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PAGE 6—August 16,1973
West German Bishops
Censure Fr. Kueng
MUNICH, Germany (NC) - West
German Bishops’ Conference has
censured controversial theologian,
Father Hans Kueng, for his reply to the
reaffirmation of the oneness and
infallibility of the Catholic Church by
the Vatican Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith.
The censure came in a statement
issued by Cardinal Julius Doepfner of
Munich, president of the bishops’
conference.
The Vatican document, “Declaration
in Defense of the Catholic Doctrine of
the Church Against Certain Errors of
the Present Day,” made public July 5,
reaffirmed the Church’s infallibility in
matters of faith and morals and restated
the traditional teaching concerning
situations in which that infallibility is
manifested.
Although the congregation did not
attach any names to the teachings it
criticized, many of the criticisms were
apparently directed at Swiss-born
Father Kueng, director of the
Ecumenical Institute of Tuebingen
University in Germany, The
congregation is investigating Father
Kueng’s 1970 book “Infallibility? An
Inquiry.”
In a statement issued the same day
the Vatican document was published,
Father Kueng claimed that the
congregation had disqualified itself
“juridically and theologically.”
Maintaining that the congregation
had passed public judgment without
trial, he said: “These proceedings and
the declaration, with nothing but
assertions without valid substantiation,
make public the fact that the
congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith is not capable of making a
contribution which will help us answer
the questions on Church, ministry and
infallibility which are now being
discussed worldwide in Catholic
theology and ecumenism.”
Recalling that the congregation had
allowed theological discussion of Father
Kueng’s book “to continue for a fairly
long time,” Cardinal Doepfner said the
congregation had issued its declaration
“so that any further cause for confusion
among the faithful might be avoided”
and had drawn attention “to a number
of errors to be found in Professor
Kueng’s thesis regarding the Church’s
teaching on infallibility. He was,
however, offered a further opportunity
for discussion.”
“Unfortunately,” the cardinal
continued, “as a result of the position
he took up on July 5, with its
judgments on the Sacred Congregation
which lack adequate foundation and are
sometimes offensive. Professor Kueng
has made the further step of peaceful
and well-informed discussion more
difficult of attainment.
“As president of the German Bishops’
Conference, I absolutely reject the
affirmations of Professor Kueng in his
reply to the sacred congregation.
Considering the importance of the
affair, I expect Professor Kueng to
cooperate by providing a satisfactory
explanation. Only in this way will
greater harm be avoided.”
C\\\\W\ II ill/////.
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Film Classifications
A. — Section I — Morally Unobjectionable for General Patronage
A — Section II — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Adolescents
A — Section HI — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults
A — Section IV — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Reservations
B — Morally Objectionable in Part for All
C — Condemned
nOOOOOOOOOOQOOOOOQ
/// / /y //llr,j' (I \ '\W\
O LUCKY MAN! (Warners) is Lindsay
Anderson’s comedy of the absurd about the
post-modern world. The film follows the
incredible exploits of a trainee coffee
salesman (Malcolm McDowell) trying to
succeed in a world he can’t understand. The
loosely connected group of situations involve
McDowell confessing to being a spy,
volunteering as a subject for medical
experimentation, becoming personal assistant
to an industrialist and going to jail for
carrying out orders, being beaten up in trying
to help poor derelicts, and finally getting an
opportunity for stardom. Anderson has knit
the various segments of the film together by a
series of songs written and performed by Alan
Price to act as a kind of Greek chorus. Price’s
music and the performances of the entire cast,
including Sir Ralph Richardson, Rachel
Roberts, Arthur Lowe, and Mona
Washbourne, make for a satisfying film of
wit and sophistication. Casual moviegoers
will find some of the visual treatment of the
film’s sexual material more than they expect
