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PAGE 2—January 1,1976
DELIVERING THE WORD ~ Pope Paul VI
proclaims his Christmas message from the loggia above
the main entrance to St. Peter’s Basilica. In the
traditional greeting, the Pope praised the world’s
young people for having unmasked the “specious, or at
POPE IN CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
least insufficient, wisdom” of previous generations.
Today’s youth, the pontiff said, are returning to
Christ’s message of “revelation and renewal.” (NC
Photo)
Moynihan And The U.N.
66 Youth Hears Christ’s Word”
BY JOHN T. MUTHIG
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Despite a
deafening uproar from the media, from
politics and from older generations,
young people today are returning to
Christ’s message of “revelation and
renewal,” Pope Paul VI declared in his
1975 Christmas Message.
Pope Paul read his message from the
Loggia above the main entrance to St.
Peter’s Basilica. Afterwards he imparted
his blessing “Urbi et Orbi” -- to the city
and the world. About 100,000 heard
him in the bright sunshine of St. Peter’s
Square.
The 78-year-old Pope called youth
the “unforeseen yet predestined
hearers” who “know how to accept the
proclamation of the Good News as a
message of relevation and renewal.”
“Almost with subversive impetus,”
the Pope said, young people have
unmasked the “specious, or at least
insufficient wisdom of older
generations.”
He addressed the youth of the world:
“The emptiness, young people, has
devastated you, and an intimate and
powerful longing has brought you back,
almost unconsciously, to the sphere of
an invitation that cannot be rejected
‘Come to Me, all you who are . . .’”
Older generations, the Pope said,
“inoculated” young people with “the
insanity of war for power, of
materialism as the only justice, of
pleasure as a confused attitude toward
the higher duties and destinies of life.”
Large numbers of youth attended the
Christmas blessing and morning Mass, as
well as .the midnight Mass in St. Peter’s
Square marking the end of the Holy
Year.
At that midnight celebration, Pope
Paul said that Holy Year has brought
about a new covenant between God and
20th-century life. He claimed that the
world “in staggering fear” had come
“near to the abyss of fatal ruin.”
In his noontime Christmas message,
the Pope declared:
“At this precise point the drama is
either ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ for the modern
generation which has shown that it has
understood the possibility and
happiness of an encounter with Christ.”
This understanding, he said, came
about for youth despite ,‘the
overwhelming uproar of a thousand
voices that fill the atmosphere of
modern life with the powerfully
amplified words of the renowned means
of social communication or the
attracting fascination of the images and
sounds which transfer the language of
the realm of thought to that of the
senses.”
He spoke also of the obstacle of “the
incalculable but formidable narcotic
influence of the pressure of public
opinion and of political propaganda.”
Such pressure “almost insensibly
deprives personal freedom of its active
exercise.” In the place of personal
freedom goes “the passivity of another’s
domination.” n
These actors, the Pope said, have not
prevented young people from grasping
the “delicate, tender and true
wave-length of the spirit.”
Concluding, Pope Paul prayed: “May
God grant for today’s youth and for all"
of us, sons and daughters of the Church
and citizens of the world, that the fruit
of the Holy Year will be the acceptance
of this word that is the expression of an
endless ‘Blessed Christmas’.”
Following the message, the Pope gave
a solemn blessing and, in 12 languages,
wished “a blessed Christmas in the joy
and peace of Christ.” For the first time
he included the African language
Swahili.
BY JIM CASTELLI
One of the most colorful recent
developments in political life has been
the flamboyant and controversial
performance of the new United States
ambassador to the United Nations,
Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Moynihan has attracted a wide
following because of his outspoken
defense of American interests, a
similarly outspoken defense of Israel,
including opposition to a UN resolution
defining Zionism as a form of racism,
and his criticism of Ugandan leader Idi
Amin as a “racist murderer.”
But one unfortunate, if unintended,
result of Moynihan’s attention-drawing
actions has been a revial of support for
American withdrawal from the UN.
Because of this, Moynihan’s
performance needs a better perspective
- it is the UN which is the real issue, not
Moynihan himself.
