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PAGE 4 — The Southern Cross, November 2,1972
The Southern Cross
Business Office 225 Abercorn St. Savannah, Ga. 31401
Most Rev. Gerard L. Frey, D.D. President
Rev. Francis J. Donohue, Editor • John E. Markwalter, Managing Editor
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All Souls Day
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Today is All Souls Day.
Because of the importance of this important annual
commemoration of the faithful departed, we offer this
thoughtful message sent our way by the National
Catholic Cemetery Conference.)
The community of the People of God
pauses on All Souls Day and during the
entire month of November -- dedicated
to the souls of the departed -- to pay
special homage to those who have
preceded them in death and to reflect on
the reality of their own future passage.
All discussion of death has come to be
considered an exercise in morbidity --
studiously to be avoided at all costs. Yet
death has always been a focal point of
Christian teaching, in the liturgy, art,
music and in the customs and traditions
of people. To be sure, the Christian
looks upon dying as a part of living as
being born. The Christian, sometimes
forgetful, is nevertheless kept aware of
his pilgrim nature, that he is a wayfarer
in the world, that the earth is not his
goal or true home.
The hope, the dream, the goal, the
ambition and purpose of this pilgrim is
to become so filled with Christ, so taken
up with Christ that the human will
becomes indistinguishable from God’s
will. Death is the final liberation of the
soul from all that impedes this, from all
that prevents it from seeing God and all
that holds it back from perfect
possession of God.
This does not imply that the Christian
despises the world nor does he spurn
living. Actually he becomes increasingly
conscious of God in the world, in nature,
in his fellow man. He delights and
rejoices in finding divinity in many
persons and places. What finally dawns
on man is that he is constantly impeded
in his union with God by the intrusion
of the world and God has to vie with our
mundane concerns for a place. The man
of the spirit is set apart at this point by
the fact that God becomes a welcome
intruder, whereas the materialist labors
to remove God from his life. This easy
removal of God from living robs death of
any meaning other than as a finale.
The Christian’s attitude toward death
is hopeful, made so by the presence of
Christ. This hope is seen explicitly in the
Church’s liturgy from the Sacrament of
Anointing to the Mass of the
Resurrection and finally in the cemetery.
As bodily life ebbs, the soul is
recommended for eternal life with the
Creator. Death becomes the Christian’s
final earthly act of belief in immortality.
In the Mass of the Resurrection, the soul
is joined to the living victim, Christ on
the altar, to illustrate that death with
Christ leads to a rising, to an everlasting
life -- our being born in heaven. The
journey is ended. Now no longer do we
tend toward God; we are with Him.
Guiding by faith, hope and love we
urge the pilgrim faithful to visit the
cemetery where those pilgrims who
preceded them are reposed. May we
recommend them for eternal life with
the Creator.
Finding a New
Point of View
Mary Carson
Recently I was in the midst of a rough day.
Several of my kids were home with an intestinal
virus.
The phone rang. It was a neighbor who was
frantic because her dog, Fifi, was at the vets for
a check-up, and there was no way of knowing
WHAT the doctor would find. She wanted me
to leave my family and come over to stay with
her till the doctor called!
The aged stroke victim sits in his chair at the
nursing home all day, looking out the window.
He watches the boy trudge by with his
papers. . .and wishes he could DO
SOMETHING,. . .anything.
The traveling salesman would love to just
settle down for a month at home. The
overworked mother feels depressed because she
hasn’t been anyplace in fifteen years.
I don’t mind people loving their pets - but
that woman sounded as if she was going to have
a nervous breakdown.
I thought it was ridiculous. Then I wondered
how many times I’ve been upset over something
that seemed silly to someone else.
So I patiently explained my situation, and
she said she’d try to find someone else who was
free to help her.
A few days later I met another neighbor. She
told me she had received a call from the first
neighbor and had gone right over to console
her. The second neighbor had been watching a
boring soap opera on TV when she got the call,
and was happy she could be of service.
This started me thinking about how some
things can be a burden for one person .. .yet
the same thing is a blessing to another.
The child comes whining to his mother,
“Why’s it raining, Mommy? Why does it always
rain when I want to go out to play?”
A farmer sees the same rain falling and
thanks God for saving his crop from drought.
The school age boy complains because of his
homework, his chores around the house, his
paper route. His teacher makes him study; his
mother makes him tidy his room; the route
manager makes him take on twenty more
papers because another boy quit. “There’s
never any time to just do nothin’.”
