Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 6-March 2,1972
FA THER OUN MURDICK:
Education Leader Called
To Wider Service
BY BERNARD F. SAUVE
SAGINAW, Mich. (NC) -- The newly
named director of the U.S. Catholic
Conference’s education department sees
the task ahead of him at his USCC office
in Washington, D.C., as a “call to wider
service.”
At the same time, Father Olin J.
Murdick looks upon his departure from
the Saginaw diocese, where he has been
superintendent of education the past 10
years, with “a profound sense of loss” at
having to depart from his friends here and
from what he humbly calls his “few”
achievements.
The 54-year-old priest set out in young
manhood to become a Methodist
minister. All in the course of one year -
1940 - he began his ministerial studies in
Chicago, served with the Congregational
Church in Washington state, began
Catholic instruction, and was received
into the Catholic faith.
Father Murdick has written
considerably since his ordination to the
priesthood in 1948. An account of his
conversion was contained in articles he
originally wrote in The Catholic Weekly,
the Saginaw diocesan newspaper, as
“Chats with a Priest.” The
autobiographical sketches came out in
1958 as a book, “Journey into Truth.”
An occasional contributor to America,
the Jesuits’ national magazine, his
“Federal Aid: the Other Side of the
Coin” was a cover story. America later
carried articles by him on parish school
boards, a field where he has become an
innovator, and on preparing parochial
schools for change. “What Not an
Ecumenical School Board?” he asked in
another article so titled.
The USCC education directorship
which he takes over on March 27 is one
of the key positions in the nation’s
Catholic Conference. He will be
responsible for coordinating the work of
five divisions: adult education, higher
education, elementary and secondary
education, youth activities, and religious
education.
Father Murdick’s appointment,
announceu Feb. 17 in Washington by
Bishop Joseph L. Bernardin, the USCC
general secretary, followed an extensive
search of almost six months among highly
qualified candidates. Msgr. Raymond
Lucker, wno had held the job, gave it up
last September to become an auxiliary
bishop in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
“I am very appreciative of the honor,
and the opportunity which this
appointment represents,” Father Murdick
told The Catholic Weekly. “I am grateful
to Bishop Francis F. Reh for his
permission, graciously given, to respond
to this call to wider service.
“I leave service to this diocese
temporarily with a profound sense of loss
and gratitude, mindful of the associations
and friendships which I have shared, the
challenges which continue, and the
achievements, few in number, which
remain.
“I see my new responsibility as a
continuation and an extension of one
which I have felt for the past 10 years: to
try to understand and interpret the total
educational mission of the Church in our
times, and to assist in the development of
the decision-making process as it relates
to that mission.”
No stranger to the American Catholic
educational community, he is the author
of “The Parish School Board,” published
in 1967 as the first of a serious of papers
by the National Catholic Educational
Association (NCEA). He has become
widely known through school board
workshops he has conducted in many
parts of the United States.
The new USCC education director
assisted in the preparation of the NCEA’s
“Voices of the Community,” a 1967
report of the U.S. Catholic
Superintendents’ Committee on Policy
and Administration.
Born in DeWitt, Mich., in 1917, Fr.
Murdick attended Port Huron Junior
College for two years and the University
of Michigan for three years. He also did
graduate work at the University of
Chicago and the Loyola University.
In January 1940, he began studies for
the Methodist ministry at the Chicago
Theological Seminary, a general religious
institution then conducted under the
auspices of the Congregational Church.
In September 1940, after two months
of religious service for the Congregational
Church in Washington state, he sought
instruction in the Catholic religion and
was received into it in November 1940 in
Chicago.
Following a semester of part-time
study at Chicago’s Loyola University, he
accepted a position on the Midland high
school, Mich., faculty.
In September 1941 he was assigned to
ecclesiastical studies at the Theological
College of the Catholic University in
Washington, D.C. Father Murdick was
ordained by the late Bishop William
Murphy at Saginaw on May 22, 1948. In
1949 he was awarded his master’s degree
from the University of Michigan.