One veteran Catholic observer of
foreign affairs describes Moynihan’s
performance this way: “It’s easy to
draw attention to the drunk on the
block, bui it’s much more difficult to
draw attention to the alcoholic on the
block,”
In this analogy, Moynihan is
successful in drawing attention to the
drunk in the UN, whether it’s the
speech of an Amin or the anti-Israeli
actions of the General Assembly, but is
much less successful in drawing
attention to the more subtle and
complex problems facing the UN.
In an effort to put the recent General
Assembly debate in perspective, for
example, the United Nations
Association of the U S.A. has circulated
a brochure emphasizing that political
activity accounts for a minority of UN
action; its most important work is done
through agencies such as the World
Health Organization and the Food and
Agricultural Organization, which
perform valuable services through
nonpolitical international cooperation.
There is also a danger that
Moynihan’s counter-offensive at the UN
will lead to complacency about
America’s own performance.
For example, Moynihan recently
introduced a proposal at the UN urging
the release of all political prisoners
jailed for nonviolent acts. Moynihan
noted that the United States had
supported similar resolutions aimed at
Chile and South Africa.
General Assembly to discredit
democracies, while severe human rights
violations in other countries remained
hidden.
On one level, Moynihan’s argument
has been taken as a defense of Chile and
South Africa, which are not
democracies. One of the most difficult
problems in public life is to talk about a
“lesser evil,” if that is in fact the case
with those two countries, without
seeming to portray it as a greater good.
On another level, Sen. Frank Church
(D-Ida.) has pointed out that “Mr.
Moynihan’s laudable position would be
immensely strengthened if the U.S. aid
program was itself less political and
more supportive of human rights.”
The Ford Administration, for
example, opposed a provision in the
current foreign aid bill which would
allow Congress to stop American aid to
a country involved in systematic
violation of human rights if the
Administration could not show that the
aid was being used for the benefit of
that nation’s needy.
MISSOURI
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (NC) - The
Missouri Catholic Conference (MCC) has
appointed a woman to its top
administrative position.
Miss Peggy Keilholz, the new
executive director, thus becomes the
second woman to head a state Catholic
conference in this country - and the
first laywoman to do so.
The MCC coordinates activity for the
Catholic Church in Missouri and serves
as a liaison body with other churches
and government offices.
Miss Keilholz is a native of St. Louis.
She received a degree from Fontbonne
College there in 1968 and is currently
working toward a masters’ degree in
theology at St. Louis University.
Prior to becoming associate director
of the MCC in 1973, Miss Keilholz had
served as administrative assistant for the
Missouri Clean Water Commission for
five years.
She is a lector and lay minister of
Communion and serves as outside
AUTHOR THINKS SO
At the same time, American military
aid has been continually extended to
countries in violation of human rights.
In 1975, for example. Sen. Alan
Cranston (D-Calif.) noted that some 80
percent of American foreign aid went to
“57 authoritarian governments.”
t
In compiling his list of those
authoritarian countries, Cranston used
material from the samk source - “the
private organization Freedom House -
which Moynihan used in determining
the number of cosponsors of the Chile
and South Africa resolutions which held
political prisoners.
The National Council of
Churches (NCC) and the Jesuit Office of
Social Ministries have both opposed
their passage of S.l, a highly criticized
proposed reform of the criminal code.
S.l has been called the “Watergate
Memorial Act” because it was developed
by former Attorney General John
Mitchell. The NCC and the Jesuit social
ministry office concluded that it is
“politically impossible” to make all the
needed changes in the massive 750-page
bill.
coordinator for Lifers Inc., an
organization of prison inmates formed
to help men serving life sentences in the
state penitentiary here.
The MCC’s new director has also been
a volunteer worker with the League of
Women Voters and the Jefferson City
Interfaith Day Camp for children.
Her appointment was announced by
Bishop Michael F. McAuliffe of
Jefferson City.
The conference has been headed by
acting executive director Louis C.
DeFeo Jr., who now continues as
general counsel for the body.
Recent activities of the MCC include
attempts to obtain increased aid for
dependent children, prison reform, and
support for family, farms.
Miss Keilholz said that other
priorities of the conference will
continue to include securing a human
life amendment, and equal treatment
for children in non-public schools.
The other woman head of a state
Catholic conference is Sister Loretta
Anne Madden of Colorado.
Woman Heads Conference
Urges Rosary Be Taught To Young
Church In State Of Schism?
