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PAGE 4—The Southern Cross, April 18, 1968
P. O. Box 180, Savannah, Ga.
Most Rev. Gerard L. Frey, D.D. President
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. O. 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 85.00 per year
Who Will Answer?
The top-level leadership of the nation’s
major religious groups were in the forefront of
proponents of the recently enacted civil rights
bill.
Many of those who presently lament an
apparent decline in respect for religion and
religious values among the country’s young
people have been in the forefront in
denouncing or undermining religious leadership
in the drive to secure for all Americans
meaningful rights to life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. Among them have been
Governors, Senators, Congressmen and
newspaper publishers and editors. Too many of
them are Georgians.
They have, with consistency but without
validity, championed what they term “the basic
civil right of all Americans to own property and
to dispose of it as they wish.”
Any property owner knows he is not free to
dispose of his property as he wishes. He is
hemmed in by all kinds of laws which restrict
both the use he may make of his property and
the purposes for which he may dispose of it.
Every community has laws governing the
size and kind of building he may erect on his
land. In many cases, he is required to engage
the services of an architect to design the
building.
Some communities even tell him how often
he must cut the grass. The are laws which
forbid him to build anything but a dwelling if
he owns property in a certain area.
If he owns a building used by the public, the
number of persons who may use it any given
time is limited by law. He is required to'have a
certain number of doors of a certain minimum
size which open in a particular direction.
If he rents dwelling units, he is subject to
minimum standards laws.
What these “bleeding hearts” in the cause of
‘property rights’ are really stumping for is “the
basic civil right of all Americans” to be bigots
and to refuse to sell or rent their property to a
man with black skin. And that is the truth of
the matter.
For too long these men have been allowed to
wrap their cause in the blanket of
respectability. For too long, noble motives have
been attributed to men whose motives are base
and contrary to the very religious values for
which they profess such deep concern.
Strip away all the pomposity, flag-waving
and constitution-thumping, and the
confrontation between the religious leadership
of the United States and the anti-civil rights
forces comes down to this:
Churchmen are concerned that in the battle
between good and evil, the good shall prevail -
that the evil to which human nature tends shall
not overcome the good to which humankind is
entitled.
Their opponents, on the other hand, are
determined to pervert the role of law to the end
that the freedom of a man to live wherever he
chooses and can afford to live shall be legally
restricted by another man’s officially
sanctioned ‘right’ to be immoral.
No, America’s young people are not
questioning the religious values which exalt
good above evil, right above wrong, men above
property. But they are questioning the
relevance of religious structures which, for so
long, remained aloof from the problems which
have made the lives of so many a ‘hell on earth.’
The churches, however, have acknowledged
their own guilt in remaining relatively silent in
the face of injustice and oppression. They are at
least trying to right the wrongs of the past.
They feel that they deserve another chance.
The disillusioned, if they only reflect on their
own weaknesses and failures, will give them
another chance.
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But their elders, who seek to canonize as
right and good that which is mean and
degrading, selfish and vain; who exalt things
above people and bigotry above justice will, one
day, be called upon to answer to a just and
wrathful God for the terrible violence and
destruction they wreaked on the hearts and
souls of children who asked for bread and
received a stone - who asked for the truth and
were deceived - who mistook the values of
their parents for the values of God - and who
came to believe that He was dead.
THE DRAFT AND GRADUATE STUDENTS
The Backdrop...
By John J. Daly, Jr.
The new Secretary of Health, Education and
Welfare has predicted that most future Federal
aid for education will be channeled into
training programs and not into the oft-proposed
big school construction programs.
Wilbur J. Cohen told his first press
conference that the nation still is desperately
short of teachers, librarians, social workers and
other skilled educational professionals. “For
each dollar that I
have, I would
rather put the
priority on the
training of
personnel. . . than
I would on bricks
and mortar,” he
said flatly.
This should be good news for many students
and for graduate schools and other institutions
training these personnel. But today the news
comes to them only softly through the gloom
which has overtaken most universities because
of the new draft law.
Beginning next month, college seniors and
first-year graduate students, with the exception
of the handful in medicine and dentistry,
become eligible for the draft, which is striving
to produce the 302,000 men the Pentagon has
ordered for this year.
In the past, most graduate students managed
to avoid the Selective Service. There is no
doubt that some of them prolonged their
studies long enough to keep out of the Army
entirely. But it is also true that the majority
were acquiring skills and knowledge that our
complex society demands today for its smooth
functioning.
