Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 4 — The Southern Cross. January 1,1970
Published at Waynesboro, Ga.
Business Office 225 Abercorn St. Savannah, Ga. 31401
Most Rev. Geraid L. Frey, D.D. President
Rev. Francis J. Donohue, Editor John E. Markwalter, Managing Editor
Second Class Postage Paid at Waynesboro, Ga. 30830
Send Change of Address to P. O. Box 10027, 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.
A Newspaper, It Isn h
In the field of religious publications
there is not only room, but a real need,
for journals of responsible liberal,
conserative, and moderate viewpoints.
The reason is obvious. By their
nature, some people tend to be either
liberal, conservative or moderate in their
outlook on the “people and events
which alter and illuminate our times.”
They are entitled to know the views of
people who, by reason of study and
experience concerning these “people and
events,” can present an informed, and in
some way expert, view of the forces
which are shaping the destiny of our
nation and the world.
But, we submit there is neither room
nor need for such journals in the ranks
of the nation’s newspapers -- be they
“national” or regional in scope. Such
publications should be clearly
understood as magazines of opinion and
commentary, not newspapers.
In the field of Catholic journalism,
three such publications come to mind --
THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC
REPORTER, THE WANDERER, and
TWIN CIRCLE. All three masquarade
under the name of “newspapers.” The
truth of the matter is that none of the
three can rightfully be called a
newspaper.
The only national Catholic
publication which, in our view, is really a
newspaper is the REGISTER, printed in
Denver and used by several dioceses as
the “guts” of their own weekly
publications. Whatever one may think
about the merits or demerits of the
editorial opinions of the REGISTER and
the views of its columnists, it remains
basically a newspaper. That is, it carries a
maximum of straight news and a
minimum of editorial opinion and
commentators’ viewpoints.
The same cannot be said of the
NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER,
THE WANDERER or TWIN CIRCLE.
All three of these publications contain a
minimum of ‘hard news’ and a maximum
of opinion and commentary.
THE WANDERER’S clientele
probably hasn’t changed much since it
came into existence. It is a hard-nosed
conservative publication. It has
depended, over the years, on “X”
number of hard-nosed conservatives to
keep it in existence and has not gone out
of its way to make ‘believers’ out of
people who do not feel comfortable in a
straight jacket labeled “liberal.”
On the other hand, both THE
NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER
and TWIN CIRCLE have conducted high
- priced campaigns to convert ‘middle of
the roaders” to their own viewpoints.
In the past, we have expressed our
distaste for what we feel is the Christ-less
attitude of THE NATIONAL
CATHOLIC REPORTER.
We now feel compelled to comment
on what, in our view, is the spiritual and
ethical sterility of TWIN CIRCLE.
TWIN CIRCLE bills itself as “The
National Catholic Press,” whatever that
is supposed to mean. By their own
admission, their circulation is only
85,000 ~ rather a paltry figure in view of
the circulation of some of the larger
diocesan Catholic weeklies in
Philadelphia, Brooklyn, New York,
Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, etc.
It has recently conducted a telephone
campaign throughout the nation
designed to place free copies in every
parish in the United States - and we
have the uneasy suspicion that these free
copies figure in its claim of 85,000 “full
time individual and bundle
subscriptions.”
TWIN CIRCLE carries a modicum of
“news” and a maximum of editorial
opinion (most of it by editor Father
Daniel Lyons, S.J.) and analytical
comment by a stable of exclusively
conservative columnists. Presently, it is
making hay out of Vice-President
Agnew’s blasts against the nation’s news
media for not clearly separating news
from editorial opinion. TWIN CIRCLE
would have everyone believe that it
subscribes to Mr. Agnew’s views on the
proper function of the news media.
However, in its issue of Dec. 28,
1969, the publication carried on its front
page, a story headlined “Twin Circle
Wins.” It referred to a poll in which 35
American bishops stated that they were
“satisfied” with TWIN CIRCLE, as a
national Catholic Newspaper,
outstripping the 32 votes cast for THE
REGISTER and the 20 cast for OUR
SUNDAY VISITOR (which would be
the first to admit that it is a magazine of
in-depth analysis and commentary,
rather than a newspaper).
But TWIN CIRCLE couldn’t resist the
temptation to editorialize the story by
characterizing THE NATIONAL
CATHOLIC REPORTER as “radical,”
an opinion shared by us but not
necessarily a documented and
demonstrable fact. True, it carried the
byline VJR - for Vincent J. Ryan -- but
it appeared not as “editorial opinion,”
but as the lead story on page one.
Page 12, the back page, was equally
offensive. TWIN CIRCLE published four
photos by Religious News Service under
which, with no indication that it was
doing so, it published its own editorial
views on the events represented by the
pictures.
The Savannah Diocese has been
thoroughly saturated by what must be a
very expensive telephone and free
mailing campaign by TWIN CIRCLE
(one can only wonder who’s “angeling”
it.)
