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PAGE 4 — The Southern Cross, December 21,1972
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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December 11, 1972
SERVIAM
T
My dear People: ’
We are about to enter the Season which commemorates
God's great love for man, a love which led Him to send His Son
into our midst as our Saviour.
It is only right at this time that our thoughts should
turn in gratitude to our Heavenly Father for His concern and for
the many evidences of His love that we receive from Him.
As I prepare to take my leave of you, I once again
acknowledge my indebtedness to Almighty God for His many blessings
to myself and to our Diocese. I wish to express my sincere grati
tude for your faith and charity and the spirit of friendship which
you have shown in cooperating and working with me over the past
five years.
Knowing so many of you has been a source of great en
couragement and satisfaction to me and an enriching experience in
my life. I will always cherish the memory of our association.
May the faith that we share be always to each of us
a source of peace and of love of God and one another, as well as
the bond that will continue to unite us.
Asking God's blessings on all of you and with the
assurance of my prayers and best wishes during this Holy Season,
I remain,
Sincerely in Our Divine Saviour,
ft,
'V
P. S. As one last reminder, I would ask you to express your concern
and love of those less fortunate than yourselves by making a generous
offering in the Christmas Collection for dependent children in this
Diocese.
A Christmas Letter
To the Blessed Mother
Mary Carson
Dear Mary,
Just between us.. .as one mother to
another . . .what was that First Christmas really
like?
The New Testament stories tell of the
beauty, the wonder, the glory, the
magnificence. But those stories were written by
men. None of them was ever pregnant.
You must have been uncomfortable those
last weeks of pregnancy. I remember how
exhausted I was carrying my children. It was
difficult to rest and most uncomfortable riding
in a car.
Once I had to make a two hour drive when I
was seven months pregnant. My son-to-be spent
the entire ride doing stretching exercises, with
one fist braced against my ribs and one foot
planted in my bladder.
I was seven months and miserable. Mary, you
made your jaunt just before your Baby was
due. It took me two hours . . .it took you TWO
WEEKS. I was in a car. . .you were riding on
a DONKEY!
I don’t care if your Baby was God, He still
had hands and feet, and the Bible does mention
that babies “stirred within the womb.”
It must have been a grueling trip. In fact, it
was probably because the trip was so bad that
you didn’t want to talk about it. All you told
St. Luke was that you “went.”
You know, Mary, a few years ago I found a
picture of the Nativity that I liked. Instead of
kneeling so piously by the side of the manger,
you were seated, resting, holding your new
Baby. Somehow, I could believe that.
Even though He was the Son of God, even if
it was an easy delivery, labor is still exhausting
and you must have been tired. It’s symbolic to
imagine you kneeling by your new-born Child,
but I believe the other picture.
Besides, you had all that company.
I thought I had confusion with relatives and
neighbors dropping in. You had all those
shepherds . . .and the angels, upstairs, who kept
singing all night. You MUST have been
EXHAUSTED.
Then the gifts started. I’ve had some strange
gifts for a new baby. The most unusual I ever
saw was a sterling silver tooth brush - for a
baby with no teeth.
What was Jesus supposed to do with gold,
frankincense and myrrh? You probably didn’t
even have diapers for Him .. .but already He
had a bank account. If you had diapers, why
would you wrap Him in swaddling clothes? I
just found out what swaddling clothes are.
They’re long, narrow strips of cloth. It must
have been an awful nuisance having to unwind
your baby before you could change Him.
All the Kble says about you is, “ .. .kept in
mind all these things, pondering them in her
heart.” I’m convinced that your “pondering” is
just like my “mulling,” even perhaps,
“worrying.”
But then, what did you do with that Baby?
Eight days later you took Him out to present
Him. . .to show Him off.. .because you were
proud of Him. And you “marveled at the things
spoken concerning Him.”
Every time I had a new baby, a doting aunt
looked at him, fondled his tiny fingers and
proclaimed, “He has the hands of a great
surgeon.” And I believed it. Or, “He has the
eyes of a philosopher.” (He couldn’t even open
his eyes yet, but she thought he was going to be
a great thinker.) And I believed. Because, just as
you did, I want to believe the best concerning
my children.
Mary, maybe I shouldn’t, but at Christmas, I
think more about you as a mother, than I do
about your Son as God. Somehow, I just feel
that we’re in this “motherhood” business
together.
