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GEORGIA PINES The Masters’ And Me! GEORGIA BULLETIN THURSDAY APRIL 18, 1963 PAGE Saints in Black and White 1 ITS UNFAIR ST. STEPHEN 2 4 BY REV. R. DONALD KIERNAN For the Weekend golfer the Masters at Augusta, Georgia represents the most in inspiration and adulation. There is hardly a duffer who does not return to his home town feeling certain that he has at last found the answer to why he hooks or slices, or why he has not been able to use his nine iron correctly. Then too, around the club house the duffer brags as to how he was only three feet away from Nicklaus when he sunk that 2 under or how Tony Limas smiled at him when he realized that he was only one under. Yes, the Masters is quite a tournament and after hav ing seen at least a part of it, H I have come to the conclusion “ that were I to be called on by the Lord I would just as soon have it be on the beautiful fairways of the Augusta Nat ional for there certainly would not be an absence of priests. There is a story abroad that one Bishop who was known to be quite good with golf sticks him self was asked by some newsmen what he thought of priests playing golf. The Bishop, answering with a smile, said: Any priest hitting above 90 is neglecting his golf; and any priest hitting below ninety is neglecting his priesthood. I guess that golf has been a favorite pastime for priests in Georgia for quite a number of years. I RECALL, as a young priest, hearing how the older priests could have joined the pro circuit and taught the professionals a few things. Of course, I always thought that as the years multiplied the scores proportionally got small er. However, before the east-west connector of the expressway cut through Key golfcourse, some old timers told me that the priests from the "I. C.” used to burn up the fairways over there. Golfing has really changed though in the past few years. As a youngster we all made movie- money by caddying and shacking balls. Now in the age of golf carts and electric carts, the age of the caddy is almost gone. This was when it was looked upon as a rich man's game, now almost everyone plays. A minister told me the other day about the preacher who played one Sunday morning by himself. The Lord wishing to punish him let him make a hole-in-one. Then the preacher was too embarrassed to tell anyone that he had been out on the course on a Sunday morning and he went to his grave, himself only knowing the secret. PROBABLY the best known among priest golf ers of recent date was the late Monsignor Grady who served as pastor of Atlanta’s Im maculate Conception Church for five years prior to his death. The Monsignor was known to love the game and indeed donated a trophy at the Augusta municipal course to encourage young golfers. Returning to Augusta for a wedding, he decided to play nine holes with some friends before going back to Atlanta. It was on number 6 that he suffered a fatal heart attack and death claimed him at the age of 44, eight years ago this month. Father James Boyce, the first Chancellor of the Diocese of Atlanta and prior to his death, pastor of Athen's Saint Joseph’s Church is re membered by his fellow priests every year with a Tournament held in his honor. Of course, there are many more whose names are held in reverence and whose scores are legend: Father Harold Barr, Father Schonhardt, Father James Conlin. All found the game enjoy able, entertaining and filled with good fellowship. To write about the living might be akin to posting a list of handicaps. Myself, however, I guess I will just continue to view the Masters in amazement and return home to my usual 60. (That is for 9 holes, of course.) Superintendent Scores Elementary School Critics ACROSS 1. .. assissted at his martyrdom 5. Bluecoat’s territory 9. Speed 13. Make eyes at 14. Commanded 15. ... martyr 17. Old-maid’s year 18. Kind 20. Fruits 22. Part of a chair 25. Alcott character 26. Equine female 27. Recording Secretary 28. Eggs 29. Kind of Tree 30. Explosive 31. Compass point 32. European subway 34. Black fin fish 35. Wharf 39. His position in the Church 41. Type of bean 42. Wicked 44. Script 48. Military expedition 51. Consume 52. Senile 53. Ensnare 55. Support 56. Medicine 59. Completed 60. Doctor 61. Craft 62. Clamor 63. Speak gently 64. Exclamation 66. Dionysos; abbr. 68. Extensions 69. Defeat 71. Apparatus for Transmitting sound waves 73. Remain 75. Lamb’s pen name 76. Greek musical term 78. Instant 80. Snood (var.) 81. Bird; Extinct 82. Early Roman statesman 