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PAGE < GEORGIA BULLETIN THURSDAY. SEPTEMBER 19, 1963 SHEPHERD ,, Archdiocese of Atlanta the rvAnn a 'htty y y? nr ■ fsli VKlMMim U J. MiY '“l SCtVING GEORGIA'S 71 NORTHERN COUNTIES Official Organ of the Archdiocese of Atlanta Published Every Week at the pecatur Dekalb News PUBLISHER - Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan MANAGING EDITOR Gerard E. Sherry CONSULTING EDITOR Rev. R. Donald Kieman ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Sue Spence 2699 Peachtree N.E P.O. Box 11667 Norths ide Station Atlanta 5, Ga. <fg> Member of the Catholic Press Association nd Subscriber to N.C.W.C. News Service Telephone 23W1281 Second Class Permit at Atlanta, Ga. U.S.A. $5.00 Canada $5.50 Foreign $6.50 A Negro Child “The love that forgives" is the text for today, as well as last Sunday when human pride over took reason and claimed the lives of four small Negro youngsters in a barbaric bomb attack on their Birmingham church. It is too late to weep. It is not enough to express sorrow; and anger is out of place. It was bound to happen, as it hap pened some forty times before, even though these were the first lives claimed by the bomb thro wers. It was bound to happen, because state and local leaders including churchmen, have paid only lip service to the Christian ideal. More important, the extre mists have been in control while the so-called moderates have been satisfied with pious cliches unrelated to the basic problem. Of all the possible questions about integration and racial jus tice, the most agonizingconcerns colored children. In the midst of many sociological, economical and cultural factors, the simple fact of the children acts as a beam of light and a spur to action. There they stand, brimful of hope, bursting with potentialities, but also damned to despair. In the eyes of wonderful little hu man persons, wounded by pre judice, all theories of racial pride dissolve in the bitter, salt taste of human tears. What segregationist is low enough to walk up to a ten year old boy, who wears his dreams on his sleeve, and be callous enough to tell him that he is cursed by a vengeful God, and that he must remain forever frustrated, merely because he is colored? What harrassed real estate operator or home owner worried by economic posibilities, has the heart to look at a little girl, filled with the nascent woman hood of all miniature Eves, and tell her that her daughters and granddaughters are doomed to live as her mother and her grand mother lived, locked on the bot tom rung of the social ladder, merely because she is colored? What worried restaurateur, hotel manager, or business exe cutive, would have the gall to look squarely at a Negro child, and tell him that he has no place in “our establishment" merely because he is colored? The tragedy is that few of us have ever met a Negro child. The ghetto walls that shield us, keep us from ever meeting a Negro as a person. eternal importance. For, if we cannot see the Christ Child in the Colored child, we will not see the God-man in the colored man, and if we fail to see Him there, we will also fail to see Him for all eternity. The Church has made it clear time and time again that the right relations of various racial or national groups to one another in the community is a moral pro blem - a matter of objective right and wrong. It cannot be adequately or effectively treated in any other way. The Church has made it plain that legalized and compulsory segregation is itself a moral injustice. It is a crime against human nature, and as such is an offense against God Himself. Catholics have to face the pro blem in that light. They have to rise above the mob, and con sciously accept the teaching of the Church. “The love that forgives" was the text for the Sunday school lesson at Birmingham’s Negro Baptist Church on Sixteenth Street. It is the non-violent mes sage which has been preached throughout the land by those Negro and White leaders busy in the fight for racial justice. It is a message which the Bir mingham Negroes havebeenask- ed to take to heart despite the horrible provocations of the past. We can only admire their pa tience -- all the more so since previous bombing provocations have gone unpunished. But how long can the leaders of the non violent movement hold in check the seething frustrations of the Negro community? We can only hope and pray that men of cour age will at last come forward and cry “Stop" to the white extremists. It may already be too late. However, we have faith that the death of the four Negro children will lead the people of Birmingham to cast off the yoke of the hate-mongers and turn to true brotherhood through love of neighbor. GERARD E. SHERRY Idols, Comp BY REV. ROBERT W. HOVDA SEPTEMBER 22, SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST. The covenant truth that there Is one and only one God is affirmed in our public worship today in a way to which we do not often advert. The Gospel is Jesus telling us that even sacred institutions like the Sabbath can threaten the worship due the living God. If they cease to serve that worship and try to achieve some kind of independent or absolute status, they are idols, competing gods, and must be put in their place lest God’s people be misled. A white man can live a whole lifetime without ever being put in the position of seeing the Negro as anything else than “one of them", one of those people one of a herd. If progress is ever to be made, it must happen that white persons will meet colored persons as persons, will see them as human beings with all of the human capacities, needs and hopes that the white person has. He tells us too that man's greatness is strictly of the a message which He re peated in the fabric of His life by humbling Himself to death and the cross so that God's glory might be plainly seen in His rising again and in His victory. The whole First Reading is also a hymn to God's mighty power, to which is