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PAGE 4 — The Southern Cross, January 16,1969
P. 0. Box 10027, Savannah, Ga. 31402
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. 30830
Send Change of Address to P.O. Box 180, Savannah, Ga. 31402
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.
What Price TheU.N.?
It has been reported that Israeli
Foreign Minister Abba Eban expressed
dismay that the gallery at the U.N. was
able to refrain from laughter when the
Soviet Union, whose tanks, soldiers and
political agents are still busy destroying
the freedom and independence of
Czechoslovakia, denounced Israel for its
retaliatory raid against the Beirut airport
in Lebanon and voted to condemn Israel.
We wonder, too, how people can
refrain from demonstrating their utter
contempt for U.N. members who throw
up their hands in horror when a small
nation visits retribution on governments
which spawn and support armed attack
against it, but who piously close their
eyes in the face of genocide with the
cynical excuse, “that’s a purely internal
matter and we cannot interfere.”
For genocide is the only name which
can be given to the wholesale slaughter
and starvation being visited upon the
Biafran people by . the Federal
government of Nigeria, and cynicism is
the only term which fits the callous lack
of concern and action by the member
states of the United Nations.
The United States, itself, had to be
pressured into supplying obsolete
aircraft with which concerned private
organizations could carry food and
medicine to the Biafrans. But even that
attempt to increase relief capabilities has
been largely cancelled out by the action
of Equatorial Guinea in halting mercy
flights from its territory and forcing the
international Red Cross not only to
suspend its flights to Biafra, but also to
consider ending its relief activities in
Nigeria, too.
Still, the U.N. sits on its hands while
thousands of women, children and old
men die every day of starvation. Lord
Fenner Brockway, head of the British
Committee for Peace in Biafra predicts
that with the rapid disappearance of
carbohydrates, coupled with continued
inadequate relief, the death rate will rise
to 25,000 a day.
Lord Brockway, speaking at the
opening conference of The North
American Coalition for Biafran Relief
last Saturday in Washington, called for
an immediate cease-fire and urged
greater international intervention to end
the war.
“There is now a very great danger of
the war there becoming a wider war,” he
said, “a war between the great powers -
Russia and Britain on one side and
France on the other.” “The United
Nations,” he declared, “has a right to
intervene” and to “insure an immediate
cease-fire.”
We’ll go even further and say that the
U.N. has a duty to intervene, and that if
it continues to stand on the sidelines
while Russia tramples the nations of
Eastern Europe underfoot, while the
Arab hordes gather to obliterate Israel,
and while the government of Nigeria
carries on its program of genocide
against the Biafrans, it is headed for the
scrap-pile of history along with the
League of Nations and other
international organizations which lacked
the courage and will to move noble
commitments from treaty and charter
documents to “where the action is.’
Church And Politics
Efforts to keep the nation’s pulpits clear of
partisan political announcements have generally
been successful. And though individual
churchmen may, from time to time, endorse or
oppose a political candidate, the main thrust
has been to “render unto Caeser the things that
are Caeser’s and to God the things that are
God’s.”
This emphasis upon separation of Church
and political activity has been so pronounced
that many Catholics and their co-religionists are
convinced that there is no connection between
religious ethics and the civil state. It is as if
politicians and public officials existed in an
isolated compartment where judgments are
based upon purely pragmatic or mechanical
principles.
Such is not the case.
In today’s complex society the Gospel
message about love of neighbor often may be
achieved only through political action. Thus the
U.S. bishops do not find it incongruous to urge
an expansion of low-cost and moderate priced
housing. Nor are they embarrassed about
pointing out the need for a family allowance
system to assist mothers and fathers with large
numbers of children.
These goals can be realized only through
legislative action. And legislature action is, by
its nature, political.
In the Scriptures and in the social writings of
Popes, bishops, priests and laymen are the
blueprints and guidelines for the type of society
in which man expresses his love for God
through love of neighbor. The fruition of this
society lies in convincing fellow citizens, by
legitimate political means, that what it offers is
for the good of all men.
Herald Citizen-Milwaukee
‘NEW LEFT AND CAMPUS DISRUPTION
T he B ackdrop...
By John J. Daly, Jr.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover has painted a
picture of the “New Left” as planning to use
terrorist tactics in the coming months to bring
about the destruction of government in the
United States.
Hoover said in a year-end report that the
“New Left” is exhorting supporters to use
terror-such as bombing and burnings~“as a
means of disrupting the defense effort and
opposing establish
ed authority.”
