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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 Canada $5.00 Foreign $6.50 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.