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PAGE 4—The Southern Cross, January 17, 1974
The Southern Cross
Busines. Office 225 Abercorn St. Savannah, Ga. 31401
Most Rev. Raymond W. Lessard, D.D., President
Rev. Francis J. Donohue, Editor
John E. M ark waiter, Managing Editor
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Detente and Peace
It is doubtful if anyone, anywhere,
really believed that the end of direct
U.S. military involvement in Vietnam
would signal the beginnings of peace in
Southeast Asia.
Certainly, the Nobel Peace Prize
Committee could not have believed it,
and we never could understand why they
chose to yoke Dr. Henry Kissinger and
North Vietnam’s Le Due Tho together as
joint winners of the 1973 award.
Fighting continues in South Vietnam,
Cambodia and Laos. North Vietnamese
military forces are directly involved in all
three places, so it is no wonder that Le
Due Tho refused the peace prize. To
accept it would have taken more gall
than even he has.
And if Kissinger’s only contribution
to “peace” had been his part in
extricating the U.S. from direct military
involvement in South Vietnam, he could
never have mustered the nerve to accept
the Nobel prize, either.
But that wasn’t his only contribution
to world peace. The detente between the
U.S. on the one hand and the Soviet
Union and Red China on the other was,
undoubtedly, the major world event of
1973 and it is almost entirely the
handiwork of Dr. Kissinger. He deserved
the award.
them . . .would create bitterness and
resentment, repressed for the moment,
but no less real for that,” Alessandrini
wrote.”
He did not spell out the “issues” to
which he had reference, but in the past
he has pleaded that the lessening of
international tensions should not
diminish international concern over
deprivation of human rights. Among the
“issues” to which he referred in the
Vatican weekly, then, must surely have
been the denial of personal freedoms by
dictatorial regimes.
What Alessandrini seemed to be
getting at is that our desire to preserve
detente should not lead us into ignoring
such things as the brutal persecution of
Soviet citizens who speak out for
personal liberty in their own country
and whose only crime is in admitting,
publicly, that personal freedom does not
exist there.
He also seems to be saying that our
desire for world peace should not lull us
into forgetting the plight of thousands
upon thousands of men and women in
the Soviet Union, China and Eastern
European countries who must endure
government harassment if they openly
practice religion and government
persecution if they teach it.
Agreements among nations, however,
last only until they are broken and there
is no way of foretelling how long the
agreements negotiated by Mr. Kissinger
between the U.S. and Russia and the
U.S. and China will hold up.
Writing in the Vatican weekly,
L’Osservatore della Domenica, Frederico
Alessandrini, head of the Vatican press
office addressed himself last week to one
important danger involved in trying to
preserve the gains made by the lessening
of world tensions, while at the same time
striving for the resolution of the issues
which gave rise to the tensions in the
first place.
“To ignore those issues as if they
didn’t exist or to be indifferent toward
The United States government should
continue to use every peaceful means
and all the moral pressure it can
engender from the non-Communist
world to convince the Soviet and
Chinese regimes that the price of true
and lasting peace is justice, and that
justice demands respect for fundamental
human rights such as speech, religion,
press and migration everywhere in the
world.
If the detente achieved by Dr.
Kissinger is so frail that it cannot survive
continued public outcry against the
repression of these rights by Moscow and
Peking, then the peace we all hope it
presages is as “phony” as the one
Adolph Hitler promised Europe
thirty-five years ago. F . n
From Generation
To Generation
Mary Carson
My three teen-age boys tell me, “Mom, you
worry too much.”
I try to convince them that it’s constructive.
Things I worry about generally don’t
happen.. .so I’ve prevented all sorts of
disasters.
But when one of them is late getting home,
even that argument doesn’t make sense to me.
My worrying isn’t protecting them. Yet there is
something inside me that won’t rest until I
know they’re all safe.
The boys assure me that my worrying is
needless. If anything was wrong, they’d call.