BY AL ANTCZAK
LOS ANGELES (NC) - A new
educational effort to teach the Rosary
to young people was called for at the
annual forum here of Catholics United
for the Faith (CUF).
The call was voiced by Father Eamon
Carroll of the Catholic University of
America, Washington, D. C., one of the
architects of the U.S. bishops’ pastoral
on Mary, Behold Thy Mother.
Despite “the strange silence of the
past 10 years, the Rosary remains a
vibrant devotion,” Father Carroll said.
“Both the Holy Father and the bishops
continue to affirm its importance.
“A new educational effort is required
of us to teach the Rosary to the
children and to the young people who
may have missed it along the way.
“Our Catholic faith asks of us not a
fearful defense or counterattack, but
charity and compassion.”
Father Carroll continued:
“Along the road of renewal and
reconciliation we need a clear and calm
proclamation of Catholic truth about
the Mother of God. But we may need
even more the joyful celebration of the
Blessed Mother to draw us together in
unity as the disciples of Christ were
drawn about Peter and Mary in the
upper room to pray for the Holy
Spirit.”
Father Carroll told 300 forum
participants from various parts of the
United States that the degree of “our
compassionate love for one another is
the substance of the measure of our love
for the Blessed Virgin Mary.”
Divine Word Father Robert Studeny,
former dean of studies of his order’s
Rome seminary told the forum that
“just at a time when the virginal
conception of Christ is being challenged
by some Catholics, a recent survey of
5,000 Lutherans showed that 87
percent accept the formula: Jesus was
conceived of the Holy Spirit without a
human father.”
Mary must play a part in making men
Christ-like, said Father Luke Zimmer,
director of the Apostolate of Christian
Renewal. “However, as in her life, she
must be in the background and Christ
must become the center of our lives.”
To put on Christ, as St. Paul exhorts,
men must do five things, Father Zimmer
continued. Men must develop a deep
personal prayer life, participate in
community prayer life, lead a life of
fasting and penance, imitate Christ in
helping the poor and enter into the
preaching ministry of Jesus. He said:
“All we have to do is to preach what
Jesus did. The message is dynamic of
itself. We must plant the seed. Some one
else will water it and God will grant the
increase. I believe that in season and out
of season we must continue to preach
the message of Christ and only the
message of Christ. I believe we may not
lower ourselves to doing things that
produce a negative, critical and
destructive effect. May this be a
challenge to all of you. Go forth and
live Christ under the mantle of Mary.”
But, he said, 23 of the 60 cosponsors
of the resolution aimed at Chile and 16
of the 23 cosponsors of the resolution
aimed at South Africa themselves held
political prisoners.
“The selective morality of the United
Nations in matters of human rights
threatens the integrity not only of the
United Nations but of human rights
themselves,” Moynihan argued.
He quoted the British poet Stephen
Spender who, after viewing the Spanish
Civil War first-hand, said, “It came to
me that unless I cared about every
murdered child indiscriminately, I
didn’t really care about children being
murdered at all.”
Moynihan noted that one reason it
was easy to criticize Chile and South
Africa for human rights violations was
that enough freedom remained in those
countries that information about dissent
and violations of human rights was still
available.
Introducing Israel into the argument,
Moynihan argued that the issue of
human rights was being used by the UN
SPOKANE, Wash. .(NC) - The
Catholic Church “is in a real state of
schism. The fact of schism exists, but
not canonically,” according to English
Catholic author Christopher Derrick.
“I expect to die in a very much
smaller Catholic Church,” the
54-year-old ex-RAF pilot said in an
interview with the Inland Register,
Spokane diocesan newspaper.
According to Derrick, the Church is
as sharply polarized as ever, but the
issue does not receive the headlines it
once did.
“Within the Catholic package, two
different products are being
manufactured,” he said, “not just in
detail and emphasis, but fundamentally
different.”
Many have lost their faith but have
not the courage to admit it, Derrick
charged. “We are surrounded by people
who are looking for some way of being
Catholic without actually being
Catholic.”
He criticized those who water down
Church doctrine. The remedy, he said,
“is to stop thinking in subjective terms
of sociology, psychology, fashion,
politics, etc., and think instead in
objective terms, asking what is, in fact,
the case . .. But that is very difficult,
because in our culture the desire for
truth ... is tremendously weakened.”
