Newspaper Page Text
URGENT PROBLEM
Extremes Of Poverty
BY REV. LEONARD F. X. MAYHEW
The existence of extreme poverty in the midst
of unparalleled plenty has received a constan
tly increasing amount of serious attention in
the past few years. Pope John’s encyclicals and
Pope Paul’s India trip have focused the obli
gation of Catholics to be concerned with the de
prived majority of mankind. Barbara Ward's
The Rich Nations And The Poor and Michael
Harrington’s The Other America, are two of the
best recent books on the subject.
It seems odd that we must always make
distinctions. However, it is necessary for us
to make a clear distinction between poverty
and destitution. Christian spirituality, rightfrom
the Gospels, considers poverty a positive value.
In the beatitudes, Christ counts
fortunate, that is, blessed, the
poor (the “in spirit” is an easi-
ly-and much - misunderstood
mmHB refinement).
WHAT WE are really con
cerned with is destitution.lt
is destitution that is an increas
ingly urgent, and increasingly intolerable, problem
of the contemporary world. Geometric progression
in the increase of population matched with a
less rapid increase- and onesided distribution -
of the sources of sustenance creates destitu
tion. This means that a majority of the world’s
people (and a sizable minority even in our
own country, as Michael Harrington and others
have indicated) lacks the necessities for ade
quate survival: nourishment, shelter, health.
A far more expanded number lack the necess
ities for anything approaching a truly human
life. John XXIII, with his exquisite humanity,
designated far more than the right to bare sur
vival as "natural rights’* of every man in Pacem
In Terris. Education, culture, mobility andmany
other things constitute elements of the full life
GOOD NEWS
Why Sing At Mass?
BY MARY PERKINS RYAN
Last summer, to find out more about what our
older boys are so interested in, we watched the
weekly Hootenanny on TV every Saturday night.
Who says that Americans don’t like to sing any
more? Doubters might object that it is only teen
agers who do; you’ll never get older people
singing. But last year I took part in the annual
luncheon of the Catholic women’s organization
in a mid-western diocese and heard some twenty-
four hundred women— all beyond , and many
well beyond the teen-age bracket -- almost rais
ing the roof singing "Happy Birthday” to one of
their moderators. And,- at the Liturgical Week
in St. Louis in August, thou
sands of men and women join
ed in singing at the Masses,
and as many hundreds as could
crowd into the halls went to
sing with Fr. Rivers, who com
posed the "American Mass
Program", and at what were
called "Hymnannys.”
So the idea that Americans,
or American Catholics, as such
don't like to sing is simply not true. But there
ceptainly are a great many of us who don’t like
the idea of singing at Mass— of singing oursel
ves, that is, along with all the other members
of the congregation who, like oursleves, may or
may not have good voices. What is the value
of our singing, that a choir can’t achieve for
us?
IT IS certainly a normal human instinct to
sing whenever people get together for any kind
of a celebration — an instinct pretty well inhib
ited in many New Englanders, perhaps, but gen
erally found in all races and cultures all over
the world. For singing unites persons in ac
tion, action involving their whole selves. It
at once helps to create unity among persons and
to express it. In singing, the lonely find com
panionship, the isolated break out of their shells-
as you can see if you watch the faces of people
taking part in Hootenannys.
Now, we Catholics need this great means of
community-building at Mass if we are to realize
our companionship with Christ and one another.
The power of the Eucharist to make us "all
one Body, who eat of the one Bread” is frus
trated if we are shut up in oursleves, cut off
from one another. Singing at Mass — not all the
time, of course, but at least at the beginning
and end and, above all, at Communion time—
VENEZUELA STILL TROUBLED
Your World And Mine
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4
cifically the papal encyclicals. We offer princi
ples rather than personalities."
THE SIGNIFICANT increase in voter support
for COPEI from 16 per cent in 1958 to
over 20 per cent in 1963, contrasted with the
decline in the AccionDemocratica vote in the same
period from 49 per cent to 33 percent, shows
how the wind is blowing. Since the 1963 elec
tion, two events have occurred, one outside
Venezuela and the other inside the country, to
raise the prestige and hopes of the COPEI
supporters.
One was the victory of the Christian Democrats
in Chile, marking the first time that a pro
gressive party of Catholic inspiration has come to
power in any Latin American republic. The
other was the continued fragementation of the
parties that had split away from Accion Democra-
tica, several
lition with it.
of which form an unstable coa-
WHAT HAPPENS in Chile will be watched very
closely in Venzuela. If President Frei succeeds
in implementing his programs of land reform and
expansion of industry, it will convince many in
Venezuela that a party of Catholic Inspiration
is not ncessarily an appendage of the reac- ■
tionary upper class, and that is a viewpoint
still widely entertained.
