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PAGE 4—The Southern Cross, January 10,1974
The Southern Cross
Busines Office 225 Abercorn St. Savannah, Ga. 31401
Mott Rev. Raymond W. Lessard, O.D., President
Rev. Francit J. Oonohue, Editor John E. Markwalter, Managing Editor
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Investigate Oil!
Georgia’s First District U.S.
Representative Ronald “Bo” Ginn last
week called on President Nixon to
undertake an investigation of major U.S.
oil corporations to determine whether or
not the oil shortage is real or
manufactured.
According to a report appearing in the
Savannah Morning News on January 5th,
Rep. Ginn declared, “It is my feeling
that adequate evidence exists now to
justify an immediate investigation into
possible illegal agreements between the
major oil companies to slow domestic
and international petroleum production
until the opportunity develops for
extraordinary profits.”
We don’t know whether such evidence
does, in fact, exist. Nevertheless we
wholeheartedly support Rep. Ginn’s
request for an investigation of the oil
industry.
More than a year ago, Illinois Senator
Adlai Stevenson III complained to the
administration that this country was
threatened with an oil shortage. The
senator was told there was no danger.
The oil companies, themselves, denied
there was any immediate danger of an oil
shortage.
Just a few short months later, in the
Spring, the nation suddenly developed a
shortage of gasoline. Spokesmen for the
oil industry still maintained there was no
oil shortage. The reason why gasoline
was in temporarily short supply, they
said, was because the industry was
producing more diesel and other
distillates and therefore using more of its
crude oil reserves for these products than
for gasoline.
We all remember how, at summer’s
end signs began appearing at service
stations announcing the good news -
“No gasoline shortage here.’Apparently
everything had returned to normal.
Then came the Arab oil boycott and
we suddenly found out, according to
government and oil industry
pronouncements, that even without the
Arab boycott, the nation faced a major
oil shortage.
Even if the Alaska pipe line were to be
constructed and oil from the vast
reserves in Alaska were to be
forthcoming, we could look forward to
five or ten years of a continued shortage,
we were told.
What we were not told, if Rep. Ginn is
correct in his message to President
Nixon, is that the oil companies have
discovered extensive oil reserves since
1967 in the North Sea, Equador,
Australia, Nigeria, offshore Indonesia
and elsewhere, which they have not
exploited at all.
We have been under the impression
for many years that the reason for
granting the oil companies untold
millions in “oil depletion” tax
allowances was that this money would
allow the industry to replace equipment
and develop more oil reserves. If an
investigation of the oil companies is
undertaken, the first question its high
moguls should be asked is “What have
you been doing with the oil depletion
allowance for all these years?”
According to the American Petroleum
Institute, an industry lobbying group,
Mobil Oil’s profits for the third quarter
of 1973 were up 64 percent over the
same period in 1972. Profits for the
same period were up 81 percent for
Exxon and 91 percent for Gulf.
However, having apparently misused
their oil depletion allowances, and in
spite of their increased profits, the oil
companies still cry poor mouth and want
to increase their prices even more. They
have destroyed or threatened the
livelihoods of tens of thousands of
people by their incredibly irresponsible
management of the nation’s oil reserves,
yet they now ask the American
consumer to line their pockets with yet
more gold.
Do the oil companies need to be
investigated? You bet they do.
-FJD
New Years Resolutions
Mary Carson
If you’re like me your New Year’s
Resolutions are down the drain by the middle
of January. I not only haven’t kept mine, but
having broken them makes me feel worse than
if I never made them at all.
Part of my problem is that I made
resolutions during the emotion filled Christmas
week. At that time, I was conscious of the
Infant’s message, over-flowing with love of my
family, and objective about the confusion in
my home.
By mid-January, things are as they always
were .. . except that I get annoyed with myself
because I am more conscious of what I haven’t
done. All my determination to be more patient
and understanding, to keep my home in better
order, to answer mail promptly ... all get lost
in the hectic daily confusion.
While it’s good to examine our consciences
and find areas to improve, self-condemnation -
particularly on a dreary, slushy, miserable
January day -- instead of sparking
self-improvement, just causes a full scale
depression.
I would guess that many people, particularly
mothers, have the same trouble. So, I propose
an examination of conscience in reverse ... to
build your confidence. It doesn’t matter when
you make it. You may want to do it two or
three times a year. In January, you could want
to make one every other day.
So, mothers, sit down for a few minutes ...
and FORGET everything that you’ve done
poorly, IGNORE what you didn’t accomplish,
DISREGARD your faults.
Now . .. WHAT DID YOU DO RIGHT?
Within the last month, have you thought one
kind thought about each of your children?
Some of them? One of them? Forget all the
times you’ve been ready to murder them. Was
there a moment you really loved them?
Hiring the last week, have you served your
family any food they enjoyed? Some exotic
new recipe? Hamburgers and potato chips?
Peanut butter sandwiches? It isn’t important
that they acknowledged it. Did you give any
one of them something they liked eating?
During the last six months, have you offered
compassion, understanding, sympathy to
anyone with a problem?