The universities have protested the new law
to no avail. They claim their graduate student
enrollment will be decimated, that the
economic pinch from sudden loss of tuition
imperils them, that scholarship and other aid
programs will be thrown into turmoil and that
undergraduate courses will be affected because
there will not be enough graduate assistants to
help in instruction.
Indeed, the Scientific Manpower
Commission and the Council of Graduate
Schools in the United States have predicted in a
joint report that there will be a 70% drop in
entering male enrollment in full time gradute
schools next September. The report also said
that as many as 20% of the high school seniors
seeking admission to colleges may have to be
turned away for lack of graduate-student
teachers.
Selective Service Director Lewis B. Hershey
will have none of these arguments. “I have
heard these cries of wolf many times,” he told
the National Press Club in Washington. “I have
a firm faith that the graduate schools are going
to live.”
Congress, too, has turned thumbs down on
the appeals from the graduate schools for a
review of the new law. Despite draft reform
bills introduced by Sen. Edward Kennedy of
Massachusetts and Rep. Frank Thompson of
New Jersey, the leadership has said that
hearings will not be held on such legislation,
claiming the matter was thoroughly reviewed
before Congress adopted the new law last June.
This means, obviously, that the predictions
from the graduate school will shortly be put
completely to the test. Undoubtedly some
institutions will suffer heavily, most likely the
struggling privately endowed schools for whom
tuition loss is a serious blow.
Mr. Cohen’s remarks to his press conference,
therefore, may be more serious than even he
recognizes. For if the predictions of
near-disaster in higher education come about,
the Federal government may find inself
compelled to pump funds into graduate schools
and the remaining students (for whom tuition
most likely will increase sharply) in order to
assure survival.
Hiouited
One More Great Task
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UNBELIEVABLE BUBBLEHEADNESS
It Seems To Me
Joseph Breig
Almost unbelievable bub-
bleheadness about moral mat
ters is all around us nowa
days. Three recent examples
are illustrative.
1. The Diocesan Council
of the Episcopal Diocese of
California voted to urge Pope
Paul to declare artificial con-
traception
jL f horrors and
consequences
of over-pop-
student con
gress at the University of
Dayton a Catholic institution
conducted by priests and
Brothers of the Society of
Mary, proposed that
contraceptive materials such
as “the pill” be made
available at the campus health
center. The student
government sponsored a
campus talk by Dr. John
Rock, a developer of “the
pill” and author of a book
saying that the Church ought
to reverse itself on the
morality of contraception.
3. A priest, a moral
theology professor at a
Catholic university, was
quoted in a speech as saying,
concerning abortion: “I hope
that we in the Catholic
Church do not anathematize
this question before it is even
discussed ... I don’t think all
the answers to it have been
revealed. I don’t know the
truth in every case of
abortion. God gave us the
commandment not to kill.
But there are exceptions,
such as war, such as
self-defense.”
Let us examine, with what
patience we may, this sort of
“thinking.”
The Episcopal diocesan
council, in asking Pope Paul
to declare contraception
moral rather than immoral,
showed its utter innocence of
even elementary
understanding of the matter.
If contraception is a moral
issue- as of course it is- then
neither Pope Paul nor
anybody else is free to give
any answer except the answer
that morality dictates.
The “horrors and
consequences of the
population explosion” have
nothing to do with the
question. What seem
“horrors” in the eyes of men
are not necessarily horrors in
the eyes of God, who knows
the future and the destinies
of human beings.
All through kistory,
people have had to stand up
to ‘‘horrors and
consequences” involved in
being true to God’s will and
God’s commandments. That’s
why there have been millions
of martyrs sung and unsung;
dead and living.
If artificial contraception
is immoral -as it is—Pope Paul
cannot do other than to say
so, as pope after pope,
theologian after theologian,
and prophets and teachers
without number, have done
through the aeons. All the
diocesan councils and student
congresses and Dr. Rocks on
earth cannot change that.
As for the priest who was
quoted on abortion: I
withhold his identity because
I find it almost impossible to
believe that a man teaching
moral theology at a great
Catholic university could be
so emptyheaded. I hope he
was misquoted.