83. ”... teeth . . . eyes, • • ■ everything” , „ DOWN 1. Pertaining to the sun 2. Enclosed fields 3. Descendant of Gileatf 4. Disease of the 10 in the gospel 5. Kind of gun 6. Orient 7. Fuss 8. White ants 9. Rdio frequency 10. Assist 11. Streetcar 12. Property 16. Sea birds 19. Patio 21. Bristle 23. Vigil 24. South America 29. Nourished 33. Large body of water 34. Snow (Scot.) 35. Sine ... non 36. Vase 37. Girl’s name 38. One of the 5 senses 40. Ontario 42. Prohibit 43. Full skirted dress 45. The Kig in France 46. Lincoln’s home state 47. Long poem 49. Apis 50. Abnormal delight In , inflicting pain 54. Quill 55. He was not afraid to . . his faith 56. Fathers 57. Winter Constellation 58. He was ... 60. Put on 63. Company 64. Suffix use to form nouns 65. Leaders ' mp °f tant organization 69. Growth 70. Arm bone 82. ... China 74. Collection of anecdotes 77. Thus 79. Toward* ANSWER TO LAST WEEKS PUZZLE PAGE 7 ST. LOUIS-NC—An Illinois school superintendent yester day said here there has been too much unfair criticism of Catholic elementary schools and not enough recognition that they have done their job “supremely well.’’ Father John J. Sweeney, Pe oria diocesan school head, charged that the only voices heard recently from Catholic education have been Catholic college educators critical of alleged failures in the Church’ educational system. “I REFUSE to accept the blame any longer at the elemen tary level for the problems of the Catholic colleges and uni- verties,” he told a session of the National Catholic Educat ional Association's 60th anni versary convention. “And I wish,” he added, “that the critics of Catholic education within our ranks would properly identify the area of the problem at its proper level. “Why should we in Catholic elementary education be blam ed for the inadequacies of the Catholic colleges and univer sities, when we have done our job supremely well?” he asked. HE SAID Catholic college ed ucators have been complaining QUESTION ROY Free To Marry? ARNOLD HEWING Calvinistic ‘Billy Budd’ BY MONSIGNOR J. D. CONWAY Q. LAST WEEK I RECEIVED BY MAIL ONE OF THOSE CHAIN-LETTER PRAYERS. I AN SWERED IT, MADE COPIES OF IT, AND MAIL ED THEM. TODAY OUR PASTOR SPOKE FROM THE PULPIT ABOUT SUCH LETTERS. HE SAID IT WAS VERY STUPID TO PAY ATTENTION TO THESE LETTERS; AND THAT IT MAY BE A SIN TO MAKE COPIES AND SEND THEM ON. I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THIS. I DON'T BELIEVE IN THESE LETTERS MYSELF, BUT I WANT TO KNOW IF I COMMITTED A SIN. A. Your pastor chose an exact word in calling these chain-letter prayers stupid. He might have added silly, simple, and superstitious. You were guilty of no sin this time because your stupidity was genuine: you did it in good faith. Another time you can hardly have the same excuse. Even then I doubt that the sin would be serious. Silly sins seldom are. * * * Q. IF A BAPTIZED PROTESTANT MARRIED A NON-BAPTIZED PERSON, AND THEN THIS PERSON IS BAPTIZED AFTER THE MARRI AGE; AND THEN LATER THEY GET A DI VORCE, CAN ONE OF THEM BECOME A CA THOLIC AND BE FREE TO MARRY AGAIN IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH? A. My incompetent answer would be NO. Reason for my incompetence: lack of complete information about all phases of the case. You should talk to a local priest. * * * Freedom To Speak Continued From Page 4 If a love of the Church de mands that we speak up about what we see in a given situat ion, how much more must our love of the Church, and above all our love of our brother, make us listen. This love will drive us first of all to be silent, - lest we slip into Anglo Saxon vigor and say, Shut up, and pay attent ion to our brother when he speaks, precisely because he is our brot her, and because his love of the Church is the same as our love of the Church. To listen, to attend, to be open to what is being said; this is the elemental service of love that we owe as a duty, which should become a joy, as our love grows. But there is a third love which impels us to listen, and that is the love of the truth. Reverence for truth, the truth that sets us free, should be a great motive for our listening. Who would dare to say that he has an absolute grasp of the reality ^ i n any sphere of the Church’s life? Who would be as bold as to assert that he has^nothing more to learn about this marvelous family into which Christ has called us? Who would have the arrogance to si lence the voice of the Spirit, or to command the Spirit in His choice of instruments? We would like to suggest a principle, and that