Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 6—February 12,1976
THE NEWMANAPOSTOLA TE
REAL THING - An advertisement on the wall gives a testimonial to the
moment as Mary knoll Father John Sivalon blesses Father Edward Stupca
in Butte, Montana. The occasion was the first Mass for Father Sivalon who
has since gone to Africa. (NC Photo)
TV Movies
USCC DIVISION FOR FILM AND BROADCASTING
A
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 15 - 7:00
p.m. (NBC) - SUPERDAD (1974) -
Intended as the usual lightweight Disney
“family” fare, but the positive picture
of family life and values presented here
is in reality a distasteful mixture of
middle-class affluence, alienation and
artificiality. (A-II)
MONDAY, FEBRURY 16 - 8:30
p.m. (ABC) - ON HER MAJESTY’S
SECRET SERVICE (1969) - George
Lazenby replaces Sean Connery as
James Bond. Entertaining enough of its
kind, there are the usual sexual
innuendos and the usual violence. In
two parts -- the second to be shown on
February 23. (A-III)
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21 -
9:00 p.m. (NBC) - DIRTY HARRY
(1971) - A brutal, thoroughly
reprehensible movie starring Clint
Eastwood as a detective quite willing to
take the law into his own hands. (C)
BOOK
EVIEWS
GET ME A TAMBOURINE! By Mary
Jane Chambers with comments on the
church by her teenaged son, Craig F.
Chambers - Hawthorn Books, Inc. 260
Madison Ave., New York, N. Y. 10016 -
Price: $6.95 (hard cover) -$3.95 (paper
back)
REVIEWED BY
TICKI LLOYD
NOTE: Mary Jane Chambers is a
well-known author, teacher and speaker. She
lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband,
Randy, and her two sons, Mark and Craig. She
is the author of three books, two of which
have been condensed in Reader’s Digest,
DON’T LAUNCH HIM HE'S MINE (1969);
HERE AM I, SEND ME; (Dec. 1973) and
GET ME A TAMBOURINE, (1975).
I met Mrs. Chambers at the Dixie Council
of Authors and Journalists on St. Simons
Island last June and since that time we have
communicated. When GET ME A
TAMBOURINE was published in December,
Mary Jane requested that I do the book
review for this paper.
GET ME A TAMBOURINE offers a
trenchant analysis of the New
Testament Church in contrast to the
traditional'church. It is a true story of
life and devotion unparalleled in faith.
This compelling book crisply written
with wit and clear lively style, will
doubtless arouse interest in the Jesus
people and the Gospel passages
concerning life as Christ would have us
live as Christians.
Throughout the book Mrs. Chambers
allows her son, Craig, to draw parallels in
today’s organized religion and the open
religion he freely practices as taught by
Jesus when He walked on earth.
There is a treat in store for those who
read this book. Armed with humor,
kindliness, grief, anxiety, hopelessness
and hope fulfilled, the author takes her
readers through pages of how she and
her family reacted when thirteen-year
old Craig denounces the traditional
church and joins the Jesus people.
Declaring to his parents that he is
“saved,” Craig joins a New Testament
Church. Disregarding his baptism in the
Methodist Church when he was a baby,
he is subsequently baptized in a river as
members of the family watch with
apprehension.
Craig sees the world as a struggle
between creative man and organized
authority, and after his baptism he
becomes a crusader for the Jesus
movement which he believes is the only
way one can rise to the life of the Holy
Spirit and live in joy and peace of soul.
To live in anything but spiritual
adventure seemed to Craig not far from
a sacrilege.
Mrs. Chambers proves no match for
her zeal-ridden son, and irritation
mounts high as Craig finds a quote in
the Bible to counteract any Bible
translation his mother offers.
The family, driven to a frenzy by
Craig’s salutations, “Hallelujah” and
“Praise the Lord,” and submitted to
daily criticism, decide to witness a
prayer service at the New Testament
Church, only to come away more
frustrated.
The author tells with candor the
exasperation encountering the family
when Craig announces he has taken
Jesus as “his personal Savior” because
he feels this experience will give
complete fulfillment to his soul. The
simple, practical reasons he gives for
joining the Jesus people are derived
from his inexhaustible knowledge of the
Scriptures.
This is a book that will appeal to
thousands of readers, laymen and
clergymen, Catholic and Protestant.
