Newspaper Page Text
THURSDAY, MAY 21, 1964
GEORGIA BULLETIN
PAGE 5
GREASY KID STUFF
Immaturity Enshrined
Saints in Black and White
ST. CHRISTOPHER
99
BY REV. LEONARD F. X. MAYHEW
"Today," cooed the sweet young thing over the
radio, "is Senior Citizens" Day." She continued,
in the soupy, condescending tone conventionally
adopted for this subject, to explain that this re
cently concocted category' of citizenship included
all those over the age of fifty I Those of us
under this advanced age are Junior Citizens
and it is our solemn duty fo help Senior Citizens
amuse themselves. The broad implication of the
pitch, with which we are surely all familiar,
was that we should hide from those over fifty
the fact of theiruselessnessand
take as good care of them as
I we do our other national shr
ines.
America today is deep into an
j undisceming worship of youth.
The objection is that this re-
j verse piety concentrates not on
I the potential, the adventure of
'becoming which is implicit in
youth, but on the mere fact of
youth in itself. It is devotion to the physical^
to surface beauty, to the quick and easy, the
flashy, that is most apparent about our "mass
culture," The level of our reading habits,’ our
television entertainment, the appeals of the
advertising agencies to our illusions- all bear
out with sad finality the enshrinement not of the
promise but of the fact of immaturity.
AGE IN ITSELF is not an accomplishment.
Nor is it necessarily synonymous with exper
ience or wisdom. The rejection of age as a
respectable value by contemporary America, how
ever, has a number of serious implications. It
is, at least, a symptom of the anti-intelli
gence trend in American society, which is too
complex to be treated briefly, too urgent to
be ignored, and perhaps too serious to receive
much attention, if treated adequately. The pat
tern extends from religion to politics to popu
lar art. From all reports, the New York World’s
Fair is a disaster area of comic book regress
ion. If this is true, it is one more evidence, on
a grand scale to be sure, of the lavish mental
laziness which threatens- to be our trademark.
The point is that anything of value, whether it
be wisdom or virtue, is attained only with effort,
with the expenditure of self, with the facing of
demands. This simple, Puritan truth bears in its
wake realism, intellectual honesty, the accept
ance of hard fact. It rejects escapism and in
sists that virtue, scarred and struggled for,
surpasses innocence, untried and unaware, on
every score. It is either laziness or fear that
makes us flee this commonsense conclusion. The
world we live in is very complicated; its Issues
are hard to resolve; the control of events seems
very complicated; its issues are hard to resolve;
the control of events seems very distanc. Youth
with its filmy gaiety, offers nostalgic irrespon
sibility. If this is really the root of our trouble,
the price is far too high.
A GOOD TURNING point would be to be rid
of all this patronizing Senior Citizen nonsense.
Without turning to ancester worship, we could re
establish the achievements of the mature as a goal
for the young. The data of the market resear
chers, bedazzled by the commercial prowess of
the adolescent, are a poor foundation for a phil
osophy of life. When such a mentality engen
ders a fear and distaste for responsibility, so
much the worse for adult and youth alike. What
holds true for the renewal of the Church is
equally valid for our secular culture; growth and
progress are predicated upon facing the world as
it is and seeing its difficutlies, not as purely
negative, but as challenge.
QUESTION BOX
Embryo Acquires Soul?
BY MONSIGNOR J. D. CONWAY
Q. 1 sincerely hope you won't make yourself
vague on the questions 1 am about to put to
you. I notice that many of the questions put to
you are often altered a bit so that you may make
yourself vague. My questions;
For centuries the Church accepted the theories
of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas that the male
embryo acquired an immoral soul about 40 days
after conception, and the female about 80 days.
This doctrine was gradually abandoned. Why this
about face? Now the Church says the embryo
acquires an immortal should the moment of con
ception.
Were females considered inferior human beings
in the early days of the Church because it took
them 80 days as against 40 days to acquire an
immortal soul?
A. Your preliminary remark hurt me deeply.
I may be vague at times, but I do not alter
questions- except to shorten them occasionally
or to correct grammatical errors.
To the best
never held the
to their infant.
of my knowledge St. Augustine
ideas with which you charge
him He gave us most of our best
concepts about the soul, but he
always remained a little doubt
ful about its origin. He possibly
inclined to the belief that each
soul was created Immediately
by God, but he was a bit afraid
that this notion might contra
dict the doctrine of original
sin; so he thought maybe souls
were handed down from parents
St. Augustine was not vague on this subject,
merely uncertain.