is that the wider the gap between the speak er and the listener, the greater the rsponsibility of the listener to pay careful attention, especia lly when it is a case of a super ior listening to a subordinate. Where there is an equality of position one naturally reco gnizes the right and the prop riety of the speaker to express his thoughts; but where posit ions are widely separated, where one carries the authority of his own which exceeds that of the speaker, only a supernatural charity will lead a superior to show this reveranee to one who is only accidentally a subordi nate, but who is at the same time essentially a brother. Was it not at the Last Supper, after washing the feet of His Apostles, that Jesus said, “The Son of Man has come, not to be waited upon, but to serve.” The only source of freedom of discussion within the Church is a love of the Church; a love which will embolden a faithful son to speak hi? mind in charity and in the bond of unity; a love which will enable another faith ful son to listen in charity and in the bond of peace. Let us all work to hasten the day when such a charity is rampant within the Church and the glorious freedom of the sons of God will become manifest in our separated bro thers, and they will thus be ur ged to seek a greater unity with us. (Extract from a recent address by Gerard E. Sherry to the Arizona Convention of the Newman Fede ration at Las Vegas, Nevada) BY JAMES W. ARNOLD Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd,’’ which might be described as a Calvinist theologian's “Mutiny on the Bounty,” has never been a wild audience- pleaser. For one reason, it has the unhappiest end ing imaginable, a Calvary without a Redemption or Resurrection. There are no ladies in the cast, which puts a crimp in the advertising campaign; often also its symbols seem more important than its people. First a short novel, published 35 years after Melville’s death and nearly 75 years after “Moby Dick,” then an opera and a Broadway play, "Billy Budd" has finally be come a movie under the guid ing genius of Peter Ustinov, the round, bearded Britisher most Americans will identify as either the decadent Nero of "Quo Vadis” or the gentle wit of television’s Tonight show. Tliis is Ustinov’s picture. He produced and directed, shared the screenplay, and acts the most cruci al of the three major roles. The film is a good one, but Ustinov-as-writer, haunted somewhat by Melville’s ghost, prevents the other three Ustinovs from scoring a major success. What “Billy Budd” means has always been more important than what actually happens: an innocent young sailor, impressed into duty aboard a British warship in 1797, strikes and accident ally kills a cruel Master at Arms. The authorit ies are sympathetic but hang him anyway, fore going justice to invoke the letter of the law because they are convinced it is their military duty. Melville deliberately made this judgement as outrageous as possible: the best imaginable man was to be executed unjustly for having destroyed a monster. Vere, the intellectual captain who forces his reluctant officers to this decision, seems a decent fellow, but he readily stifles both human feeling and moral scruple in favor of military law: "For that law and the rigor of it we are not responsible...however pitilessly that law may operate, we nevertheless adhere to it and administer it.” SO SOON after Nuremberg, when the inevitable defense was that the accused had, with varying degrees of regret, only carried out the law, it is not hard to catch Melville’s point: in war, there is no limit to the horrors even honest men will perpetrate in the name of duty. Expediency is also vital to the captain’s moti vation: if he does not hang Billy, the crew will think the officers weak and afraid of their men. The common sailors (Vere thinks like a tradit ional aristocrat) are not capable of understanding Billy’s innocence. They will see only that a sea man has killed a hated superior and gotten away with it. Vere’s character is the source of filmmaker Ustinov’s difficulty: in expanding the story to a two-hour film, he has added so much warmth and intelligence to the man, both as writer and actor, that the captain’s final judgement is not only outrageous but incredible. Ustinov’s Vere seems exactly the sort of man who would recog nize of dilemma - justice vs. the good of society- as a phoney one. Injustice, seen in perspective, cannot have social value. What's more, the movie Vere rejects the pragmatic argument, that acquit tal might