The weakening of Accion Democratica is natur
ally seen with approval by the COPEI lea
ders. Nevertheless, they add a word of warning.
* "It would be diastrous.” as one of them said to
me, "if the fragmentation progressed to the
point of parlimsntary stalemate and frustra
tion of the Executive. That would simply set the
scene for a new dictatorship of either the right
or the left. And there is real danger of such a
development. We are unfortunately still a long
way from a tradition of democracy."
faints in
rvjfl
ii VI
ST. CLARE
hike
115
THURSDAY, JANUARY 7, 1965 GEORGIA BULLETIN PAGE 5
ARNOLD VIEWING
every man deserves in the twentieth, the rich
est of all centuries.
There appears to be a paradox. First, no solu
tion is possible on an individual basis. Second,
no complete solution is possible on a purely,
political basis. No voluntary effort or contri
bution to charitable causes, no matter how good,
can reach the causes of widespread destitu
tion. National and international society, as now
constituted, condemns certain groups to hope
less deprivation. Only agencies which are as large
as the problem can begin to deal with its causes.
Only vigorous, ; reforming political action -
that is, action of the whole community—munici
pal, national or international— can mobilize suf
ficient resources to combat the social defects
which defy individual initiatives. The effects
on human beings of a heritage of destitution can
only be overcome by a long-range effort of edu
cation possible only for the organized agencies
of social welfare.
AT THE SAME time, the ultimate social good
of an open society, governed by standards of
love and justice, will only result from the con
version of individual persons to concern for their
brothers. The poor will only be enriched when
Christ is served by Christians where alone He
can be found - in our neighbor. All the cliches
about individual dignity and initiative fade into
the hypocrisy they really are when used as
excuses not to give to others what we would be
given, not to do to others as we have them do
to us.
We live in a world of terrible contrast bet
ween wealth-worshipping affluence and the aw
ful struggle to avoid starvation. In such a con
text, the Church- that is. we Christians- has a
double duty. We must first make clear our ad
herence to poverty as a Christian moral value.
We need to divest ourselves of both our real
and apparent avarice. At the same timd, we have
an obligation to exert all our energy- collec
tively and individually and in every form that is
available to us- to combat defeat destitution every
where.
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My Fair Lady
ACROSS
i rumen
4 The Bishop pre
sented her with
a -—
5 cravat
11 type of cat
14 article (Spanish)
15 land measure
60 World War II craft 23 with (German)
61 her -——detained 25 like
her in church 26 palliative
63 air 4 28 downcast
65 a Southern constel- 29 sacred image
lation 31 World War II area.
67 repulsive
71 float
74 mow
16
17
18
19
20
21
27
eel; Old English
ostrich-like bird
margin
brain; P.I.
A Master’s Degree;
abbr.
77
78
79
81
84
85
a dog
Priestly vestment
prefix; before
center
not genuine
chemical ending .
formic acid source
piece 87
wagon tongue 88
neglect 89
The Bishop of--—-90
left the altar to 91
come to her
traitor
instrument
heights; abbr.
secular
any (Scot.)
unwritten
92 comprehend
37 macerate
33 nabs
35 to make grooves ,
40 caper
43 one who is foolish
can’t make us into Christians who truly love
one another, but it can bring home to us some
of the requirements and the joys of Our unity in
Christ. It is, at least potentially, a very power
ful means of helping us to be whole human per
sons at Mass, persons who find joy in being
and acting with other persons in the love of Christ.
OF COURSE, it may take some time before
the singing in your parish church seems any
thing like a sign of unity. It may take a much
longer time before hymns are composed that
really suit the requirements of religious singing
today, both in words and musi?.,Itmust raise
our hearts and minds to God— but our hearts
and minds, not those of people of some other
time and place. It must unite us, but not simply
as a cheerful human gathering, but as members
of Christ. It must help us to worship more fully,
to worship as Christians. These are not easy
requirements for poets and musicians to meet.