St. Thomas did teach the idea you descri
be, but he should have listened better to his
3ld teacher, St. Albert the Great, who held the
ipposite; namely, that the soul is created by God
nd infused into the embryo at the moment of
a conception.
Because of the great authority of St. Thomas
nany theologians of past centuries have held the
\0-day-80-day theory, but never did it, or any-
hing like it, become a doctrine of the Church,
'Ihere were always theologians who disagreed.
Modern knowledge of the nature of conception
and of the embryo have tended to rule out the
Thomistic theory. But there are still some of
his dedicated followers who hold it today;
they tend to be less certain about the time of
the infusion of the soul and to eliminate discri
mination between the sexes, but they still think
the embryo goes through some sort of vegetable
and animal stages before it gets a human soul.
The Church still has no doctrine on the matter.
For practical purposes, like baptism and abor
tion, her law presumes that the embryo is a human
being from the moment the sperm joins with the
egg and they become one living being. This is p*w
cisely my own un-vague opinion. But ardent Tho-
mists rightly maintain that the law is not doctrine.
Of course females were considered inferior
human beings in the early days of the church,
and they still are today. They may not be priests
or even acolytes. They are not even supposed
to sing in the choir. TTiey may hold no Church
office, in the strict sense of the word.There is
even one law which urges that they sit separated
from the men in Church. In very few places is it
observed.
Women have always been considered inferior
in civil law, in nearly every nation. Even in
America today their legal rights are not equal
to those of men.
With evident pleasure Pope John XXIII noted
in Pacem in Terris; "Women are gaining an
increasingawareness of their natural dignity. Far
from being content with a purely passive role
or allowing themsleves to be regarded as a kind
of instrument, they are demanding both in domes
tic and in public life the rights and duties which
belong to them as human persons."
No longer need they wait twice as long as men
to become human persons 1
Q. Little Folk's Prayer: Dear Father, hearus as
we say, thank you for our food today."
A. Recently someone asked about a simple
blessing to be used by children before meals.
Now I have a number of them, e. g.:
Dear Father, we thank thee for giving our food;
Please bless it and help us each one to be good.
Amen."
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
Your World And Mine
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4
NOR IS THE economic boycott likely to be more
than a pinprick. South Africa's trade with boycott
ing countries was inflnitesmal, and she has had
no trouble in pidking up new markets that fully
compensate for the losses. Besides, the losses
were more apparent than real.Goods that former
ly travelled direct still reach the same customer
through intermediaries,
Pressures on the white bastion will increase
somewhat when self-government comes to the
British colonies of Bechuanaland, Swaziland and
Basutoland, all scheduled for constitutional ad-
vance this year. They may encourage guerilla
and sabotage activities, but they cannot alter the
pow r structure.
THE DECISIVE change would be the collapaeof
Portugese rule in Mozambique and Angola.These
are the real bastion* of South Africa. They form
physical barriers to infiltration from ti» north and
supply the underpaid labor on which Souti Africa's
gold industry is built.
1 am convinced that Mozambiquans and Angolans
have no more sense of allegiance to Portugal
than did the Congolese to Belgium, They are held
by Portugese force, and South Africa for its own
benefit pays a substantial part of the cost of hold
ing them. The combination has the power to main
tain control indefinitely. But that is on the assump
tion that the Salazar regime continues in Portugal.
Overthrow of that regime would mean the end of
Portugal's empire in Africa and the regime could
end any day.
SOUTH AFRICA would be tempted to react by
herself occupying Mozambique and Angola. But I
suspect that opinion on both sides of the Cold War
would not stand for that. The efforts of South Af
rica to incorporate the trust territory of South
West Africa, which she has administered since
the 1920s’ are already forming a coalition of the
great powers against her. They could hardly stand
idly by, if she moved to extend her colonial em
pire.
ANONYMOUS ATTACKS
Catholics Feel Pressure
From Mississippi K.K.K.
ACROSS
1. Verb form
(Archaic)
5. agreement
9. newspapers and
periodicals
14. reverberate
15. Turkish measures
16. beginner
18. ostrlch-like bird
19. instruct
21. Mayan gcd
£2. girl’s name
24. birds of prey
25. challenge
26. army N.C. officer
(abbr.)
28. mlssa est
29. de main
30. object (ftbbr.)