They know all the reasons I shouldn’t worry.
And they try to set a good example for me by
staying cool and confident. They try ...
However, this past weekend, one of the boys
went camping. He is a staff member of our local
Boy Scout troop and the trip was being led by
the scoutmaster. I expected them back around
four or five, Sunday afternoon. Certainly, by
six.
The weather all day Sunday was bad .. .sleet,
hail, freezing rain. The campers were in a
mountainous area, and the information we got
from news broadcasts was that the roads there
were impassable.
I had great confidence in the good judgment
of the scoutmaster, and didn’t worry. . .till
about seven o’clock.
Then every ten minutes I thought I heard a
car door outside. I’d run to the front door and
look out. But no one was there.
My other sons, of course, were not
concerned. “Mom, it’s senseless to worry.” “If
anything was wrong, you’d have heard.”
I was worried. “Suppose the car skidded off
the road. Suppose they’re in a ditch someplace,
and no one even knows they’re there.”
“Mom, worrying isn’t going to do anything
about that, either.”
But these same nonchalant sons asked every
little while, “You haven’t heard from them?”
“He’s not home yet?”
Of course, they weren’t worried. . .just
interested. (Normally, they wouldn’t give him
the right time.)
By nine-thirty I had some real doubts. I
called the county police headquarters near the
campsite. They told me the roads were bad, but
not impassable, then offered a new concern. “If
they haven’t enough gas to make it home, that
could be the problem. There isn’t a drop of gas
up here.”
He also suggested I call the State Police;
they’d have accident reports.
As soon as I hung up the phone, one of my
“unworried” sons asked, “what’d they say?”
The State Police had the same report on the
roads, and no accident or stranded cars fitting
the description.
“Unworried” sons reassured me that if the
roads were too slippery to drive they probably
stayed over. There was no way they could get
to a phone.
I suggested that both boys get some sleep.
They “had a few things to finish” and puttered
around with inconsequentials, stalling, waiting.
By ten I had another thought. My father had
some knowledge of that area. I called him.
He calmly went over all the facts. The roads
could be so icy that it wouldn’t be good
judgment for them to drive. They couldn’t call.
They probably stayed over and would call in
the morning. If anything was wrong, I would
have heard. There really was nothing I could
do.
Dad asked, “Can’t you go to bed and get
some sleep?”
I realized he was right, and told him that I
thought I could.
“.. .but if you hear anything from
him .. .no matter what time it is .. .call me
right away.”
At half past ten the campers arrived home.
My son said they had had to drive very
slowly and cautiously. He couldn’t understand
our relief at seeing him. He knew he was okay.
There was nothing to worry about.
OUR
PARISH
lHllilllHi.lmmimimjL
Women power*
AND PLAYER
meeting
Wti—
oOnne/f
Tt never bothered you before that the
twelve apostles were men.”
Remembering Those Who Live
On the Margin of Life
Reverend John Reedy C.S.C.
Every large family, I suppose, has an Uncle
Jim.
He was my father’s older brother, a not very
successful pipe-fitter who was a strange, quiet,
private man.
Instead of “private” I was going to write
“lonely” but, though he lived with our family
for about 10 years, I only now realize that I
didn’t really know him well enough to decide
whether he really was lonely . . .or whether he
simply wanted to be alone.
His marriage broke up when I was very
young, but I can still recall the extreme
delicacy with which my mother conveyed the
warning: “This is something you don’t talk
about - ever.”
There were no children in his marriage and,
looking back, the wonder to me is not that the
marriage broke up, but that it lasted as long as
it did. For his wife, much of the time must have
seemed like sharing a life with a cigar store
Indian.
At any rate, Jim was alone. There must have
been some discussion about the move, but in
those days it seemed perfectly natural that he
should move in with our family. An attic
bedroom was fitted out with the furniture that
was the remnant of his marriage and of his
parents home. When he wasn’t working, he
spent most of his time up there, listening to the
radio, reading, dozing.