To Hoover, the
heart of the “New
Left” movement is
the Students for a
Democratic
Society, the
organization of
young, left-wing intellectuals who have
disrupted dozens of college campuses. Building
their strength around the widely felt anxiety
and protest over the Vietnam war, SDS led
hundreds of students in campaigns aimed at the
Selective Service and at job recruitment by
businesses which have strong ties with the
defense Department.
No one can dismiss the director’s report. Nor
can we ignore the fact of widespread student
demonstrations. The Educational Testing
Service, Princeton, N.J., reported several weeks
ago that 38% of the deans of students in 860
accredited four-year colleges and universities
faced demonstrations against the Vietnam war
in the 1967-68 school year.
By the same token, however, it would be
unfair to brand all student demonstrations as
the work of the “New Left” and as the
potential source of destruction of property
through terrorist tactics. Those demonstrations
that are out of line (such as physically
preventing job interviews by Dow Chemical)
should be condemned; but those which are
orderly should be respected.
Finally, as the Educational Testing Service
report concluded, it is a further disservice to
brand all college students with the label of
agitator. The student protest movement is
definitely a minority phenomenon. “Members
of the student Left groups amount to about
two percent of the national student
population,” said the study’s director, Richard
E. Peterson.
The ETS report also showed that student
demonstrations are not an across-the-board
proposition. Many colleges and universities,
through a variety of means including
accommodation of student wishes, have
avoided trouble.
For example, large independent universities
report more student involvement in protests.
Demonstrations over Vietnam occurred at twice
as many independent universities as compared
with public colleges, church-related and
career-oriented schools. Protests over the draft
system took place at half of the independent
universities, but at no more than 20% of the
Catholic institutions and the teacher-training or
technical schools.
Oct THovettt&tt
Week Of Prayer For Christian Unity
ECUMENICAL THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE
It Seems To Me
Joseph Breig
Through the initiative of '
Pope Paul VI and as a
consequence of John XXIII’s
Second Vatican Council, a
remarkable new center of
world religious scholarship is
being created in the Holy
Land.
There, in the years before
us, experts in
Scripture,
theology and
; a 1 v a t i o n
history will
i nevitably be
dealing, in one
way or
another, with
some of the
questions I have raised.
I refer especially to the
essential, basic oneness, in
God’s providence and
wisdom, of Judaism and
Christianity, of the Old and
the New Testaments which
are truly one testament.
The task of these scholars,
as of all true scholars, will be
to search for the divine will,
the divine purposes; following
where truth leads.
Beginning in 1970, the
Ecumenical Institute for
Advanced Theological Study
will be housed in a group of
buildings clustered around a
strikingly beautiful chapel,
the whole designed by Frank
Montana, head of the
Department of Architecture
at my alma mater, the
University of Notre Dame.
The center is now in
process of construction. The
35-acre hill site was provided
by Pope Paul in memory of
his precedent-setting
pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
It is situated between
Jerusalem and Bethlehem,
amid stands of cypresses,
pines and olive trees.
In keeping with the
ecumenical nature of this
undertaking many Christian
Churches are collaborating in
it, and “the world” is
financing it through gifts
from foundations and
individuals.
The institute’s
reason-for-being is expressed
in its motto: Mysterium
Salutis (The Salvation
Mystery.) Its scholars, coming
from many nations for longer
or shorter stays, will be
striving to penetrate deeper
and deeper into the salvation
mystery of God’s love for
mankind, and man’s response.
The central purpose is to
direct the eyes of humankind
“to the universality of God’s
Word, which is addressed to
all men.”
This is to be done through
“study of Scripture as a
whole” --New and Old
Testaments together.
The goal is “to bring to
light the inexhaustible riches
and the diversity of ways of
(divine) Revelation,” and “to
discover how the revealing
Word can be explained to
men of today.”
The seed idea for this
institute was planted during
Vatican II, when Pope Paul
received the “other
Christian” delegate-observers
in audience.
In a talk which aroused
the Holy Father’s great
interest, Prof. Skydsgaard of
the Lutheran theology
faculty in Copenhagen
suggested an ecumenical
study into “the theme of
salvation history,” brought to
prominence by the theologian
Oscar Cullman.
Pope Paul felt that the
ideal site for such studies
would be Jerusalem, “mother
of all the Churches.” In 1964,
he gave the task of creating
the institute to Father
Theodore Hesburg, president
of Notre Dame and of the
International Federation of
Catholic Universities.
The next year, theologians
met, with the Rockefeller
Foundation as host, and
formed an academic council
to create the Institute. The
membership sparkles with
such great names as Father
Pierre Benoit of Jerusalem’s
Ecole Biblique; Church of
South India Principal J.
