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PAGE 4—The Southern Cross, October 25,1973
The Southern Cross
Business Office 225 Abercorn St. Savannah, Ga. 31401
Most Rev. Raymond W. Lessard, D.O., President
Rev. Francis J. Donohue, Editor John E. Markwalter, Managing Editor
Second Class Postage Paid at Waynesboro, Ga. 30330
Send Change of Address to P.O. 8ox 10027, Savannah, Ga. 31402
Published weekly except the second and last weeks
in June, July and August and the last week in December.
At 601 E. Sixth St., Waynesboro, Ga. 30830
Subscription Price $2.76 per year by Assement Parishes Diocese of Savannah Others $5 Per Year
Best Wishes, Mrs. Hall!
Readers of this paper are, we believe,
well aware of the activities of parish
councils of Catholic women, the deanery
councils and the diocesan council.
Reports on one or more of these
councils are printed week in and week
out. They are easily the most active
organizations in the diocese. The weekly
column “DCCW Notes” is probably the
most widely read column in the paper.
So, “Hats Off” to the women of the
diocese who comprise these councils.
The church means a lot more to them
than simply forty-five minutes or an
hour with the Lord on Sundays.
Very special congratulations are in
order for Mrs. Jack Hall of St. Teresa’s
parish, Albany, the newly-elected First
Vice-President of the National Council
of Catholic Women (NCCW).
Her election is not only a reflection of
her competence and dedication to the
programs and goals of the Council at
every level-parish, deanery, diocesan and
national-but a reflection of the vitality
of the councils in our diocese.
We know that Mrs. Hall will bring
increased lustre to the second highest
post of the NCCW and that she will have
the loyal support of every member of
our parish, deanery and diocesan
councils.
Rays of Hope
The firing of special Watergate
prosecutor Archibald Cox was both
unfortunate and unfair.
Unfortunate, because it resulted in a
further erosion of confidence in the
integrity of President Nixon. All major
opinion surveys taken since the
Watergate investigations began have
shown a steady increase in the number
of people who believe that the President
had some kind of guilty knowledge
concerning the Watergate affair and
subsequent cover-up, and/or guilty
knowledge of illegal and unethical
activities in connection with his own
political campaign in 1972.
His order to Mr. Cox to cease all
judicial efforts to force Presidential
release of tape recordings of
conversations relating to testimony given
before the Senate Select Committee on
* campaign irregularities and a federal
grand jury did nothing at all to reverse
the trend reflected in the polls.
The firing was unfair because Mr. Cox
accepted the position as special
prosecutor only on condition that he be
given a completely free hand to conduct
his investigations and free access to
relevant White House files and
documents. He was not given that free
access and was refused specific files and
documents he had requested. When he
went to court in an attempt to force
release of one form of documents, the
tapes, he was ordered by the President to
cease and desist and when he refused, he
was fired.
Yet, like sunshine piercing storm
clouds, the actions of a high presidential
appointee, the Attorney General; and his
deputy gave eloquent witness to the
existence of high principle among
government officials.
Attorney General Elliot Richardson,
like the President, had given Mr. Cox
assurances of a free hand to direct his
investigations as he saw fit. When he was
certain that the President would ask him
to go back on his word to Mr. Cox, he
resigned. When his deputy, Mr. William
P. Ruckleshaus, was ordered by the
President to fire Mr. Cox for doing what
the President had once given him free
rein to do, he refused, at the cost of his
job.
Perhaps it was this powerful witness
to the sacredness of one’s pledged word,
as much as the widespread public protest,
that moved the President to change his
stance vis-a-vis the tapes which had
precipitated such turmoil and anguish.
Let’s hope that this is the beginning of
a truly sincere effort to speedily clear up
Watergate and related misdeeds and to
put them behind us with the assurance
that they can’t happen again.
Teen-Agers Tell
Their Side of Story
Mary Carson
Recently I wrote a column grossly
exaggerating my interpretation of what
teen-agers mean by what they say. It was
intended to help both parents and teen-agers
look a bit more lightly . . . possibly even
laugh ... at the “communication gap.” An easy
bridge over tension is a sense of humor. (My
own teen-agers thought that column was pretty
funny.)
At the end of the column I asked teen-agers
to write to me explaining why a girl thought
there was something wrong with her because
she liked her mother.
For anyone who has doubts about today’s
teen-agers, 86% of the letters I received said,
straight out, they liked their parents! The
letters came from all over this country and
Canada, from 12 to 19 year olds. A few
mentioned having difficulty in telling their
parents they appreciated them, but it came
through in their letters. Here are some typical
excerpts:
“From high school on I thought my parents
were the worst. They wouldn’t let me do
anything like the rest of my friends. Now (in
college) I appreciate everything that my parents
did for me.”
