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RULING RESTATED
Sacraments and the Invalidly Married
to Challenge Smut—
speaking exclusively of the
brother-sister relationship as the only
solution approved by the Church.
That relationship is one in which a
couple involved in an invalid union
consent to surrender their sexual rights
in return for permission to frequent the
sacraments.
In such a case, the Church does not
“bless” their marriage but simply allows
them the sacraments even though, from
outward appearances, they are living as
By rejecting national standards or
expert testimony as the criteria for
obscenity, the court significantly
reduced areas of higher-court litigation.
By re-asserting the legitimate interest
of government in prohibiting obscenity
even from consenting adults, and by
refusing to make broad extensions in
the realm of privacy, the court sharply
reduced the areas of possible litigation
on constitutional issues.
By forcing dealers in obscenity to
prove that their materials have “serious
literary, artistic, politifal or scientific
value,” the court dramatically shifted
the burden of proof for First
Amendment protections from
prosecutors to defendants.
It appeared that the Supreme Court
was breathing a sigh of high judicial
relief at the prospect of fewer obscenity
litigations in the future.
Dissenting Justice Brennan captured
the spirit of the court when he
remarked that the examination of
contested materials “is hardly a source
of edification to the members of this
court.”
POPE STATES CHURCH NEEDS
“More Deeds —
PAGE 7—The Southern Cross, July 5,1973
‘Sailing Down the River’...
PARISH BOATRIDE. In upper photo, Father Fred Nijem (in striped
shirt) relaxes on the forward deck of a riverboat taking him and members
of Savannah’s St. Benedict’s parish on a ride to Daufuskie Island, S.C. A
serious storm forced everyone into sheltered part of the boat while the
vessel’s Captain dropped anchor and rode out the storm for forty minutes
(lower photo).
Fewer Words”
VATICAN CITY (NC) - The
Vatican’s Doctrinal Congregation
reiterated the ruling that Catholics
married invalidly may not go to
Confession or Communion unless they
are living in a so-called brother-sister
relatonship.
Cardinal Franjo Seper, prefect of the
congreation, sent to the bishops of the
world a letter in Latin on April 11 in
which he called attention to:
-“The diffusion of new opinions
States Free
(Continued from page 1)
protecting juveniles and unwilling
adults, the court said it has never
declared these concerns “to be the only
legitimate state interests permitting
regulation of obscene material.”
According to the court’s opinion,
which was delivered by chief justice
Warren E. Burger, states must limit their
legislation to “works which depict or
describe sexual conduct.”
The court also said that “that
conduct must be specifically defined by
the applicable state law, as written or
authoritatively construed.”
Five cases were decided by the court,
but the broad issues were defined in two
basic cases, Miller v. California and Paris
Adult Theater v. Slaton a district
attorney in Georgia.
In Miller v. California the basic issues
of what can be called obscene and what
constitutes community standards were
decided. In Paris Adult Theater v.
Slaton the objection that obscenity laws
invade the constitutional privacy for
consenting adults was rejected.
The high court returned all five cases
to the original courts for retrial in the
light of the guidelines issued by the
court.
In all five cases chief justice Burger,
an appointee of President Richard M.
Nixon, was joined in the majority
opinion by the other three Nixon
appointees to the court, justices Harry A.
Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., and
William H. Rehnquist, and by Veteran
court member Byron R. White.
Justices William O. Douglas and
William J. Brennan Jr. filed dissenting
opinions in each case, and Justices
BISHOPS’ COMMITTEE
WASHINGTON (NC) - The U.S.
bishops’ Committee on Social
Development and World Peace has
condemned U.S, bombing in Cambodia
as a violation of “traditional Christian
principles.”
Under these principles, the
committee said, “weapons may not be
used which are indiscriminate in their
effects.”
“It appears to us,” the committee
said, “that the carpet bombing
techniques used in Cambodia violate
this principle in that it is difficult or
impossible in practice to discriminate
between combatants and
non-combatants” in carpet bombing.
In “carpet bombing” flights of B-52
bombers drop their cargoes of bombs
from high altitudes and cover large areas
with a “carpet” of bombs. Critics say
that the technique causes indiscriminate
destruction over large areas; its
supporters say that its use is limited to
areas that include large military targets.
The committee, in a statement issued
here, questioned the legal and military
aspects of the bombing as well as its
moral basis.
which deny or call into doubt the
teaching of the Church on the
indissolubility of marriage.”
-Those “who live in an irregular
union” are to be admitted to the
sacraments of Penance and the
Eucharist only when they subscribe to
the “approved practice of the Church in
the internal forum.”
According to a Vatican source who
knows well the mind of the
congregation, Cardinal Seper was
Thurgood Marshall and Potter Steward
joined Brennan in his dissents.
One effect of the Supreme Court
ruling will probably be the reduction in
appeals and counterappeals on
obscenity cases brought before the
courts.
Since 1966, when three justices
issued a plurality opinion that a work
must be “utterly without redeeming
social value,” before it is judged obscene
there has been a sharp increase in what
is commonly called “hard-core”
pornography, and in court tests on
constitutional issues.
In its new decision in Miller v.
California the court noted that this
criterion of obscenity “called on the
prosecution to prove a negative . . .-a
burden virtually impossible to discharge
under our criminal standards of proof.”
The court gave what it (ailed “a few
plain examples” of what states may
define as obscene. It cited:
-Patently offensive representations
or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts,
normal or perverted, actual or
simulated.
-“Patently offensive representations
or descriptions of masturbation,
excretory functions, and lewd
exhibition of the genitals.”
While these were not presented as
exhaustive, they will almost certainly be
used by states as the basic guideline for
writing new obscenity laws.
