Newspaper Page Text
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GEORGIA BULLETIN,
JANUARY 11, 1961
the
Archdiocese of Atlanta
GEORGIA BULLETIN
SERVING OEORGIAS 71 NORTHERN COUNTIES
Official Organ of the Archdiocese of Atlanta
Published Every Week at the Decatur DeKalb News
PUBLISHER - Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan
MANAGING EDITOR Gerard E. Sherry CONSULTING EDITOR Rev. K. Donald Kiernan
Member of the Catholic Press Association
and Subscriber to N.C.W.C. News Service
Telephone 237-7296
2699 Peachtree N. E.
P.O. Box 11667
Northside Station
Atlanta 5, Ga.
Second Class Re-entry Permit Pending at Decatur, Georgia
U.S.A. $5.00
Canada $5.50
Foreign $6.50
(Part 2)
In our first editorial we stres
sed the role of the Catholic news
paper in community as well as in
strictly religious affairs. To
many, this presents problems. By
its very entry into the commu
nity, the Catholic newspaper
takes a stand and might thereby
enter the arena of controversy.
This is a perfectly valid role,
as long as controversy is a side
issue, and not the main role. The
Catholic newspaper should not
stir up things simply to be con
troversial; but, if going about
its legitimate role, controversy
is created, then so be it! All
the peace and tranquility that we
yearn for will not be achieved by
standing aside like a Pilate, a
timid soul, afraid to stand up
and be counted on the important
issues of the day.
IN ATTEMPTING to be a Vital
Arm of Catholic opinion, the Dio
cesan newspaper will tackle many
issues: racial integration, anti
communism, the Role of the
laity, Federal Aid to Education,
Parent - Teacher cooperation,
public morality and the like. The
Catholic Church is universal.
Therefore, its news and com
ment will be all-embracing.
There will be some who will at
tempt to pin upon us labels such
as Liberal or Conservative. But
we want no part of this seman
tic tangle. We will , no doubt,
be Liberal in some things, and
Conservative *n others. In all
things, we will attempt to be what
we are, Catholic - - that is,
members of a world wide family
of brothers, united in Christ, a
family which is centered on God,
and yet concerned for men; a
family which is in this world,
and is interested in this world,
but which seeks a better world in
the hereafter. The trunk of our
family tree is two thousand years
old, but its roots go backthrough
the Jewish experience to the most
remote ages of men; and its
boughs reach out to the most re
mote future. Our job is to so
portray this family that all others
will see it for what it is.
TAKE THE question on anti
communism. Most of us have not
yet matured sufficiently to under
stand the tremendous spiritual as
well as material evil of Marxist
doctrine. Many of us are anti
communist only to save outmoded
political theories; only to save
our material comforts -- a little
suburban split level, the televi
sions, the refrigerators and the
family car. Many of us seem to
think that these are the only im
portant goals in life. We seem to
ignore the growing inroads of
modern secularism on our spiri
tual formation. We tend to view
spiritual and moral problems
only in the light of how much we
gain, how much material com
fort we can amass. Our anti
communism and our pro-Catho-
licism is becoming more and
more a question of material
values
Our times are wracked with the
problem of race. We are faced
with a choice of being heroically
faithful to our country's most an
cient and honorable ideals, or be
ing locked in a trap made by
money and supported by neurosis.
At this time of such a frightful
choice, America must get help
from her Catholic people. When
the injured man of color looks at
us he must find a helping hand,
not another book for a kick. When
the warped man who hates turns
to us, we must not let him find
fire for his predudice, but instead
the cool balm of reason and the
reassuring strength of maturity.
By very definition, a Catholic is
an integrationist. With prudence
and charity, we must make this
clear to all who will listen.
OUR POLICIES have no politi
cal connotations whatsoever.