“I love my parents and I’m sure they love me
and if I’ve ever said I hated them it was because
I was mad and frustrated.”
“I hope the girl you wrote about is not
influenced too much by her classmates. After
all, what’s wrong with ‘liking’ your mother?
Ask some teen-ager who knows.”
“It’s a privilege to me to have parents who
DO care about morals and manners, and I’m
very grateful towards them for this.”
“What bothers me is a lot of kids complain
about their parents not understanding them but
do these kids take the time to understand their
parents? Parents have feelings just like kids.”
There were just a few letters expressing a
different opinion:
“Your article was a prime example of the
narrowmindedness that is common in your
generation. The definitions you printed were,
besides being grossly biased; irrelevant, and
unfair. The sarcasm you displayed was crass and
unjust.”
“The article was absurd! It was utterly
disgusting and untruthful!”
Sadly, the writers of these letters said they
really do hate their parents. From the tone of
their letters, I’m afraid the feeling may be
mutual.
There is a deep bitterness expressed .. . yet
underneath it is that eternal optimism of
youth. “At least I’ve learned how NOT to raise
my children when I’m a parent!”
To these troubled teen-agers I’d ask that they
do themselves . . . and their future children . . .
a favor. Sit down right down. Write out all the
things your teen-agers will be allowed to do;
what they won’t be allowed to do. List what
you, as a parent, will give of yourself. Put it in
an envelope. Seal it. Save it. And years from
now, give it to your teen-agers to read . ..
unedited.
To the rest of the teen-agers, I think you’re
great! You recognize that there are difficulties
and problems on both sides, but you are
working at maximizing strengths and
minimizing weaknesses. You and your families
are obviously working at a mutual
understanding, learning, and growth.
And above all, keep your sense of humor.
You, too, should make a list of how things will
be when you are a parent. And some day, years
from now, read it with your teen-agers.
You’ll probably both have a good laugh.
OUR PARISH
TRICK or TREAT
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“You don’t have to write the Bishop, Madam.
I'm the Bishop.”
My Orthodoxy Can Whip
Your Orthodoxy Any Day
Reverend John Reedy C.S.C.
Please excuse a wide yawn over the recent
exchange of spitballs between American biblical
scholars and the clutch of conservative Catholic
publications.
It’s easy to understand the indignation of
the scholars whose competence and religious
loyalty have been questioned; and it’s not too
difficult to understand the attacks of the
conservative journals once you grasp some of
their basic fears regarding the Church and its
traditions.
However, it’s much more difficult for me
to see why a blow-by-blow account of this
essentially unimportant squabble should be of
interest to anyone else.
There was a time a few years ago - according
to the man-bites-dog rule -- when any public
dispute among Catholics was seen as legitimate
news. In those days we reserved all of our best
shots for people like Paul Blanshard and G.
Bromley Oxnam.
But surely we are long past that situation.
Today any Catholic journalist who gets to
feeling that he is Joan of Arc just because he
publicly disagrees with a bishop, a Vatican
official or the Knights of Columbus simply
shows he’s first cousin to the college muckraker
who gets a thrill out of zinging the campus
administration.
This recent dispute is inconsequential and
should have been left to the mimeograph
pamphleteers and people who mail carbon
copies to Pope Paul.
A small group of “true believers,” a few of
whom are priests and bishops, are impressed by
the wild charges made in these publications.
But such people are already convinced; their
judgment is not actually formed by the
publications. They read them for the same
reason people go to pep rallies, to hear others
shout the opinions they already hold.
Few thoughtful leaders of the Church are
going to evaluate biblical scholarship on the
basis of charges made in these publications. For
this reason, the double-barreled blast issued by
the Catholic Biblical Association struck me as a
perfect example of over-kill.
Most Catholics never knew anyone was
accusing the scholars of “heresy” until they
issued their denial.
Though their protest strikes me as bad
strategy, I consider these debates between
irreconciliable opinions as basically harmless, if
futile. Such explosions of indignation and
righteousness might even be a therapeutic way
of working off nervous energy.
My greater concern, though, is the judgment
of those Catholic papers which gave
disproportionate space to this controversy.
I think such coverage seriously misreads the
revulsion many sincere Christians feel for the
bitter controversies waged among people who
claim to speak the content and spirit of the
Gospel.
It doesn’t take a great deal of theological
sophistication to recognize the inconsistency of
the Crusaders who went out to kill
Mohammedans in the name of Christ or the
horror of an Inquistion which used torture and
the stake to preserve the purity of doctrine.
