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PACE 4 GEORGIA BULLETIN THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1964
.. Archdiocese of Atlanta
the
GEORGIA BULLETIN
SERVING GEORGIA'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 EDETOR Rev. R. Donald Kiernan
2699 Peachtree N.E,
P.O. Box 11667
Northside Station
Atlanta 5, Ga.
Member of the Catholic Press Association
and Subscriber to N.C.W.C. News Service
Telephone 231-1281 U.S.A. $5.00
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Second Class Permit at Atlanta. Ga.
Lay Advisors
Last week’s announcement of
the establishment of an Advisory
Council for Education, including
members of the laity, constitutes
a “new approach” for our Arch
diocese. It is also fitting, for the
laity are not only the prime
educators of their children but
also the prime financers of Cath
olic schools.
It continues a trend in “the
Archdiocese whereby competent
lay persons have been coopted in
to groups and commissions which
were formerly exclusively cleri
cal in their makeup. Such invita
tions for the laity to serve the
Archdiocese as active advisors
refutes the theory (still held by
some) that the laity’s duty is only
to “pray and pay”. It also con
firms the layman’s rightful role
as a collaborator in the works of
the Hierarchy.
Experience with other Arch
diocesan groups assures us that
the new Advisory Council mem
bers will not be mere rubber
stamps. Priest, religious, and
lay advisors will all work togeth
er in the interests of the Arch
diocese. From their fruitful
collaboration will come gains in
both the spiritual and material
ends of our educational tasks.
Education is one area in which
counsels of the laity have been
absent for too long. The “fresh
air” of renewal has changed all
this. Atlanta now joins twenty-six
other dioceses which have school
boards withlay members.
We have a “voice” in our
school affairs and we are confi
dent that parents will respond
with a vigorous assumption of
their responsibilities instead of
merely demanding their rights.
Archbishop Hallinan has pointed
to the task in his recent state
ment on the new education Off
ice:
“We enter a new era. Educat
ionally, we must offer our Cath
olic young people the very best
we can. With the leadership of
Monsignor O’Connor, the new
Secretary for Education, and a
devoted staff of priests, sisters,
and laity, we are now prepared
for a Catholic school system able
to hold its own. While serving
the modern needs of society, it
will still keep foremost the ulti
mate need--the Kingdom of God,
the place destined by God for
every child both here and in eter
nity,”
GERARD E. SHERRY
Newman Apostolate
National attention is focused
during this week on the 725,000
Catholic students attending sec
ular colleges and universities
throughout the United States.
Sharing the spot-light will be
an English Cardinal of the Nine
teenth Century, John Henry New
man. The link connecting a Ro
man Cardinal of the Victorian
era with twentieth century
American college students is
hardly a historical accident.
Over seventy years ago the needs
of Catholic students studying in a
secular environment and the
ideas and example of Cardinal
Newman were joined together
in the founding of the Newman
Club at the University of Pennsy
lvania, and the beginning of a
movement that has developed into
a major apostolate of twentieth
century America, the Newman
Apostolate.
During Cardinal NewmanWeek
1964, students on some 913 cam-
“Don’t tell anyone but he eats meat on Friday!”
puses will be reminded anew of
the stature of the man long ago
chosen as their special patron.
Once again it will be seen how
relevant to the twentieth century
were the ideas and aspirations
of this churchman of the nine
teenth. Book displays of works by
and about Cardinal Newman will
be featured at many of the 175
Newman Centers across the
country. In lectures and sympo
sia and round table discussions
the ideas of Newman will be pre
sented and analyzed.
In this day of the Second
Vatican Council, they will be
come aware that their patron
might well be called the “First
Father of the Second Vatican
Council”. Bishop Robert Dwyer
of Reno recently wrote that, ‘The
ascetic figure of John Henry
Newman towers ever more im
posingly over the horizon of the
Second Vatican Council. Ina very
exact sense it would be called
his (Council the fulfillment of his
vision and the justification of his
theology. . . . Newman’s thought
is basic in all its deliberations.”
Newman's concern with the
role of the layman in the Church,
the coherence of his theory of the
the development of doctrine, his
probing into the principles of
the interpretation of Scripture--
all foreshadowed developments
that are playing a major role
in Vatican Council il.
The force of Newman’s ideas
on the importance of religion in
education has had a pervading
influence in encouraging church
officials to greater and greater
concern for the apostolate that
bears his name. Almost un
believable strides have been
made in the past decade in
providing Catholic Centers.
^fru/e/p
March, month of
Joseph,pa fron of
Bcumenicah Council
f- 1
PRIMARY GOAL
Newman’s
Implications
BY GERARD E. SHERRY
This being Newman Week, it is perhaps well
to dwell for a few hundred words on the impli
cations of Cardinal Newman's times and his life
and the impact they have on our present apostolate
ot the secular campus.
