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PAGE 4 GEORGIA BULLETIN THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 1964 ^Archdiocese of Atlanta GEORGIA BULLETIN SCRVING GEORGIA’S 71 NORTHED COUNTIES Official Organ of the Archidocese of Atlanta Published Every Week at the Decatur DeKalb News PUBLISHER- Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan MANAGING EDITOR Gerard E. Sherry CONSULTING EDITOR Rev. R. Donald Kiernan 2699 Peachtree N. E. P. 0. Box 11667 Northside Station Atlanta 5, Ga. ASSOCIATE EDITOR Rev. Leonard F. X. Mayhew Member of the Catholic Press Association and Subscriber to N. C. W7 C. News Service Telephone 231-1281 Second Class Permit at Altanta, Ga. U. S. A. $5.00 Canada $5.00 Foriegn $6,50 Liturgical Week The National Liturgical Week, which opened in St. Louis on Monday has even greater signi ficance for American Catholics than previous Weeks have had. The reason is clear. This is the first national convention on the liturgical apostolate since Pope Paul published the Constitution of the Vatican Council on Sacred Worship last December. The im petus given the liturgical aposto late by the Council must now be implemented in dioceses and parishes. For this reason this year’s Liturgical Week has adop ted the theme; “The Challenge of the Council; Person, Parish, World.” The Liturgical Week will deal with the Constitution on Wor ship as a challenge offered to the Church to become aware of her vital inner life. Unless the Catho lic community can see it as a challenge and an invitation to a more meaningful and authentic Christian experience, then the work of the Council will not have achieved its purpose. It is the aim of the Week to spell out this challenge, to make it a re cognizable goal. What does per sonal involvement in the litur gy and in the life of the Church mean? Why is the community as pect ,of worship so important? Why is the fresh emphasis on Scripture so vital? In what terms does this challenge affect parish life as well as the Church’s role in the greater community of the world? The work of education and in struction which must precede and accompany the imminent lit— rugical reforms is a gigantic but essential task. Only an intel ligent participation in and cele bration of the liturgy can make authentic renewal possible. This is why the Vatican Council turned its first attention to this sub ject, before efforts at renewal in other directions. The Liturgical Week will focus on this aware ness through talks and discus sion and also in the daily cele bration of the Eucharist. The Archdiocese of Atlanta is well-represented at the Lit urgical Week. Archbishop Halli nan will deliver the principal ad dress at the closing session of the Week. Priests, Sisters, Semi narians and laity from Atlanta are taking part in the discus sions and exercises. Our arch diocese and our parishes will certainly contribute generously to the success of the Week and its aims and will benefit im measurably from the experience of our representatives in St. Louis. No ‘Blackball’ The Knights of Columbus are to be congratulated on their historic step taken in annual con vention inNewOrleans last week- they junked the old “blackball” membership rule and agreed that future applicants in the Catholic Fraternal Order can be turned away from local councils only by a disapproval vote of one-third of the members present. The step was taken in the form of a unanimous resolution approved at the annual meeting of the Supreme Council and was in line with the recommendation of Supreme» Knight John W. Mc- Devitt who urged the Knights to “use charity and justice, and these factors alone,” in select ing candidates for membership. He was supported by 10 state councils of the order which cal led for relaxation of the mem bership requirements. The changes made in the mem bership requirement removed the possibility that an applicant can be rejected by the negative votes of as few as five members of a local council. This former pro cedure was seen by many as lead ing to discrimination against Negroes. The new rule goes into effect on September 1. Congratulations are in order. We hope it will enable all members of the Knights of Col umbus to that essential unity within their own ranks and that it will make a positive contri bution in unifying all citizens of goodwill. , fJ H 0 V \t V ->V ) mis ecumenical} /movement is i / STARTING TO, V ) BURN ME UP! GEORGIA PINES Appletree Theater BY REV. R. DONALD KIERNAN Washington, D, C. has its Watergate concerts; Boston, has its Esplanade, and Atlanta has its Chastain Amphitheater. All over our country to day there are professional, semi-professional and amateur ventures in public entertainment. There is hardly any metropolitan area or small hamlet which does not have a group interested in either concerts or plays. No matter what the size of the town may be, wherever theater groups are found it seems that the cul tural level of the town is high. Of course, if one is fortunate enough to live in a college town, then a whole series of produc tions are available during the academic year. Even the high schools today have highly quali fied thespian. groups. The Catholic community of Atlanta has indeed been fortu nate for a number of years now with its St. Thomas More theater guild. With the assistance of the Bergmans, these actors over the years have presented many excellent and dis tinguished performances, NOTHING seems more enjoyable to me than to drive out to Chastain Park on a hot summer night and sit under a starlit sky and see some of the finest performances and celebrated