Delightfully readable, it will add new
dimensions on matters of faith, and
awaken people to the challenges of the
New Testament Church.
In her own words, Mary Jane
Chambers comments: “I don’t see why
we middle-aged adults shy away from
the biblical idea that “a little child shall
lead them.” Not only do we recoil at
this thought, we refuse even to listen to'
our young people. For some reason,,
most of us feel that there is nothing
youth can teach us.
And yet in this epic debate, I am the
one who has learned the most.”
After reading GET ME A
TAMBOURINE, one will come to
realize that the church is changing, not
collapsing.
Liberty And Justice For All:
American Catholics 1776-1976
BY FATHER JOHN WHITNEY EVANS
(NC News Service)
Perhaps the best way to understand
the Newman Apostolate is to start with
the fact that it no longer exists. Instead,
“Catholic campus ministry” flourishes
in hundreds of places. Most intriguing of
all, this situation represents a return to
forms of pastoral care and religious
education that Catholic bishops
initiated in public colleges and
universities seven decades ago this
bicentennial year.
Thus, the story of the Newman
movement unfolds in three states.
The first was characterized by strong
episcopal leadership aiding professors,
students and priests who organized “the
chaplain movement” in state
universities. Even skeptics termed this
diocesan-based innovation a “new link”
in the evolution of American Catholic
life. It promised dynamic involvement
with the emerging American university.
The second phase witnessed the rise
of student associations after 1910.
These sought to regain lost episcopal
leadership in a period dominated by a
twofold apologetic: Newman Clubs
trying to defend members against
sometimes hostile teachings while also
trying to validate their own existence
for sometimes unsympathetic
churchmen. This latter effort
culminated in the formation of the
National Newman Apostolate in 1962.
The present stage, Catholic campus
ministry, once again enjoys strong
diocesan leadership. Diocesan directors,
women Religious, and lay persons
assume increasingly important roles
along with ordained chaplains. This
signals a return to the dynamic pastoral
engagement of the first phase and
substitutes positive principles of
evangelization for the defensive mood
of the second.
The Newman movement had its
origins at the University of Wisconsin in
1883 when Catholics, seeking social and
intellectual companionship, formed the
Melvin Club. Ten years later one of its
members, Timothy L. Harrington, a
medical student at the University of
Pennsylvania, used this club as a model
for the first Newman Club, which
became the inspiration for the Catholic
student movement that flowered after
1915.
Meanwhile, Pope Pius X in 1905
issued an encyclical letter on religious
education, in which he commanded that
“schools of religion” be founded in
every center of higher learning that did
not teach about God.
The first American bishop to obey
the Pope was Archbishop Sebastian G.
Massmer of Milwaukee. In 1906 he
appointed Father Henry C. Hengell to
the University of Wisconsin as chaplain
and authorized the erection of a chapel
and educational hall to be known as The
Catholic College.
Other bishops followed his example.
By 1910, 17 dioceses had announced
full-time chaplaincies that included
chapels, club houses, or educational
building. Foremost was the canonically
erected campus parish at the University
of Texas. Here Paulist Fathers set up
accredited religion courses and
Dominican Sisters opened a women’s
dormitory.
But soon this enthusiastic initial
development ended. Members of the
Catholic Educational Association
claimed the chaplain movement would
destroy church colleges, undermine the
Catholic University of America, and
even endanger parish schools.
The bishops did not fully agree.
Confronted with the issue in 1907, they
refused to excommunicate parents with
children in non-Catholic colleges.
Nevertheless, the spirit of the time and
Church law inhibited more
wholehearted involvement with
Catholics in secular institutions.
So, after 1908, when they formed the
Catholic Student Association of
America, Catholics in nonsectarian
colleges were largely on their own. This
association passed on in 1918, but by
then the Newman Club Federation,
originally named the Federation of
College Catholic Clubs, was three years
old.
Foremost in this effort was Father
John W. Keogh. In 1913 he became
chaplain of the Newman Club at the
Some time ago, thanks to the New
York Film Council, we had the privilege
of seeing a film that makes a unique
claim upon the extra dimension that a
Catholic critic must bring to his work. It
is called THE PROMISED LAND, and,
unfortunately it is never going to reach
a theater near you nor near anyone else
for that matter. It is a Chilean picture
set in the early 30s.