attributed every human good and grace. It is a humble confidence which we express at the altar today, a confidence made possible by humility and rendered foolish without it. As we share the holy gifts we sing: "Lord, I will tell of the holiness that is yours alone." For the Catholic, this is of MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, ST. LINUS, POPE, RENEWAL OF CHURCH WITHIN THE CHURCH Understanding Dissent to single out the essential element of some ques tion, for example, the rights of man or the proper relation of the state to the family or to the Church, etc. The imperative which it lays upon the person who is committed to its truth is to translate the standard it sets into practi cal action. This will involve an assessment of many things less sure than the principle itself: what is possible in these circumstances is the most efficient means of achieving the desired end, the effects it will have on other questions of greater importance. In this process of working out a conclusion there is bound to be some difference of opinion. Hard reality does not always yield willingly to the prescriptions of thought. To some, one con sideration will seem to have predominant impor tance. Another will not accept such a choice but will anticipate an outcome that will better balance die two concerns. If this seems too theoretical, the record gives evidence that it is a very practical con cern. Too many Catholics have been ready to read out of the Church those with whom they disagree. The sincerity of too many honest men has been impugned because they would not follow a determined "line". Too many times the ac cusation of ignoring or tampering with the facts has cancelled out any recourse to discussion. Pressure tactics have too frequently been sub stituted for a willingness to submit a difference of opinion to public and rational judgement. THE CATHOLICS who ignore the solemn and public statements of the Church on questions which affect their personal interests and pre possessions are the only ones who rule them selves out of the healthy and intelligent dialogue that ought to exist among us. To prefer some other consideration to the clear voice of the Ch urch speaking about the real problems we face may be rationalized in the name of freedom but automatically disqualifies a person, to that very degree, from speaking as a Catholic. That is the only way in which it can be done. eting Gods, Mislead People BY REV. LEONARD F.X. MAYHEW President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam is a Catholic. President John F. Kennedy of the United States is a Catholic. They are involved in a rather serious disagreement. William Buck- ley is a Catholic and a conservative. John Cog- ley is a Catholic and a liberal. They disagree about any number of things. Cardinal Ottaviani of the Holy Office and Cardinal Suenens of Brus sels are both eminent prelates of the Catholic Church. They also represent divergent view points concerning many issues. For a certain number of Catholics, in spite of repeated ex planations, thisremains a problem, occasionally approaches a source of scandal, k may, there fore, be of value to clarify the proper dist inctions and attempt to lay the question to rest. To begin with, it is not a matter of a relat ivist escape from the question by vaguely af firming that "everyone is enti tled to his opinion.*' We must assume for the sake of the argu ment a devotion to truth, to the right answer, that would not compromise itself merely on the basis of being permissible. If there is to be anything re sembling an intelligent ex change of opinion and Judge ment from which progress may result, we are bound to predicate sincerity of those who disagree with us - unless and until they prove their lack of it. Failure in this re gard precludes any possibility of inteligent ex change. HOW CAN it happen, then, that people who share a basic allegiance to a body of principles will arrive at such thoroughly contrary conclu sions about matters that ought to be governed by those veryprinciples? The answer lies in the word 'principle''. A principle is a beginning, a point of departure for thought. Any principle worthy of the name is an attempt to be at least relatively universal. It tries, in other words, LITURGICAL WEEK MARTYR. Even that first place among the bishops which the popes occupy, by God's decree, is a ser vant’s role — **nor yet as lording it over your charges, but becoming from the heart a pattern to the flock"-)First Reading). If there should be any mistake aboiit it, die Qffetory hymn quotes Jeremla: "Behold, I have placed my words in your mouth." Our conviction that the hierarchy is part of God's plan for His Church is not a faith in men but in the Word of God. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, MASS AS ON SUNDAY. "That your grace may always direct and be with us,*’ is our petition in the Opening Prayer of the Mass today. The liturgy always tries to involve us in a simple recognition of the fact that we are made by God and for God. This is the way we are. It is not a matter of "Every rung goes higher, higher" or "every day in every way," though these refrains have a certain truth about them, too. It is only that the human person has no other meaning and no other destiny. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, MASS AS ON SUNDAY. Our meaning and our destiny are in our relationship to our Father and our brothers and sisters. A curious combination of humility and glory which the practical order vindicates and which has stood the test of time. "Wonderful are the deeds (our glory) which he has wrought (our humility),*' we sing in the Alleluia before the Gospel. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, SS. ISAAC JO- GUES, JOHN DE BREBEUF & COMPANIONS, MARTYRS. This is a local feast for the United States, so it offers us an example (admittedly very minor and inadequate) of the adaptation of Catholic public worship to different cultures and environments-—a principle aff irmed almost unani mously by the Fathers of Vatican Council II last year. It might be well today, then, to pray for the putting of that principle into practice in a vastly more general and thorough way, so that all seg ments and levels of human society, while express ing the same Faith and enjoying the same Gospel formation in worship, may be able todoboth well, whether their natural bent is for handclapping or for Bach. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, SS. COSMAS & DA MIAN, MARTYRS. How well the martyrs serve the whole Christian community 1 They demonstrate that no good, even life, can compete for our wor ship with the all-high God. And they serve as models of selflessness and dedication for all generations: "Let the people show forth the wis dom of the saints, and let the Church declare their praise" (Entrance Hymn). The Gospel speaks to human distress and tells us that where God does not supply healing He supplies a blessing. There is no way to lose for him who has faith. CONTINUED ON PAGE 5 What Is A Bishop? BY GERARD E. SHERRY The news wires this week brought to public attention the personal tragedies of two members of the world-wide Catholic hierarchy. Bishop Francis Walsh of Aberdeen, Scotland, resigned his post in a dispute with the Vatican, and was given a titular See by Pope Paul. Arch bishop Pierre Martin Ngo Dinh Thuc of Hue, South Vietnam, brother of the president of that country, arrived in the United States, implying that he had been ordered by the Holy See to keep silent about his country's explosive political situa tion. Already I have had several telephone sails to my office, asking what exactly is the role of a bis hop. Here are some thoughts once w ritten on the subject under editorial anonymity. THE LAYMEN re spects and obeys his bishop, but the same layman may not be aware of what a bishop is. The role of the bishop is perhaps best illustrated in the celebration of a solemn Pontifical Mass. Here, when the Ordi nary of the Diocese, surrounded by his priests and people, offers in all splendor the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, one is impressed by the meaning of the bishop’s office as teacher and ruler of the flock entrusted to him by God. Just as the Pope is the visible head of the Universal Church, so the bishop is the head of the diocese, the local Christian community. The local Christian community is ruled by Our Lord Jesus Christ through the authoritative voice of its own bishop. The bishop of a diocese is, then, no mere administrator of temporal affairs, no mere executive insuring the smooth running of a large administrative body, but rather the spokes man under the Supreme Pontiff, of the divine Head, Jesus Christ. "BISHOPS, then, must be considered as the nobler members of the universal Church,” wrote Pope Pius XII in the encyclical on the Mystical Body, "for they are linked in an altogether special way to the divine Head of the whole body and so are rightly called 'most excellent among the members of die members of the Lord’. . ." So the honor which is paid to bishops is no mere empty ceremonial, but the response to a subline spiritual truth. Bishops are joined in a special way to Jesus Christ, the divine Head of the Mystical Body, His Church, because as true shepherds, bishops freed the flocks entrusted to them, and rule those flocks in the name of Christ. This feeding is done through the confering of the sacraments (especially of the Holy Orders and Confirma tion). The ruling of the flock is carried out by the guarding of morals. It is the bishop of the diocese who is in the first place responsible for the truth of doctrine and the rightness of life among the souls given into his care. REAPINGS AT RANDOM IN EXERCISING this role of shepherd, the bishop is not altogether independent, but subor dinate to the Roman Pontiff. Although the juris diction of the bishop is inherent in his office, yet it is received directly from the Supreme Pont iff, the encyclical on the Mystical Body tells'us. No bishop may be consecrated without specific- authorization from the Holy Father. This is the reason why we say that the bishops are the suc cessors of the apostles. To the rulers of this world, can be applied the warning, "Touch not my anointed ones,” 1 for bishops have been anointed with the chrism of the Holy Spirit," says Pope Pius XIL These words were written against a background of Com munist and Fascist attempts to intimidate more bishops. The same words ring with more meaning in the light of more recent events. Bishops must not be touched maliciously as a Steplnac or Beran, or a Mindszenty have been touched. Nor may they be condemned in court for doing their duty, as the bishop of Prado was originally condemned for denouncing public sinners. Nor may they be attacked in a news paper advertisement by misguided Catholic lay men, as one American bishop was a few years ago. Rather they must be treated as the nobler members of the Mystical Body of Christ, divinely appointed, under the Supreme Pontiff, to rule and teach the souls entrusted to them. THE POWER of the Supreme Pontiff over bis hops, far from standing in the way of the power of ordinary and immediate jurisdiction by which the bishop feeds and rules the particular flock entrusted to him, rather confirms the power of the local bishop. In the words of Pope St. Gre gory, the Great, "My honor is the solid stren gth of my borthers (the bishops). 1 am truly honored when due honor is paid to each and every one." The office and the authority of bishops was established not by human council, but by divine law, as the Church teaches us in several of her most important documents. St. Paul, speaking in the Acts of the Apostles (20:28) tells us that the authority of bishops is given by the Holy Ghost: "Take heed of yourselves, and to the whole flock in which the Holy Spirit has placed you as bishops, to rule the Church of God, which He has purcheased with his own blood."