Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 6 - November 9.1972
LIFE IN MUSIC
BY THE DAMEANS
BEN
Ben, the two of us need look no more
We’ve both found what we were looking for
With a friend to call my own, I’ll never be alone
and you my friend will see,
You’ve got a friend in me.
Ben, you’re always running here and there
You feel you’re not wanted anywhere
If you ever look behind and don’t like what you find
There’s something you should know,
You’ve got a place to go.
I used to say, I and me,
not it’s us, how it’s we.
Ben, most people would turn you away,
I don’t listen to a word they say
They don’t see you as I do
I wish they would try to
I’m sure they’d think again
If they had a friend like Ben.
By D. Black & W. Scharf
( c Jobete Music Co.. Inc. ASCAP)
Friendship songs have made a strong impact on the music world lately. It’s
refreshing to hear such positive values stressed in songs like “Lean on Me,” “Run
to Me” and the classic “You’ve Got a Friend.” It’s encouraging to know that
there are still people who have the courage to say, “I care.”
“Ben” is a friedship song with a twist. When people discover that it is the title
song of the movie with the same name, that Ben the friend is really a rat, they
usually become disgusted and tend to write the song off.
Has “Ben” lost all it’s value? Do we stop there? No, because songs can take on
different meanings for the people who listen to them. That’s why “Come
Saturday Morning” is special to some people because the song now means their
wedding day and senior class songs come to mean the good times shared together
in school. That’s why “Ben” can say much about friendship.
It’s good to have a friend -- someone you can turn to when nobody else
understands, someone with whom you can share big moments and small ones
too. A friend doesn’t have to say a thing sometimes -- as long as he’s there and
smiles to let you know he’s on your side.
Sharing is important. In a world where people keep to themselves more and
more, where our mental hospitals are over-crowded and people fear one another,
it is important to have a friend. As long as it’s I and me, a person’s world can be
pretty small, but when he starts letting people make a difference in his life, when
he begins talking in terms of us and we, he’s got a good start on friendship
relationships. It won’t be long before such a person knows the meaning of the
saying, “Friendship doubles joy and divides grief.”
If friends can be so valuable, God’s friendship should mean much to us, and
some of these friendship songs can remind us of his concern for us. Aretha
Franklin sings, “You’ve got a friend in Jesus/ He’ll be there/ He can brighten
your darkest hours/ Just call out his name.”
The Father offers us understanding like we never believed possible. Remember
that wild reception the prodigal son received on his return home after his sinful
life. You can almost hear the Father say to the repentant son, “Most people
would turn you away. I don’t listen to a word they say. They don’t see you as I
do.”
You know when you’ve found someone special who treats you that way. And
Jesus adds, “I call you friends.” What a mind-blowing idea - that God really
considers man worthy of friendship.
Have you ever considered God a personal friend, one who really cares about
you, or to whom you can turn at any time? Here’s a little test. Think of your
best friend and think of your God. Compare the two in terms of best qualities,
dependability, sense of humor, personality, honesty, etc.
Now consider the main faults of each - impatience, quickness to rashly judge
or condemn, laziness, anger. Who comes out better, your friend or your God? If
it’s not your God, you either don’t know him too well or you have the wrong
God. Look him up again. Try St. John, chapter 15 for a start.
What a great blessing it is to have a friend, to be understood, to be loved, to
have a place to go. Rats can’t do it, people who care can, and God offers it to
mankind everyday.
SWEETEST MUSIC THIS SIDE OF HEAVEN? “The Francis Boys,” Capuchin friars
from Viterbo, Italy, let loose with some sweet sounds at a concert in Milan. The group,
named after its order’s patron, St. Francis of Assisi, has decided to serve God with
music as well as by following the Capuchin rule. (NC Photo)
Where Have Religious Habits Gone?
ROME (NC) - Where have all the
habits gone, those bulky garbs in which
men and women Religious enshrouded
themselves to show the world
instantaneously that they were, indeed,
men and women Religious?
They have been streamlined, of course,
at the suggestion of Pope Pius XII in the
early 1950s and by the Second Vatican
Council in 1965.
In the opinion of many, they have
been streamlined to the point of
extinction, causing Vatican Radio to
lament last August:
“In ever increasing numbers, more and
more priests and nuns are abandoning
their garb and every exterior sign of
distinction.”