Father Murdick was appointed the first
principal of the new Catholic Central
High School in Alpena, Mich., in 1950.
His “I have a Question” radio program
was carried by an Alpena station, with
two other stations later adding it to their
programming.
He was named vice rector and high
school principal on the founding staff of
Saginaw’s St. Paul Seminary, which open
ed in 1960.
Bishop James A. Hickey, the founding
rector, now heads Rome’s North
American College. Bishop Kenneth J.
Povish, former dean for St. Paul’s college
section, now heads the diocese of
Crookston, Minn.
“Father Murdick’s new assignment will
be applauded by hundreds of Catholic
educators who have seen him as colleague
and friend,” commented Auxiliary
Bishop William McManus of Chicago,
chairman of the USCC Education
Committee, when word of his
appointment was made.
“At a time when Catholic educators
are seeking vigorous and prophetic
leadership, Father Murdick will be able to
direct his talents, experience and vision to
the complex challenges confronting
Catholic education in the United States. I
pledge to Father Murdick the full support
and cooperation of the USCC Education
Committee.”
Film Classifications
A — Section I — Morally Unobjectionable for General Patronage
A — Section D — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults Adolescents
A — Section HI — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults
A — Section IV — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Reservations
B — Morally Objectionable in Part for All
C — Condemned
X, Y & Zee (Columbia) The A, B, C’s of
Domestic Discord, British Sytle. One of life’s
perverse compensations is the constant
reminder that no matter how bad things seem
at the moment, you have only to turn a corner
to discover that they can always get worse. You
might, for example, bump full into X, Y & Zee,
a shrill British sex melodrama starring Elizabeth
Taylor, Michael Caine and Susannah York as
the sides of a shifting marital triangle. Taylor
and Caine are a conspicuously affluent,
childless London couple whose marraige is
healthy only when sick — the two thrive on
debasing each other with abuses ranging from
obscene shouting matches to flaunted
extramarital affairs. Providing tryst for this mill
is Miss York, offered as a young widow both
tender and sensitive -- qualities clearly out of
place in the lurid milieu in which Taylor and
Caine circulate. Caine, to his amazemeTit, finds
himself falling in love with Miss York,
something which brings to bursting his wife's
already overstrained seams. In their unhealthy
household of course, mere tantrums have no
effect; nor would it help if Miss Taylor took her
own lover which is in fact her husband’s
suggestion. Even a bloody suicide attempt fails
to arouse much more than a lifted eyebrow. All
of this leads to Plan B: the only thing Miss
Taylor can do is seduce the girt herself, which is
timed so that Caine can walk in at the crucial
moment.
If the film has any point to make, it is to
condemn married lovers such as Caine and
Taylor who use others foully to get back at
each other while getting each other back. Yet it
is impossible to accept Miss York as a victim,
because she is much a cut-out as the others.
Indeed, she is used by writer O’Brien and
director Hutton in precisely the same way she is
used by Taylor and Caine - as an object.
Therefore, her seduction, which is meant to be
the shocking climax, is merely a final nadir.
The only remaining curiosity about X, Y &
Zee is its lack of visual explicitness. Aside from
a brief “rump shot” of Miss Taylor’s double,
the film is absurdly scrupulous in avoiding
visual offense. But with all of the other
abundant nastiness in speech and situation, who
needs nudity? (B)
WELCOME HOME, SOLDIER BOYS (20th
Century Fox) Bloody Sunday Comes to Hope,
New Mexico. As they head west across the
South, four mustered-out Vietnam vets find an
America gone sour and corrupt. The only
people interested in them are those whom they
should beware: hustlers, orgy girls, smalltown
auto mechanics. Even their pathetic little vision
of the Great American Dream, to work as
partners on a California cattle ranch, turns out
to be as substantial as air itself. Thus, in a
violent climax meant to be as ironic as the
movie’s title, the soldier boys celebrate their
“welcome home” by coasting their heavy
Cadillac, formerly used as a funeral limousine,
into the sleeping hamlet of Hope, New Mexico,
where they make their stand by leveling every
building and killing every inhabitant. And then,
naturally, the National Guard moves in to
annihilate them.
