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PAGE 6-March 8,1973
Lenten Special--Justice in the World
BY JAMES R. JENNINGS
(Associate Director
USCC Division of Justice and Peace)
Teachers have a thankless job. If their students don’t learn,
they are charged with failure. If students achieve new insight
and awareness, the teachers are accused of encouraging change
and unrest. In either case, the community served by the teachers
is likely to be upset.
Yet it is precisely in favor of education for “upsetting”
action, that is, social change, that the institutional Church has
become increasingly vocal. Repeatedly, at the papal, conciliar,
synodal and episcopal level, recent Church statements pose two
unsettling propositions: 1) the present conditions of injustice
are so widespread as to place in jeopardy the very existence of
the planet; and 2) these unjust systems and structures must be
clearly and unequivocally identified, and appropriate responses
evoked.
Much of what is implicit in these propositions is, by nature,
controversial. Nonetheless, it is these propositions that
Christians - teachers as well as others - are being called to
examine in the light of the Gospel.
From their history, one would expect American Catholics to
be especially well-equipped to make this examination and design
appropriate actions. In the first place, they know about
injustices; they have a history of experiencing alienation and
discrimination. The decades of anti-Catholic sentiment are not
in the so-distant-past that many today can’t recall the deep
feeling of satisfaction when John Kennedy “made it” to the
Presidency.
Secondly, in the post-Vatican II era, Catholics have
“discovered” the Bible, and a new awareness of the richness of
the Scriptures is becoming a part of the American Catholic
experience. The powerful strains of the call to justice which
undergird the Old Testament are providing fresh insights into
the New Testament’s law of love.
The frequent denunciation by the prophets of those who
engaged in sterile ritual while injustice ran rampant in ancient
Israel has not failed to influence present liturgical renovations.
Much of the restructuring of the liturgy highlights the social,
that is, inter-human relations, and contributes to a greater
awareness of the community and its needs.
Finally, Catholics have a good track record for political
action. The labor movement was populated with Catholics who
saw that by collective - that is, political - action, a gross
imbalance in economic bargaining power could be rectified.
Many Catholics in American urban centers were fiercely
political, and succeeded in advancing the cause of civil rights
during those years.
Today, Catholics are neither naive nor ignorant about the
American political process. Quite the contrary, the so-called
Catholic vote - despite the frequent announcements of its
disappearance from the political scene - continues to be courted
by candidates who respect its political potency.
So, some of the ingredients are present for American
Catholics to effectively pursue justice, though the task is
formidable. The American bishops expressed their grave concern
that Catholics become effectively involved in promoting justice
for all men:
. . .The Church has addressed herself to social justice,
world peace, the political order, the underdeveloped
nations. By all this, many were moved to put their hope in
her. If Catholic performance does not match Catholic
promise, then truly we shall have failed. If our deeds
contradict our statements, then we shall have doubly
sinned. We were warned once: “It is not your encyclicals
which we despise; what we despise is the neglect with
which you yourself treat them!” (American Bishops
Pastoral, “The Church in Our Day,” January 1968)
In November, 1971 the bishops at the Roman Synod, in
denouncing the conditions under which men “suffer violence
and are oppressed by unjust systems and structures,” also spoke
of their concern about credibility: if the Christian message does
not become operable by effective Catholic “action in the cause
of justice in the world, it will only with difficulty gain
credibility with the men of our times.”
In the past, American Catholics knew oppressive wage
systems and unfair labor practices; they were uneducated and
lived in ghettos cut off from the American mainstream; they
were ridiculed as the “religion freaks” of their day. Today,
American Catholics have gained a measure of affluence and a
degree of political sophistication, and a potential for providing
leadership and vision. They have the opportunity to make a very
real and meaningful contribution to the world’s good health.
The ancient writer of the Old Testament Proverbs called
believers to: “Open your mouth in behalf of the voiceless, for
the rights of all who are left desolate. Open your mouth, decree
what is just, maintain the rights of the poor and the needy.”
The task is no less urgent today.
LIFE IN MUSIC
BY THE DAMEANS
Dancing in the Moonlight
We get it almost every night
when that moon get big and bright.
It’s a supernatural delight
everybody was dancing in the moonlight.
Everybody here is out of sight
they don’t bark and they don’t bite,
they keep things loose they keep things light
everybody was dancing in the moonlight.
Dancing in the moonlight
everybody feeling warm and right,
it’s such a fine and natural sight
everybody dancing in the moonlight.
We like our fun and we never fight
you can’t dance and stay up tight,
it’s a supernatural delight
everybody was dancing in the moonlight
Dancing in the moonlight
everybody feeling warm and right,
it’s such a fine and natural sight
everbody dancing in the moonlight.
by Kelly
(c Perception Records, Inc.)