actors upon the stage of the Amphitheater. It is truly in keep ing with Atlanta’s reputation of being a cultural center for the south. Just a few hours drive north from Atlanta is an Indian pageant held nightly at Cherokee, North Carolina. It is almost unbelievable how much the temperature drops at night up in those hills. There in an outdoor theater the history of the Indians of Western Carolina and north Georgia is presented by the Indians themselves. MUCH LESS publicized, unfortunately, but equally enjoyable is Cornelia’s Appletree Thea ter, Now here is a real example of community cooperation where talent is recruited from the surrounding towns and even Shakespearean pro ductions are put on with eclat. The smallness of the theater appears proof that the actors are enjoying their work as much as the specta tors enjoy the production. It was Horace Greely who once said, “Go west, young man”. But it was Bob Porterfield of Ab ingdon’s (Va.) Barter Theater who said to native Georgian, Jack Willoughby, “Go home to your own people’’. Mr. Willoughby came to the “home of the Big, Red Apple” and enlisted the aid of ladies and various clubs in the project of found ing a theater. Today, Cornelians continue to boost and expand their theater, CAROUSEL, Charley’s Aunt, South Pacific, Dial “M” for Murder, and Oklahoma are but a few of the productions presented by the col lege-student apprentices and local actors in Cornelia's Appletree Theater. Television and movies have hurt the theater for a number of years now. However, the pend ulum seems to be swinging in the opposite dire ction and small theater groups are being born all over the country, TIME WAS when a. Sunday would not have been complete without a trip down to the city park to hear the local band playing some of John Phillip Souza’s stirring marches Fac tories and big businesses used to sponsor bands in much the same way that local enterprises now sponsor bowling teams. With the theater, however, a different story exists. Often the actors had to play two roles; one, a ticket salesman; the other, an actor. Possibly the inspiration and encourage ment supplied in a smell town by such a group as the Appletree Theater will serve as an im petus to other cities to have a rebirth of the theater in their own town. HOPE FOR LEPERS Your World And Mine BY GARY MacEOIN and Europe in 1944. Vandalism Lawmen from north Georgia gathered last week in Buford seeking a solution to the grow ing problem of vandalism which has plagued campers and home owners for some time in the mountain-lake resort area. One possible solution advanc ed was that the campers and home owners should accept a greater measure of responsibi lity themselves by noting license plates, description of autos and number of persons involved. This, of course, would involve the informant in litigation, sus ceptibility to retaliatory suits, loss of time from work and yes, possibly retaliation. These con siderations, unfortunately, keep many of us from taking action even though justice may demand our involvement. Special park patrols and swif ter administration of justice in our courts with set standards of punishment might be the answer to the physical problem but ulti mately the training of youth in principles of moral responsbility seems the only answer. Among Americans working in remote parts of the world, I have met none who has made so dra matic and favorable and impact as an orthopedic surgeon from Utah named Hans. His incredible achievements in a leper settlement in West Africa will surely live for ever in the region’s folklore. The story begins with the naming of a genial Irishman, Bishop Thomas McGettrick, to the dio cese of Ogoja, Eastern Nigeria, in 1939. Here he found three quarters of a million people (by 1964 grown to over a mil lion) living in 8,000 square miles of tropical bush. All year round they eat yams which they grow in the rainy season, break ing the rock-hard earth with mattocks to make 4-foot-high mound3 in which the tuber can swell to its full proportions. It was less hot than steamy Calabar on the coast, where the bishop had previously worked. The climate is in fact quite pleasant when one gets up to the town of Ogoja, within sight of the Cameroon highlands. OGOJA’S first bishop found many problems, but none more poignant than the lot of the ubiquitous lepers, for whom nobody cared. His guess that there were many thousands was subsequently con firmed when the number under treatment grew to 20,000. But that is anticipating, for Bishop Mc- Getttrlck could do little more than figure and make projections until the war ended in Africa By then he was ready. He had persuaded the chiefs to rent him 700 acres covered with dense vegetation, soaring palms and tali cotton trees. Encouraged by the Nigerian Government, he went to Ireland and persuaded the recently founded Medical Missionaries of Mary to send some sis ters. Gradually, mud-brick buildings with grass roofs went up, constructed in large part by the pat ients who flocked from all sides as the glad tid ings of hope for the hopeless spread. Such was the beginning of what in less than twenty years has grown to a network of three set tlements, 36 segregation villages and 84 treatment centers, with a total at last count of 19,610 patients. EACH SETTLEMENT contains a hospital with operating room, laboratory, physiotherapy, occu pational therapy and rehabilitation department. Around it are homes for those not confined to bed yet needing constant treatment. For the children there are dormitories, a dining hall and school. Many of them began their