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PAGE 4 GEORGIA BULLET IN THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1964 the Archdiocese of Atlanta GEORGIA BULLETIN SEKVINO GEORGIA'S 71 NORTHFBw 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 Norths ide Station Atlanta 5, Ga. ASSOCIATE EDITOR Rev. Leonard F. X. Mayhew Member of the Catholic Press Association and Subscriber to N. C. W. C. News Service Telephone 231-1281 Second Class Permit at Altanta, Ga. U. S. A. $5.00 Canada $5.00 Foriegn $6.50 In Defense Of Dorothy Day “See those Christians, how they love one another!'* This seems to be the silly season with some Catholic publi cations. Recently, we had the spe ctacle of Ramparts, a magazine out of California, swinging wild ly (and in bad taste) at Card inal McIntyre of Los Angeles; and at the late Archbishop Joseph Rummel and his successor in New Orleans, Archbishop John Cody. Then we had the disgrace ful display of advertising for political hate propaganda appear ing in The Wanderer, which is an organ of the extreme Catholic Right. V/e appear to have gone full circle with the appearance of a crassly intemperate article in the November 22 issue of Our Sun day Visitor which questions both the loyalty and Catholicity of Miss Dorothy Day, one of the great est American symbols of the Church's concern for the poor. Sometime ago she was given an award by the National Catholic Social Action Conference. Jesuit Father John E. Coogan, OSV columnist, and a spokesman for the Catholic ultra-Right, now challenges the award and feels free to express his disapproval by calling Miss Day names, de riding her ideas, and scoffing at the poor. Ah, the poor--all of whom are invisible to Father Coogan des pite the hard facts offered by Michael Harrington and Pre sidents Kennedy and Johnson. In Our Sunday Visitor, we find this priest-columnist amazed at Miss Day's championing the rights of deprived people. Father Coogan knows the poor do not exist because factory parking lots are full of expensive cars. This blindness to the world as it is, coupled with the un-char- itable attack on Miss Day's Catholicity and very integrity, are matters we cannot allow to pass without comment. She hard ly needs defending by us; her life and devotion to her commit ments for The Catholic Worker Movement are sufficient answer to such critics. Yet, let us get some things straight: Her right, and any Christian's right to be a pacifist, for ex ample, cannot be denied simply because someone else does not agree. We do not, in disagree ment, haul up the worst word in our vocabulary, “Communists" and toss it about loosely. In our critical comments, we try desperately to avoid persona lities and wish always to stick to issues.Alas, in this particular situation, the personalities and issues are interwoven, and we feel it our duty to speak out. We do not go along with everything that Dorothy Day says or does, but we are happy that she was singled out for a Catholic honor. Her lifetime of working for unpopular causes puts her in the good company of the saints. We are proud to have her in our midst. GERARD E. SHERRY Two-Edged Sword The complex question of ato mic destructive warfare has been raised by the Council Fathers. The now famous Schema 13 which has been roundly criti cized for diverse reasons calls for the total elimination of nu clear arms as immoral while remaining silent on the problem of disarmament. Bishops from England and the Unived States have defended their government's attitude of sane nuclear respon sibility. The problem of world peace is a just topic for the Council Fath ers. Many of them have lived through the horror of war and its attendant problems. They have seen their people killed, their churches destroyed and even their priests shot for protest ing the inhuman conduct of the war. Their concepts of the con sequences of a nuclear war are made more vivid by these me mories. There should not be any haste to condemn those nuclear powers whose foreighn policy has been one of constructive peace. This nuclear sword has enabled the West to check the spread of in ternational Communism with its atheistic attitudes. New techni ques in the production of wea pons systems have limited the -destructive power to a level where it can be reason ably regulated. In certain cases the norms of conduct which the Church has applied to the mor ality of just warfare could be ap plied favorably to the use of ato mic weapons. A flat, blanket statement condemning nuclear warfare would make our past use of the atomic bomb im moral acts. To be neutralistic or pacific unilaterally means the end of world peace. A condemnation or a branding as immoral those nations who possess nuclear weapons would fail to consider the good that has been mainta ined by these powers. To de sire that all weapons of this type be sc rapped without adequate safeguards would not be a real istic approach to world peace. The Council should encourage all men to live by the mandates of Christ and should show a greater sense of gratitude for those men and nations who have borne the heavy burden of main taining this precarious peace. Justice alone will regulate true peace, Until all mankind have the same sense of justice and brotherhood, the justice that re sides in an atomic arsenal is the only language which interna tional bullies understand. CATHOLIC FREE PRESS, WORCESTER, MASS. Advent Offering GEORGIA PINES ‘And Away We Went!’ BY REV. R. DONALD KIERNAN At the risk of appearing monotonous, once more I write about the “Good Olde Days” and pro mise to my faithful readers that this will be the last in the series. Saturday nights for me would not be complete without watching the Jackie Gleason show. (My good mother can’t stand him because she thinks that he shouts too loudly, but somehow or other I am fascinated by what he has in the cup he drinks out of. I live in hope that someday the handle will break and 1*11 be able to see whether it is tea of coffee 1). Any how, the other night he talked about the “good old days’* too. I thought I was old but he mentioned somethings I had never even heard of myself. The program opened up with Jackie Gleason describing the home of a millionaire friend of his. The house was loaded with antiques such as a play er piano, phonograph, overstuffed sofa, etc. At any rate it seems that this house was really admired by everone and Gleason couldn’t ima gine why, because as he put it, he had one just likeitwhen he was on relief, REMINISCING, Jackie Gleason told of some of the things in the by-gone days. See if you recall any of them. Do you remember bathtubs with legs; penny candy; (or even nickle candy!); running boards on cars; rumble seats on the sports roadsters; butchers who gave away bones for the dog and liver for the cat? Does your memory go back to the time when they gave two pairs of pants with every suit; and do you remember the time when doctors would make house calls? (this really brought down the house with applause), Jackie wanted to know just why doctors write prescriptions in penmanship which is impossible to read and then send bills which are ever so legible? RED PITCH MEAT CARTS and travelling grocery stores went from house to house and the baker would even deliver on Sunday, Milk men made daily rounds. Refrigerators were not born yet and a twenty cent piece of ice would be worth about ten cents by the time the iceman had lugged it up three flights of stairs. We seldom see women shaking out a dust mop any more. Gadgets and instantmixes have reduced the time spent in the kitchen. Kitchens now are as attractive as living rooms, I suppose because they are used about just as much. Children were named after movie stars and I guess this is why we have so many children named Shirley (Temple). An occasionally patriotic man would name his son after the President and since the only ruler so many of us knew was Roosevelt, this insured at least one Franklin in every town across the coun try. DO YOU remember when the lot next to the high school was filled with bicycles instead of auto mobiles? For that matter do you remember when children walked to school? Time was when the only night out of the house was Friday. The other nights meant study! 10 cent movies and afternoon shows for the high school students are a passing fancy. Junior proms when you were given the use of the family car for the evening seem as ancient as the horse and buggy days. Gas was 14 cents a gallon and a corsage cost only a dollar and a half. Howard Johnson would stay open late to accomodate the Prom crowd and the price was within the reach of all. THE FAMILY radio was regulated by the head of the house and you had to study in a room by yourself. Gosh, where have those days gone? Well just as Jackie would put it; “And away we go!*' IN AFRICA Your World And Mine BY GARY MacEOIN Is Communism winning in Africa? The question is one that arises almost spontaneously on Ameri can lips in any discussion of that continent. Per haps its frequency indicates some justification for the common African complaint that we are less concerned with their welfare than with their sup port in the Cold War. Be that as it may, I shall attempt to answer it. Communism starts with an enormous advantage in the newly independent African states. Capitalism has been tried in these countries for a hundred years. It has disrupted their traditional socio economic systems without cre ating prosperity or a high living standard in any one of them. Their leaders are convinced that free enterprise cannot serve them any better today than it did yesterday, that it will continue to work against them and to the unfair benefit of the highly developed Western na tions who sing its praises. Communism, on the contrary, has not been tried in Africa. It, consequently, has no negative his tory' to live down. African leaders discount the Western criticisms of its inhumanity. Not a few of them have been indoctrinated in its teachings in Western universities in which they were subject ed to discrimination and exposed to the worst in our culture because of their color. All of them are constantly reminded that Communism has raised an under-developed Russia to a position of world leadership and high levels of education and living in fifty years, and that it is currently modernizing China. It can do the same for Africa, they are assured. THE ARGUMENT that Russia sacrificed count less millions of its citizens to achieve its rapid advance and that China is sacrificing an entire generation carries little weight. “What do we have to lose,” they ask. “If we do nothing, we sacri fice both ourselves and the future. Would a gene ration not be a small price to pay in order to bring the good life to our children?