Within the limits established by state
laws, the court gave solid authority to
juries to determine whether material is
factually obscene.
In four months - February through
April - the United States dropped
80,000 tons of bombs, at a cost of $160
million, on Cambodia, the committee
said, “and still there has been little or
no progress toward stability” in that
nation of Indochina.
Despite the bombing, “the situation
there continues to deteriorate,” the
committee said, and it questioned “the
futility of continuing to use a massive
military power to shore up a shaky and
ineffectual government.”
With the repeal of the Gulf of
Tonkin resolution and the return of
U.S. prisoners of war, the committee
said, the legal authority for the
Cambodian bombing is “dubious.” Past
bombings have been justified by
supporters of the war on the basis of the
Gulf of Tonkin resolution and as a
means of winning the release of the
prisoners.
Congress has not authorized the
bombing and recent votes in both
houses have shown that Congress wishes
to cut off funds for the bombing, the
committee said.
VATICAN CITY (NC) - “More
deeds and fewer words” are needed at
all levels of the Church, Pope Paul told a
group of cardinals living in Rome on
June 22, the day following the 10th
anniversary of his election to the papcy.
The cardinals had assembled in the
Vatican to wish the Pope a happy
anniversary. The Pope, as he has in the
past, took the occasion to deliver a
rather long and detailed view and report
on the hopes, aspirations and facts of
the life of the Church as he sees them
from his unique position.
He began by saying that he would
have preferred that the ‘occasion be -
passed over in silence,” but then
announced that he wanted to talk about
the Church “at this particular moment
in time.”
Pope Paul’s reign began in the midst
of the Second Vatican Council and has
been conditioned by that event. He
touched first on his intention to carry
out the programs of the council.
“The teaching of the council is far
from having become a living reality for
many, however much they may refer to
it,” he said. “Hence the full acceptance
of the council’s teaching continues to be
the program which we desire to follow
with humble firmness.”
The Pope noted that the first major
reform of the council was the whole
subject of liturgy, the way Catholics
collectively and individually give
worship to God. He said that the many
reforms already accomplished in this
field are “only an introduction.” He
added: “What we pastors of the Church
man and wife in a normal marriage
relationship.
Another solution to many invalid
marriages among Catholics was made
public last year but the Vatican asked
that it be stopped.
That is to the so-called “good
conscience” case in which remarried
Catholics who honestly feel their
previous marriage was not valid but who
cannot prove it in a Church tribunal are
allowed to go to Confession and receive
Communion. Here again the second
marriage is not blessed by the Church.
At least eight dioceses in the United
States were practicing the “good
conscience” solution at the time that
Bishop Robert Tracy of Baton Rouge
made it public in June 1972 that his
diocese was doing so.
The following August, Cardinal John
Krol of Philadelphia, president of the
National Conference of Catholic
Bishops, said that the holy see wanted
dioceses to halt practices “contrary to
current discipline.”
Cardinal Krol further specified that
the Vatican directive was not aimed at
the practices of specific dioceses or of
one nation.
Although Cardinal Krol intimated at
that time the Vatican would launch a
study of the “good conscience” issue,
the April letter of Cardinal Seper gives
no intimation that other solutions are
being studied.
At least one U.S. bishop - Bishop
Joseph Green of Reno - released to his
priests an unofficial translation of the
cardinal’s letter. Bishop Green said he
did so because he knew “this problem
(admitting to the sacraments those in an
invalid marriage) has been a very
pressing one for so many of you in your
pastoral care of souls.”
must seek, without ever declaring
ourselves satisfied, is that our efforts in
the liturgical field must help modern
man really to pray.”
The 76-year-old Pope, who has
occupied the “throne of Peter” for 10
of the most turbulent years in the life of
the modern Church, kept pointing to
the future of the Church, rather than
the past.
Speaking of the pastoral means by
which priests and laymen are trying to
talk to modem man, the Pope said:
“Our pastoral methods are perhaps
not always adapted to the needs of
modern man, who also has a hunger for
God and a homesickness for his home,
without knowing it or daring to realize
it. Our words perhaps leave him
indifferent.”
Even though the council aimed at an
updating of the Church’s pastoral
approach to men today, Pope Paul said,
“If we make a sincere and serene
examination of conscience, we cannot
say that this updating has yet fully
attained the objectives” that bishops,
priests and laity were called on by the
council to attain.
Pope Paul said that the Church today
is trying to find a “happy synthesis of
‘new and old,’ of tradition and reform,
of conserving and updating the
patrimony of faith, so that its
unalterable riches may be presented
convincingly to the men of our time.”
With the end of the council, he said,
there has been a flowering of teaching
about the Church. But, he added, “this
process has not always beeh combined
with a healthy critical sense, with a
pastoral criterion, disinterested research
and with the scientific probity necessary
in moments of great toil. Hence there
arises the double duty of reaffirming the
eternal and unalterable truths . . . while
adapting it to modern language and to
new sensitivity.”
Pope Paul singled out the work
assigned to the International
Theological Commission, which he
created at the suggestion of the Second
Vatican Council. The commission, he
said, must preserve, “the perennial
treasure of the message of salvation”
while one must look ahead, in order to
reinforce the integrity of all doctrine
without any hasty change with regard to
the fleeting fashions of new language.”
Enlarging on the problem of the
Church talking to modern man, Pope
Paul spoke of its approach to the whole
world: “The world looks to the Church,
and she must have the ability, the
training and the proper methods for
entering upon and carrying foward the
discussion which leads to the
proclamation of the Gospel.
GRADUATES of St. John the Evangelist School, Valdosta, proudly display diplomas after graduation
ceremonies on May 25 th.
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Cambodia Bombing Condemned