But how does one define this Religious
garb, which the Vatican Council called
the distinguishing “sign of a consecrated
life?”
Is a veil essential to a nun’s habit, or a
Roman collar for a priest? Or can
something simpler take their place so that
the suggestion of the council’s decree be
fulfilled:
“Religious habits should be simple and
modest, poor and becoming,” hygienic
and utilitarian “since they are signs of a
consecrated life.”
What indeed is a Religious habit?
About the only answer to this question
- at least around this town - is that
Religious garb worn by a man or woman
in vows immediately identify them as a
nun or priests who are leading a dedicated
life that is not the life of a layman.
(All correspondence should be directed to: The Dameans, St. Joseph’s Church, 216
Patton Ave., P.O. Box 5188, Shreveport, La. 71105) ( c 1972 NC News Service)
This may sound
consultor to the
Religious put it:
vague, but as
Congregation
one
for
_J
“The congregation deliberately avoided
saying what were the component parts of
Film Classifications
A — Section I — Morally Unobjectionable for General Patronage
A — Section II — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Adolescents
A — Section III — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults
A — Section IV — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Reservations
Morally Objectionable in Part for All
B -
C -
Condemned
FELLINI’S ROMA - Another Chapter in
Fellini’s Grotesque Film Autobiography.
No other director has been as obsessed with
the sources of his own inspiration as Federico
Fellini. His journeys into the interior began
with 8Vz (1963) and have since then become
increasingly his major theme. For those who
have celebrated his earlier transmutations of life
into the art of film fiction, these later works are
invaluable in what they reveal about the
creative process and the personal vision Fellini
imposes upon every film he makes.
Even those who have never seen a Fellini film
will find his imaginary travelogue of Rome an
absorbing entertainment. It is a series of vivid
impressions of the Eternal City, past and
present, as seen through the eyes and
imagination of the director, who becomes once
again the young man fm the provinces who
finds life in Rome even more exciting than he
had dreamed. FELLINI’S ROMA is founded on
an indulgent nostalgia for the Thirties and
Forties which rejects present-day traffic jams,
tourist traps, and imported lifestyles.
Indirectly, Fellini is saying that all that is left of
the Rome he loved are the ancient monuments
obstructing the path of modern progress (e.g.,
the subway).
His recreations of the past work because they
catch the spirit of the time and, most of all, the
ethos of a profligate people. Whether it be a
village school, a local movie theater, or a
boarding house, Fellini revels in expressionistic
atmosphere and exaggerated images which are
strikingly singular if not outrightly grotesque.
There is magic in these recaptured images from
the past that eliminates the dividing line
between reality and fantasy. Some of these
vignettes go on too long (such as the vaudeville
sequence, although it ends with an air raid that
is surely the most evocative and economical
recollection in the film). Others tend to be
heavy-handed (the pathetic contrast between
cheap and high-class bordellos) or coyly
meandering (the ecclesiastical fashion show
ridiculing the style of the pre-Vatican II
church). But, ail in ail, ROMA’S successes far
outweigh its flaws.
For Fellini, at age 52, the film is a fond and
playful return to his youth. For the city, it is an
elegy for a Rome that no longer exists except in
his memory. His footage of the present is cold,
impersonal, and purely perfunctory. Fellini’s
lack of involvement with the present life of the
city is clear long before he presents the
concluding images of leather-jacketed bikers
circling famous monuments and then roaring
off into the darkness. (A-IV)
THE ASSASSINATION OF TROTSKY
(Cinerama) British director Joseph Losey’s
flawed but fascinating study of the
much-speculated-on and -studied political
assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico in
1940. Richard Burton as Trotsky, living in exile
but still wielding enough international power
for the Stalinists (and many others) to want
him out of the way, is excellent in his best
screen role in years. Less successful in a much
more demanding and interesting role is Alain
Delon as the mysterious Jacson, man of hazy
background and many aliases and assassin
extraordinaire. Even worse off is Romy
Schneider, thrown in as a link between killer
and victim - she’s fine as decoration but hardly
believable as a real character. For poli-sci buffs.