Editorially, we are neither Re
publican nor Democrat, Liberal
or Conservative. We shall at
tempt only to be Catholic. We
do not write to please or to
displease. Alas, we know we will
do both as time goes on. We are
consoled by the fact that no two
people are alike. We must con
stantly remind ourselves that
we are not dealing with a mass,
but with human persons. Per
sons, and only persons, have
our interest.
When we meet someone, we
should not see blue eyes, red
hair, or green pants, and on this
basis of color, make a judgment
about him; but rather when
we meet him, the person,
we should make a judgment
as he is, not as all red-heads
are, or all blue-eyed persons
are. This is the very point of
the whole problem; how can we
assure to every man whatever
his race, color, or creed, the
right to be treated as a person,
and not as a lump in a mass.
THIS, THEN, is a sample of
what we will attempt to do edi
torially through The Georgia Bul
letin. If at times we hurt our
readers, there is no intent. If
at times we please, we shall be
glad, but only in so far as we
have been of service. This is a
basic point. The Georgia Bulle
tin is meant to be of service to
its readers. It is their news
paper in the Metropolitan See of
Atlanta.
Finally, we shall welcome ex
pressions from our subscribers
be they good or bad. All that we
ask is that such letters be con
cise and written in t a charitable
manner. We, for our part, will
endeavor to be worthy of your
support.
What We Are About
»»
THESE KIDS MUST BE STOPPED"
LITURGICAL WEEK
Feast of The Holy Family
BY FR. ROBERT W. HOVDA
(priest of the Pittsburgh Oratory)
FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY, JAN. 13.
FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY. The Incarnation
means that God entered into, shared, embraced the
human condition, except for sin. And the human con
dition involves family and social life, interdepen
dence, mutual respect and reverence.
The reality of the Mystical Body is divine con
firmation of this fact of our experience. We are
saved, we find redemption, in a community of sal
vation, and our saved lives are lived in the family
and in larger social units.
THE MODERN Feast of the Holy Family was in
vented to impress us Christians again with the
necessity of making these social
relations supra-human by join
ing them to Christ and living -
them in Christ. Perhaps an even
better way of reaching this di
vine truth is the more recent
effort to restore to our public
worship, especially the Mass,
its social and communal cha
racter.
Those Catholics who are still
unable to realize the necessity
of active participation in the Mass (by cooperat
ing in a common prayer and song) have forgotten
that the Eucharist is the community’s worship and
that it is worship of one another (recognition of
worth, reverence, respect) at the same time as it
is adoration of God.
It is social worship, involving the participation
of everyone, which fulfills the instruction of today’s
First Reading: "...kindness, humility...patience...
Bear with one another...forgive...have charity...
peace...in one body...teach one another by psalms,
hymns....”
MONDAY, JAN. 14, ST. HILARY, BISHOP, DOC
TOR. The Church celebrates her great teachers
not because they possessed wisdom but because
they shared it with their brothers, not because of
their insights into the meaning of Jesus Christ but
because they opened their hearts and minds to their
fellow travelers (if we may allow ourselves the ex
pression), their fellow pilgrims.
So the familiar Gospel of salt and light (first
part) and of orthodoxy (second) and the First Read
ing's underscoring of the urgency of Jesus’ Mes
sage—these are lessons in social responsibility.
LITURGY AND LIFE
"The mouth of the saint speaks wisdom” (Gradual).
TUESDAY, JAN. 15, ST. PAUL, HERMIT. The
Christ has come (Christmas) and has manifested
himself as ”our leader” (Epiphany) that we might
be elevated from doubt to certainty - , from isola
tion and estrangement to community, from hope
less wandering to purposeful direction.
This identification of ourselves with Jesus, with
the Mystery of His pilgrimage through time and the
world, is the great work of the liturgy. It is beau
tifully summed up in the First Reading: "...so
that I man know him and the power of his resur
rection and the fellowship of his sufferings: be
come like to him in death, in the hope that some
how I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 16, ST. MARCELLUS, POPE,
MARTYR. Shepherd of shepherds, bishop of bishops,
the pope who teaches with his blood has truly been
a "pattern to the flock” (First Reading). His is
indeed a graphic identification with the Master, and
a far cry from the manner and trappings of the
pompous, petty officialdom in terms of which so
many of us still think of the Church’s ordained
ministry.