from the movies. (A-IV)
A TOUCH OF CLASS (Avco Embassy)
This new Melvin Frank comedy, of the
sophisticated adult variety, offers just what its
title inidcates, a touch of class-but not much
more than a touch. London-based American
exec George Segan and British career gal
Glenda Jackson chance upon one another
while dashing for a cab, and the stage is set
with all the movie-predictable results. Since
he’s a reasonably happy married man and
she’s a wise-cracking divorcee, the
complications all involve how to arrange and
cover up the liaisons. The humor is mature,
with some occasional scatological references
to make up, apparently, for what the script
lacks in genuine wit. Besides the fact that
Segal and Ms. Jackson simply fail to come off
as a credible romantic couple, director
Frank's problems with his film range all the
way from a weak script that has his principals
eternally skittering all over London, to a total
inability to know when to draw the story to a
close gracefully. As a result many viewers will
find the film’s theme of illicit love more than
a little tasteless. <A-III)
SHAFT IN AFRICA (MGM) You can take
Sahft out of Harlem, but you can’t take
Harlem out of Shaft. Neither can you improve
on a nice original, although you can, in this
case, try to get by with a lot less. Richard
Roundtree again inhabits the black-Bondian
role of John Shaft, who is “recruited” (which
is to say, kidnapped) by an African diplomat
in order to break up a contemporary slave
trade being run by a depraved Arab named
Amafi (Frank Finlay), who runs the operation
from his comfy digs in Paris, and who has an
even more depraved Arab girlfriend named
Jazar (Neda Arneric). Once he gets the
picture, which is brought into sharp focus by
the diplomat’s comely daughter Aleme
(Vonetta McGee), Shaft decides a return to
his African roots won't be all that bad. After
a crash course in Afro culture, language, and
folkways, Shaft poses as a willing recruit for
the traders, and his trek across Northern
Africa toward European labor camps begins.
The path is naturally littered with human
pitfalls, which Shaft quickly converts into
bloody pulps. The girls who get in his way,
e.g., the insatiable Jazar, get the usual
treatment, only this time director John
Guillerman, poor substitute for previous
SHAFT director Gordon Parks, indulges in
near-pornographic nudity. Even more crude is
the dialogue supplied by screenwriter Stirling
Silliphant. The result is a slick but slimy film
experience. (C)
BLUME IN LOVE (Warners) Was better off
with its original title, LOVE IN BLUME, but
that still wouldn't have saved this slick,
offbeat, uneven, but occasionally hilarious
marital serio-comedy by Paul Mazursky.
BLUME follows George Segal, as a Beverly
Hills divorce lawyer who becomes his own
foolish client, in a frenetic attempt to win
back his adamant ex-wife Nina, portrayed by
now-radiant, now-scowling Susan Anspach.
The trouble is triggered by wife’s discovery of
hubby in flagrante delicto with his secretary,
a traumatic event which dissolves the marriage
but also brings Blume to the belated
realization of how much he loves his wife.
The standards and mores, of course, are
Hollywood’s, and their interpretation is
Mazursky’s--factors which create both the
problems and rewards of this curious film.
The story unfolds via flashback, as a bearded,
chastened but stupidly optimistic Blume sits
around in St. Mark’s Square in Venice, Italy,
reminiscing about his ex-wife who works in
the welfare office in Venice, California. The
challenges facing him over the period of
re-wooing are awesome: her basic and total
hostility, her subsequent relationship with a
mellow hippie-drifter named Elmo (Kris
Kristofferson, in the movie’s nicest part), his
own shameless affair with a mutual friend
(Marsha Mason) who doesn’t mind being used,
etc., etc. The story is so fragmented and
diffuse that it has little dramatic impact, but
individual scenes work here and there as the
windup reunion in Venice (Italy) approaches.
One funny improvisational scene has Blume,
Nina and Elmo getting mildly stoned together
and composing a ballad about Elmo’s
boyhood pet goat named Chester. But aside
from moments like that, this BLUME doesn’t
blossom. And for casual adult movie-goers, its
causal nudity and use of a particular
four-letter expletive will prove distasteful.