Such is the inevitible stuff of WELCOME
HOME, a gruesome and ultimately cynical film
which is a combined road-picture and
returned-serviceman drama. Writer Guerdon
Trueblood and director Richard Compton have
a legitimate subject to explore and even give an
occasional indication that they know where
their probes are aimed. The four soldier boys,
particularly Joe Don Baker and Alan Vint, are
themselves quite convincing. But the overall
film, chiefly because it fails to reach beyond a
series of shallow and often melodramatic
episodes, amounts to mild exploitation of a
subject much in need of deep, serious
treatment. Even if America ends the Vietnam
War, the problem of its combat veterans trained
to kill in highly sophisticated ways but
otherwise highly unemployable, remains the
gnaw at us all. Unfortunately, WELCOME
HOME is not the kind of film that can deal
with the issues in a way that has any real value.
(B)
CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS
TO DIE OF LOVE (MGM) French director
Andre Cayette has a history of involvement
with social and political issues, and his new film
is no exception. The movie is based on the
1968 Russier controversy, involving a mature
teacher who “seduced” one of her young
students, was tried, convicted, and later
released, only to face retrial, at which point she
committed suicide. Annie Girardot is in the key
role, and is an appealing, skillful actress, but
Bruno Pradal is too mature to capture the
tender youth. In any case, the real issue of the
film, one which is worthy of inspection but one
which many adults will have to judge on their
own, concerns the way in which society and its
laws deal impersonally with human beings
involved in deeply personal problems. Cayette
does not necessarily defend his heorine; rather,
he attacks the way in which she was hounded
and punished. Unfortunately, understanding
and appreciation of the film and its theme
depend heavily on one’s familiarity with the
background -- from French law to the
immediate events of the May student uprising
in 1968. Also, there are some lamentably
graphic scenes depicting rampant lesbianism in
French prisons. (A-IV)
THE LITTLE ARK (National General)
Producer Robert Radnitz was cited by the
national Catholic film agency a couple of years
back for his efforts to bring wholesome
“general audience” films to the screen in an age
where economics and public interest seemed
stacked against that kind of a product. The
award was more for Radnitz’s endeavor than
for any specific achievement, for he has always
had difficulties in putting his films together
coherently. THE LITTLE ARK is based on a
Jan de Hartog novel about the disastrous floods
in the Netherlands in the early fifties. The story
focuses on two children and their struggle to
find the kind of stepfather who was separated
from the by the deluge. In a series of sometimes
dizzying episodes, they eventually do find him,
thanks mainly to the film’s actual and symbolic
“savior” figure, trawler captain Theodore Bikel.
The film, directed by James P. Clark, has its
moments (as when a friend they’ve made is
murdered by a madman before their eyes - and
you and your kids’). Spp the film, by all means.