We would simply point out to the
people of the Savannah diocese: if
you’re in the market for a journal of
conservative opinion and analysis, the
TWIN CIRCLE fills the bill. But a
newspaper, it isn’t. And the 35 bishops
who announced themselves as “satisfied”
with TWIN CIRCLE as a newspaper
ought to be ashamed of their abysmal
ignorance in the field of journalism.
THE POOR AND HUNGRY
The Backdrop...
By John J. Daly, Jr.
What must have been a puzzling request to
many casual observers was made by the recent
White House Conference on Food, Nutrition
and Health. Delegates asked President Nixon to
take the administration of Federal feeding
programs out of the hands of one agency and
assign it to another.
Specifically, the conference chose as one of
its five urgent anti-hunger recommendations
that the Depart
ment of Health,
Education and
Welfare be given
the chore of
running feeding
programs now
operated by the
Department of
Agriculture.
What difference will that make?
The principal reason is that such a switch-is
thought capable of bettering the status of
feeding programs in Congress. If the
Department of Health, Education and Welfare
were administering the projects, the
Congressional review of them, and of proposals
to expand them, would go through committees
on health and education.
Mr. Nixon was asked by the White House
Conference which he convened to declare a
national food “emergency.” The conference
hoped this would permit the nation’s hunger
problem to be treated as quickly and as
I
thoroughly as are natural physical emergencies,
such as hurricane disasters.
The President quietly avoided the request.
Spokesmen for him made clear he is relying on
extension of Federal food stamp programs to
all counties where they do not exist. Under this
program, low-income families buy stamps
which they redeem for food and groceries at a
value higher than their purchase price.
This effort must begin its fight for
Congressional approval by clearing the House
Agriculture committee.
How is it doing? On Dec. 16, the committee
reaffirmed its earlier killing of a Senate-passed
bill to raise money authorized for food stamps
from the present $610 million yearly to $2.5
billion annually by 1972. It eliminated the
Nixon Administration’s plan for free food
stamps for the neediest. It voted to request
states for the first time to pay 10% of the
Federal costs of the food-above the value of
the stamps.
That’s not all. The committee voted to
withhold food stamps from nonworking adults.
It said stamps should be denied adults, except
mothers, who do not have a job. This action
was taken despite arguments by supporters of
the stamps that it is unemployed
adults-especially farm workers replaced by
machines-who are among those in greatest need
of food.
Such hostility explains the request to
President Nixon that he switch administering
agencies.
i
s.
706* 70M
"peed “16e*ul
A WORD TO YOUNG PEOPLE
It Seems To Me
Joseph Breig
If I were to speak to an
assembly of young people
today, I think I might begin
by urging them not to let
themselves be gulled into
promoting movements which
they would detest if they
understood their true nature.
We Americans are
accustomed to
being open
and frank with
one another;
to speaking
what is on our
minds; and we
are not parti
cularly adept
in detecting
the practiced liar who hides
foul intentions behind fair
words.
A long time ago, as a
delegate to a convention of
the American Newspaper
Guild, I had my first frontal
contact with the communist
falseness which preys upon
the idealism and the
humanitarianism of youth.
We were debating a
resolution which condemned
the Franco regime in Spain
but was silent about the
devil’s partnership at the time
between the Stalinist tyranny
in Russia and the Hitler
dictatorship in Germany.
Readers may find this hard
to believe, but so bemused
were the delegates by
communist double-talk that
they voted me down when I
proposed that there be added
to the resolution these words:
“And it is the sense of this
resolution that the American
Newspaper Guild condemns
every form of government
which tends to make man the
slave of the state.”
Fortunately, the nation’s
newspeople were more
realistic than their delegates,
and in a referendum soon
afterward they reversed the
convention’s communist
serving action.
I remember a talk given
once to a group of
newspeople by a man of great
wisdom, who emphasized
their tremendous
responsibility for seeing to it
that words are not used to
make things seem to be the
opposite of what they really
are.
I would counsel young
people, therefore, to be
vigilant lest they be used as
puppets by the kind of men
concerning whom Christ said
that they are liars and sons of
the devil “who was a liar and
a murderer from the
beginning.”
Then I would suggest to
the young people that they
dedicate their lives-not just a
year or two but every
moment God gives to
them-to the effort to change
the world for the better, little
by little, in whatever walk of
life they may enter into.
Cardinal Paul Emile Leger,
who resigned at 60 as
archbishop of Montreal to
devote himself to serving
lepers, returned to his former
see city not long ago to
receive a $50,000 donation
toward his work from the
Royal Bank.
In his banquet address, he
appealed to young people to
join in “the gigantic
enterprise of developing the
Third World.” He said he was
speaking to the young
because “the road to be
travelled is long, and the
obstacles many and
difficult.”
There is no vocation or
work or position in life in
which one cannot serve God
and fellowmen. One’s deeds
need not be spectacular; one
can help to bring about a
better world by having faith
in the democratic process, by
voting wisely, by upholding
those who labor for great
reforms--and by rearing
children who have hearts for
the poor but also have heads
that cannot be turned by the
lies of the liars.