THURSDAY, JAN. 17, ST. ANTHONY, ABBOT.
Monks may be freed (as are women Religious
and priests in the West) from the responsibilities
of normal family life. But their salvation is no more
solitary than that of the rest of us, for their vows
bring them into a different kind of family, no less
social, no less demanding of self-denial, but illu
strating another aspect of the Gospel message.
“The Son of Man is coming” (Gospel) is a vivid
expectation in the Church and must be vividly seen
even in her earthly life.
FRIDAY, JAN. 18, MASS AS ON SUNDAY. Lest
that concern for our brothers and sisters, for our
family and social nature, become an excuse for
unfaithfulness to God, the Gospel teaches that we
serve others best, as Jesus served us all, by
absolute fidelity to the Father’s Will. Christian
love is not a matter of following the other sheep,
of being borne along by every breeze or fashion.
SAT., JANUARY 19, ST. MARY ON SATURDAY.
Mother and Bride (Gospel and Communion Hymn)
are the Virgin's great titles of veneration. Her
ministry is, as is the ministry of every Christian,
one which points to and serves another. She seeks
no spotlight, makes no claims. "Behind her the
virgins shall be led to the king” (Entrance Hymn).
All is for the King. Our devotion to her must not
obscure this central truth.
Reflections on The Epiphany
BY REV. LEONARD F. X. MAYHEW
"On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love
gave to me...” It was King Alfred, the story goes,
who decreed twelve days of feasting from Christmas
to the feast of the Epiphany. Worn out as our pa
tience is with Yuletide tinsel and commercial
caroling from Thanksgiving onward, it is small
wonder that we feel no taste for twelve more days
of Christmas.
If Advent is every restored as a period of real
longing, maybe then we will not be willing to re
linquish our Christmas merriment on December 26.
However, one of the costliest consequences of our
present custom is that It has caused us to lose sight
of the beauty of the feast of the Epiphany.
EPIPHANY means a revelation, a manifestation,
an enlightening. Specifically, here it stands for the
gracious manifestation of himself that God offers to
us, his creatures and his child
ren. Nowhere has this been ac
complished more profoundly
and more mercifully than in the
Incarnation, when God took on
human flesh and human life.
God Is love and light incom
prehensible. When God became
man, that divine light flooded
over our world and that love be-
came tangible and obvious.
The manifestation of God to men is so extra
ordinary a mystery, a work so full of mercy; it
constitutes one of the elements so essential to the
Incarnation, that In the first centuries the Church
had no special feast in honor of the birth of Jesus
at Bethlehem. The early Christians celebrated on
January 6 the feast of the "Divine Manifestations -
Epiphany.” It passed from the Eastern Churches
to the West and, until recently, outranked in solem
nity even the great feast of Christ’s nativity. The
Epiphany is still one of the ten Holydays of Obli
gation for the universal Church, although we in
America do not observe it as such.
THE LITURGY reaches the second high point of
the Christmas cycle on the Epiphany. Christmas
is an intimate feast, the family feast of all Chris
tians. Epiphany, on the other hand, is the cosmic
feast of the Catholic Church. Although we concen
trate principally on the coming of the Magi to Beth
lehem, the theme of the Epiphany liturgy Is less
one particular historical event than the mystery
CONTINUED ON PAGE 5
A VOCATION
Religion And
The Invalid
BY GERARD E. SHERRY
Religion in relation to the invalid is a neglect
ed subject. Few of us. value or appreciate good
health until we are sick. Money often alleviates
the lot of those who suffer from ill health, but it
cannot compensate for the loss of good health.
I remember a conversation I had once with an
English girl who expressed it all something like
this.