Man loves to dance. You can see it in the awkard movement of a small child as
he stands in front of a radio and tries to imitate with his body the music that
he hears. It is an important part of the culture of young people as they dance,
sometimes so far apart and sometimes so close together.
Older people, too, claim the dance, from the middle-aged couple trying to
recall the steps they used to do so well, to the old man whose limbs are weak
and who is content to sit in his rocking chair, nodding his head and tapping his
hand to the sound of the music.
Dancing seems to come natural to man and King Harvest sings a bright little
tune about how “Dancing in the Moonlight” helps you feel warm and right. The
song points out how dancing helps keep things loose and light.
No matter what problems a person may have, no matter how hemmed in he
may feel by the pressures which surround him, the dance is good theraphy
because it helps him to let it all out. “You can’t dance and stay up tight,” the
song says. It’s almost as if the poison of anxiety drains out of a person as the
body moves and responds to the rhythms which seem to set it in motion.
Some say it is just the physical or mental exercise in dance that helps keep a
person loose, the same as energy spent in playing football or tennis or collecting
stamps. But there seems to be more. King Harvest hints at the answer when he
describes the delight of dance by the word “supernatural.” The singer doesn’t
elaborate on the word but we have an idea what he means.
Man knows keep down that he has certain feelings which go beyond the
power of speech and these find their expression in some sort of gesture. He
attempts to put his body in step with his mind, to express a feeling which mean
something to him. Thus the dance is more than natural for it touches the very
spirit of man as he seeks to express whatever is really alive in his soul.
Philosophers and theologians throughout the years have written commentaries
on the dance and how it “shows forth in visible fashion what the inner beauty of
the soul has in common with the outer beauty of the body.” Even the Bible tells
us that David danced for the Lord when he was victorious in battle and Psalm
150 exhorts us to praise the Lord with drums and dancing (although I fear the
average Christian on the street would accuse you of watching too much Sesame
Street if you told him you were praising the Lord with drums and dancing).
Dancing can be an affirmation that the body of God gave it to us is indeed
good and if we believe that the Spirit of God moves where he wills, what is to
keep him from putting rhythm into our bodies as well as wisdom into our
hearts? As Christians we believe that one day our bodies will exist in a glorified
state and to me that implies a lot more activity than sitting on clouds and
playing harps.
Heaven will be a swinging place according to chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation as
peoples from every time and place are called to enternal joy by Jesus, whom one
contemporary hymn described as the Lord of the Dance.
“Dance then wherever you may be.
I am the Lord of the ,dance said he.
And I’ll lead you all wherever you may be.
And I’ll lead you all in the dance said he.”
(Direct all correspondence to: The Dameans, St. Joseph’s Church, 216 Patton Ave., P.O.
Box 5188, Shreveport, La. 71105)
THERE’S A LION ON THE LINE -- A Chinese lion joins a protest at
Philadelphia’s State Office Building where protesters were seeking to
block a proposed expressway which would cut into Chinatown They said
that destruction of Holy Redeemer Church building, with a gymnasium in
its basement, would leave the community with no indoor recreation
facilities. (NC Photo)
THE LAST TANGO IN PARIS (United
Artists) - This is one TANGO you might want
to sit out. Paul, a middle-aged man numb with
despair at the suicide of his wife, happens
upon Jeanne, a girt inspecting a vacant
apartment. They immediately engage in sex.
During the next few days, she returns again
and again to the apartment for further
tempestuous encounters with Paul. Between
these sessions of sensual gratification she
works on a movie with her fiance while Paul
tries to cope with his interior desolation. In
trying to break free from his past, he finally
takes Jeanne to a dance hall and proposes to
her. She runs away and in pursuing her, he is
killed.
Although the story itself is traditional
romantic melodrama, the manner in which it
is told is fragmentary and relies on isolated
scenes instead of on coherent sequence. From
the time that Paul first seizes Jeanne, the film
is impelled along its course of sexual odyssey
without logical connectives or clear
motivation. The story is only an escuse for a
stylistic exercise in the way people feel not
how they reason. Those who respond
emotionally to the film will have to supply
their own motivations for the characters.
Viewers can speculate about why Paul and
Jeanne act as they do but the film does not
provide answers. Objectively, the film
operates in a moral vacuum, and the exercise
becomes an empty one.
Bertolucci has made a love story for
intellectuals, a film that misses the
complexities of life as much as did the old
studio soap-operas. The sex scenes may not be
pornographic, but though they surely would
repel many viewers, neither are they needed
(including the verbal explicitness) to the
extent to which they are used. Sexuality and
the erotic have been communicated before on
the screen much more creatively and
effectively. Sex in LAST TANGO is strangely
anti-erotic (perhaps because it is so
self-consciously arranged) and communicates
nothing about the emotional lives of its two
characters.