Have you read a book, or a magazine or
newspaper article that caused you to think?
Have you improved your mind a bit? Has
anything, even a cartoon, caused you to
consider more deeply your relationship to God
and others?
Have you done anything that has made the
world. . . even a tiny bit of it. . . more
beautiful? Grown a plant? Painted a room?
Swept your front steps?
Have you smiled?
Have you helped anyone?
Have you accepted help. . . because it made
someone else feel good to be able to help you?
Have you seen God’s work . . . and admired
it. . . in a sunset, a snowfall .. . the intricate
beauty of a little child’s eyes?
Have you settled an argument? Wiped a tear?
Or a tiny nose?
Have you discussed anything, especially with
your children, that has caused them to think
more clearly, given them food for their minds?
Not only can you probably answer “yes” to
every one of these questions, you can also write
long lists of all the good things you ARE
DOING!
By building your own confidence, you are
taking the first step toward fulfilling the
two-fold law Jesus gave. To love your neighbor
better, you must love yourself more! Your
capacity to love will grow and sincere love of
.God will flourish in you.
Smile .. . YOU love God!
“Tell Me, Father
About the Catholic Church”
Reverend John Reedy C.S.C.
In a conversation, the other evening, the
thought suddenly occurred to me that it’s been
a long time since I was asked to give
instructions to anyone.
And an even more disturbing thought
followed: Today I’m not sure just how I would
go about it.
I know I couldn’t do it the way I did in the
past, taking one of the better “catechisms” and
following its orderly presentation of the
doctrine and life of the Church with
explanations, emphases, answers to questions.
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Certainly that was an efficient way of
covering the material, but I would choke on
that kind of an indoctrination today. Too much
has happened in the Church, too much has
happened to me, too much has happened to the
people who seek a better relationship with God
in today’s world.
Probably I would start with some long
sessions of trying to understand where this
particular person stands in relation to his own
life, to the people with whom he lives.. .
where he stands in his perception of God.
This means that the investigation would have
to be intensely personal. The idea of a class for
such people seems as absurd as a class for
troubled marriages. Certain information needs
to be covered, certain things need to be said to
all such people, but the way it should be said
and how it will be heard must differ from
person to person.
Without trying to play God, I would want to
find some basis of serious concern for God or
for the mystery of life before I got into a
presentation of the life and teachings of the
Church.
As I look back to some of the people who
accepted my words in the past, I fear that a
number were not really serious. Oh, they said
they were, but their attitudes and actions said
something quite different. There were some
who simply wanted to cement an engagement
>by sharing the religion of a fiancee. There were
others who seemed to be seeking the social
respectability of belonging to a Church - and
Catholicism seemed as attractive as any.
There were even a few who were good
friends of mine, who were probably impressed
by the seriousness with which I seemed to take
the life of the Church.
Today, any of those motives could serve as a
starting point, but unless I could discover a
genuine, serious search for God and the things
of God, I think I would discourage the person.
If a man or woman is not really serious about
religion, he is probably better off recognizing
that fact. At least, he will be less likely to
deceive himself.
For those who are serious, I think all I could
do would be to describe what Catholicism
means to me, what it tells me of Jesus in the
New Testament and present in the Church and
the world today, what it tells me of God as a
loving Father, of my own inadequacy, of the
world the Father gave us as the setting for our
enjoyment and sorrows, for our achievements
and failures.
Of course, I would have to cover the basic
“content” of the Church’s traditional teachings,
but I don’t think I would try to “prove” them
the way I did in the past. Too many of those
proofs now strike me as very fragile; too many
of the teachings and practices which I defended
have been qualified or seem to admit of
qualification in the future.
No longer would I want to give instructions
in a way that would leave people vulnerable
when practices and terminology are changed in
the years ahead.
Moreover, it seems to me that relatively few
of the subjects I used to cover in my
instructions go to the very heart of the Catholic
commitment. Many of them are good and
useful expressions of religious understanding
and practice; others were useful in the past.
But the basic questions I would want the
person to answer for himself would be these:
From your experience, your thought, your
sensitivity, are you convinced that the world
and our lives take their meaning from a loving,
personal God? From your knowledge and
perception of Jesus, can you accept Him as
Lord and Saviour? As our chief revelation of
the Father’s love?
As you look at the Church today, in the
searching, troubled, flawed people who are
gathered together in it as a community, can you
genuinely see a continuation of the Lord’s
presence as it existed in the first group of
followers he gathered around himself?
If so, welcome to the sacramental,
Eucharistic community; if not, accept our love
as a brother, as an honest searcher for God ...
and accept our good wishes as you continue
your search.
Is The Devil for Real?
Rev. Joseph Dean
If you and I were making the universe, we
would probably set it up with no sorrow, no
pain, no evil, a place of perfect happiness.
Almighty God can and has, no doubt, set up
just such kinds of creation. But these are worlds
of necessity, of forced goodness, of
machine-life perfection.