(A-lll)
PLAY IT AS IT LAYS (Universal) Difficult,
arcane, confused, sometimes depressing,
occasionally fascinating study of one woman’s
descent into the private hell of mental collapse
under the pressure of tinsely Hollywood
lifestyles. Based on the Joan Didion novel of
the same name, and regarded bu cultists as a
fem-lib pioneer classic, the story is fragmented
in the same way the housewife (Tuesday Weld)
finds her life fragmented into a series of minor
and major crises. The film, dealing frankly (but
non-sensationally) in such things as abortion,
homosexuality, and garden-variety amorality,
Hollywood Style, is definitely not for the
casual movie-goer. There’s an added problem in
the “rough talk’’ of the Hollywood denizens
appearing in the film, which further restricts
the audience. Performances by Miss Weld and
friend Tony Perkins, however, are outstanding.
(A-IV)
BARON BLOOD (AIP) is a pefectly
forgettable bit of nonsense about an evil
German baron reincarnated to wreak havoc in
his family’s ancestral castle. The baron’s
peculiar penchant for impaling thylocals on his
rustle turret has reaped its own reward in the
form or a curse by one of his medieval victims
which is discovered by Elke Sommer and the
baron’s distant (!) American relative. When tne
baron, bloodied and all that, is conjured up, the
luckless couple loose the reject curse, thus
giving him a 20th-century opportunity to
continue practicing his hobby while posing as
invalid millionaire Joseph Gotten. Director
Mario Bava excels in a display of a fine
assortment of torture machines, but one can
only regret the slow professional demise of
Joseph Cotten and Elke Sommer. (A—III)
BORN BLACK ( TO WHITE PARENTS)
(Hallmark) owes its title to a documented case
history, so the prologue goes, of the birth of a
Negro child to Caucasian parents. Actually it
turns out that tne incident is mechanical rather
than medical, due to a sperm transfer resulting
from promiscuity. A spurious attempt at
soft-core titillation of utterly no value either to
the voyeur or the general moviegoing public,
this German-ltalian co-production, it should be
noted, has no relation whatsoever to the
present “black films for black audiences’’
phenomenon. (C)
NECROMANCY (Cinerama) counts heavily
on its audience’s willingness to be as confused
about reality and fantasy as its troubled
heroine, pretty Pamela Franklin. The poor dear
has already recovered from the trauma of giving
birth to a stillborn child when she finds herself
the latest candidate for witchcraft in a creepy
little California village owned and completely
dominated by Orson Welles. Welles, in his
now-familiar green putty nose is a master of the
occult and also a manufacturer of witchy toys -
an irony heightened by the fact that he allows
no children in the village. His hope is for Miss
Franklin to convert to his way of thinking and
offer her own life in necromancy - the raising
of the dead -- in order to bring his dead son
back to life. Is it ail a nightmare?
Producer-director-writer Bert I. Gordon never
lets on, and the result is a movie that does not
scare at all but amuses only slightly in its
unwitting ineptness and desperate grabs at
twists and shocks. It would be completely
innocuous, too, save for scattered flashes of
gratutous nudity and a nasty attack by a pack
of rats seemingly left over from WILLARD and
BEN. (A-lll)
a Religious habit since there is no one
simple definition for the many cultures
and climates in the world.
“If you started that you would have to
issue a catalogue showing all the styles for
the four seasons and the seven
continents.”
Asked if a conservative suit and a small
metal cross would qualify as appropriate
Religious garb for a nun, another
consultor replied:
“The congregation has not defined a
Religious habit and I am not going to do
so either, but I must observe that many
lay women wear conservative suits and
small metal crosses.”
One official of the congregation said
that he believes that there is no obvious
distinction between secular and Religious
garb and that nuns who want to look like
nuns can easily do so, but not by pinning
a little cross on the lapel of a jacket.
Even the cardinal who has spoken most
about Religious habits has not defined
their essential parts. To do so would
clearly be going beyond the council’s
decree.
Cardinal Ildebrando Antoniutti,
prefect of the Congregation for Religious,
said in an address on Jan. 21, 1968, to
women superiors general in Rome that
general chapters of Religious orders are
“not empowered to ... suppress
Religious habits and allow the use of
secular clothes.”
The following January, releasing
guidelines for renewal of Religious
formation, the cardinal left the choice of
Religious habits up to the superiors,
thereby once again avoiding a specific
definition.