What the film does have is an acting tour de
force by Marlon Brando. The performance is
the ultimate in the development of screen
anti-heroes although the part itself is a
stereotype (the disillusioned expatriate
Americans of the Lost Generation whose
spiritual home was Paris). Brando absorbs all
our attention in his playing of the inarticulate
Paul with his incoherent mumblings and
shambling gestures, so that even when he
overplays a scene (particularly, the crucial one
at his wife’s bier) we accept it as part of the
character. The strength of his performance
makes everything else seem unreal and
artificial. Because of the failure of Jeanne
(Maria Schneider) to be any more than a
physical body devoid of any inner reality, her
role is really non-existant.
It seems obvious that the film got out of
control because Brando was so good. What
started out as a film of conflict between two
people has in actuality become simply a
record of Paul’s sexual binge. Because of this,
the scenes between Jeanne and her mother
and fiance are simply lost. Bertolucci (whose
other films have been more interested in
social issues than in personal problems) has
here failed to impart any enlightenment on
the human condition. Technically, it is
interesting in the way it mixes the romantic
and the realistic sensibilities but even this is
labored and unrewarding. The artistic failure
only compounds the moral one and
moviegoers would be better advised to seek
out THE SPIDER’S STRATAGEM, an earlier
Bertolucci work now currently in release. (C)
CHARLOTTE’S WEB ( Paramount) One of
the nicest little films around is an animated
adaptation of CHARLOTTE’S WEB, the
children’s classic by E. B. White. The movie
features the voices of Debbie Reynolds as
Charlotte, TV’s Laugh-In poet-laureate Henry
Gibson as her adopted piglet friend Wilbur,
and Paul Lynde as their rascally pal
Film Classifications
A
A
A
A
B
C
Section I — Morally Unobjectionable for General Patronage
Section II — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Adolescents
Section III — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults
Section IV — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Reservations
Morally Objectionable in Part for All
Condemned
Templeton the Rat. The story is a simple
one, about the semi-perilous upbringing of
Wilbur, a runt of the litter who gets a little
help from his friend Charlotte, and becomes a
county fair champ. Being a highly literate
spider, Charlotte spins a series of pig
promoting webs - things like “He’s Terrific”,
and “He’s Humble” - that make Wilbur a
local celebrity, and, far more important, keep
him out of the waiting sausage grinder. The
film teaches many lessons, and its gentle
manner of “entertainment plus” is perfect for
today’s kids -- and their parents, too. There
are themes about the value of oneself, about
friendship, and about death and the natural
cycle of things. With a little music thrown in
for good measure, CHARLOTTE’S WEB adds
up to fine family entertainment. (A-l)
BAXTER! (National General) is the
poignant, sometimes heartbreaking story of a
young boy's gradual psychological
deterioration as a result of the disintegration
of his parents’ marriage. Scott Jacoby plays
the teen-ager, whose affliction first manifests
itself in a speech defect but eventually results
in almost total withdrawal. Those who try to
help him are a young girl neighbor (Sally
Thomsett), a neighbor model and her
boyfriend (Britt Ekland and Jean-Pierre
Cassel), and a gentle and wise speech therapist
(Patricia Neal, who herself underwent speech
therapy following her near-fatal stroke a few
years ago). Source of much of the boy’s
trouble is his self-indulgent, affluent, and
neglectful mother (Lynn Carlin), who has
moved herself and her son from Los Angeles
to London, where she virtually deserts him to
follow her own selfish pursuits. The story
does not end happily; but thanks to the fine
performers and the knowing direction of
Lionel Jeffries, BAXTER! is full of warmth
TV Movies
SUNDAY, MARCH 11 9:00 p.m. (ABC) -
HARRY O and INTERTECT - “Double
Feature” consists of two private-eye pilots,
one hour per. The first stars David Janssen as
an ex-cop forced to retire because of a
gunshot wound and - how’s this for a twist --
hired as a private eye by the man who shot
him. The second hour, INTERTECT, stars
Stuart Whitman as chief of a detective agency
hired to find the missing wife of a business
tycoon. Yawn.
MONDAY, MARCH 12 9:00 p.m. (ABC) -
THE BEST MAN (1964) — Politics in action
provides the basis for this drama about two
candidates fighting for their party’s
presidential nomination. The two are Henry
Fonda and a rather youngish Cliff Robertson,
and the object of their political affections is
wizened Spencer Tracy as the lame-duck
Chief Exec. Some of the themes aired are
adult, and some of the political blackmail
tactics illustrated need a mature perspective.