cause mutiny, and bases his case solely on the law. It’s a complete reversal of good sense. What is arbitrary but at least true to character in Melville becomes, in the film, only arbitrary. THE AUDIENCE, stunned and irritated, may also be annoyed by the ending. Billy is hanged only moments before an enemy ship opens fire and everyone leaps to battle stations. One feels that if the chaps had only used better timing, as they do in American westerns, Billy could have been saved, helped win the battle, and shaken hands all around. As hero, handsome blond Billy (British new comer Terence Stamp) is much as Melville wrote him; an illiterate, natural saint, “young Adam before the Fall,” with no knowledge of bad, no understanding even of indirection. His antagonist, Claggart (Robert Ryan), is the exact opposite: naturally depraved, a man who hates and expects to be hated back. This is neat, predestined Calvinist conflict, but dissatisfying if one believes that both virtue and vice are learned, not injected by lightning at birth. Ignorance is a hindrance, not an aid to sanctity; the true saint knows evil, but rejects it for something better; he thinks no evil of others, not from innocence, but out of love. Tlie conflict between good and evil is eternally fasci nating. But in “Billy Budd” much of the salt has gone out of it, because the good man is incapable of bad, the bad man incapable of good. THE POINT is well brought out in Billy's famous last line. Halter about his neck, he looks at his guilt—ridden captain, smiles disarmingly and shouts: “God bless Captain Vere I” How much more impressive the line, if the condemned man had even been tempted to curse or despair. Otherwise the movie, shot off Spain in cinema scope with real sailing ships, is a vigorous sea story, full of the sound of wind and sea, floggings and fights and mutinous tensions. Actor Ryan, when he is mean, is the meanest man alive; the script makes him, perhaps, too much the routine Hollywood sadist, moved almost to ecstasy by the whip. Stamp handles his impossible role with an unnerving combination of asceticism and virility, and veteran Melvyn Douglas contributes ably as the inevitable philosophizing old sailor who under stands All. One thing about Melville’s classic is unforgett able: the notion that goodness, for all its defeats and suffering for the evil of other men, can never lose its hold on the human heart. In the novel, when the end comes in battle for Captain Vere, many months after the execution, his last incoherent words are of Billy Budd. CURRENT RECOMMENDED FILMS; For everyone: about the alleged weakness of higher education. “Had they not been so con cerned with building their own separate dynasties, and a littlq more willing to cooperate with each other, this sorry state might not have not arisen in their ranks,” he commented in an aside. Father Sweeney launched en thusiastically into what he call ed “my bold contention” that Catholic elementary schools have strengthened the faith of American Catholics, provided a basic education “every bit as good if not better” than public schools and produced “first - class patriotic Ameri can citizens.” THE QUALITY of basic edu cation in Catholic schools he said, has not been made suffi ciently clear. He said the most- used testing device, the Metro politan Achievement tests, “clearly indicate the superb job we are doing in the basic skills of reading, spelling, ari thmetic and social studies,” he said. Father Sweeney said the schools' patriotism has been proven repeatedly. He cited the “Guiding Growth in Christian Social Living” curriculum which is used as the frame work for every Catholic ele mentary school. “If any better method of training American elementary school children in basic. Chris tian virtues, including patriot ism, has been devised, we have not yet seen it and I doubt if we ever will,” he said. IN A convention session for college educators, a Jesuit from Boston College said that private higher education has “entered a decade of destiny.” Father Charles K. Donovan, S.J., academic vice president of the Massachusetts institut ion, noted that 15 years ago, most college students attended private institutions. Today, he said, the opposite is true. “More than 60 percent of college students now attend public institutions and the pre sent trend will obviously bring the proportion to 75 per cent in our lifetime,” he said. The voice of private higher education is “still strong” in America, he added, but he in dicated it will be less signi ficant