A young mother, tied down with her
children feels cheated because she never
developed her potential for a successful
career. . .and a successful career woman
complains of the emptiness, for no one ever
calls, “Hi, Mom . . .I’m home.”
There is a bit of salty philosophy I remember
hearing as a child: “One ship goes east, another
west, by the self-same winds that blow. ’Tis the
set of the sail and not the gale that determines
the way they go. Like the ships at sea are the
ways of fate, as we voyage along through life.
’Tis the set of the soul that decides the goal,
and not the calm or strife.”
Sometimes it’s wholesome to analyze our
complaints.. .for our burdens could be
another’s blessings.
My house is untidy. Do I think of those who
have no home?
My kids are noisy. Do I think of those who
cannot bear?
Too often I discount another’s worries. But
each person’s problems are important to HIM. I
can’t begin to understand another’s troubles
until I can see from his point of view.
Do you have a blessing or burden in your life
that could be just the reverse for another
person? Write to me care of The Southern Cross
and tell me about it. Maybe if we collect enough
ideas, we can help others see a new point of
view.
‘THAT’S WHY I HATE TO BRING PHILBERT ON MISSION SUNDAY"
Americans Know Little
About Ethnics
Rev. Andrew M. Greeley
As someone who has labored for years to
promote the serious consideration of ethnicity
in American society, I must confess to having
mixed emotions about the definitive
rediscovery of the “ethnics” in the election
campaign. I lament that they were rediscovered
after they had deserted the Democratic
candidate and not before. And I’m appalled
about the stupid, insensitive and downright
ignorant comments made about ethnics in the
American press.
In a brilliant article I read recently, the
historian Thaddeus Radzialowski comments,
“The American view of the immigrant and his
progeny has changed considerably. The brutish,
antidemocratic ignoramus; the strikebreaking
supplanter of honest American labor; the
advance guard of anarchism and Bolshevism;
the mindless tool of the papal conspiracy was
transformed by the 1940s into the kindly,
gentle, slightly comic- fellow who, waving his
citizenship papers proudly, burbled
heartwarming patriotic cliches in his broken,
night school English. Now he is again
transformed into the racist hard-hat. These
stereotypes, many of them conflicting, reveal
much more about the projected hopes and
hidden fears of American society than they do
about the immigrant.”
Wills and Sidney Callahan have already made it
clear that there is too much ethnicity in
American society. And George Higgins (the
second-rate novelist, not the monsignor) thinks
that the Irish would be well advised to forget
everything in their past because there was
nothing there but “mud huts and misery.”
(And faith and a fight for freedom and poetry
and song and storytelling and mysticism-but
Mr. Higgins is apparently not interested.)
Now comes Gerald Sherry, the Flying
Dutchman of Catholic journalism. He
denounces me for playing on ethnic fears.
That’s right, Gerry, old man, the ethnics have
nothing to be afraid of. There is no crime in the
city, no drug problem, no collapse of urban life.
Strange that black Americans see exactly the
same problems.
(By the way, Mr. Sherry recently announced
that I had written myself out of the Church by
my criticism of bishops. Strange. I thought
faith was directed at the gospel and not at the
virtue and competency of the hierarchy. When
Mr. Sherry arrives on the scene at a new
newspaper he promptly drops all “liberal”
columnists on the grounds that he will give the
“liberal” opinion.)
Research evidence from a half dozen studies
has made it perfectly clear that the ethnics are
less racist and less hawkish than other
Americans. Yet this finding is resolutely
rejected by most members of the American
elites. One professor at the University of
Chicago recently denounced me as irresponsible
for repeating this finding in public even though
he admitted that his research showed the same
results. Apparently, one is a racist even if one
says that ethnics are less racist than the
American average.
The simple truth is that most Americans
know absolutely nothing about the ethnic
communities and are not interested in learning.
Their stereotypes, as Professor Radzialowski
says, are all they need. Among the worst of the
anti-ethnic bigots are certain Catholic
intellectuals and journalists for whom it is
inconceivable that anything good could come
out of the ethnic community. People like Gary
Whether the Catholic press and Catholic
universities and Catholic scholars will ever
achieve enough maturity to be able to take a
look simultaneously critical and sympathetic,
sophisticated and warm, at the ethnic
immigrant communities and their hopes and
fears, their promises and their potential seems
to me to be an open question. I’m not holding
my breath.
Yet there might be good reason for doing so.
As Professor Radzialowski says at the
conclusion of his article: “It is a fact that
Americans know almost nothing about him (the
ethnic) or the communities he established in
our urban areas. Solutions to our national
urban crisis must be based on knowledge of
how the city is organized. It is obvious that
ethnic communities as well as the black
community are integral parts of thje city scene.