(A-l V)
TUESDAY, MARCH 13 8:00 p.m. (NBC) -
THEY CALL IT MURDER - Murder mystery
stars Jim Hutton, Leslie Nielsen, Jessica
Walter, Jo An Pflug. As a suburban D.A.,
Hutton tries to untangle a pair of probable
murders (one in a swimming pool, the other
in a suspicious auto crash) that point to an
underworld gang war campaign. Made
especially for TV.
8:30 p.m. (ABC) - THE BAIT - Donna
Mills as an attractive undercover policewoman
(and she IS attractive) goes out on a limb as
the decoy for a rampaging homicidal maniac.
Giddy suspense.
MURDER -- James Stewart, now that he's
flopped in his own TV-series, tries his luck in
his first made-for-television feature. Here he is
a down-to-earth country lawyer who takes the
defense for a would-be heiress accused of
murder most foul ( of her benefactor, yet!)
Strother Martin and Bonnie Bedelia co-star
and Mr. Martin somehow makes
wo rthwhile.
it
9:30 p.m. (CBS)
HAWKINS ON
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) -- CLASS OF '63 — TV feature brings
the old college crowd back together again for
the first time, with some predictable results.
Jealousy is the name of the game, as
suspicious hubby Cliff Gorman hatches a
deadly welcome for his wife’s old flame. Joan
Hackett and James Brolin help out with the
melodramatics.
8:30 p.m. (NBC) - MR. INSIDE / MR.
OUTSIDE - Hal Linden and Tony LoBianco
play the carrot and the stick in this
city-detective action melodrama. Herein they
track a perpetrator who set them up in
ambush.
THURSDAY, MARCH 15 9:00 p.m. (CBS)
-- APPLAUSE -- TV adaptation of the
long-running Broadway hit, with Lauren
Bacall. Nifty performances and a clever look
at the Great White Way.
SATURDAY, MARCH 17 9:00 p.m. (NBC)
-- THE MAGICIAN and JARRETT - Like
ABC’s double feature earlier in the week, this
combo sends two pilots up the flagpole to see
who salutes. THE MAGICIAN is Bill Bixby,
who lends a (magical) helping hand to the
emotionally needy. JARRETT is Glenn Ford,
well-heeled, cultured investigator of rip-offs in
the world of fine art.
and insight. (A-ll)
HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (Universal) Clint
Eastwood’s newest film in which he stars and
directs is, at best, a pretentious and, at worst,
a perverse continuation of his ideological
commitment to the concept of sadistic
vengeance applied outside the law by the
individual. Eastwood here uses the Western,
itself a traditional metaphor for the
application of an asocial form of justice, to
tell a pompous tale of how a stranger with no
name destroys a town whose cowardly
populace willingly collaborated in the murder
of a high-minded marshall who opposed the
local mining company’s infringement on
federal property. Together with the film's
quite offensive, if transparent, message, what
makes DRIFTER so extraordinarily bad is
Eastwood’s total lack of sensibility as a film
maker. Eastwood’s ludicrous juxtaposition of
cliched metaphor - the stranger materializes
out of the heat haze of the desert, insists that
the town be painted inferno red, administers
justice with a bullwhip against a fiery
background, appoints a midget as town mayor
and sheriff — and the conventional realistic
plot devices of the Western would be utterly
dismissible if it were not for the film’s
repeated visual brutalities and its sexist
attitudes toward women. Eastwood’s general
debauching of the town includes the quaint
male fantasy that women (here Mariana Hill
and Verna Bloom) cannot, after all, fail to
respond to rape when instigated by such as
Clint Eastwood. In short, an utterly
despicable film. (B)
TWO PEOPLE (Universal) begins with an
immensely fascinating look at center-city
Marrakech (in Morocco) photographed
beautifully by Henri Decae under the
direction of Robert Wise. Nothing, however,
can redeem the rest of this truly mindless
movie that has Peter Fonda as a Vietnam
deserter who, having wandered the world,
decides to turn himself in, and Lindsay
Wagner as a jaded divorcee fashion model
meet in Marrakech and talk their way to
Casablanca, then make love in Parish and
finally fly to New York where he is to face
the military. Apart from Ms. Wagner’s
sympathy for Fonda’s plight, the budding
romance is totally unmotivated and certainly
made no more credible by a ridiculously
over-extended, semi-nude love scene. Between
Fonda’s stilted non-acting (by now a
trademark) and Richard DeRoy’s
non-scripting, TWO PEOPLE resembles
nothing so much as a small budget LOVE
STORY. But then Peter Fonda is better than
Ryan O’Neal and Ms. Wagner is better than
Ali McGraw, and well, Marrakech is more
erotic than Harvard Yard and Paris is lovelier
than gritty old New York. One wonders,
however, whether going AWOL is half as
tearful as dying of cancer. (A-IV)