Again in 1969, in an address in Rome
to 550 mothers general, the cardinal
complained:
“The increasing trend toward
secularization .. .has introduced a secular
style of dress which is not the sign of
consecration called for by the council.”
Finally, in a letter written last winter
but made public only this past August,
the cardinal informed superiors that the
garb “should be differentiated in some
manner from obviously secular clothing.”
Spaniards Show
Concern for Drop
In Marian Devotion
ZARAGOZA, Spain (NC) - A high
Churchman blamed Catholic education
leaders for a decrease of Marian devotion
in this nation otherwise famous for its
cult to Our Lady.
Archbishop Marcello Gonzalez of
Toledo told delegates to a Marian Week
here that “the crisis in devotion to Mary
cannot be attributed to the teaching
authority of the bishops nor to a decrease
of interest at the grass-roots level.
“It is caused by those in charge of
religious education in schools and some
preachers,” he said. “There is too much
omission and neglect of what the Virgin
Mary means in the history of salvation.”
Saying that the Second Vatican
Council tried to correct a trend away
from Marian devotion, Archbishop
Gonzalez agreed that as practiced in the
past it needs reorientation.
“But we are falling into a purely
negative approach, a crisis, in which some
views even contradict Church teachings
on Mary.”
Delegates responded by stressing that
“devotion to the Virgin Mary has a social
impact of great importance.”
Their resolutions called for reorienting
Marian worship toward community works
and social justice, rather than the
traditional stress on shrines and strictly
religious celebrations.
The same letter reminded priests that
they should “always” wear the Roman
collar or some other distinguishing mark.
Not even the Pope has defined the
necessary parts of a Religious habit.
In his exhortation on the renewal of
Religious life of June 29, 1971, the Pope
declared:
“While we recognize that certain
situations can justify the abandonment of
a Religious type of dress, we cannot pass
over in silence the fittingness that the
dress of Religious men and women should
be, as the council wishes, a sign of their
consecration and that it should be in
some way different from the forms that
are clearly secular.”
Where have all the habits gone, even
the streamlined ones?
Many would say they exist no more.
Others, perhaps, would say that it is all
in the eye of the beholder.
Survey Reports Startling Shift
In Church Attitude hy Under 30 9 s
NEW YORK (NC) - American
Catholicism as it was known before 1960
seems to be finished, according to
sociologist Father Andrew M. Greeley
and his associate at the National Opinion
Research Center (NORC), William C.
McCready.
Furthermore, they said, “the official
Church neither recognizes nor appears to
care very much about the attitude shifts
that have caused its demise.
Writing in America, Jesuit national
weekly published here, Greeley and
McCready reported the results of a new
sociological survey on Catholic attitudes
and practices, designed to update the data
contained in NORC studies done in 1963
and 1965.
Compared with the 1963 and
findings, the new survey showed:
1965
-American Catholics have become
more like their Protestant counterparts in
church attendance and attitudes toward
abortion and premarital sex.
-The most significant changes in
practice and attitudes have taken place
among young Catholics - the under-30
age group which accounts for 27 percent
of today’s American Catholics.
According to the 1963 survey 71
percent of America’s Catholics attended
church at least once a week; in 1972 this
dropped to 55 percent. Among
20-29-year olds, the number attending
church more than once a month dropped
from 76 percent in 1963 to 46 percent in
1972.
The new survey showed an increase in
both Catholic and Protestant acceptance
of legalized abortion for a wide variety of
reasons since 1965, but the change in
attitudes among younger Catholics has
been more dramatic. As a result, the gap
between Catholic and Protestant thinking
in the under-30 age group has narrowed
from an average difference of 15 percent
in 1965 to a 7.2 percent differential
today.
While 38 percent of all Catholics today
think premarital sex is “always wrong,”
only 14 percent of the Catholics under 30
feel that way. Over two-thirds of the
under-30’s feel that premarital sex is
“wrong only sometimes” or “not wrong
at all.”
According to Greeley and McCready,
the changes in Catholic church
attendance and attitudes towards
abortion and premarital sex are
significant sociological indicators because
Church teaching and law have not
changed in these areas.
“Most likely,” the authors concluded,
“fewer young people who have been
raised Catholic are going to continue to
define themselves as members of an
organized church.”
