Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

PAGE 4 GEORGIA BULLETIN THURSDAY APRIL 4, lv63 Archdiocese of Atlanta the BpS ^ GEORGIA BULLETI^I Slit VINO OeOHOIA'S 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. R. Donald Kieman ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Sue Spence Member of the Catholic Press Association and Subscriber to N.C.W.C. News Service Telephone 231-1281 U.S.A. $5.00 Canada $5.50 Foreign $6.50 Second Class Permit at Decatur, Georgia 2699 Peachtree N.E. P.O. Box 11667 Northside Station Atlanta 5, Ga. Are We Forsaken? HEADBONE'S STILL CONNECTED TO THE FOOTBONE ACHIEVING BALANCE Pluralism - Birth Control One of Christ’s greatest pray ers was. “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Never did He seem less like God as when He said this. Yet, never was He more genuinely Godlike. Here in this desolate moment He is giving up every thing, even the light of day. The stage is set. * The scenery is dulled with a brush dipped in the murky shadows of eclipse. A funeral shroud is hung over the sun: there is to be no spotlight on this scene. The gates of light are closed. The gates of darkness are opened. Deep and thick the gloom is poured on the ground. It rolls to the foot of the Cross and climbs to hide the Man upon it. It whelms Him and cuts Him off from men, and seemingly, from God. Within that cloud is the whiz zing and the droning of the lo cust plague of sin. Brood upon brood, host upon host, myriad upon myriad this horde settles on His soul, creeping, loathsome, noise some. Relentlessly, remor- sley it advances. The man on the Cross writhes, unfriended and alone, left to the whim of the pestilence. Biting like pride, chirping like covetousness, crawling like lust, devouring like anger, gnawing like gluttony, singing like envy, smothering like sloth the pestilence over runs Him with the slime and putrefaction of rottenness and decay. “He was made sin for our sake. He was made a curse and an execration.” His unconquerable will is steeped in turmoil, caught in the obscure careening of that pesti lential cloud, trapped in a swirling gulf of aloneness. His anguish embraces eternities. He must cry out. As He drifts into that abyss of lonesomeness He shows that He is more Godlike than ever. He shows that delay is not defeat. He shows that dark ness is not blindness. As His spirit in plunged into the lightlessness, He summons His strength and begins to sing. He begins to intone the Twenty First Psalm; one of the Psalms about His Passion. There is no despair here. Read the rest of the Psalm and you will see that it is a song of hope. It is a canticle which "SPECK" “Does Sister know about this fifty-mile procession?" shoots a ray of light through the shadows, to show us that at such times we must not only pray but pray all the more. True, it begins with the words, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” because it is a prophecy about His Passion, but the Psalm goes on to say, “Thou hast not slighted nor despised My pray er. Neither have You turned away Your face from Me. When I cried to Thee, Thou didst hear Me.” It is a hymn of reli ance, not a dirge of hopeless ness. Now more than ever does Christ earn our salvation for us by trusting under trial. Never did He seem less like God. Never was He more genuinely Godlike. How could God seem to aband on Him? His whole life was an abondonment. The difference between Calvary and Bethleham is a difference of degree. His self-emptying on the Cross con tinues His self-emptying in Beth lehem. The worst thing that God can do to us is to seem to leave us alone. Sometimes He does this as a punishment and that is bad. Sometimes He does it as a trial, and that is good. He does it as a punishment, but as a medicinal one. God does not punish capri ciously. He does it, not to avenge but to bring us to our senses. Sometimes God leaves us alone until we realize our weakness and insufficiency and come back to Him. Could it be that He is doing that to the world today? How often the worst thing that can happen to us is to have God to do what we want. The World has said, “We want to be left alone.” Yet it will not be long before the old cry is heard, “Why has God abandon ed us?” It is a time-worn re frain. We push God out, and then say, “Why has He abandoned us?” We cast ourselves from the pinnacle of the temple and expect His angels to bear us up, lest we dash our new shoes against a stone. Sunday was Passion Sunday. The statues were covered with the purple cloth of Penance. The Church asks that we assume the purple mantle ourselves as we tread on the last few miles to Calvary. It is a reminder that out of darkness comes light. Approach BY FR. ROBERT W. HOVDA (Priest of the Pittsburgh Oratory) APRIL 7 SECOND SUNDAY OF THE PASSION. Our immeidate approach to the central cele bration of the Christian year, the Easter Vigil, begins with a triumphal acknowledgement of Christ as King. For the King is the symbol of the whole people, their embodiment. Already conscious of the victory He has achieved for us and we can attain in Him, we enter upon a sacred week commemorating redemptive events with a parade in which we hail “death’s con queror.” “All glory, laud and honor to Thee, Redeem er, King” is the hymn of the day. He is king, yes. He gives us an identity. He forges bonds of unity. He creates a people, But, even more, He is Redeemer. What He gives, forges and makes is an inner transformation and power — not, aM other kings, merely a common loyalty and