*' The point is one that we in the West tend to overlook. The love of parents for their children is one of the strongest weapons of the Commun ists, and it will remain in their hands for as long as there are masses of children living indestitu tion. The Communists proclaim loudly that no strings are attached to their aid. What Africans are dis covering, however, is that it is very expensive. Ghana saddled itself with a fleet of Soviet com mercial planes, poor imitations of earlier Ameri can versions. The Russian technicians who ope rate and service them cost more than their Wes tern counterparts, and many of them need inter- CONTINUED ON PAGE 5 LITURGICAL RENEWAL Bishop Is The Father BY GERARD E. SHERRY We are reminded by advocates of renewal that a bishop is the father of the Christian community; from him the responsibilities of the priesthood are delegated in the parish. We are told by schol ars that in the primitive church, a messenger would be stationed near the bishop, and he would bring the word to the other parishes to begin the Mass only after the bishop had begun his. It is to this concept of the Bishop as Father, as he who sets the tone for the People of God in his care, that we turn our thoughts on this the eve of the First Sun day of Advent, 1964. We are face to face with problems in relation toliturgical reform that urgently need the direction of our bishops. REAPINGS AT RANDOM The Council Fathers overwhelmingly approved reform of the liturgy and the introduction of the vernacular in certain parts of the Mass. Indeed, on the final vote, there appears to have been only about four against. Now, almost a year since Pope Paul VI promulgated the Constitution on the sacred Liturgy, some of it is going into effect next Sun day, November 29, The First Sunday of Advent. ALAS, DESPITE the action of the Council Fath ers; despite the millions of words that have been written in explanation; despite the millions of words that have been expounded at recent diocesan liturgy conferences, the People of God in many areas seem neither enthused nor prepared. Indeed, in some areas of the country, one gets the imc pression that from the top to the bottom there is misgiving. What is at the root of the problem? The people must be lead into liturgical reform; they must be taught to understand it; they must be told the reason why. Above all, they must be given example. If the Bishops and Priests appear luke warm or hesitant, can the faithful be blamed for their lethargy or lapses into ennui? I was reading the official instruction to the cler gy and laity of one diocese in relation to liturgi cal reform. It was suggesting what to do and how to go about it. Tragically, the instruction wasun- enthusiasticin tone and persistently negative in its message. It contained caution after caution com forting to those who do not want to change or re form in the liturgy. It did not look into the future with joyous Christian arrtieip6tion»'‘lt was^etrietly a canonical document devoid of all warmth and spiritual love. THE LTURGICAL Constitution, signed last De cember, called for an immediate and intense pro motion of liturgy reform through educative pro cesses in every diocese, parish, and Catholic home throughout the world. This was done in some 1 dioceses in this country. Alas, in many, there ap pears to have been hardly any promotion or edu cation on the subject. In some others, there has been in the past couple of weeks, the appearance of a crash program to get the people ready for No vember 29. In others, again, the reform that is permitted is strictly to the letter of the law. Where there are loopholes, great care has been taken that they be used to advantage, so that gradualism rather than smooth sailing is the watchword. All bishops are bound by the same Liturgical Constitution, yet reading some of the Episcopal directives on it, one would gather that a great deal hinges on who’s interpreting it. There is no uniformity, despite the fact that the U.S. bishops agreed upon a basic plan, and a date to implement it. Can we wonder, therefore, that in some areas of our country, the people are neither enthusiastic nor willing to go along with even the bare minimum of reform and renewal. HOW DOES this situation come about? It is basi cally because of the fuzzy interpretation given many issues within the Church. The same now goes with liturgical reform. If some bishops and priests are less enthusias tic than others, then this is bound to have a damp ening effect on the momentum of implementation of such reform. Furthermore, as long as some of the priests and laity can keep referring to the slowness to adapt liturgical reform in various U.S. dioceses, it will make it doubly difficult in those areas where enthusiastic acceptance is being en couraged. If the public utterances and writings of some bishops and priests are but lukewarm and begrudging, then the confusion and bewilderment among the laity will continue to spread. The laity seeks answers: ’The elaborate gothic altar that was in our church from my grandfather’s day can’t be used for Mass facing the people; why must it be sacrificed for this innovation?” “I’m not used to singing; I’m a Catholic. It disturbs my prayers.” “I don’t see how I’m going to carry on my private prayers. I always remember the Poor Souls, and I don’t intend to stop.’ “After communion, it’s going to be awfully hard to say my own prayers.” “I don’t want to give up saying my rosary during Mass,” CONFUSION and bewilderment! Who is answer ing them? If, from the bishop down, the spirit of renewal is weak, then no one is answering them. In the areas where the bishop has worked, the priests and people have worked too. Then answers to difficulties have been offered and accepted. But here and there is not good enough; we need a united effort. VVe must go forward together, not merely making the motions, but one in spirit. The Holy Spirit is urging us into a new age of the Church; let us embrace it sincerely to rt_-ap CONTINUED ON PACE 5