Russell Chandran; United
Presbyterian Dr. Robert
McAfee Brown; Switzerland’s
Lutheran Prof. Cullman;
Toronto’s Anglican Prof.
Eugene Fairweather; France’s
Father Yves Congar; Syrian
Orthordox Rev. K. C. Joseph
of India; United Church of
Christ Prof. Arthur C. McGill
of Harvard; Methodist Dr.
Albert Outler of Dallas, and
many others.
"I just can't bring myself to say grace
for a spinach casserole."
GUEST EDITORIALS
There Go
The Judge!
The Dutch seem to be at it again, and--if
published reports are to be believed-the results
of their Pastoral Council should be stimulating,
to say the least.
One of the reports from Holland, however, is
doubly disquieting because its influence is
already apparent in this country.
The report is that individual confession is
very rare and has been replaced by communal
penance services.
Now, there are communal penance
services-and there are communal penance
services! This newspaper published a detailed
explanation two weeks ago of a communal
penance service in Saginaw, Mich., in which
community liturgical celebration was joined to
individual confession in order to heighten
appreciation for the Sacrament and emphasize
the reconciliation of the sinner not only to God
but also to the community of believers. Two
years ago, we reported successful-and orthodox
- communal penance services at Holy Spirit
Church in South Philadelphia.
If it is true, however, that the confessionals
in Dutch churches stand as relics to a
sacramental antiquity rather than as places of
intimate sacramental encounter with God, then
the practice of communal penance services
could be suspected of doubtful orthodoxy and
of unsound psychology.
If theological development is salutary-as
modern progressive thologians would claim
wihtout hesitation-then the development of
penitential theology to that point at which it
was determined that a judicial judgment by a
competent minister of the Church is a necessary
prerequisite to the exercise of the power of
“binding and loosing” would seem to have
brought the Church to a point of no return.
Theological refinement would seem to be
possible within the framework of auricular
confession; the abandonment of auricular
confession would seem to be unorthodox
regression rather than legitimate development.
Theological problems aside, the
abandonment of individual confession in favor
of a communal expression of sorrow would
seem to be of doubtful psychological value.
The practice of frequent confession is falling
into desuetude, we feel, not because it is
inappropriate or because there is less sin in the
world, but because too many penitents and
confessors unfortunately fell into a dulling
routine which often obscured the sacramental
significance and personal importance of what
they were doing.
Communal penance services without
personal confession, we maintain, result not in
community reconciliation but in mass
deception and represent not progress, but a step
backward in our pilgrim progress toward
“grace-full living.”
(Philadelphia Catholic Standard & Times)
Obscenity
Any attempt made to stem the rapid rise in
crime in the United States should include an
effort to curb the publication and sale of
obscene material, in the opinion of the nation’s
No. 1 law enforcement officer.
Few persons in the country are as outspoken
against pornography and its evil influence as is
J. Edgar Hoover, whom President-elect Nixon
has asked to stay on as the director of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. He buttresses
his condemnations with reports he receives
from police officials across the country.
In the very first days of the new 91st
Congress, Rep. Fletcher Thompson of Georgia
said he would introduce a constitutional
amendment to give Congress the right to define
obscenity and regulate publication of obscene
material. It is expected that other measures will
be introduced in the first session of this
Congress. Rep. Thompson said court rulings
have made it “impossible” for people to
“protect their children and loved ones from
being exposed to obscenity.”
In one of his most strongly worded
statements of 1968, FBI Director Hoover said:
“It is impossible to estimate the amount of
harm to impressionable teenagers and to assess
the volume of sex crimes attributable to
pornography, but its influence is extensive.”
He added that “many parents are deeply
concerned about conditions,” and that “we
must face reality.” “Pornography, in all its
forms, is one major cause of sex crimes, sexual
aberrations, and persversions,” he asserted.
“Police officials who have discussed this
critical problem with me,” Hoover declared,
“unequivocally state that lewd and obscgne
material plays a motivating role in sexual
violence. In case after case, the sex criminal has
on his person or in his possession pornographic
literature or pictures.”
Hoover spoke of “degenerate sex pictures
and pornographic literature” being “covertly
peddled and sold in most cities,” and said they
“net greedy smut merchants millions of dollars
annually.”
“Obscene material is indeed an evil, but it is
not a necessary evil. If the illicit profits of
pornography were replaced with stiff
punishments for the filty purveyors, this evil
would be brought under control,” he advised.
(J.J. Gilbert)