(A-lll)
40 CARATS (Columbia) represent a
Hollywood reunion of sorts: male lead
Edward Albert, director Milton Katselas,
screen-writer Leonard Gershe, photographer
Charles Lang and production designer Robert
Clatworthy all worked together on the film
version of another Broadway hit,
BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE. The theme, of
an unlikely romance flying in the face of both
convention and family objections, is sort of
re-cycled too. But it is the new things-namely
Liv Ullman as the sophisticated
divorcee-career gal whose age is translated
into the title’s golden terms, Billy (Green)
Bush as an irascible Arizona tycoon, and the
pristine coast of Greece as an opening and
closing location-that give the movie its life.
Certainly, the BUTTERFLIES gang are assets,
and Albert, in particular, is probably headed
for major stardom. But Ms. Ullmann, Mr.
Bush, and the eternal Hellenic paradise steal
scene after scene. The story itself is a routine
Broadway type of thing: boy meets older
woman (in Greece), boy loses older woman
(in New York), older woman gets boy (in
Greece). Ms. Ullmann, though, is almost
ethereally lovely, and manages to make one
overlook both her own unsuitability as an
overaged ingenue and the script’s tendency to
dish up lumpy theatrical lines that are best
delivered from a semi-crouching position. For
his part as Ms. Ullmann’s beau (who winds up
marrying her nublie daughter), Bush proves a
delight. Nothing need be said about the
Greece of the tourists, or, for that matter,
about the fact that 40 CARATS, because of
its theme of unusual adult relationships, is for
adults seeking light-hearted entertainment.
(A-lll)
CAHILL, UNITED STATES MARSHAL
(Warners) John Wayne’s latest Batjac
production is another of Wayne’s “message”
Westerns in the tradition of TRUE GRIT and
THE COWBOYS. In most respects a
run-of-the-mill effort about an overworked
marshal whose larger-than-life crime fighting
activities have kept him from his two
youngsters (Gary Grimes and Clay O’Brien).
CAHILL follows Wayne’s search for a group
of outlaws led by George Kennedy who have
held up a bank and killed the sheriff and his
deputy. Gradually coming to realize that the
two boys have aided in the robbery Wayne
decides to make his pursuit of the criminals
into an object lesson for his sons. Apart from
the glaring contrivances of the plot which
would be acceptable in a less pretentious film,
Wayne spins out a peculiar brand of morality
which seems, once again, to condone the use
of guns in the hands of the young. More
questionable, however, is the film’s
resolution: having killed the five outlaws,
Wayne forgives the two boys because there
will, after all, be no one to testify against
them at a murder trial! Such transparent
rationalizations will hardly mislead an adult,
but one can only wonder about the effect
upon youngsters. Director Andrew V.
McLaglen’s heavy reliance on cheap studio
sets and process photography will deceive no
one. (A-lll)
RECENT FILM CLASSIFICATIONS
American Graffiti (Universal) - A-lll
Jeremy (United Artists) -- A-lll
The Last American Hero (Fox) - A-lll
Oklahoma Crude (Columbia) - A-lll
Badge 373 (Paramount) -- B
BOOK REVIEW
BROTHER IS A SPINNER -- Benedictine Brother Kim Malloy shows a
visitor a drop wheel, one of the earliest types of spinning wheels at a
spinning bee in suburban Louisville, Ky. At right Sarah Bailey twirls a
large walking wheel as she feeds wool onto the machine. Brother Kim, of
St. Meinrad, Ind., is a self-taught spinner who has become an authority on
the subject. (NC Photos)
“The Jesuit” by John Gallahue, Stein
and Day, 1972, 296 pp. $7.95 BY
THOMAS N. LORSUNG.
Sometimes when I read a novel, I
can’t help wondering what it might be
like as a movie.
I get that feeling from reading “The
Jesuit.”
One reason for my reaction is the
promotional release included with an
advance copy of the book. It warns that
if a prospective reviewer wants to blab
the surprise ending, he shouldn’t review
the book.
If you buy the novel, that damoclean
sword won’t be hanging over your head.
There’s nothing to stop you from
shouting the ending from the rooftops.
The whole thing smacks of cheap
movie advertising that screams from
film pages: “DON’T TELL ANYONE
THE SURPRISE ENDING! No one
admitted to the theater in the last 15
minutes.”