83. hues
unorthodox
teaching
pulsate
negative
Lincoln’s son
40. thought
41. printer’s measure
42. conjunction
43. His feast is in — -
47. conversed
49. part of airplane
50. continent
51. Mr.
52. John in Paris
53. iron ore
35
36.
38.
39.
54. American 20.
educator 23.
57. fragment 27.
69. Arctic explorer 29.
60. Biblical Judge 30.
61. sullen 31.
63. French article - 32.
64. causeway 34.
66. parasite in blood 35.
68. He was very —- — 37.
73. sour 39.
74. unnprve
76. passageway 42.
77. liquid measure 43.
79. nobleman 44.
80. JerK 45.
81. Egyptian deity 46.
82. Peruvian Jndian 48.
83. grasses 49,
DOWN 52.
1. take notice of
2. summit 54.
3. Egyptian measure 55.
4. periodq of time 56.
6. kettle 57.
6. Crusaders’ 58
headquarters 63.
7. greatest virtue 65.
8. spoils 67.
- 9. not an R.N. 69.
10. boy’s nickname 70.
11. one who slips away 71.
12. fodder 72.
13. alarms 75.
17. variety of
corundum 78.
born
agent
pronged
conducted
funeral notice
Rinab cikkege
Sisera’s killer
girl's name
head coverings
relected
penetrate by
digging
prejudice
union
Hindu sorceress
legal claim
eager
bey’s name
His Job
He is our patron
on a — —
Congressional — —
Var. of Alice
Russian leader
proprlo
. Brown
store
Paradise
oyster farm (Pr.)
ceremony
glacial ridge
national agency
acquires
language
association (abbr.)-
state (abbr.)
ANSWER TO LAST WEEK'S PUZZLE ON PAGE 7
JACKSON, Miss. (NC) — Ca
tholics in Mississippi are be
ginning to feel greater pres sure
applied by the revived andnew-
ly-militant Ku Klux Klan in this
state.
Klansmen now number 91,000
here and are advertising for
more’ native-born, white can
didates to join their organi
zation. Excludedfrom member
ship are Catholics, Jews,
"Turks, Mongols, Tartars,
Orientals, Negroes, or any
other person whose native back
ground of culture Is foreign
to the Anglo-Saxon system of
government by responsible,
free, individual citizens."
ACCORDING to a Klan cir
cular, Catholics are excluded
because "they bow to a Roman
dictator, in direct violation of
the First Commandment, and
the true American spirit of re
sponsible, individual liberty."
Jews are similarly not ac
ceptable "because they reject
Christ, and through the new
machinations of their interna
tional banking cartel, are at the
root center of what we call
‘communism’ today."
Two publications, one of them
Catholic, have felt the sting
of Klan anger in recent weeks.
The Greenwood Commonweal,
a secular paper, was assailed
after its editor commented un
favorably on a series of Klan
cross burnings in 64 Miss
issippi counties. A printed cir
cular issued by an anonymous
"local civic group" attacked
the paper for its failure to
"stand with Mississippians..."
ARNOLD VIEWING
Act One And The Critic
BY JAMES W. ARNOLD
In "Act One," Dore Schary has put together
the early success story of Moss Hart with the
zeal of a scoutmaster recounting the boyhood
wildlife adventures of Theodore Roosevelt.
The picture is embarrassingly bad, partly
because it is told on the sensitivity level of a
tum-of-the-century biography for young people.
Thus we see the starry-eyed young playwright
sitting in an empty theater,
dreaming of wild applause and
cries of "Author! Author!”
Producer-director Schary is
so fond of this bit he returns
to it, with variations, four or
five times. Again, there is the
author glowing as he leaves
his first professional script-
loctoring session ("Moss," he
tells himself, as the Skitch
Henderson music swells, "you’re in businessl")
or riding on a train to his first out-of-town
opening ("It’s happening, Moss!’’).
THE SHOW is built on the premise that an
audience will be entertained by watching an un
known playwright sell his first Broadway play and
rewrite and rewrite it, out of sheer devotion to
money, until it becomes a hit. But why should
this be more interesting than watching a man
build a button business or construct an empire
of artichoke-processing plants?
Granted that Moss Hart was a first-rate comic
author ("You Can’t Take It With You") and a
talented director ("My Fair Lady"). But the
film is far less a tribute to an imaginative
theatrical artist than to a self-centered, stage-
struck youth who wanted (1) to be Somebody and
(2) to make a lot of money. Whatever the real Hart
may have been, the movie Hart is h^dly worth our
time.