They noted that “Catholics are
becoming more like the rest of the
population in terms of their opinion on
critical and controversial issues. They are
less readily identifiable as a separate
block whether we look at Church
attendance, moral issues or attitudes
about the legality of controversial
practices.”
The authors lamented the
disappearance of “immigrant
Catholicism.” While admitting that it had
its weaknesses, they said, it “also
generated an organizational loyalty that,
for all its narrowness, produced much
enthusiastic creativity.”
“The loyalty is gone, the creativity is
gone and the meaning system is gone or
at least going,” they said. “The
remarkable thing is that no outside foe
destroyed us; we destroyed ourselves.”
As a solution to the dilemma Greeley
and McCready called for “leaders and
prophets” who would fashion American
Catholicism around “a meaning-system
(called ‘the Gospel’).”
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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13 - 9:00 p.m.
(NBC) - GIANT (1955) - Conclusion of the
epic filmization of the gigantic Edna Ferber
novel about life, love, incipient racism, and
general-all-around growing up and adventuring
in Texas, covering a period from the turn of the
century to the early 1950’s. Rock Hudson,
Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean and Dennis
Hopper star as key members of the Texas
family who form the core of the engrossing
film. (A-l)
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14 - 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) - THE VICTIM -- Suspense thriller made
for TV stars Elizabeth Montgomery, George
Maharis, and Eileen Heckart. Plot has Miss
Montgomery as a wealthy do-gooder, traveling
alone on a stormy night to her sister’s secluded
home after the sister has called for help - only
to discover that the sis is missing by the time
she arrives there. Maharis plays the sister’s
“unconcerned” husband. Dum-da-dum-dum.
9:30 p.m. (CBS) - THE STRANGERS IN 7A
- TV feature film stars Andy Griffith and Ida
Lupino as a couple living in “Fun City” (New
York) and finding not only dirty streets and
rising rents, but a pack of thugs who take them
hostages as part of an elaborate bark-heist
scheme. Michael Brandon and Susanne Hildur
co-star as leaders of the young rat pack.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 15 - 8:30 p.m.
(NBC) - TO STEAL A KING - For the hardy
fans of hardy George Peppard as “Banacek,”
here in plunging knee-deep into a
coin-collection caper that has the local police
stumped.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16 - 9:00 p.m.
(CBS) - IN COLD BLOOD (1967) -- A major
television event, if they can pull it off without
crippling the chilling film with cuts and
commercial breaks. The film is a courageous,
compassionate semi-documentary from Richard
Brooks. His exemplary film recreates with
shattering realism but a notable lack of
sensationalism the true story of the senseless
1959 multiple slaying of the Clutter family of
Holcomb, Kansas and the apprehension and
hanging of their killers, Perry Smith (Robert
Blake) and Richard Kickock (Scott Wilson).
From the Truman Capote non-fiction novel, IN
COLD BLOOD explores the backgrounds and
motivations of the two criminals, scrutinizes
the practice of capital punishment. Exceptional
use of black and white photography (by Conrad
Hall), music (Quincy Jones) and sound. (A-lll)
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17 - 9:00 p.m. (CBS)
- THE AMBUSHERS (1968) - Pandering and
generally inept attempt to cash in on the
spy-flick craze of the mid-Sixties. The virtually
non-existent plot serves mainly as the excuse
for parading a succession of single - and
double-entendres to assault your ears and a
bevy of scantily-clad gals (most of whom will
wind up on the cutting room floor) to titillate
the hero. Perhaps the dumbest aspect of all is
the sloppy, smutty run-thru of the spy role by
Dean Martin, who has been in a number of
bombs but never one this bad. (B)
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18 - 8:00 p.m.
(NBC) -- THE GREEN BERETS (1969) - John
Wayne stars in and co-directed this ghastly
commercial for U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Basedon the popular Robin Moore novel, the
film follows Wayne and his green-bereted
minions as they clean up wave upon wave of
those commie gooks. The film emphasizes the
he-manly slaughter of the enemy to the point
that it wallows in red blood. The movie was
made "with the cooperation of the
Departments of Defense and State” at aL'Wme
when the government was desperately trying to
“sell” the nation on the war it has yet to fully
conclude. (A-lll)