Surely it is incredible that
a man a priest—holding a
degree in theology, is
incapable of making the
elementary distinction
between the murder of the
innocent — of unborn
infants—and the killing, in
self-defense, of the guilty; of
someone who is trying to kill.
The morality of all killing
in self-defense arises out of
the fact that such killing is
sometimes absolutely
necessary to protect the lives
of the innocent and also the
very principle of the
sacredness of life. But
abortion is, as Vatican II
emphasized, a frightful crime
because it is the slaying of the
innocent, and because it is
the most wanton sort of
denial of the sacredness of
life.
In the presence of such
“thinking” as I have cited,
“bubble-headedness” is a
mild world for what is going
on.
GUEST EDITORIALS
Violence Not
The Answer
No sooner had the word come of the death
of Dr. Martin Luther King when we began
hearing the news of equally disturbing
proportions. There were riots in the nation’s
capital, Chicago, Raleigh and Detroit, to name
only a few.
Lawlessness rocked the Capital where
looting, burning and murder forced the
government to bring in troops to restore order
and peace. Not since the War of 1812 had
Washington experienced such destruction and
Chicago was recalling the days of the great fire.
Banners and bullets are not the answer to
racial injustice in the United States. The
memory of the 1967 summer and the death of
Dr. Martin Luther King are too fresh in our
minds to see this country ripped apart by
racists in early April.
The position of this publication on the civil
violences in our cities can be stated simply and
without equivocation. They are wrong. They
are legally and morally wrong. They are
unjustifiable. Vandalistic rioting, arson, and
looting are felonies in every jurisdiction.
Homicide incurred in their commission usually
constitutes murder, the worst crime of all.
Participants in any of these offenses should be
promptly apprehended, arrested, tried, and, if
convicted, punished.
We could make these sweeping
pronouncements with far greater enthusiasm
and unequivocation if we could say to the
offender:
“Your crime is truly inexcusable. We have
given to you every opportunity that everyone
else has had in this society. We have protected
your rights to the same degree that every other
citizen has been protected. And this is your
response. Shame on your disrespect for the laws
which protect us all!”
But White America cannot in truth make
such statements. Even those whites of good
will, who are in genuine sympathy with the
problems of black citizens, have not exerted
any substantial effort to afford them equal
rights and opportunities. Our sanctimonious
good intentions pale in comparison beside the
forces that racists, bigots, and Klansmen exert
to see that such rights are not granted.
As pointed out by the late Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr., the Declaration of Independence, the
Constitution, and the bodies of law which have
developed from such fundamentally moral
documents have meant one thing to white
Americans and quite another to black.
And herein lies the simple lesson which we
seem unable or unwilling to grasp: Respect for,
and obedience to all law diminishes whenever
the legal process produces one brand of justice
and opportunity for one citizen and a different
brand for another. This is true whether the
fault lies in content or in enforcement.
Cynicism, defiance, corruption, violence,
and disorder are the inevitable products of such
a dual standard. Our cities are bleeding from
these wrongs today.
Dr. Martin Luther King said he had a dream
for America. That dream must be for all
Americans. It can never come about through
lawlessness. Neither can it be brought to
fruition through repression, slums,
unemployment and shortsightedness.
(The Witness, Dubuque Iowa)
A Chaplain
Reports
The United States Army Chaplain Corps has
a bright tradition. Its members go where the
fighting men are to be found. In both World
Wars, in Korea and now in Vietnam the story
always has been the same. They share the
dangers and the suffering of the foot soldier
and, as the tragic roll unfolds, they are among
the dead.
Gen. Sampson told a group of chaplains at
the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
upon his return from Vietnam that he was
“exhilarated” by his experience there.
Chaplains are close to their congregations and
their boots are as muddy as those of the men
about them. There is no lamentation over their
way of life and only one major complaint—the
excessive publicity given the draft evaders on
streets and college campuses, and the other
assorted subversive elements.
However, even this discreditable aspect of
the war issue has its bright side. The morale and
commitment of the soldiers in Vietnam, Gen.
Sampson reported, have not been affected by
it. There is a rapport which is not impaired by
subversion or anguished cries of the dissenters
at home.
It is always pleasant to contrast the spirit of
the men who live with the danger of death day
after day with that of the craven creatures who
seem to be so numerous, or at least
conspicicuous, at home. Without the former the
nation would be pretty much at the mercy of
its enemies. (The Monitor—Trenton, N.J.)