when the proportion of students in them begins to ap proach the 85—15 ratio between public and private elementary and secondary schools. FATHER Donovan said public financial aid will be needed. “It would be unrealistic to think the decline of private higher education can be arrested with out public aid,” he said. Yet, he warned, public aid will be fought by advocates of public higher education. “Any effort to reverse the decline of private higher edu cation by a new policy of public aid will be violently opposed by advocates of public higher edu cation, whose convictions on this matter seem at times more akin to religious zeal than do those of some representatives of church-related colleges.” Father Donovan said private higher education “must face the possibility” that duringthe rest of the 20th century, “many private colleges will suffer the fate of the 19th century' private academies — those privately conducted secondary schools that preceded public high schools but were unable to survive when public high schools became generally available at no cost.” The Miracle Worker, To Kill a Mockingbird, Gigot. For connoisseurs: Sundays and Cybele, Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Better than most: The Longest Day, Days of Wine and Roses, Mutiny on the Bounty', Billy Budd, The Lion. God Love You MOST REVEREND FULTON J. SHEEN So often we meet college graduates who introduce themselves by identifying themselves with their college: “I am an A man,” I am a B man, * I am a C man.” Never do they identify them selves by their parish, or even by saying: “I am a Catholic.” Could it be that our colleges are educating loyal alumni rather than Catholic laity? Are they preparing mailing lists of financial prospects rather than possible apostles of the Church, lay mission aries abroad, loyal disciples of Christ? A Catholic is a member of the Mystical Body of Christ, bound to the world, and even to all unredeemed sinners, before he is bound to his parish—or his college. His diocese, his parish, his nation, even his ego—all are nothing but windows through which he looks out upon human ity. The grief of the world is his, the hunger of the world is his, the tears of the world are his and even the sins of the world are his. Like King Richard II, he says: “I live with dread like you, feel want, Taste grief, meet friends.” In the parable of the Good Samaritan, it was the one who was farthest away in terms of blood, nationality and human affection that Our Lord called the neighbor. We Catholics must realize that we impinge on every single life in the world. We are brothers to all. We stand and fall together. If they are contemptible, so are we. If we are struggling after higher things, so are they. If we have visions, so do they. The Church in many parts of the world is suffering persecution. It could very well be that the Good Lord is sparing us now in order that we might be His right hand to extend alms to the poor of the world. May we be worthy of this mission! And in giving alms to whom you may, be ever mindful of the fact that the Holy Father, who cares for all missionaries in all parts of the world, said that he was to be “first and principally aided.” You do this by giving to The Society for the Propagation of the Faith, his own Pontifical Society. GOD LOVE \ OU to Mrs. E. R. for $100 “To be used in the education of a native seminarian.” ... to Mrs. M. C. for $5 Please accept this offering, which I saved a dime at a time over a period of two years. Give it to God’s poor.” . . . to J. M. M. for $40 “In gratitude for an answer to my prayer, ’Deliver me from^my necessities, O Lord. May this, in turn, help someone e * se# • • . to Mrs. G. Z. for $5 “I saved this small amount giving my boys haircuts instead of sending them to the barber. It isn t ^ much, but 1 hope the Holy Father can use it to do some good. ... to L. A. for $5 “In petition for my partially blind son, that others may have their eyes opened to the Faith.” V\ORLDMISSION, a quarterly magazine of missionary activities edited by Most Rev. Fulton J. Sheen, is the ideal gift for priests, nuns, seminarians and laymen. Send $5 for a one-year.subscript ion to WORLDMISSION, 366 Fifth Avenue, New York 1, New York. SHEENCOLUMN: Cut out this column, pin your sacrifice to and mail it to Most Rev. Fulton J. Sheen, National Director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, 366 Fifth Avenue, New York l.O, N.Y. or your Diocesan Director. Rev. Harold Rainey, P.O. Box 12047, Northside Station, Atlanta 5, Ga.