and take your older children -- but be prepared
to answer to few basic questions about why this
or that happened the way it did. (A-ll)
THE NIGHTCOMERS (Avco Embassy)
Marlon Brando is back, inhabiting the character
of Peter Quint (from the Henry James story,
“Turn of the Screw”), and with an Irish brogue
that’s as thin as his hair. The story is pretty
thin, too, although it has its juicy-thick-sticky
moments, and is only “based on the characters”
in the original James short chiller. Indeed, the
movie prefaces the James work by showing us
how Quint and his mistress, Miss Jessel,
affected the two children Miles and Flora, and
how they died -- all before the arrival of the
original story’s point-of-view character, Miss
Giddon. Director Michael Winner and writer
Michael Hastings are responsible for the heavily
sexual contrivances of the film, and their
interpretations would make poor old Henry
spin in his Victorian grave. What the film will
do for you is demonstrate another instance of
corruption of the innocent, in this case the
children and their governess, and the near
glorification of evil incarnate in Mr. Brando’s
Quint. Visual gore, sweaty sex, and a touch of
sado-masochism are things most of us can do
without, especially at the movies. (C)
BARTLEBY (Maron Films) The intriguing
Herman Melville story “Bartley the Scrivner”
has survived on paper since 1853 thanks mainly
to its surprisingly advanced psychological
probings of some of the darker recesses of the
ordinary human soul. As a film (written and
directed by Anthony Friedmann), however, it
fades fast. The simple explanation is (and this is
despite brilliant acting by John McEnerny and
Paul Scofield as Bartleby and his employer,
respectively), that the story is not one which
needs visual treatment for effect. Indeed, as
Bartleby refuses to do any work (“I would
prefer not to”) is sacked and finally dies, his
pathetically tiny, private world being cut out
from under him, the power is in the interior
questioning, rationalization, and
self-accusations going on in the narrator mind
of the employer. The message of BARTLEBY is
in the medium, but the medium is print, not
film. (A-ll)
WILD IN THE SKY (American
International) Brandon de Wilde is a
crazy-mixed-up college kid who dodges the
draft, escapes prison with two fellow
malcontents, skyjacks on SAC jet bomber
(armed with an H-Bomb, natch!) and circles
around for a while before dropping the payload
on Fort Knox the better to promote socialism
by making the filthy lucre untouchable? As if
the storyline itself is not preposterous enough,
there are a host of bigots and hypocrites who
mouth ethnic insults or, in thycase of one of
the ground control officers, pass their spare
time making obscene telephone calls. Do you
get the picture? (B)
RECENT FILM CLASSIFICATIONS
Bartleby (Maron Films ) -- A-ll
Cabaret (Allied Artists) - A-lll
The Nightcomers (Avco Embassy) - (C)
NC Newsmaker; Father Olin Murdick, is the newly appointed Director of the Department of Education for the United States
Catholic Conference. (NC PHOTO)
MINISTER DESCRIBES COLLEGE STUDENTS
‘Most Religious Generation’
STANFORD, Calif. (NC) - The
growing number of college students
showing a renewed interest in religion
should not be written off as “Jesus
freaks,” a Methodist minister said here.
The Rev. David Roper, part of the
campus ministry team at Stanford
University here, said many of the
students he serves are members of “the
most religious generation in more than
half a century.”
When he same to Stanford in 1968, Mr.
Roper said he found students “very
spiritually perceptive, but they did not
want the constrictions of an established
church. They wanted to return to
spiritual issues and to study the
Scriptures.”
BY PATRICK RILEY
ROME (NC) — Cardinal Josip Slipyi,
storm-center of agitation for a Ukrainian
Catholic patriarchate, declared bitterly on
his 80th birthday that he has suffered
more since being freed from Soviet
captivity than he did while a prisoner in
Siberia.
Friend and foe of the proposed
patriarchal system agreed the cardinal was
referring to Pope Paul’s persistent refusal
to create a patriarchate for the Ukrainian
Catholic Church.
Cardinal Slipyi, as archbishop-major in
Lvov, in the Soviet Union is the leading
Ukrainian Catholic churchman.
“I do not want the honors of cardinal,
or even those of patriarch,” he asserted at
a Mass in his honor Feb. 17 at the
Ukrainian-rite church of Sts. Sergius and
Bacchus in Rome.
“But I repeat that the cause of a
Ukrainian patriarchate is the cause of
God Himself.”
His listeners disagreed over whether he
said - as some newspapers reported -- that
he had suffered more since his liberation
in 1963 than while awaiting execution by
the Soviets. Some insisted his only
reference to the threat of execution was a
statement that while awaiting death at
Communist hands he understood Christ’s
agony of dread in the Garden of Olives.