After very difficult religious trials and exper
iences, Newman came to realize, and to hold
this as a central fact of his life, that he could
comeinto personal contact with the One whom he
loved and served with all his heart, Jesus Christ,
only in, w ith, and through the Church. He knew
that within the Churchcould be found the Divine
strength which would make this wisdom able to
save his world. And with his double loyalty and
love - his loyalty to
God and his loyalty to
his time, his love of
God and his love of
the men of his time-
he ardently desired
to bring his world
to the Church and
the Church to his
world. And yet we
know from his life
that he failed.
His keenest disappointment lay in the realiza
tion that he had not been able to establish the
rapproachment between the Church he loved
and the men he loved. We must ask ourselves
why did Cardinal Newman fail? The answer can
be found in his Church and in his world. Let us
look first at his world. The world of the 19th
Century can best be characterized as adolescent.
Scientific knowledge was making strides of great
length, unleashing new powers and new energies.
REAPINGS
AT
RANDOM
Pray With Him
A LITTLE VAGUE
Liturgical Architecture
BY REV. LEONARD F.X. MAYHEW
The final two chapters of the Council’s Con
stitution on the Liturgy are concerned with art
and artistic matters as they relate to our pub
lic worship. This takes in a wide field: archi
tecture as it relates to the building of churches;
music, sculpture and design as they govern
the making of statues, stations, vestments, al
tars, and so forth. We use a great number of
material things in our liturgy and, aside from
the water, bread, wine and oil of the Sacraments,
they are all artifacts of one kind or another. The
problem is to insure that they are worthy of their
function, that is, beautiful and meaningful. Hence,
the necessary, but not always harmonious, relat
ionship between art and liturgy.
It must be admitted that these two chapters are
not the most imaginative of the Liturgy Consti
tution. There is a good deal of vagueness, which
an outstanding Catholic thinker
.has not hesitated to call “desul
tory and undiscriminating”.
[ The weakness of these chapters
lean be explained. Dom Hubert
| Van Zeller, O. S. B„ has writ
ten in The Critic (Feb.- March
1964): “the bishops can be ex-
< cused for thinking of liturgical
art as a side issue: it has never
been put to them as anything
alee.** On the credit side of the ledger, it must
be said that these chapters do add something posi
tive to the discussion, to what St. Pius X and
Pius XII have already written. The key is one
half-sentence in one paragraph of the final chapt
er. It declares that the bishops “shall give a
hearing. . .if needed, to others who are especi
ally expert" in these matters.
THERE CAN be little doubt that it is “need
ed". The present situation is pretty terrible. Our
nineteenth and twentieth-century churches, for the
most part, range from the pseudo-Gothic through
the pseudo-Baroque to the peseudo-contemporary
(in which only the cross or spire distinguishes
a church from a motel or auto-washmobile.)
Art, architecture, sculpture and design are
specialties. Apart from real folk art, which is
almost non-existent in western culture, this is a
truism, so far as secular endeavor is concern
ed. It is equally true with regard to religious
or liturgical art. The Important point is that
these are lay specialities. They are fields for
those who have devoted the requisite study,
thought, practice, time and talent to their chosen
profession. The art expert is a rarity; the cleric
art-expert is a species so depopulated that it
should be considered only by counting on one’s
fingers the deserving individuals.
Vatican Council II is a clear and evident sign
that the Holy Spirit is moving the Church into a
new era, into the twentieth century, with all its
complications and new needs. (Or, if you prefer
optimistically, you may view it from the opposite
perspective, that He is moving the twentieth cen
tury into the Church.) This much - repeated truth
not only applies to “practical" matters like the
vernacular and coilegiality, but also to the equally
“practical” matter of liturgical art.
CONCERN WITH outward forms is not synon
ymous with externalism. The theme of the Sac
raments (outward signs with inward effect and
meaning) runs all through out theology and our
liturgy. The social and political revolution of our
century has been accompanied, as it should be,
by an artistic revolution. There are forms which
mesh with our mentalities and our needs, which
not to be satisfied with either the forms of the
thirteenth century or the sixteenth or the nine
teenth - or the false products of our own time.
Within the area of that art which aspires - or
pretends - to answer the ambiance of the time
we inhabit, there is good and bad, true and false.
We must at least exert the effort to distinguish
the good and true from the bad and false.
The experts of the art departments of our own
and of the secular colleges and the authentic
artists of our time are “needed” and should
be called upon, lest we add to our inheritance
of the pseudo-Gothic and pseudo-Renaissance, a
bequest for the future of more of the same plus
the pseudo-modern. It is a precise and demand
ing imperative to the lay (and, in this regard, this
includes the clerical corpus) Catholic, who is at
least knowledgeable and concerned for the beauty
of Thy house and the place where Thy glory
dwelleth."
LITURGICAL WEEK
Penance For The Renewal
BY REV. ROBERT W. HOVDA
MARCH 1 3RD SUNDAY OF LENT'S penance
prepares us for the renewal of our baptismal
vows at Easter. Today's emphasis on the con
test between darkness and light, between evil
and good, reminds us that, though Christ has
won the contest and shares His victory with us
in baptism and in the Eucharist, we are free men
and women who can reject the salvation we
now possess.