The talents of the sick may be used but they
will not be enjoyed as the healthy can enjoy the
exercise of them. The chronic invalid
may be able to do
his work even though
it entails strain and
responsibility, but
the effort will be
painful. Ill health
forces the sufferer to
forgo many things in
which he delighted
before he was ill and
takes away some of the pleasures he would nor
mally find in the pursuits which remain to him.
ILL HEALTH, whether it be temporary or
chronic, is a part of the suffering brought to the
world by sin; it is a part of the burden under
which mankind must labor. Ill health is a form
of suffering that may come to Christian or to
pagan, to saint and sinner alike. It is a cross which
may come at any time and no one can be certain
that he will escape it.
Confronted with an incurable illness, the pagan
may face it with stoicism or he may decide to
end it all and deny suffering through suicide.
These are the two extremes of pagan reaction
to ill health, but the middle way is the one most
often chosen. This consists of bearing ill health
with resentment and complaint and so adding to
the burden as well as making life harder for all
who come in contact with the invalid.
THE NON-CATHOLIC Christian, too, is puzzled
at times by the mystery of suffering when he is
called upon to endure ill health. He believes that
all ill health is evil and therefore i t cannot be
God’s will that he should suffer from it. Many of
his teachers have told him that if he had suffi
cient faith in the power of God he would be cured
and so he adds guilty feelings about his lack of
faith to the burden of his disease. Some modern
psychological teaching suggests that all physical
illness is caused by unconscious stress and desire
and such teaching again adds guilt to the heavy
burden of the invalid.
Christian teaching on ill health is positive and
satisfying, and the Catholic invalid thanks God who
has not abandoned him to the negative philosophies
of the non-Catholic world. The Christian invalid
knows that sickness and ill health have no place
in God’s original plan for the world. He knows
that ill health is part of the price mankind must
pay for sin. He knows, too, that God has allowed
him to bear this part of the world’s cross be
cause it is the way in which he can best serve,
love and adore Him, make expiation for his sins
and take part in Christ’s sacrifice for the sins of
the world.
The Christian invalid knows all this, but it is
only gradually that he comes to see the wonder of
his vocation and the resemblance, that it bears to
the religious life.
THE RELIGIOUS is a person called to serve
God with his entire being. He is called to union
with Jesus, union so complete that taking posses
sion of his whole self, Christ transforms him into
a likeness of Himself. The will of the Religious
is no longer his own, for Christ has taken posses
sion of it. His heart is no longer his own, for it
belongs to God. It beats with the heart beats of
God, and is no longer moved by the creatures. The
mind of the Religious is no longer his own, for
it is lifted up to heaven and its only study is to be
united to God and to think as God would have it
think.
The body of the Religious is in no way his own,
for it is part of the sacrifice he has made to God
who will do with it what He will. He is under the
control of his superior whose commands are the
expression of God’s will for him.
The Religious makes his sacrifice through the
three-fold vow. The will is sacrificed by obe
dience, the body follows the sacrifice of the will,
and poverty and chastity by which he abandons
earthly possessions and the love of creatures set
him free to pour out his love to God until he be
comes united with Him. Whether he be a conten-
plative loving God through the worship made in
prayer and austerity or a busy worker in the
mission field, a hermit, or a teacher, he is a man
set apart by God and bound through vows to His
service.
THE RELIGIOUS will love God’s children whom
he serves by his prayer or by his work but he will
love them in the love of God. His love for them will
draw his brethren and himself to closer union with
the love of God in whom alone he is united with
them.
r .T>
We should note here that the sick take no vows.
They do not become members of a Religious Or
der. They must live in the world and work in the
world until they are called to the community life
of the hospital ward or the sick bed at home. Yet,
in reality they have the life of Religion.
The invalid is bound by obedience in a way that
is seldom granted to the heal they layman. He
must live wherever he can find conditions most
suited to him and this may entail an environment
which is at variance in every way with that which
he would have chosen himself. The healthy may
CONTINUED ON PAGE 8
REAPINGS
AT
RANDOM