Therefore it is necessary to understand the
former just as we are beginning to understand
the latter if peace is to be restored to our cities.
• y ■■■
Jackie
Robinson,
Nobleman
Joseph A. Breig
The death of Jackie Robinson, first Negro
baseball player in the major leagues, awakened
memories in me. I met him 10 years ago at a
meeting of the Ohio Catholic Conference for
Interracial Justice, at which he was a speaker
and I was master of ceremonies.
I remember that after he talked. I took the
microphone and guaranteed him that his cause
would triumph. Humorously, I recalled that in
high school I had the biggest chest expansion,
and attributed it to the fact that in the grades I
had been chased often by gangs of zealous
Protestant kids yelling “Get that Mick!” Yet I
had lived to see my old home town governed
for the most part by Catholics.
Hack people, too, I said, would rise in the
social, political and economic scale, and
prejudice would gradually be dissolved; because
when all is said and done, America is a free
country and its institutions have grown out of
the theological truth imbedded in the
Declaration of Independence: “All men are
created equal . ..”
Now, 10 years later, the situation of black
Americans is immensely improved. And today I
have a much deeper appreciation of the nobility
of men like Jackie Robinson - a nobility largely
responsible for the progress we have made
toward the ideal of equality of everyone.
Jackie Robinson was a nobleman. Never did
his charity and humor fail him despite the
taunts and discriminations to which he was
subjected after he donned the uniform of the
Brooklyn Dodgers. Quietly he set a Christ-like
example of patience amid insults and affronts.
At the interracial dinner at which Robinson
spoke, one of the leaders was another black
man who has endured discrimination with
unfailing cheerfulness - my friend Joseph H.
Newman, who later became the first permanent
deacon in the Qevleand diocese.
Joe Newman is a native Brooklynite, and
was present at the first game in which Jackie
Robinson appeared in a Dodgers uniform, in
1947. He saw Robinson hit his first home run
as a Dodger. Dodger fans, he recalls, idolized
Robinson.
Newman recalls also that much of the
preparatory work for the entrance of the first
Negro into the big leagues was done by Msgr.
Raymond J. Campion, pastor of St. Peter
Claver in Brooklyn. Msgr. Campion was a fan of
the Negro League, in which the immortal
unmatchable Satchel Paige pitched, and Josh
Gibson caught.
People who talk as if America were
hopelessly corrupt are tragically wrong.
America remains a nation where, sooner or
later, injustices are corrected, and in which
individuals and groups can rise to great things.
There are a lot of prejudiced Americans - but
in that respect they are un-American, because
the deepest genius of America is reverence for
every human being because all are “endowned
by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights.”
“Easy to
Criticize”
Rev. James Wilmes
It is far easier to be critical than it is to be
constructive. And, of course, a lot more fun!
The critic on the sidelines with no
responsibility for results says lightly, “You are
doing it all wrong.” But he leaves unsaid how to
do it right. “How stupid can you be?” he asks,
but offers no bright solution.
Yes, it is easy to be critical. The role has
everything in its favor, including hindsight.
None of the headaches of work-in-progress is
his, none of the bugs that are hidden in the
best-laid plans, and none of the penalties for
failure. Just a grand stand seat and a jaundiced
eye.
There are two sayings that every ever-ready
critic should take to heart. The one: “If you
can’t boost, don’t knock.” Stand out of the
way of one who is trying to start something,
build something, salvage something. If you
cannot help, at least, don’t hinder. The other:
“Never show a fool a thing half done.” That
means that kindly folks wait to judge an effort
by the final outcome. An assembly line is no
place to look for a finished product.
The victim of carping criticism should
consider the source, namely the character of his
detractor, his reputation as a responsible
person, and his motive. The critic who has an
axe of his own to grind, or who by his
opposition is compensating for his own
inferiority, can well be ignored. As George
Bernard Shaw once advised those who suffer
these gadflys: “They” say. What do “they”
say? Let them say!
RESOLUTION: Find good in everything
with some sincere, complimentary comment.
Criticize loud and clear when the common good
is involved, but with constructive feasible
suggestions.
SCRIPTURE: “I tell you that of every idle
word men speak they shall give account on the
day of judgment. For by your words you will
be justified and by them condemned.” Mt.
12,36 “Hypocrite, first cast out the beam from
your own eye.” Mt. 7,5
PRAYER: Holy Spirit, give us Wisdom to
know when it is true charity to speak or to be
silent. Amen.