I know you’ll be busy Christmas morning,
but if you have a minute to spare, stop over to
my kitchen. Let’s take a few moments to just
sit quietly and have a cup of coffee.
And if I don’t see you before
then. . .have a very Merry Christmas. . .and
wish your Boy a Happy Birthday for me.
Love,
Mary Carson
The memory stretches grandly
to place the mystery of this season
on holy soil,
and reverently,
for when the Lord words his way
back into our presence,
our even boldest expectations
are snuffed to nothing
by the extravagance of his fulfilling.
We still reel
at the impact
of those first promises kept:
while we awaited a new prophet,
we got the very Word of
God;
while we hoped for a Messiah,
we got the only Son of
God;
while we
we got a whole new life
while we
we got ourselves picked up
by Him.
and comes,
our advent time,
like the stars of night,
where voi
and God,
being with Word,
is given a chance
once again
to speak for Himself .
The Good of
T echnology
Reverend Andrew M. Greeley
It is now clear where “Catholic radicalism” is
going when the war is over. Recent interviews
with and writings by Daniel Berrigan indicate
that the new enemy is “technology.” It would
also appear that the attack on “technology”
will be of the same order of sophistication and
intelligence as the previous attack on the war.
To begin with a definition - from which
poets like Daniel Berrigan might be legitimately
excused: Technology is nothing more than the
practical application of scientific knowledge.
An attack on technology is both an attack on
science and on the way science has been
applied.
Catholics who do not respond to a book
from Father Berrigan the way the old Church
used to respond to a papal encyclical might
want to ponder what life would be like were it
not for technology.
To begin with, half the readers of this article
would not have lived beyond the age of 20 (and
the writer of this article would have died in
infancy). Women readers would have had to
have six children merely to keep the population
stable. Half of their children would not live to
adulthood. Eventually, either the woman or
one of her children would have died in
childbirth.
Epidemics of cholera, malaria, and smallpox
would be frequent. Cholera germs would live in
waters unpolluted by technology, waters that
would be clean, pure, and deadly. Children
would succumb to scarlet fever, measles, and
polio; men would work from dawn to dusk
every day; homes would be dark, dank, and
cold. Life would be dull, short, and brutish.
Famine would always be a lurking possibility. A
single storm at the wrong time could turn that
possibility into a certainty.
As Colin Turnbull’s recent study of the Ik
makes clear, when men live on the brink of
death they turn to violence and cruelty of the
sort that makes our frequently violent cities
seem peaceful by comparison. Modern life mav
have its uncertainties, its harshness, its cruelties;
but only the naive romantic would want to
trade -places with the Ik, blessedly free from
technology as they are.
There would be little time for culture. Most
people would not be able to read and write.
Folk art might flourish, but not many folk
would have the leisure or the lifetime to enjoy
it. The great music, painting, and literature of
the world would belong to a very few. Religion
would be mostly magic and superstition used to
keep the hostile forces of the universe at bay so
that man might survive.
Is this the kind of world to which Father
Berrigan wants us to return? Is this what Barry
Commoner has in mind when he says that the
iron law of ecology is that nature knows best?
The life described in the previous paragraphs is
what nature did. The elimination of much
sickness and misery from the world is what man
and his technology did. Upper middle-class
romantics like the Catholic radicals may want
to destroy technology; those in the United
States and other parts of the world who do not
yet enjoy its benefits are not likely to be
edified by the radical program.
The Green Revolution (in food production)
is pure technology. In the space of a decade, it
practically eliminated the threat of famine in
India (where, thanks to the technology of the
Green Revolution, food production is now
increasing twice as fast as the population).
Would the Catholic radicals willingly sign the
death warrants of those Indians who most
certainly would have starved to death if it were
not for the Green Revolution?
It is, incidentally, worth noting that the
Green Revolution was designed and financed in
the United States (mostly by the Rockefeller
Foundation), a society which Father Berrigan
repeatedly tells us is sick. Not so sick,
apparently, that it cannot produce a
technological change which will save millions of
lives.
