Newspaper Page Text
SERVING 88 SOUTH - GEORGIA COUNTIES
The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 53 No. 40
Thursday, November 16,1972
Single Copy Price — 12 Cents
THE ANNUAL COLLECTION for the Campaign for Human
Development will be taken up in Catholic churches throughout
the nation on Sunday, November 19. (See related editorial on
Page 4 of this paper.)
Northern Irish Protestants
Feel Let Down
hy British
BY JOHN MCCAUGHEY
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (NC) —
How does this grab you as a toast for
your next drink?
“To the glorious, pious and immortal
memory of King William III -- who
saved us from rogues and roguery, slaves
and slavery, knaves and knavery, popes
and popery; from brass money and
wooden shoes. And whoever denies this
toast, may he be slammed, crammed
and jammed into the muzzle of the
great gun of Athlone, and the gun fired
into the Pope’s belly, and the Pope into
the devil’s belly, and the devil into hell,
and the door locked, and the key
forever in an Orangeman’s pocket.”
Perhaps you’d prefer a song? There
are plenty. Lovely ones about “Kick All
the Popeheads” and “You’ve Never
Seen a Better Papist Than With a Bullet
in His Back” or “Satan’s Eye May Hail
Thee, blood-stained Papacy!”
Many Northern Irish Protestants
wonder how anyone can call himself a
Protestant and not enjoy such songs and
toasts. They wonder what the English
have come to and feel betrayed by them
because the English seem to have
become so effete that they don’t even
get pleasure any more from bashing up
papists.
INSIDE STORY
Catholics, Democrats
P9. 2
Ballot Results
Pg. 3
Human Development
Pg. 4
Cook’s Nook
Pg. B
That attitude of Northern Irish
Protestants could be construed as being
the essential element that has sparked
off the new hostilities between the
ultra-Protestant Ulster Defense
Association (UDA) and the British
army, according to a new study - “The
Orange Order,” by Tony Gray - on
Protestants in Northern Ireland.
The Orange Order was established in
Northern Ireland in 1795 to defend the
British sovereign and to support the
Protestant religion. It was named after
William of Orange, who defeated
Catholic King James II at the Battle of
the Boyne in 1680, and started a long
period of Protestant supremacy in
Ireland.
The study shows that Ulster
Protestants feel passionately not only
about being British, but also about
being Protestant. The long line of
Protestant tradition is dear to them. It is
something that they cherish and
celebrate; it is as important to them as
their families, their jobs, their marriages,
their children, their deepest feelings.
The unkindest cut of all is that being
Protestant does not seem to be
important to the English any more.
If it were, would British paratroopers
turn on them, searching their clubs for
arms, treating them like plain terrorists;
worse, like Catholics?
That is something they just cannot
understand. It is the rejection of a lover,
a mother. A rift like that cuts very deep
and scarcely ever heals.
They are a strange people, the Ulster
Orangemen, whose most extreme
brethren are the guiding lights of the
UDA. In their loyalty to Britain they
are deeply touching.
Take a house off the Shankill Road, a
Protestant section of Belfast: a poor
house but a very special picture of the
Queen adorns a wall of the front parlor.
The tenant, about 40, is out of work.
He has six children, bad teeth and big,
dirty fingernails. He talks about the
coming fight for Ulster.
“For what, though?”
“For the British way of life,” he
replies. Six kids, no job, a rotten house
in a Belfast slum with a picture of the
Queen - the British way of life!”
But you wouldn’t take that away
from him for anything. It’s his belief.
And as Tony Gray makes clear in his
book, it is passionately adhered to, and
built on centuries of tribal rituals about
Protestant supremacy, of which England
was the chief exponent.
They are very paranoid too - the
Catholic Church has attempted to
overthrow the state several times and
has, for example, perpetuated a reign of
terror in Spain; the predominantly
Catholic Irish Republic in the south is
bent on the idea of a united Ireland,
based on antecedent territorial claims.
No wonder all those songs and secret
rituals are about drinking the blood of
Catholics.
But their rising fears today are about
something much worse, in a way. They
are about the growing fatigue of
England with the whole affair. Each
new opinion poll in Ulster affirms these
fears. All the “radar” of those involved
perceives that England will lose faith,
after all that’s been done and said.
And then what? Not just civil war,
but a terrible aloneness.
It is hard to see what will become of
the Orangemen in the future. Like the
Freemasons, it is a remarkably magical
sort of phenomenon with links all over
the world - there are even African ones.
The real animus, however, of the
Orange Order in Ulster comes from the
Protestant proletariat, who are now
deeply into the militant and military
organizations of ultra-Protestantism,
such as the UDA, Ulster Vanguard, the
Orange Volunteers, and in the case of
the younger boys in the ghetto areas,
the Tartan gangs.
But they are being deserted by the
middle and upper-class chieftains who
gave them leadership in the past. The
Protestant aristocracy, which used to
march to the sounds of the drum every
July 12 along with their Orange
brethren, have quietly disengaged
themselves from the scene for a life of
respectability in England.
AT SEMI-ANNUAL MEETING
Bishops Hear Appeal
For Amnesty, Amity
WASHINGTO(NC) - Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia, president of
the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, has reaffirmed the U.S.
bishops’ call for amnesty for “those young men who for reasons of sincere
conscientious belief refused to participate in the war” in Vietnam.