There is no choice here, no free expression,
no true love, because true love includes an
intelligent and unpressured choosing. If God
wants to create a universe with the higher
values in it like cooperation, participation,
liberty, responsible choice, real love, and not a
clock-work kind of agreement, then He must
tolerate the risk of a wrong choice, of a denial
of love, of a deliberate lack of cooperation. By
the very fact that our universe is not a
mechanistic one, that we do have a deliberate
freedom to bring good or to cause evil in our
lives and in the lives of our families, we come to
the conclusion of a personal Intelligence behind
the design of the universe rather than some
impersonal power.
At first glance we would think that evil and
wrong choices come only from our selfishness
or pride, or from the powerful attraction of
God’s gifts around us, in opposition to our
attention to the Giver of these gifts.
But if God is the personal Being He has
revealed Himself to be, through the teachings
and credentials of Jesus, His ambassador to us,
then we have to admit the possibility that even
in the process of choosing good and evil,
personal approaches could be involved. In other
words, if we ever find evidence that we are
tempted to evil by a personal tempter, by a
personal intelligence that has personally
rejected God’s goodness, we should not be too
surprised.
It is possible for a personal God to tolerate a
personal approach by one who has used his
freedom to reject God. God will give us the
strength and the power to resist such personal
temptations to evil, but He will not force our
love or cooperation. This kind of universe
seems to be the one we are living in, in God’s
present providence.
People who are Christians have the additional
information from the inspired word of God,
such as in Ephesians 6,19:
“For it is not against human enemies that we
have to struggle, but against the Sovereignties
and the Powers who originate the darkness in
this world, the spiritual army of evil.”
The Arab
Oil War
Joe Breig
Surely the nations of Western Europe will
come to regret the loss of sovereignty and
self-respect which they suffered when they
bowed so quickly and abjectly to Arab oil
threats.
Gradually, too, the world will awake to the
fact that those threats have introduced a new
menace into the lives of all peoples.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has said,
rightly, that the oil war will not be allowed to
dictate American foreign policy.
“If pressures continue unreasonably and
indefinitely,” said Mr. Kissinger, “then the
United States will have to consider what
countermeasures it may have to take. ”
The Western Europeans also will have to
consider, sooner or later, what steps they may
have to take. They have salaamed to the Arabs
thus far, but they cannot let themselves be
economically crippled.
In the background of this situation,
therefore, lurks the danger that the U.S., Japan
and Western Europe may be forced to use force
to protect themselves from industrial and
economic paralysis.
In that case, we might face, again, an eyeball
to eyeball confrontation between the West and
the Soviet Union.
If that happens, the Western European
surrender will be the basic cause. Apparently
they have forgotten the lesson they learned
from Chamberlain’s surrender to Hitler at
Munich - that yielding to threats leads only to
more and bigger threats.
Four American winners of the Nobel Price
for Economics have joined with four other
American economists in a warning that “our
foreign policy should not be deflected in the
slightest by the illusion that giving in to oil
blackmail will, in fact, gain us anything.”
Too bad the Western Europeans were not
equally clearsighted. They failed in loyalty both
to the European Common Market and to the
North Atlantic Treaty Alliance which for years
has protected them against Soviet aggression.
The Common Market nations abandoned
their partner, the Netherlands, when the Arabs
shut off oil to Holland for having had the
temerity to express some measure of sympathy
for Israel. Three times the Netherlands appealed
for an oil sharing arrangement; in vain.
How much damage to NATO has been done
remains to be seen. But there can be no doubt
that the Western European surrender to the
Arab threats strengthened the hands of those
Americans who want total withdrawal of U.S.
troops from Europe.
It hardly needs saying that if those troops are
pulled out, the Europeans will find themselves
chilled by more than a winter’s cold with
reduced oil supplies. Soon enough, they will
feel the bitter winds of communist imperialism
blowing from the Russian steppes.
HL. J Yourself
MBS* Surgery
Rev. James Wilmes
There should be a Hall of Fame for people
who find new and better ways to replace
bungling, old time methods. A possible
nominee would be the lad who solved the
painful problem of pulling a tooth.
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His delightful substitute for the
time-honored custom of tying the tooth to a
door-knob and waiting for someone to open the
door, is a bow and arrow. Tying the bad tooth
to the arrow, he bent the bow as far as strength
would allow, and fired both arrow and tooth
off into the wild blue yonder.
That lad will go far in life. He has made early
the fateful move from depending on others, to
doing-it-yourself, however painful. He has
learned well: if it’s got to be done, do it
yourself! Or to put it another way, if someone
will have to do it, let that someone be you.
If someone must stop to help a traveller in
need, let it be you. If someone must begin to
point out and take action on some civic abuse
or neglect, get involved. If someone must speak
up and “tell it like it is,” speak up. If someone
must eventually take responsibility and lay life
or labor on the line, let that someone be you, in
union all the time with Christ Jesus.
Painful, you say? Costly? Different? Perhaps
- and perhaps not. One of the most interesting
discoveries of our time regarding painful and
enjoyable work is the fact that self-imposed
hardship is enjoyable! And that self-established
goals make life worth living.
Draw you own bow, fit your own arrow, fire
in your own chosen time - and know that
you’re truly alive!