In the television situation shows, he would
have been a loveable Walter Brennan type,
showing children how to build wagons and find
fishing holes.
He wasn’t. He was just Jim -- tall and lean,
gruff and somewhat crotchety, quiet and
remote.
He wasn’t always easy to live with. Probably
because I was the youngest (possibly because I
was the most obnoxious) he occasionally
expressed an opinion on my behaviour, and I
resented it.
But it didn’t happen often.
His one indulgence was a regular stop at a
local cafe after work. There was one summer
afternoon when he either quit early or drank
faster. I can still remember how my mother hit
the ceiling at the thought that our family had
been disgraced because Jim had covered most
of the sidewalk on his way down our residential
street.
My father, I suspect, had a quiet talk with
him, because I can’t recall that it ever happened
again.
After my parents reached a condition at
which they were no longer able to provide a
place for him, he moved on to live the same
kind of life in the home of one of my cousins.
He died there, as quiet and remote and alone
as he had lived.
I don’t think of Jim very often, but when I
do, he bothers me - for a couple of reasons.
Though I was young at the time, I still can’t
understand how I could live so long, in the
same home, with so little understanding of a
person.
Possibly no one could have broken through
his shell. Perhaps my father was really closer to
him than I realized. Still, no one should live
that much on the margin of life. As I look back
on my indifference to his isolation, I can
discover a clear example of the tendency to
avoid getting involved with people who are not
naturally pleasant, warm and attractive.
And when I think of that tendency, it’s hard
for me to forget the priest of the Gospel story
who rode down the other side of the road when
he passed the fellow lying in the ditch.
The other thought about Jim that bothers
me is the question: What is happening to people
like him today? Perhaps our family didn’t give
him enough, but it did provide a home, people,
some sense of belonging.
Today, smaller homes and mobile families
provide little accommodation for the outsiders
who exist on the margin of life. They still exist,
I’m sure - in rented rooms, in small, dingy
apartments, in the parts of the city from which
families have moved.
Yet, for those of us who profess to follow
the Lord, they cannot fade completely. Even
years later, they come back to us - if only to
prompt a column about what we should have
done.
The First Step
Rev. Joseph Dean
The longest journey begins with the first
step. Our loving Father does not demand that
we become heroes, or saints or apostles,
overnight, but he does expect us to begin with a
first step in the right direction.
What is an example of this first step? One
example is our sincere prayer that God would
help us release the energy of his life that he has
already placed in us. For this we need to realize
several basic facts: God loves us; God freed us
from the power of evil through Jesus Christ;
God wants to give us a new life through the
Holy Spirit that Jesus promised to send us and
has sent us.
The next move is ours. In order to receive
the new life God is offering us, we must begin
to turn away from those things that block our
relationship with God and to accept Jesus as
our Lord. We need a change of direction. The
word, “repentance,” means this change of
direction.
Repentance involves:
1. Honesty that there are things in our lives
which are wrong and need changing.
2. Humility to be willing to change with the
awareness we need God’s help.
3. Renunciation or turning away from our
wrongdoing, deciding not to do it again.
4. Asking forgiveness for what we have done
wrong.
These are just a few examples of that first
step in the right direction which we need to
make. And in order to receive this new life God
is offering to us, we must also ask him for it in
faith, expecting to receive it because he wants
us to have it and has promised he would give it.
Our Christian lives are based on facts. We put
faith in the facts, and only then do our feelings
follow. If we feel any doubts, we deal with such
feelings by looking at the facts. When we grasp
the facts that God promised us something, we
can expect it to happen to us. We need to claim
the promise of God as we make our first step in
his direction. We shall receive what he
promised, not because we earn or merit it, but
because of what Jesus did for us and won for
us. Jesus is the greatest fact of all.
SCRIPTURE - “If you then, who are evil,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will your heavenly Father give
the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Luke
11, 13.