In his president’s report at the opening of the fall general meeting of
the U.S. bishops here, Cardinal Krol also defended the staffs of the NCCB
and its corresponding civil organization, the U.S. Catholic Conference,
against “reckless and irresponsible broadsides of criticism.”
Stating that the “long and tragic
conflict in Southeast Asia is apparently
drawing to an end,” Cardinal Krol said:
“It is time for Americans to address
themselves to the challenges and
opportunities of reconciliation not only
in Vietnam but here at home as well.”
thousands of pilgrims who walked for
days to reach the national Marian shrine
and the numerous applicants for entry
to seminaries.
The bishops, priests, Religious and
laity of Poland, he said, “give no
evidence of hangups, of identity crises.
of credibility gaps, of authority
problems. They have a common problem
-- a common struggle which uniU.s
them. As the rector of the Warsaw
seminary told me: ‘We thank God that
we have problems .„.if we didn’t have
them, we would really be in trouble.’ ”
The cardinal attributed the vigorous
faith of the Polish people to “deep
internal spiritual renewal” which has
spared the Church there “many of the
disturbances that result from exterior
renewal and adaptation which is not
accompanied by interior renewal.”
Some 240 of the nation’s bishops
attended the five-day meeting at the
Twin Bridges Marriot Hotel here.
Emphasizing consideration for the
needs of young people, “so profoundly
affected spiritually and materially by
the war,” Cardinal Krol urged special
assistance for returning veterans, both
healthy and wounded, and for prisoners
of war.
Then, speaking of conscientious
objectors, he said:
“A year ago, expressing ‘our genuine
pastoral concern’ for these young men,
we recommended that ‘the civil
authorities grant generous pardon to
convictions incurred under the Selective
Service Act, with the understanding that
sincere conscientious objectors should
remain open in principle to some form
of service to the community.”
“If, as we all hope and pray, we are
now moving into a period of lasting
peace, it is incumbent on us as a people
to approach the task of healing our
internal divisions and building this peace
in a spirit of generosity and mutual
respect.”
After praising the devotion of the
staffs of the NCCB and USCC, Cardinal
Krol spoke of the criticism to which
they have been subjected.
Acknowledging that the staff of any
organization cannot be exempt from
legitimate criticism, he said that “when
criticism becomes exaggerated and
unfair, when it is pursued with a
viciousness which suggests that the
divine law of bearing false witness - of
slander and calumny - has been
abrogated, then it is incumbent on those
responsible for policy within an
orginization to speak on behalf of the
staff.”
“Some of the exaggerated criticism of
the staff shows a crass indifference to
the common good of the Church and to
the efforts of the conference of bishops
to promote the kingdom of God.”
AN OLD WOMAN talks with a priest in an area aided by Campaign for Human
Development funds. The collection, which has raised more than $16 million since
1970, is distributed nationally and locally. (NC Photos)
Cardinal Krol called the NCCB/USCC
staffs “singularly dedicated and
competent.”
Cardinal Krol did not name the critics
to whom he was referring, and at a press
conference following the talk, a
spokesman for the bishops said
newsmen would have to wait until the
end of the bishops meeting on Nov. 17
to question Cardinal Krol about his talk.
Reporting as Chairman of a
subcommittee of the Council of the
Secretariat for the (World) Synod of
Bishops, Cardinal Krol said that the two
topics recommended by most bishops’
conferences for consideration at the
1974 Synod of Bishops are marriage and
family life, and faith in the magisterium
(the Church’s teaching authority).
Speaking of his recent trip to Poland,
he said that that country “is an area in
which the two ideologies of theism and
atheism are locked in a mortal struggle.”
Because the forces of atheism control
the mass media, the process of
education and the means of social and
economic coercion, he said, “the odds
are against the forces of theism --
religion.”
Manifestations of faith, however, are
widespread, the cardinal said, citing the
HEADLINE
HOPSCOTCH v t
Denver Schools to Close
DENVER (NC) - Three of the five archdiocesan high schools here will be
consolidated into one, Denver Archbishop James V. Casey announced here. Citing
financial problems as the key factor, Archbishop Casey said that Cathedral, St. Francis
de Sales, and St. Joseph’s high schools will re-open under one roof next year. Two
other archdiocesan high schools in the city - Holy Family and Machebeuf - will not
be affected by the change. The archbishop said the projected figures for these two
indicated that they would be able to continue for at least the next three years. The
new centralized school, which will be located at the present Cathedral high school, will
be able to accommodate 900 to 925 students, the archbishop said. The three schools
had a combined enrollment of about 1400.
School Tax Credits
WASHINGTON (NC) - Despite a “Spartan” attitude toward finances, the Nixon
administration “will continue to show interest in and support for” tax credits for
parents of nonpublic school children, Sidney P. Marland Jr., the administration’s top
education official, said. Marland spoke at his first news conference since his
appointment as assistant secretary for education in the Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare. He was formerly U.S. commissioner of education. The tax
credit concept, while not the only possibility for aid to nonpublic education, “seems
attractive,” Marland said.