MARCH 2 MONDAY, 3RD WEEK IN LENT.
Baptism is again proposed, to give meaning to
our fasting, in the First Reading’s story of Naa-
man. Unwilling though he seemed to be, he had
faith in God and in the message of God's prophet.
Faith alone is the condition of our Easter pro
mise and our Easter joy. No natural claim (Gos
pel) can make up for lack of faith. Today’s Mass
begins, “I will put my trust In God” (Entrance
Hymn).
“My eyes look up continually to the Lord,"
goes the refrain of the Entrance Hymn. This is
living “as men native to the light” (First Read
ing).
Darkness envelops us when
we cease to see God in the world
He has made, when the world
becomes for us the kingdom of
another power (Gospel) and, not
bai^fig with God, is against Him,
This defective vision should be
corrected by our participation
in the Eucharist, with its bread
and wine and its blessing of all
things.
MARCH 3 TUESDAY, 3RD WEEK IN LENT.
Sin, however private it seems to be, has a
corporate aspect. It affects the whole people
of God, directly or indirectly. Our lack of inte
grity, our weakness the face of temptation,
is no private matter. If it makes sense for the
Church to undertake a corporate penance.
It makes sense for the Lord Christ to for
give us through a reconciliation with the Church,
with the whole community of God’s People. Both
lessons today teach not only the inexhaustible
mercy of God but also the social natr • of our
ransom.
The scholarly world was almost dizzy with
the discoveries of history and the liberations of
philosophy. The political world was aglow with the
fond hopes unleashed by the Revolution. In those
days you didn't smirk when you said, “brave
new world.” In those days you thrilled as you
heard the German poet Heinrich say, “Fall on
your knees; they are carrying the Sacraments to
a dying God."
Fascinated with itself, delightedly playing with
new powers, rompingly revolting against all
authority, the 19th Century found it imposs
ible to even consider the Church, let alone to
listen to Her. On the other hand, within the Church
Cardinal Newman met rejection, suspicion, and
even contempt.
Suffering from a lethargy which had its roots
in the failure of the so-called medieval synth
esis; suffering from an ennui caused by carry
ing the burden of many centuries of custom;
weakened by the strenuous exertions of the coun-
ter-Reform, Holy Mother Church in the 19th
Century was like a tired old lady.
Everyone who raised a voice, asking the Church
t o come to this world, was considered either a
traitor, willing to sell the City to the enemy,
or an ignorant person who could not judge pro
perly the values that were at stake. The Church
in Newman’s time had lost the nerve, the vita
lity, which had led to great conquests in the past.
No room for a Paul in that church, who was will
ing to throw aside the whole Mosaic law. No room
in this Church for the gambling spirit of a
Francis of Assisi. Had a man stripped himself
naked in the market place, the 19th Century
Church would have not only considered him un-
Christian, but quite out of keeping with propr
iety. So Cardinal Newman failed.
Our task is similar to Cardinal Newman’s; it
is to pick up where he left off; to bring the Church
to our world. Like Cardinal Newman, we are
devoted sons and daughters of the Church. Like
Cardinal Newman, we know that within the Church
we have the wisdom of God and the strength
of God. Like Cardinal Newman, we love the men of
our time. Like Cardinal Newman, we have aa ar
dent desire to establish a living, vital link bet
ween the Church and our world.
What are our chances? Must we fight those two
enemies - the enemies in the world and the ene
mies within the Church? Personaly, I think that
the 20th Century is quite different from the 19th
If the 19th Century could be called adolescent,
the 20th Century has achieved a certain matur
ity. At least, the reckless self-hypnosis of
the 19th Century has been killed. Two world
wars, a major depression, the world divided into
two hostile camps, the horrors of Hiroshima,
have led men to suspect science. The degeneiv
ation and complete corruption of democracy in
to the so called People’s Republic behind the
Iron and Bamboo Curtains have led men to a
more sqber estimation of liberty; have let them
see more clearly the distinction between liberty
and license. The modern world is not hypnotised
by man, but has rediscovered the sense of Orig
inal Sin and is willing to look to God— if God can
be made visible; if God’s children can speak its
language.
What about the Church? Do we still find leth
argy, cowardice, ennui, respectability? There are
indications that these vices are still present.
There are still men within the Church who are
fascinated by the past because they are scared
to death of the present and don't think of the fut
ure. There are men who must cower, locked in
an imaginary' cloister, muttering and repeating
the fetish-like slogans of the past, endlessly
building straw men which are so easily destroy
ed. There are men who look out at the ad
vances made by unruly human reason and refuse
to recognize that new questions have been asked.
They answer the old questions with the old
answers, instead of accepting the new question,
incorporating them as St. Thomas did into the
Summan ami bringing out of the old, new things.