Schary, who was M.G.M.’s guiding genius in it’s
most inventive years, has deep roots in Show Biz
and was a friend to Hart and other celebrities
depicted in the film. He assumes that because he
found these people loveable and magical, they
will seem so to us. But he needs to tell us why.
Even Shakespeare, 400th birthday notwithstanding,
would seem a dull fellow if he did nothing but
josh with his cronies at the Mermaid or pace
worriedly behind the first-night audience at the
Globe.
THE MOVIE Hart (flamboyant Jet-Set actor
George Hamilton) comes off as an over-dressed
12-year-old. He is always stammering apolo
gies to his elders, striking off on emotional
tantrums that would do justice to King Lear, or
throwing up on opening nights. The only time he
is bearable is In a vain attempt to empty a
water-filled refrigerator pan in his 1929 Brooklyn
apartment.
Admittedly, a writer’s story is hard to drama
tize. How do you show the brain-cracking labor
of two collaborators grinding out a play? Well,
you can’t, and you shouldn’t try to make a
movie of it. Schary diverts our attention to small
threads of humor; one writer can’t stand the
other’s cigars, his colleague is starving and
survives by stealing cookies. The device gets
us happily through the sequence, but what does
it contribute to what we know of Hart and George
S. Kaufman?
Schary fills the screen with men talking to
each other on the telephone. He shoots scenes
of a play from a stationary camera in mid
orchestra, with acres of waste space on both
sides of the screen. When he wants to say that
an audience is bored, he has them yawn and frown.
In one deft sequence, he shows the almost poetic
effect on an author of a good actor’s reading
his lines. Then Schary has the excited Hamilton
fall off his chair to provide a yak for the popcorn-
munchers in the back row.
The film’s major asset is the almost photo
graphic impersonation of Kaufman by versatile
Jason Robards. The main delight comes from
seeing Kaufman again as he was, playing the
worldly cynic to Hart’s Tom Sawyer. Still all
we see is Kaufman's pose, the egotist with the
heart of gold. If he is loveable I somehow missed
it; he seems as unpleasant and insufferable as
ever.
The moral value of "Act One" is best displayed
by its closing scene, in which Hart, fresh from his
first triumph, rushes home to Brooklyn and drags
his family out of their modest flat in the middle
of a violent rain, presumably to lead them to the
promised land of Westchester or Sutton Place.
"That’s the way it really happened," said one
awed lady customer. "And he goes on, from one
success to another."
The law of averages caught up, posthumously.
"THE CRITIC," this year's Academy Award
cartoon, is a brief (less than five minutes)
spoof on avant-garde artfilms, which occasionally
feature squiggles, squares, circles and question
marks dancing to far-out music. In essence, "The
Critic" allows long-baffled customers to express
their frustration through the voice of comedian
Mel Brooks, who plays an unconvinced lowbrow.
"What’s dis?’’ Brooks asks, as the squiggles
and squares flow about in meaninglessly rhythmic
color. "Must be two things in love...dirt, dirt and
filth...For this I paid my two dollars?...Mus be
symbolic...yesh, symbolic of junk." And so on.
Lowbrows and highbrows alike will be im
pressed, wheather they think it a left-handed
expression of Truth or something producer Ernest
Pintoff put together with spare film on a rainy
afternoon.
CURRENT RECOMENDED FILMS:
For everyone: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World;
Lord of the Flies, Lilies of the
Field.
For connoisseurs: Tom Jones, 8 1/2, The
Leopard.
Better than most: America America, Dr. Stange-
love, Love With the Proper
Stranger, Billy Liar, Charade,
Paris When It Sizzles.
The same circular attacked
the Center Light, a publication
of the St. Francis Center in
Greenwood. The center is ope
rated by Pax Christi, a group
of laywomen who work with
Negroes.
THE CIRCULAR declared
that "this so-called newspaper
is nothing but racial agitation
in its rankest form. Its sole
purpose is to extol Negro can
didates for public office and to
announce integrated social af
fairs and report on their suc
cess."
The Klan circular continued;
"It comes as no surprise that
this group of people, who are
responsible for this publication,
use religion as a camouflage
for their integration activity.
This misuse of Christianity is
time worn and in extremely poor
taste..."
APPENDED to the comments
was a list of white merchants
who have advertised in the Cen
ter Light. At least one of them
has since dropped his adver
tising because of pressure from
white citizens.