I’ll play their silly game and won’t
tell you the ending, except to say you’re
right in suspecting the brother.
As for the book itself, it is a more
than passable adventure story about a
Russian-American Jesuit named
Alexander Ulanov who is appointed by
Pope Pius XI for the monumental task
of reviving the persecuted dying Russian
church in the 1930s. He’s ordained
(consecrated was the term then) a
bishop for the job and along with a
French-Russian Jesuit companion is
smuggled into the country to baptize,
hear confessions, ordain, etc.
He does these things, despite a
lingering fear of the secret police and
the checks and balances imposed on him
by his companion, Father Paul Marais,
who himself must survive the amorous
attention of a female medical student
and a treacherous poisoning. But then
there’s the surprise ending.
Author John Gallahue, a former
Jesuit supposedly ousted from Fordham
for wanting to tell the Ulanov story
(based on a true incident, he says), spins
a good yam. Suspense builds as you
await the choice of the candidate for
the secret mission and once the man is
chosen and the job undertaken, you
wait for the next shoe to drop as the
Jesuits perform their duties incognito in
the police state.
It would indeed make a good film,
moving as it does from the rural
loveliness of Woodstock College, then in
Maryland, to the hellish hot furnaces of
a luxury liner, the back alleys of Rome,
the splendors of the papal chambers, the
vastness of Russia as viewed from a
speeding freight car, humble workers’
quarters, a secret loft church, rugged
Russian highways and back to the
Vatican.
But the surprise ending, believe me, is
nothing that an old Perry Mason fan
couldn’t see coming for a couple of
chapters.
—
fr LIFE IN
BY THE DAMEANS
KODACHROME
When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It’s a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of education
Hasn’t hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall
Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s
a sunny day
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away
If you took all the girls I knew
When I was single
And brought them all together
for one night
I know they’d never match
my sweet imagination
Everything looks worse
in black and white
by P. Simon
(c 1973 Charing Cross)
BMI
“Kodachrome is a song that definitely prompts a response. It is difficult to
pass over what the song says, and it is equally difficult to pass over who is saying
it--Paul Simon.
A year ago Paul Simon released his first album without Art Garfunkel, his
partner in the highly successful Simon and Garfunkel team. The interesting note
about that album was a new pessimism that pervaded Simon’s music.
\
MUSIC
It was as if the break with Garfunkel had created an emptiness in Simon’s
mood and his songs. “Kodachrome” comes from the second solo album of Paul
Simon, “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon.” And this album, too, is marked with the
same pessimism.
“Kodachrome” is a strong statement that life is harsh. According to Simon,
high school didn’t prepare him for the way life really was, his imagination
making him dream that life would be more than he found it. When he finally
viewed the world in black and white, Simon discovered that “everything looked
worse.”
While there is truth in the fact that people daily find themselves unprepared
for life, still the question remains: Is life really so hostile or so empty?
“Kodachrome forces you to ask whether life is worth choosing. Is there a real
color to life or is it pale and stark?
For many people the answer to that question is that there is no color. They,'
like the song, have found life and its promises to be much less than they
dreamed. As they sat back and observed the world unfolding before them, they
discovered a shocking emptiness in the values and maturity of others. And so far
for these people, whatever color there was to life was added artificially through
alcohol, or drugs or security-oriented social structures.
But for many others, there is color to life. And the reason seems to be rather
simple. They want life to be meaningful, and so they become part of it. They
become involved with life, actively making it reflect their deepest aspirations and
ideals.
These people remind us that life is valued only becuase it contains something
valuable-themselves. Jesus said much the same thing: “A man can have no
greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.”
The secret to the song “Kodachrome” and the secret to life is not in waiting
to find out how the final print of the picture will look. It is in deciding what
type of film to put in the camera in the first place. The man who is willing to
purchase the very best film-who is willing to give his life for others--is the man
who will gain life. The man who chooses to make himself one with life is, in fact,
the man who makes the world colorful enough to choose.
(All correspondence should be directed to: The Dameans, St. Joseph Church, 216 Patton
Ave., Box 5188, Shreveport, Louisiana 71105)