purpose. BY REV. LEONARD F. X. MAYHEW We Catholics had a good time during the last Presidential campaign. We had golden opportuni ties by the carload to prove how well we have reconciled our religious loyalty with our adher ence to the American political system. We vindi cated ourselves on the outmoded, tired charges and we settled back for a long rest of self- congratulations. We belong. But problems not, only re main; they abound. Summed up under the term ’plural ism’ they embrace explosive issues which range from gov ernment assistance to paro chial education to the distribution of birth-control information and service in tax - supported health facilities. A pluralistic society such as the United States Includes many groups which differ from each other in religious and cultural convictions. Our political system is based on achieving a balance among these groups through majority rule limited by constitutional protection of the freedoms of minorities and individuals. Social peace and the mobilization of a consensus to solve common problems depend on a further balance among the diverse groupings within the pluralistic society. This can be accomplished only on the Initiative of the groups themselves, since it is not a prop er matter for legislative direction. Its success will depend on our awareness of viewpoints differing from our own and a willingness to com promise without sacrifice of principle and, fre quently, to subordinate short-term advantage to long-term progress. 1 would like to discuss one very thorny con troversy that has involved our pluralistic society in recent years and continues still. It concerns public policy regarding family planning services and information. A great deal of bitterness and mutual distrust has been generated in various parts of the country over this issue. It is im portant enough to demand our awareness and thoughtful consideration. We Catholics believe that artificial or mech anical interference in the marital relationship is gravely immoral. At the same time we are forced to recognize that our conviction represents very definitely a minority position within the American community. Where a generation or more ago there may have existed an almost general consensus in agreement with our conviction, in recent years the consensus has shifted to the contrary view. Certain religious groups have officially advocated family planning subject to certain moral norms. They have expressly dis avowed the doctrine help by Catholics that holds certain means of birth control to be immoral. This deep-seated disagreement poses grave pro blems regarding public policy in this field. To begin logically, we ought to define with exactness the bounds of our disagreement. Only then will it be possible to approach a sane and just public policy. Our fellow citizens have no right to expect or demand that Catholics change their beliefs or their practices merely to con form to the new consensus of opinion on this quesion. But neither can Catholics expect to control by pressure or political tactics the be liefs and practices of others. As a beginning we would do well to dispel the impression that the Catholic Church teaches that families must have as many children as possible. Father Stanislas de Lestapis, S.J., professor of family sociology at the Institut Catholique in Paris, and representative of the Holy See to the U. N. World Population Conference in 1954, wrote in a recent book: “the Catholic Church teaches that there is, in principle, a right, or better a duty, to practice a form of birth limi tation based on careful thought, provided that this regulation is inspired by motives of genuine charity, and that it respects the order of values inherent in the sexual function and also the pattern of its structural factors.” It will be valuable also to note the similarity between the statements of Pius XII and that of the National Council of Churches listing the conditions making family limitation permissible. The disagreement, of course, arises over the question of licit means of family limitation. The Catholic Church con demns artificial contraception while non- Catholics generally do not recognize the moral prohibition of any means which are not them selves harmful. The political society must accept the fact that differences exist between the religious groups on birth control. NOT INVENTED Priesthood Is Christ BY GERARD E. SHERRY We have been talking quite a lot about the work of the laity, but one should never forget the importance of the priesthood. As has been so often said before in relation to the Lay Apostolate, the priest is everything and no thing. Here are a few ideas which are worthy of serious consideration by all of the laity in order that we can better accept some of the minor irritations of parocial life. The priesthood belongs to no man but only to Christ. It is for this reas on that long ago men began to speak of the priest as "another Christ.” The priesthood which the human priest exercises belongs to Christ. The truths which he is commis sion to speak belong also to Christ. Yet the man who is a priest is not an automa ton. Rather, he is a man who has entered into an almost miraculous partnership. He has freely allowed Christ to possess him, to fill him with divine power, and to set him upon a divine mission. So when we call a man a priest we speak rightly. But we speak rightly also when we say that there is and can be but one priest. As Cardinal Suhard puts it, “There are not, therefore, several kinds or degrees