The problems of pollution and
environmental waste are not technological or
even moral. If everyone would admit their
moral guilt - as the radicals insist - and bring
their bottles back to the supermarket, the
environmental problems would not be changed
at all. The root of the difficulty is
social-organizational and economic. Our
capacity to understand the organization of
large-scale economies, politics, and societies has
not kept pace with our understanding of
physical and biological science. But problems of
economy and social organization are complex
and intricate - much more difficult than food
production. They will not be solved by the
naive enthusiasm of self-righteous romantics
who are devoid of technical competence.
The Crib-
And
The Cross
Joseph A. Breig
God willing, I will be spending Christmas
with my Florida grandchildren. And while they,
kneeling at the Crib in their parish church, will
be thinking about the baby who is God, I will
be thinking about the God who is a baby.
One’s point of view changes as one grows
older. Vividly do I remember attending Sunday
school in a drafty wooden church, and reciting
the great basic truths: “God made me .. .God
made me to know him, to love him, to serve
him, and to be happy with him forever in
Heaven.”
I can still smell the incense at Mass before
dawn on Christmas morning, and the evergreen
branches at the Crib. There I knelt with the
unshakeable faith that is unshakeable to this
day. And the Christ Child and I were children
together, as he and my grandchildren will be
this Christmas Day.
But now he and I are adults together, with
weights of sorrow and suffering upon us; and
even at Christmas time, I think of him more on
the Cross than in the Crib.
As I say, I think of him more as the God who
is man, than as the man who is God. For now I
understood something of what it is to be God -
to be outside time and space, to know all
things, to possess all things, to be all-powerful
and utterly free, to be infinite in every
perfection, to be boundless in bliss.
And now I realize that from all eternity,
God, although he owns all these things totally,
eternally sacrifices them on the altar of his
measureless goodness and his unimaginable love
for you and me, and our children and
grandchildren, and our ancestors back to Adam
and Eve.
God is so great that he who is life itself, and'
the source of all life, dares to die for us. He is
so great that although he suffers unthinkably,
he is infinitely happy in his sufferings because
his sufferings save us from everlasting death,
and show forth the glory of his goodness.
“The heavens show forth the glory of God,”
says the psalmist, “and the firmament declares
his handiwork.” True. But the greatest showing
forth of God’s glory is his suffering and death
in our flesh, as our brother, as the greatest and
noblest member of our family of humankind.
“Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and
might,” we say in the Preface of the Mass,
“heaven and earth are full of your glory.”
Again, true. God is the God of power and
might. But above and beyond that, he is the
God of helplessness, of humility - the God who
made himself an infant, dependent upon his
mother for food and warmth, even for life
itself.
He is the God of total self-giving,
self-immolation, self-abnegation; the God who
in our human nature was seized, bound, spat
upon, tortured and killed by us whom he
brought into existence out of nothing. At the
Crib with my grandchildren, his glory in the
Crib and on the Cross will merge into one
unutterably adorable glory for me.
Noon
Prayer
Call
Reverend Joseph Dean
Next week a noon prayer call is going out
from 140 Christian Denominations in the
United States and Canada. It is the preparation
for launching Key 73, a cooperative effort to
make Jesus Christ known to every person in
North America and to seek a commitment to
Him and to His mission in the entire world.
This noon prayer call includes radio
programs, newspaper participation, a five
minute prayer service on the major TV
networks, noon time gatherings of people in
office buildings, shopping centers and local
churches. The prayer call involves community
groups and industry so that all business and
school groups will pause at noon for a silent or
group prayer. From Christmas Day until
January 6th, every Christian in North America
is asked to join in some way for this noon
prayer call.
Church bells will ring, fire whistles will
sound, drivers will toot their horns. Wherever
possible, people on the raod will park their cars
for several moments of thanksgiving,
repentance, worship and petition. This
preparation for the year long program stresses
repentance in particular.
By repentance is meant a change of attitude
for the better, a compunction for past offenses
against our loving Father and our brothers in
Christ, a complete turning away from any
unloving thoughts, words or deeds in our lives.
The noon day prayer provides all of us with the
opporutnity to beg God’s forgiveness for our
stubbornness, selfishness, resentments, vanity,
and attitudes of superiority over other persons.
Through prayer and truthful humility we can
all join in this first phase, launching Key 73.
The other five phases of the year are these:
We call our continent to the Word of God, to
the Resurrection of Jesus, to New Life, to
Christian Proclamation, and to Cooperative
Commitment.