And today, real harm is done to the
Church’s witness to the Lord by cheap
squabbles among those who profess to be
recognizable by the way they love one another.
My other objection focuses on the error of
thinking that our publications are dealing
adequately with the real problem when they
simply report the crudities of such an exchange.
\
In fact, there is a real problem which has not
been adequately handled. It is the problem of a
genuine cultural and theological confusion
among people who have not yet begun to grasp
the implications of Vatican II.
Of course, the documents are available, and
most theologians can understand them. But the
work of translating that content into personal
convictions and values . . .of showing the
continuity of Christian tradition has only
begun. And that work is one of the major
responsibilities which justify the existence of
Catholic periodicals today.
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“What makes you think my religion course is permissive?”
Art Fakery
Is Rampant
Joe Brieg
Back in my metropolitan daily newspaper
days, I was sometimes assigned to report on a
famous annual international art competition.
Invariably, the first prize was awarded to
something insane.
Two possible explanations suggested
themselves to me. Either the judges were as
crazy or crooked as the winning “artist,” or the
award was a put-on as a publicity stunt.
To this day, I incline to the latter conclusion.
Promoters are naturally tempted to play upon
the widespread delusion among journalists that
the more bizarre something is, the newsier.
Salvador Dali, for example, is a shrewd
manipulator of the media. Often he gets big
headlines by pulling the legs of reporters - and
the public - with such stunts as breaking out of
an artifical egg, meanwhile blandly assuring
everybody, in polysyllabic terminology, that in
doing so he is creating art.
I don’t mind Dali having his fun and getting
his publicity, because he is a great and sincere
painter who creates true art which uplifts the
human spirit. But I emphatically object to the
foisting of nonsense, imbecility and perversity
upon the people under the guise of art.
These thoughts are prompted by my reading
of some honest and forthright comments by an
artist of my acquaintance, Roman Elias, a
designer in Cleveland.
The Elias patience reached its breaking point
when he saw that the Cleveland Museum of Art
had awarded a first prize for sculpture to a
rusty hunk of steel preposterously titled,
“They’ll Never Take Us Alive.” Among other
entries was some orange crating to which had
been fastened dirty nylon stockings, full of
holes.
Concerning the first prize piece, Elias said,
“It’s junk. A fraud. The tragedy is that
anything that is declared great at the museum
will be accepted as great by 90 percent of the
people who go to the museum. They are afraid
to say anything against these people who are
playing at being art messiahs. It’s obscene.
“The people who run art museums have
created a whole vocabulary of cultivated
doubletalk about art-A facade that’s
fashionable. When you ask them what a
painting or a sculpture means, they give you all
this slop about inner meanings and symbolism.”
Elias himself runs an art exhibit, but he
won’t show the work of “con men.” He says, “I
simply won’t show a work if I think it’s a
ripoff. If a person is going to be a sincere artist,
he has to do the work. He has to make the
effort at conveying the idea, not conning the
viewer.”
Elias believes that the trend in art nowadays
is “back toward honesty.”
Let us pray.
Reverend James Wilmes
A despairing woman in her early forties, told
her psychiatrist this tale:
My father was a professional man, always
too busy for us. When we needed his help, he
would reply, “I’m busy. It will be all right.
Take this money and buy a new hat.”
Woe to the parent or spouse who falls into
the fatal habit of substituting giving for sharing,
who thinks it is easier to give a thing than to
share one’s self with another. Giving may be
easier for the moment, since sharing of self is
costly; but in the long run, the cost of mere
giving far outweighs the value of what is given.
What especially can you share with others?
First of all, your attentiveness: try to hear
what is being asked by the other person. The
child may ask for a toy or a treat, but the real
question is, “Do you really love me?” The toy
is an object, easily provided if you wish, but
reassurance is something else.
You must attend to and hear the question,
and then find the intangible way to really
answer it. Giving would be easy; sharing is
costly but how infinitely rewarding, too.
Next, you have understanding to share, not
merely rational comprehension, but the deeper
qualities implied when we describe a person as
“understanding.” It includes acceptance of the
other person as a real person, with faults and
virtues, strengths and weaknesses.
It includes also sympathy, a falling-in with
the other person’s point of view. Understanding
also includes affection for the other as a person
of value - whether stranger, friend or loved
one. All these you have, not simply to give but
to share. Ignore the immediate cost; the final
value is priceless!
RESOLUTION: Never appear
“rushed-to-death.” Paper-work can wait; souls
cannot. Allow sufficient time for another
calmly to explain himself and to repeat the
problem in other words. If impossible to do so
at the moment, offer immediately to set an
hour soon for calm discussion.