Store
Sun’s
Energy!
Joe Breig
The ultimate -- and permanent - solution of
our energy problems is solar energy. To reach
that solution, however, will require a great and
gradual revolution in industry, in economics
and in employment.
My authority for that statement is a man
who should know - a university physics
professor who was a consultant for President
Nixon’s Nuclear Energy Advisory Commission.
My professor assures me that thanks to
recent technological breakthroughs, it has
become perfectly possible for us to capture and
store energy from the one source that not only
is inexhaustible, but costs nothing and is totally
pollution-free - the sun.
But his solution cannot be attained easily or
soon in a society in which vast numbers of us
are employed in (for instance) the production
and distribution of oil, gasoline, gas and coal.
Large industrial changes, too, will be
necessary in order that solar energy, in the form
of hydrogen, may be substituted for gasoline,
kerosene, diesel fuels, gas and coal.
The tremendous importance of the
technological breakthrough on solar energy
may be illustrated bv a simple statistic: in an
average day, the sunlight falling on Lake Erie
contains more energy than all the energy used
up that day in the entire nation.
The long-range question that will face us,
therefore, is this: within how many years can
we, as a practical political matter, take the steps
necessary to provide ourselves with ample, free,
and pollution-free energy?
What will be needed, it seems, is a decision
along the lines of the one that placed men on
the moon. No such decision, my friend believes,
is likely to be reached within less than decades
of years.
Perhaps, indeed, the decision will not be
made until we are forced to it by the depletion,
or the hoarding by some nations, of fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, there is an interim action which
we could take, the professor tells me.
He warns vigorously against the proliferating
of nuclear-fission power plants. Not only do
they generate great amounts of heat in the
atmosphere (thermal pollution) but they leave
us with a residue of radioactive substances that
will remain dangerous for thousands upon
thousands of years.
Nuclear FUSION, however, is a different
matter, my friend tells me. Energy from this
source, he says, can, if properly developed,
meet our needs until such time as we can make
the great changes net .ary for the final
substitution of energy from the sun.
Let’s keep solar energy alive in our thinking.
It is, as the professor says, the final and
permanent solution; and it can transform the
way of life of people all around the globe.
Catalysts
Rev. James Wilmes
There are persons, (and they are more in
number than may be realized) who serve as
pivots around which things revolve, hinges upon
which great doors open and close in life. Trace
back some new development in a school, a
neighborhood, a Church, an industry to its
starting-point, and ten-to-one you will find
some pivotal personality.
They may not be the wisest, nor the
doing-est, nor the ones with the most apparent
clout. They may not be charismatic, as the
saying goes to-day, nor particularly impressive
in any way. Just much like mo6t of us.
But the pivot person is the one who asked
the right question, beginning with “Why?” or
“Why not?” or “How?” or “When?” The hinge
person is the one who brought two or three
“movers” and “shakers” together, and saw that
the sparks and the inspiration and the
decision-making took place.
That person is a “catalyst” - an agent which
speeds up action and interaction, so that a new
combination is formed out of the existing
factors in a situation. The agent doesn’t do
“anything”; but things get done because the
catalytic agent is there. Everyone does this
some of the time. More could do it and much
more of the time, for this old world’s good!
RESOLUTION: Never neglect to be a
catalyst out of human respect: fear of making a
mistake, being laughed at, asking a “foolish”
question, stepping on someone’s toes, etc. Most
questions provoke thought, and even the
supposedly “obvious” profit readers and
listeners by repeated explanation. Be the
“scapegoat,” if necessary.
SCRIPTURE: “A great crowd followed
Jesus. Philip told Jesus, ‘Our $10.00 will not
buy even a little bread for each.’ Then Andrew
put in, ‘A boy here has 5 barley loaves and 2
fishes, but what are these among so many?’
Jesus said, ‘Tell the people to sit down.’” Jo. 6,
1-10.