Nowhere did the world-wide
Depression strike with more devastating
effect than in Chile. Whole masses of
people, following the railroad lines,
wandered about in search of work and
sustenance. Based upon an historical
event, THE PROMISED LAND takes up
the story of one group of refugees who
find a distant, fertile valley that seems
to belong to no one. Guided by a seedy
intellectual called Pinstripe, because of
his threadbare suit, they build there a
village of their own. Later they receive
word from the distant outside world
that a socialist state has been set up in
Chile by decree of a president with the
unlikely name of Marmaduke Grover,
and they rejoice, believing that this
makes legitimate what they have done.
Then, under the leadership of a simple
peasant named Jose Marin, whose
intellect and social awareness the
prodding of Pinstripe had awakened, a
band of village men march on the
provincial capital and, after its bloodless
occupation, decree a socialist regime
throughout the province, believing all
the while that they are acting in the
name of the government. The truth is,
however, that the Grover regime lasted
no more than ten days, and the military
University of Pennsylvania. In 1915 he
became chaplain general of the new
national federation, a position he held
until 1937. Father Keogh organized
more than 600 clubs and brought
dozens of priests into the cause. In the
1930s he helped the Confraternity of
Christian Doctrine to develop special
programs for college students.
By 1950 Newman Clubs enrolled
80,000 of the 310,000 Catholics in
non-Catholic colleges; Catholic
institutions registered 293,000 students
that year. Realizing that this statistical
gap would widen and that the need for
spiritual leadership would heighten,
campus priests organized the National
Newman Chaplains’ Association. Led
chiefly by Father Paul Hallinan of
Cleveland, the association joined the
student federation to develop sound
liturgical and educational programs.
Some officials still argued that canon
law forbade bishops to finance Newman
Centers because this would encourage
Catholics to attend non-Catholic
institutions. But Newman leaders
meanwhile developed their movement
so effectively that eventually former
critics began to advocate its full
acceptance as a strong arm of the
Church in higher education, and in 1962
is building up its forces in the area to
smash these upstart peasants. Jose Marin
is forced to lead his band back to their
home valley, and shortly afterwards a
huge government force overwhelms
their village and massacres all the
inhabitants.
THE PROMISED LAND is a mixture
of many styles, and it is shot through
with imperfections of every sort; but it
has a wry, ironic humor, and at its best,
a sweep and a naive power much like
that of primitive art. The Virgin Mary,
for example, portrayed in realistic
fashion, walks among these poor
peasants encouraging them and
strengthening them. And then when the
representatives of vested power stage a
protest in front of Jose Marin’s
headquarters in the occupied capital,
one of his followers, seeing the statue of
Mary that they carry, observes: “You
know, I think there must be one Virgin
for them and another for us.” The film
conveys with moving force the sense of
a dream realized then lost forever, of
the oppressed of the earth gaining
through hard work and sacrifice a brief
place in the sun only to pay with their
lives for their temerity in defying the
power of their exploiters.
What gives it still greater force,
however, and thus makes an even more
cogent demand upon our sympathies is
the character of the events that
followed its completion. The Allende
regime fell in a rightist coup that placed
a repressive military junta in power.
This rush of history not only gives a
prophetic coloring to THE PROMISED
the bishops mandated the National
Newman Apostolate as “the work of the
Catholic Church in the secular campus
community.”
But the years following Vatican II led
the Newman movement back to its
earlier inspiration.
Council teachings on the Church in
the modem world, collegiality, liturgy,
ecumenism, and the apostolate of the
laity confirmed central aims of the
Newman movement, and swept aside
canonical doubts.
The rapid increase of Catholics
enrolled in state universities and
community colleges, the emergence of
religious studies in formerly secular
schools, and cooperative programs
between these and Catholic colleges
underlined the usefulness of Catholic
campus ministry for each diocese.
Today, more than 200 diocesan
directors coordinate the ministry of
about 2,000 Sisters, priests, and lay
persons serving more than 2 million
Catholics on the 2,500 campuses of the
nation. Emphasis on liturgy,
counselling, Bible study, prayer groups,
retreats, and social justice sets the
pattern in most places.
LAND but brings home its theme with
an almost unbearable pathos. For
although the director, Miguel Littin,
escaped to Mexico, two other
participants were not so fortunate.