OUR PARISH
/M
altar
/4nd
Ros/\«y
Society
Tea
“Our committee, by a vote of seven to three, wishes
you a Happy New Year!”
A
I
Sao Tome
Revisited
(This is the second in a series of articles by
Irish-born Father Dermot Doran, C.S. Sp., now
on a fact-finding mission to Biafra. Father
Doran was one of the first persons to break the
blockade of Biafra-the secessionist Eastern
region of Nigeria-in order to provide food and
medicines for civilians in the area. He is an
adviser to U.S. Catholic Relief Services. This
article was written while Father Doran paused
in Portuguese West Africa en route to Biafra.)
By Father Dermot
Doran. C.S. Sp.
SAO TOME, Portuguese West Africa (NC) —
Three hundred miles off the coast of West
Africa straddling the Equator lies the tiny
island of St. Thomas, or Sao Tome, as it is
known by its Portuguese name. To say that it is
beautiful is not enough. It is simply lovely, and
picturesque and could qualify for the artist’s
dream world.
Twenty-five miles long and 15 miles wide,
the island is bathed in brilliant tropical sun all
year round and its sandy beaches are touched
by a most tranquil and exquisite green-blue sea.
The main town, also known as Sao Tome, has a
multitude of narrow streets, expansive colorful
plazas, scores of statues and monuments and
hundreds of old stucco buildings packed so
close to one another that one would imagine
there was no more land left.
For five centuries now this “little bit of
heaven” has been in and out of historical
prominence.
It was first discovered deserted in 1470 by
Portuguese explorers. Later in the slave trade
days, it became quite a prominent transfer
point for slaves taken from West Africa, en
route to Brazil and the West Indies.
Slave ships also used the natural harbor as a
replenishing point for their stores and supplies.
The abolition of slavery in the 19th century
saw the end of the busy days and times for Sao
Tome. The island and its 60,000 inhabitants
settled down to a rather quiet, peaceful type of
existence broken only by the weekly arrival of
a small 12-seat airplane from Angola, 1,000
miles away, and the monthly visit of a tramp
freighter to the port.
It was the Nigeria-Biafra war that brought
Sao Tome into world news. It happened quite
casually and almost by accident. From the
beginning of the conflict, Portugal offered its
facilities to blockaded Biafra.
Once a week, or so, a Biafran plane, after
breaking the Nigerian blockade, would touch
down at Sao Tome’s airstrip to refuel prior to
the long 14 hours’ journey back to Lisbon.
In March, 1968-11 months after the
blockade was imposed around the former
Eastern region of Nigeria-two Irish Holy Ghost
missionaries decided to go out to Sao Tome for
a week-end rest. Father William Butler of
County Wicklow had spent 25 years of his life
teaching and ministering in West Africa. Father
Kevin Doheny of County Kilkenny has spent
15 years as a teacher and rector of a seminary.
Both were tired and worn down from the
endless months of caring for war victims.
They boarded the plane in Port Barcourt,
Biafra, and landed one and a half hours later in
Sao Tome without a dime or knowledge of a
word of Portuguese. The Catholic priests on the
island welcomed them and, in rather
street-Latin, managed to converse.
The sight of stores filled to the brim with
salt, beans and rice, as well as all the other
goods, impressed the two priests so strongly
that they immediately ordered 10 tons of salt
for their beleaguered people. Salt, by the way,
is as necessary as water in tropical Biafra.
The priests then persuaded the pilots of their
plane to do “a run” back to Biafra with the salt
before taking off for Lisbon as scheduled. With
some misgivings, the pilots agreed. But who
would pay for this unauthorized trip? And the
shopkeepers asked who would pay for the salt.
Father Butler assured one and all that
everything would be paid for by Father Doheny
when he got back to Biafra. So off they went
with their salt, leaving Father Butler in Sao
Tome. The money was collected in bits and
pieces in Port Harcourt and neighboring
missions while the salt was being unloaded at
the airstrip.
That was the first direct relief flight from
Sao Tome. Hearing this story and impressed
with the possibilities of this nearly unknown
island, Msgr. Karl Bayer, secretary general of
Caritas Internationalis (international Catholic
charities organization) dispatched Father
Anthony Byrne to Sao Tome to investigate the
facilities. Shortly after his favorable report,
Father Byrne was joined by representatives of
the German Lutheran agency and regular mercy
flights were begun to Biafra.
At first, there was one flight a night, later
two and even three flights a night, delivering 25
to 30 tons of badly needed relief supplies.
When the full impact of the Biafra crisis
became known to the world in July, 1968, U.S.
Catholic Relief Service (CRS) inaugurated
weekly Boeing 707 Jet flights from New York’s
Kennedy Airport to Sao Tome, via Amsterdam.
This was the first time a jet plane had landed in
Sao Tome, and the whole island turned out to
see this modem wonder of the world.
(Continued on Page 5)