In Natchez, Miss., many Ca
tholics received an anonymous
circular signed by the “Adams
County Committee for Religious
Integrity" which contained an
attack on two priests associa
ted with the civil rights move
ment.
THE CIRCULAR suggests
that Catholic churches and
schools have become infiltrated
by communists, and asks; "Are
you, as responsible religious
people, going to allow your
Church, your Church property'
and your Church leaders to be
used by communist conspiracy
in their fight to destroy all re
ligions?"
In answer to this circular,
Msgr. Thomas Fullam, rector
of the Cathedral of Our Lady
of Sorrows in Natchez, declared
in his Sunday bulletin that the
charges are "full of in
accuracies and malicious in
sinuations."
"PEOPLE who hide behind
slogans and titles inspired by
prejudice and bias, as in the
present case, have no love for
the Catholic Church or for Ca
tholics as such."
Seminary Fund
Remember the SEMINARY FUND
of the Archidocese of Atlanta in
your Will. Bequests should be made
to the “Most Reverend Paul J.
Hallinan, Archbishop of the Catho
lic Archdiocese of Atlanta and his
successors in office”. Participate
in the daily prayers of our semi
narians and in the Masses offer
ed annually for the benefactors of
our SEMINARY FUND.
God Love You
BY MOST REVEREND FULTON J. SHEEN
This letter is typical of those that come from our missionary
bishops who are laboring in countries where the Communists
are beginning to devastate lands and to renew the Crucifixion.
“As a matter of fact, it is very difficult for the propagation
of the holy Faith at this time. In more than one parish where
the godless Communists are reigning, religion is simply forbidden.
The Catholics were told not to go to Church, to catechism
classes or to say prayers. The Communists tell them that all
these, things are useless to the fatherland. One of my priests had
to leave his three parishes under the formal threat of death. The
two catechists and two Sisters tried to stay, but were finally forced
to leave, God save the poor sheep they left behind, for they are all
new converts 1 Another priest got out of II-
parish where he was constanly invited to attend
Communist meetings. His three parishes are
in the middle of the jungle occupied by the
enemies of God’s Holy Name. For the last
Confirmation tour in the most remote part
of my diocese I had to travel incognito so as
not to arouse Communist notice. I was almost
drowned by the violent waves which rocked
the frail craft packed with passengers of all
ages. Thank God we were safe and sound, but
the sacred vestments were soaked through. The hardships never
scare my priests, however, who need and deserve continued
assistance in order to carry on joyfully their sacrifices for
the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls.”
May the bishops and priests of the United States, whose eyes
fall upon this letter hasten to make some sacrifice that we may
forward it to the Holy Father for this bishop and many other
bishops of the Church who are poor. To the laity, too, we send
our appeal, inasmuch as you are brothers and sisters of the
converts mentioned in this letter. St. Paul tells us that if one
member of the Church suffers, the whole Church suffers. This
is true of our physical body when, if our tooth aches, our whole
organism seems to share the pain. May our Catholic people
translate week after week their love of the suffering, crucified
Church throughout the world, and do some acts of self-denial
for the Holy Father and his Society for the propagation of the
Faith,
GOD LOVE YOU to Mr. P.K. and family for $70 ’The oldest
of our seven children is an aspirant to religious life and upon
thinking of this and all the nice things our family has, we think
it is time we share. This is a combination of our income tax
return, coupon refunds, cigarette denials and, of course, the
children put in some of their baby sitting money and their
’gift monies.”’ .... to Mrs, W.R.S. for $3.15 "In thanksgiving for
all that we have, upon completing the Nine Day Novena. This
represents that extra coffee each day; one cent for each phone
call placed or received; and two of our boys gave up their bus
ride and used bicycles. Our family of eight is happy to share,
hoping it helps someone in need."
Why not give a GOD LOVE YOU MEDAL to the graduate in
your family? The ten letters of GOD LOVE YOU spell out a
decade of the rosary as they encircle the medal originated by
Bishop Sheen to honor the Madonna of the World. With your
request and corresponding offer you may order one in any of
the following styles:
$2 small sterling silver
$3 small 10k gold filled
$5 large sterling silver
$10 large 10k gold filled
Cut out this column, pin your sacrifice to it and mail It to Most
Rev. Fulton J. Sheen, National Directpr of the Society for the Pro
pagation of the Faith, 366 Fifth Avenue, New York lx, N. Y. or
your Archdioceaan Director, Very Rev, Harold J* Rainey P. O.
Box 12047 Northslde Station, Atlanta 5, Ga,