of priests, as if each one were a separate kind of priest. The priesthood cannot be invented, it is. It is not even, in a sense, something. It is someone: Christ.” Any ordination day, therfore, is a challange - a challenge to our realization of what Christ has done for us. There are attitudes abroad today which would seem to indicate that many lay people do not understand. There are some who see the priest as a man with a job to do, a man suscept- biel to the same evaluations as other man. And this is not true. The priest is a carrier of Christ. He may, indeed, carry Him lovingly and nobly, as Mary did, or — this would be an extreme case — he may drag and transport him as the soldiers did on the way to Calvary. In either case he remains a carrier of Christ. He and the Mas ter are linked inseparable for all eternity. Hence, when any of us look at a priest, be he young or old, suave or abrupt, dapper or dishevelled, pleasing or irritating, good or bad, we cannot close our eyes to the presence of the Master. Christ chooses a priest to carry on the ex pansion of God’s kingdom on earth through the preaching of die divine word, and through the ad ministration of the sacraments. He entrusts the renewing of His redeeming death to him, who has become one of Christ's chosen few. True, we can conceive the redemption so de vised that we might participate in its saving grace without any mediation, whatever. If God so wished He could require that we merely say: ” I believe in Thee, my Lord”, and thereupon we should become Christians without any out ward baptismal ceremony. If God wished, he could require that we merely kneel down, beat our breast, and say "Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner”, and then our sins would be forgiven without confession and priestly absolution. But the truth is that God did not will it so. Christ decreed that we are to avail ourselves of outward sign and ceremonies for the dis pensation of His grace, and that these cannot be performed by anyone except those to whom He has entrusted this office. Since man is not merely a spirit but is composed also of a material body, it is fitting to our material na tures that God, in dispensing His interior, invisible grace, should use external, visible signs and ceremonies. To this end He needs the priesthood, a priest hood living only to serve God and to lead souls to God. Even though God knew that human weak ness would still remain in His priest, yet He wanted their love to reach so far as to em brace all mankind. Without hesitation the priest must go wherever duty sends him: to the little village, to the great city, to children at school, to sick persons in hospitals, to the poor in the slums, to strangers and to heathens. All over the country in every diocese, the vast majority of our priests perform an unsung task of being "other Christs.” They are active in the civic organizations, especially those con cerning charity and education. So very often we are apt to forget that the priest is expec ted to be an expert in practically everything. Only die other day I sat for a couple of hours in the austere room of a very busy pastor. I was not at all surprised that there must have been 20 to 30 telephoned interruptions. Three or four callers wanted to know whe ther Father could come to dinner (it was al most dinner time then). They had a good roast in the oven and they would love Father to be their.guest. He knew there was a problem, and Father was expected to be the counselor. Another phone call was from a local judge. He had a problem Catholic Juvenile, whom he would have liked off his hands. He was sure Father could do it — and right away. Then there were the calls from non-Catholics. Some merely to say hello; some to ask questions about the Faith; and oth ers just plain cranks. CONTINUED ON PAGE 7 LITURGICAL WEEK To Central Celebration So when we hear the graphis accounts of His suffering, in the Mass following today’s pro cession and in the liturgy throughout this week, we realize we are lndenti- fied with Him in His suffering as well as in His victory. And not only as sinners, whose failure to love has crucified the Savior but also as co sufferers — as men and women whose suffering ac quires in Him in a postive and a redemptive value. APRIL 8 MONDAY IN HOLY WEEK. The un- velieving world sees only waste and weakness in the passion of Jesus and indeed in all wor ship of God. Isaia’s fellow citizens scoff (First Reading); Judas complains (Gospel). Why this needless suffering? Why so much effort, time and money given to worship when man stands in need of so many things? Can history teach those whom faith does not reach that without God and worship man is no longer man? APRIL 9 TUESDAY IN HOLY WEEK. Per haps nothing portrays as vividly as this week's liturgy the fact that Christianity is principal ly not a cause, nor an institution, nor a code, nor a philosophy, but a Person. Another ac count of die Passion, in place of the Gospel to day, again simply, starkly narrates the total self-offering of the Suffering Servant. The First Reading describes man’s plot against Him. The hymns sing of His trust in the Father. APRIL 10, WEDNESDAY IN HOLY WEEK. The contrast in the first two lessons of today’s Mass (both from the Old Testament) between the sob- dler hero and the suffering hero leads to another reading of the Passion and the clear choice of the Redeemer. A lesson in power for the Christ ian who is as mesmerized as other men by Continued On Page 3 REAPINGS AT RANDOM