Commenting on the Church in the
United States, Derrick said Americans
are attracted to extremes.
He cited the example of sexual
attitudes. Americans seem to “find it
hard to have a middle position between
extreme prudishness about sex and
extreme far-out permissiveness.”
While the American Church is
polarized, he said, his impression is that
Catholics in the Netherlands, France
and Canada - “in that approximate
order” - are more divided on Church
matters.
Episcopal Priest Says Catholic Church Unity Effort Leader
BY WILLIAM R. MACKAYE
WASHINGTON (NC) - An Episcopal
priest, preaching by special arrangement
at a Catholic Mass in the National
Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
here, said that the Catholic Church is
now the leader of the effort to reunite
the world’s divided Christians.
The preacher, the Rev. J. Robert
Wright, professor of church history at
the Episcopal General Theological
Seminary in New York, said that the
Anglican Communion, to which he
belongs, was the leading force in
ecumenism earlier in this century but
that the initiative shifted to Catholics
following the Second Vatican Council.
Father Wright preached the homily at
a special Mass marking the 50th
anniversary of the founding of
Atonement Seminary here, the
theological training center of the Friars
of the Atonement. Principal
concelebrant at the rite was Archbishop
William W. Baum of Washington, who
also gave permission for Dr. Wright to
be the homilist and described his
appearance as “not only an honor, but a
grace.”
In an interview following the Mass,
Father Wright said his views on the
Catholic Church’s current role in
ecumenical affairs were shared by at
least two Anglican bishops who have
key roles in ecumenical affairs, Bishop
J. R. H. Moorman of Ripon, England,
and Bishop C. Kilmer Myers of
California.
“Since Rome has entered the
ecumenical movement in force,” Father
Wright said, “most Christians of most
traditions feel that insofar as there is a
human center of unity in the church, it
lies in Rome. . . .
“Although there is widespread
disagreement whether Rome should be
the center, most non-Roman Catholics
believe the center is in Rome, at least as
a practical matter. Most feel that if
Rome is willing to take any initiative, it
should be followed - not blindly, but as
coming from the largest church in
Christendom.
“Rome is now taking that initiative
by following up explicitly on the
Vatican II principle that there can be
corporate reunion (of separated
churches) as well as individual
conversions (to the Catholic Church).”
In his homily Father Wright described
Catholic ecumenical initiatives as
“prudent yet forthright.”
He also noted with pleasure, “I have
frequently been asked to speak at
various sorts of ecumenical programs
before, but this, I think, is the first time
I have been asked to preach the Gospel
by any group of Christians except my
fellow Anglicans.”
Citing Scripture, the homilist
declared that “holiness, truth and
mission ... are the three major
characteristics of the one united church
for which Christ prays.
“They correspond, in a way, to the
work of Christ Himself as priest, as
prophet or teacher, and as pastor or
servant, and they likewise set the tone
for a seminary . . . The outlines of His
church, the general principles of the
17th chapter of John’s Gospel,
therefore, help to ensure that a
seminary to train future priests will
almost certainly have its foci in the
chapel, the classroom and the field
context.”
The Friars of the Atonement, who
arranged for Father Wrights’
appearance, have historically had a
special concern for Christian unity and a
special interest in Anglicanism. Their
founder, Father Paul James Francis
Wattson, was trained in theology at
General Theological Seminary where
Father Wright teaches, and the
community was founded in 1898 as an
Episcopal religious order as was its
companion women’s community, the
Sisters of the Atonement.
In 1908 Father Wattson founded the
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity,
then known as the Church Unity
Octave.
In 1909 the complete society of both
the friars and the Sisters, who were led
at that time by their foundress, Mother
Lurana White, entered the Catholic
Church. A major factor in their decision
was the ridicule they suffered among
Episcopalians of that day for advocating
the corporate reunion of the churches
and for preaching the primacy of the
papacy.
Headquarters of the society since it
was established has been at Graymoor,
near Garrison, N.Y. Atonement
Seminary, which is adjacent to the
campus of the Catholic University of
America, was founded in 1925.
The friars, always a small community,
now number 232. Most of them are
stationed in the United States, although
they also maintain small houses in Italy,
England and a few other countries.