of law and order, and hand
ing over the innocent to cri
minal aggressors.
Those who wage what Mao
and Ho Chi Minh call “wars
of national liberation” em
ploy, as a matter of deliberate
policy, the most hideous
cruelties to advance their con
quests. They offer a choice
to peaceable Vietnamese far
mers and their sons: “Are
you going to join us, or at
least feed us, or would you
prefer to watch while we tor
ture your wife or mother to
death, or while we cut off the
hands or gouge out the eyes
of your daughter or sister?
And after that, if you resist
us, we will kill you.”
Christianity means loving,
and praying for, the gunman-
yes; but it also means using
Whatever force is necessary to
stop him from gunning people
down. Peace, as the popes
have repeatedly said, is the
work of justice-not of senti
mentalism.
CABBAGES AND KINGS
Rev. William V. Coleman
On
Education
Every summer I have the unique opportunity
of observing two wonderful groups of children,
one from our Catholic schools and the other
from public schools all over South Georgia. I
see the youngsters in many different situations,
since they live with us at Camp Villa Marie.
Such an opportunity makes clear-the good being
done by our Catholic schools. It is a real labora
tory experience.
To those who write learned-
0BSnS^ ly about the “school problem”,
• jj I can only point to experience
W -y which tells even the casual ob-
\ n server that our school must
W /£ be doing something right. The
children who come from them
^ ' have about them a self con
fidence and an inner happiness
which is denied those who cannot take advant
age of the Catholic school.
Child for child, the home is without doubt
the major influence. Those who come from
good homes are well adjusted, whether they
are in a Catholic school or not. Over and
above this, however, there is a certain elan
vitale which Catholic schools somehow man
age to instill. The Catholic school child is
at ease with religion, comfortable, relaxed at
the thought of God. God seems to be more
his friend than his master. He has embibed
from his teachers a happy attitude toward
God.
He fears sin less. He sees God more as a
Savior than a Judge. His sharing in the Mass
is less a duty than a privilege, and a happy
privilege at that.
There was a time, perhaps when this was
not true, when Catholic school children were
over regimented and overly conscious of sin,
law and obligation. Those who react against
Catholic schools and use this as a reason are
reacting against something which has passed
away.
While we do have to worry and worry ser
iously about the staffing financing and distri
bution of our schools, it would be a shame to
think of abandoning them when they are giving
so much to our children. Their excellence in
helping children to love God happily, is the over
riding reason for finding a way to making them
more available to more people in the days
ahead.
R.S.V.P.
Q. MAY A CATHOLIC JOIN BIRCH
SOCIETY?
A. These days the Church hesitates to
formally condemn any group of people
banded together for any reason what so
ever. You can see this change in attitude
in her dealings with Communism and
Communistic regimes. It is unlikely that
condemnations of societies will take place
in our era. This leaves the individual Cath
olic with the obligation of making a decision
in each case and a greater measure of
freedom of choice.
In joining any organization which has
a social position, as does the John Birch
Society, one should certainly ask himself
if this position is consistant with the
clear social teaching of the Church. If the
tenor of the society fells within the rather
wide umbrella of papal teaching, there is
no reason why a Catholic cannot join it.
The anti-communist stand of the John
Birch Society is commendable. It has help
ed many Americans to realize that there
is danger in the world. For this reason
some Catholics have joined the society.
On the other hand, there are many >
Catholics who feel that the underlying
attitudes of this society toward, the Ne
gro, the poor and the government are
so completely out of keeping with recent
Church social teaching that they could
not join even though they appreciate the
anti-Communism of the society.
I would suggest that you read the two
great encyclicals of Pope John XXIII,
“Pacem in terris” and “Mater et Ma-
gistra” and the “Blue Book” by Welsch,
the founder of the Birch Society, and draw
I your own ^conclusion. I have and mine
is that no informed Catholic should sub
scribe to membership in the John Birch So
ciety.
Q. THE BLACK POWER MOVEMENT?
A. I would apply the same criteria
as in the question just answered! Here,
however, there is no real organization
and no real policy to study. Almost
4 every user of the term “Black Power”
means something different. To join any
of the organizations which use the term
could be possible if they acknowledge
the dignity of every man and of the law.
Mail Questions to R.S;V.P., P. O. Box
180, Savannah, Ga. 31402.