Msgr. Ivan Choma, the cardinal’s
secretary, said he was not in a position to
confirm or deny any reports about the
cardinal’s words.
There was no denial from any quarter,
however, of the authenticity of Cardinal
Slipyi’s words at the Mass as quoted in
the press: “Some of the sufferings I have
had to undergo after my so-called
liberation have been more painful for me
than my imprisonment.”
Cardinal Slipyi spent a total of 18
years in detention in the Soviet Union.
He was freed in February 1963 through
Pope John’s intervention, and was named
a cardinal two years later by Pope Paul
VI.
He started a no-credit seminar in 1970
with about 25 students who represented
the Bible “based on fact rather than
emotion.”
The program has now grown to nine
seminars with 300 students participating.
“We try to avoid emotional appeals.
We want people to live on the basis of the
facts of historical Christianity,” the
minister said. Twelve interns - college
graduates who are interested in ministry
not in formalized training - assist him in
the seminars.
“Many of the students who come to us
are the victims of disillusionment and
despair,” Mr. Roper explained. “They
have a great need for love and
Pope Paul has twice turned down the
Ukrainian Catholic bishops’ formal
request for establishment of a
patriarchate.
The Pope has pleaded canonical and
practical reasons for his refusal, especially
possible adverse effects on the estimated
5 million Catholic Ukrainians living
within the Soviet Union. The Ukrainians
Catholic Church is outlawed within the
Soviet Union.
SUNDAY, MARCH 5, 9:00 p.m. (ABC) -
FIREBALL FORWARD - “World premiere”
action-suspense drama stars Ben Gazzara as a
maverick Army general in World War II.
Ricardo Montalban, Eddie Albert co-star.
MONDAY, MARCH 6, 9:00 p.m. (ABC) -
THE DELPHI BUREAU - Made-for-television
espionage thriller operates exclusively on the
fantasy level, as U.S. secret agent Laurence
Luckinbill (he’s that sincere fellow in the
airlines ads) becomes entangled in the usual
web of murder, intrigue, and all that cloak and
dagger stuff whilst on a mission to track down a
whole fleet of missing obsolete fighter planes.
Pot luck.
MONDAY, MARCH 6, 9:00 p.m. (NBC) - I
THANK A FOOL (1962) -- Bland, soupy soaper
with the following ingridients: adultery,
mercy-killing, courtroom pyrotechnics,
emotional breakdowns, alcoholism, implied
incest, schizophrenia - you name it, we got it!
Susan Hayward and Peter Finch are the grateful
fools, respectively, a nurse once convicted of
euthanasia and her former prosecutor, who is
presently her patient. (A-lll)
TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 7:30 p.m. (NBC) -
THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) - From
somewhere over the rainbow comes one of
television’s genuine pots of gold, the
perennially enchanting classic starring Judy
Garland (age 17) as the lovely Kansas farmgirl
Dorothy who with her little dog Toto is swept
away to the wonderful but frightening land of
Oz. Off to see the Wizard via the yellow brick
road are a Scarecrow (Ray Bolger) who wants a
brain, a Tin Woodman (Jack Haley) who needs
a heart, and a Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr) who
desires courage. Their only obstacle is the
Wicked Witch (Maraaret Hamilton), who’d like
nothing more than i pturing them and keeping
them from reaching the fabled Emerald City.
(A-l)
TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 8:30 p.m. (ABC) -
THE ROOKIES - Original 90-minute television
feature concerns a handful of police recruits
experiencing varying degrees of difficulty
adjusting to their profession in a large
metropolitan center. The drama, which stars
Darren McGavin, Paul Burke, Cameron Mitchell
and Robert F. Lyons, falls somewhere between
“Mod Squad” and the recently televised Knapp
Commission Hearings in New York.
THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 8:00 p.m. (CBS) -
WILL ROGERS’ U.S.A. - Videotape
presentation culled from James Whitmore’s
community, and they are searching for
meaning in life that is substantial and
lasting.”
Jeff Siemon, a seminar participant and
co-captain of last season’s Stanford
football team, described the current
upsurge in religious interest among
college students as “an acknowledgement
and desire to change one’s life through
Jesus Christ.”
Siemon, an All American linebacker
and first round draft choice of the
Minnesota Vikings, carried his religious
commitment to the college football
squad.
“Before the Arkansas game in 1970,
five of us got together in the motel room
for a short prayer,” Siemon said. “We
continued to do it before every game, but
we didn’t make a big thing of it or try to
convert other players. But before each
game, more players started dropping by.”
By this year’s Rose Bowl game -
played annually on New Year’s Day in
Pasadena, Calif. - more than 40 players
showed up, he said.
“There were a lot of nominal
Christians in the 1950s; they weren’t
vocal,” Mr. Roper said. “Most people
were still enamored with science and
technology.”
“But now we’re seeing a return to
spiritual issues or to primitive
Christianity,” he said. “Whatever name
we use, it provides for many an answer to
the problems of living in a chaotic world
through the person of Jesus Christ.”
acclaimed one-man show, a kind of “Mark
Twain Tonight” in boots and ten-gallon hat.
Whitmore is superb as the deceptively gentle,
velvet-harpoon wielding Westerner who poked
kindly fun at the American manners and mores,
with special emphasis on politics. It’s the kind
of humor America was once famous for, but
which they don’t seem to make much anymore.
FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 8:30 p.m. (NBC) -
HOW TO FRAME A FIGG (1971) - Originally
intended for theatrical consumption, this inept
comedy featuring Don Knotts sat around in the
can for a while and is now being spun off on
TV. Beware: its humor is limp, its situations
predictable, the acting hammy. The plot, such
as it is, revolves around the little shaky guy’s
unwitting involvement as the sole honest
accountant for a thoroughly graft-ridden
municipality, If public corruption makes you
laugh, by all means enjoy. But the fact that the
movie is technically unobjectionable does not
mean it is good entertainment. (A-l)
SATURDAY, MARCH 11, 1:00 p.m. (CBS)
- CHILDREN'S FILM FESTIVAL: “Up in the
Air” - a perfectly lovely little film, this
adventure set in Victorian England focusses on
a “Dickensian” boarding school where four
clever sixth-formers devise an ingenious method
of escaping from a cruel headmaster's
iron-fisted tyranny. This one is made especially
for children, but it will delight adults, too.
SATURDAY, MARCH 11, 8:30 p.m. (ABC)
- A TASTE OF EVIL -- Original 90-minute
television film stars two Barbaras -- Stanwyck
and Parkins. Miss Parkins plays a young woman
recently returned home from “being away” at a
mental institution, and discovering that
someone nearby, perhaps in her own family is
trying to block her path to full recover^ Miss
Stanwyck is her slightly feverish mommy.
SATURDAY, MARCH 11, 9:00 p.m. (NBC)
- WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR,
DADDY? (1966) - Another of Hollywood’s
laff-riots aimed at showing that war isn’t hellish
at all but is really fun, fun, fun. The
combination of bosomy Italian girls and a local
wine festival sidetrack a platoon of invading
G.I.’s who are supposed to be out snuffing Nazi
troops. Dick Shawn is clown-in-chief, aided and
abetted by Carroll O’Connor (alias Archie
Bunker), James Coburn, and Cameron Mitchell.
Vulgarity and dumb sight gags are the order of
the day and the only reason anyone could have
for watching would be to keep his attendance
record at Aldo Ray War Movies intact -- Aldo
plays Sgt. Rizzo). (B)
CARDINAL SLIPYI
Says He’s Suffered More
Since Release By Soviets
T. V. MOVIES