Jorge Muller, a cameraman, and Carmen
Bueno, an actress, were arrested by the
Chilean security police at the end of
November, 1974, though the
government has never acknowledged it,
and they have b6en imprisoned ever
since and subjected to torture. Carmen
Bueno, a beautiful young woman, plays
the wife of Jose Marin, and at the end
of the film she is slashed to death by
sabrewielding soldiers. Thus one would
have to be nearly devoid of emotion to
emerge from a screening of THE
PROMISED LAND unshaken.
The cases of Jorge Muller and Carmen
Bueno are not unique, of course, nor is
it just rightist regimes that practice
oppression of this sort, (at this writing
the name of an imprisoned Soviet
filmmaker named Sergo Paradjanov has
come to our notice), but focusing
attention upon their plight will help the
cause of the oppressed all over the
world. If any of our readers are
interested in doing something along this
line, they may contact the following
sources of information: Emergency
Committee to Defend Latin American
Filmmakers, 333 Avenue of the
Americas, New York, N. Y. 10014. For
the Soviet director; Peter Broderick,
2205 42nd St., NW, Washington, D. C.
20007. THE PROMISED LAND may be
rented from Tricontinental Films,
whose address is the same as that of the
Emergency Committee.
t —
Special Film Feature
....... j
LIFE IN MUSIC
BY THE DAMEANS
Take It to the Limit
All alone at the end of the evening
And the bright lights have faded to blue
I was thinking about a woman that loved me
I never knew
You know I’ve always been a dreamer
Spent my life running round
And it’s so hard to change
Can’t seem to settle down
But the dreams I’ve seen lately
Keeps on turning out
And burning out
And turning out the same
So put me on a highway
And show me a sign
And take it to the limit
One more time
You can spend all your time making money
You can spend all your love making time
If it all fell to pieces tomorrow
Would you still be mine
And when you’re looking for your freedom
Nobody seems to care
And you can’t find the door
Can’t find it anywhere
When there’s nothing to believe in
Still you’re coming back
You’re running back
You’re coming back for more
So put me on a highway
And show me a sign
And take it to the limit
One more time
By R. Meisner-D. Henley-G. Frey
Sung by The Eagles
(c) Benchmark Music-Kicking Bear Music 1975 (ASCAP)
“Take It To The Limit” is the new release from the hot Los Angeles group,
“The Eagles.” While the song is not as immediately attractive as their other
tunes, e.g. “Best of My Love” or “Lyin’ Eyes,” it has an interesting subject.
The Eagles’ new cut is a slice of life song about a man who “can’t seem to
settle down.” He is drawn from one attraction to another and he finds it “so
hard to change.” Recently, however, his free-wheeling style is catching up with
him and things have been burning out all around. Suddenly he is afraid that
everything is falling apart and he will be left with nothing to hold onto or to
believe in. And so he sits all alone at the end of the evening soberly recalling
passing memories while the lights fade.
The most interesting feature of this song is that this man who has found his
life so unfulfilled keeps coming back strongly. He cannot resist life’s urge to get
back on the highway and try again. The normal bystander would expect such a
frustrated searcher to be crushed and to give up his journey, or at least to be
cautious after all that he has endured. But, no, he wants, needs, and believes that
life has a goal if he can only discover the right highway and dare to take it to the
limit.
When I first heard “Take It To The Limit,” I thought the message was the
emptiness a person experiences when life is too self-centered. But there was
something about the song which struck close to my own life - in a positive way.
Gradually I came to see that the song could very easily say something about the
restless heart which all religious people have. The believer is both gifted and
troubled with an instinct for life which is never satisfied. Always there is the
dream which launches one back onto life’s highway turning him into a pilgrim
who is never completely at home.
The great sinner and saint, Augustine, was constantly moved by a heart which
sought to take life to the limit. Very much like the Eagles’ song, Augustine aired
his restlessness and emptiness until he finally realized that it was not so much a
burden to be lost as it was a reminder that he would be satisfied when he came
to the day when he met the Person-Without-Limits.
It is not good to push a song for more than it intends, but the image of the
highway and the title phrase, “Take It To The Limit,” really do say something
fine to those of us who restlessly move on. It reminds us of our belief that we’re
“coming back for more.” “Take it to the limit one more time.”
(All correspondence should be directed to: The Dameans, P. O. Box 2108, Baton Rouge,
Louisiana, 70821).