education with their treatment. Segregation villages are for those who do not need hospital attention. Each has one permanent building, a treatment center on weekdays and a church on Sundays, It houses weak, old and crip pled patients, and those who are actively infec tious. The others live in mud and thatch huts around, are able to till the fields and attend to their CONTINUED ON PAGE 5 DESPITE MOOD No Time For Despair BY GERARD E. SHERRY In a world in which God is constantly re jected, the Christian must constantly seek to love Him better, serve him more faithfully, and attempt to lead others to the same goal. Yet it is true that many of us despair at times, because we are fearful little people with little faith. While we should view this space age as an age of fear, let us not walk into the trap of thinking it is an age of doom. It is an age when we Chris tians must rise with an historic vision and enlivened courage to accept the times as God's will—meeting the periods of pro sperity and tran quility with humility and thanksgiving, and the dark periods with out panic, without lamentation. We must re place fear with a disciplined faith. Every age has it fears—we have only to read our history books to find many of the central characters have forecast the end of or ganized society and the doom of people threatened by some ancient or modern force of barbarity. REAPINGS AT RANDOM Even today we have cause for fear and it is difficult when meditating of the fate of her oes of the Church of Silence such as Cardi nal Mindszenty, Archbishop Beran, Maryknoll Bishop James Walsh, and a host of other vic tims of the mew barbarians behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains, Yet when we think of them we must also remember their pre decessors, Peter and Paul and the host of other Martyrs who suffered and died knowing that the Church of Christ would survive time itself. We who live in this great country have less to despair about than any other people. We have been spared the anguish of op pression; we have not yet been privileged to share in the glory of martyrdom. o I am reminded of the plea of Pope Paul in his latest encyclical Ecclesiam Suam (His Church), for the laity to make a greater ef fort in the apostolic mission of the Church. He does not make this call simply because of a shortage of priests in some parts of the World. This is an erroneous impression often given by the over-zealous actionist. The Pope is simply reminding us of our obligations— for we are in duty bound to participate in some measure in the apostolate of the Church. We must therefore know what we are about—-where we are going. We are not abstractions, disincarnate beings. We are flesh and blood, with a unique per sonality, our own heredity, our own tempera ment, our own history, our own resources. It is through all that makes up our lives that we must attain our eternal destiny; our home life, our work, our recreation, our courtship, our marriage, are no more than steps forward to our divine destiny. Our education, our pre paration for our vocation in life—these things aren not accidents of fortune nor of personal choice alone—they are the means willed by God whereby we are able to reach our per sonal perfection, fulfill our social mission and attain our salvation. All this may sound a little like a sermon. So be it. There is a constant temptation to exhortation without the follow-up of action. This is a typical reaction from a Communion Breakfast or other such meeting. Yet I sin cerely believe that such meetings are far from the focal point of our Catholic life. Such meet ings and gathering are useless unless they are the means whereby we join together with other determined Christians to live up to our ob ligations to our Church, our family, our neigh bors and our country. In days of crisis or fear there is a tendency to retreat into the con fines of the parish enclave—to withdraw into the Church, leaving the world to others whose standards of morality and ethics we cannot a- gree with. Yet this is the age when we should be spreading out in unity from the walls of the parish, spreading the Light and the Truth to all in witness. It would be well to refer again to the latest words of Pope Paul from his en- cydcial: “In the pursuit of spiritual and moral per fection the Church receives an exterior sti mulus from the condition in which She lives. She cannot remain unaffected by or indifferent to the changes that take place in the world around, 'This world exerts its influence on the Church in a thousand different ways and places conditions on her daily conduct. The Church, as everyone knows, is not separated from the world but lives in it. Hence, the members of the Church are subject to its influences; they breathe its culture, accept its laws and absorb its customs. 'This imminent contact of the Church with temporal society continually creates for her a problematic situation, which today has become extremely difficult. On the one hand Christian life, as defended and promoted by the Church must always take great care lest it should be deceived, profaned or stifled as it must strive to render itself immune from contagion of error and of evil. ' On the other hand, Christian life should not be adapted to the forms of thought and custom which the temporal environment offers stom which the temporal environment offers * and imposes on her, provided they are com patible with the basic exigencies of her re ligious and moral program, but it should also try to draw close to them, to purify them, to enable them, to vivfy and to sanctify them,,,”