But we shall never get anywhere by not sing
ing the best hymns that are available today
— singing them as best we can and trying to
sing better, the better to "praise God in the
Church."
rhetor
Ancient Syria
J pertaining to a
i>rc tuberance
pebble
.•toman ancient
spirit?
i cognomens
electric; abbr.
gasoline
seventh month of
Jewish year
DOWN
1 Papal court
2 ones
3 cupolas
4 Henry IV birth
place
5 cunning
6 slant
7 staff
8 cajoles
S She was for
years
10 eyes; (Scot.)
1) nine
12 comb, form; all
13 mongrel
32 misjudges
34 jacket
35 car
87 Coral Island
88 sounds
39 exalt
40 aureoles
41 a garden plant
42 squad
44 Asiatic fibre plant
47 snidely
49 for fear that
52 dirk
54 Abyssinian langu
age
57 sixth sense; abbr.
59 —Sparks
62 certainty
64 abolish
66 note; music
68 epithets “
69 combine
70 meaning
71 bond
72 arm bone
73 heed
75 lawsuit (Spanish)
28 76 She founded the
Order of ——Clares
79 quid
80 hank of twine
82 brown kiwi
83 cloth measure
ANSWER TO LAST WEEK'S PUZZLE ON PAGE 7
JAMES W. ARNOLD
Aside from the wholesome purpose of making
money, there is only one reason for making
a movie out of "My Fair Lady." That is to re
cord for future generations an opulent and opt
imum production of one of the great musical plays
of our time.
Jack Warner’s film, directed by George Cu
kor, performs this task admirably. Others
will add that it also makes the elegant Lern-
er-Loewe adaptation of Bernard Shaw’s "Pyg
malion" accessible to a broad world-wide au
dience. But it is hard to believe, at the prices
currently being asked, that it
will reach too many customers
who haven’t seen one stage ver
sion or another.
LET’S NOT beat around the
Christmas tree. Except for
some reservations about Aud
rey Hepburn’s Eliza, the movie
is a first class production of
the play. Rather than recount
its already familiar excellen
ces, let’s get at something more important.
Just how good a movie is it? For MFL lovers
and mahy filmgoers, it is probably; enough
to say it does the play in spades. But alert
movie buffs will notice that I have not said it
is a great movie.
This isn’t the season to bog down in a heady
discussion of what makes a movie "good." But
frequent readers shouldn’t be surprised at my
view, which to put it over-bluntly, is that a good
movie entertains by a combination of sight and
sound effects unlikely, if not impossible, in any
other medium.
THE SIMPLE fact is that MFL was created
for the stage, The reasons for its greatness are
all rooted in its theatrical nature. One, the
trio of remarkably vivid adult characters;
the spirited Cockney flower girl, her rascally
amoral father, and Higgins, the acidly intelle
ctual woman-hater who miraculously turns her
into something more than a lady. Two, the Ler-
ner-Shaw dialog, which has both sparkle
and meaning. Three, the songs, fresh, literate
and melodic, and Cecil Beaton’s turn-of-the-cen-
turn costumes, perhpas the best designing
job since the creation of the butterfly. Finally,
it is a happy show, with an upbeat sentimen
tal ending.
All these stage effects have now been put on
film. The result is certainly more than a film
ed play; this is pot, thank heaven, another
“Gypsy." But I cannot honestly see that the
transition has changed our improved MFL in
any important way. It is still a play, not
a movie; the customer’s experience is still the
same one he got in the theater.
OBVIOUSLY , one has a better view of the
actors; he can see them close up and from vary
ing angles. He also has no troble hearing all
the words. There are more sets, and they are
more realistic (though not real, because the film
was shot on a sound stage). And director Cukor
(whose last film was “The Chapman Report"
but whose 46 credits to date range from "Cam
ille" to "A Star Is Born") has tried, where it
could be done easily, to add movement by both
actors and camera.
TRULY cinematic moments are rare, Cukor
adds a delightfully steamy scene in which Eliza
is forced into her first bath. “Just You Wait"
is enhanced by a fantasy sequence that would
have been impossible on stage. The threatri-
cality of "Street Where You Live" has been
slightly improved by framing the young man’s
solo with small bunches of flowers. And an inven
tive use of cutting and color make Doolittle’s
comic farewell to amoral life ("Get Me to the
Church") the film’s most artful sequence.
But the major impact of MFL comes from
sights, sounds and performances that can as well,
though less extravagantly, be seen, heard,
and enjoyed on the stage. It is just not a real
movie. The point is worth making because we’ll
hear abundant praise of this film in Coming
months from critics who are mainly only telling
us again what a fine play it is.
ALL THIS may seem like tilting at windmills,
since many customers will settle for a charming
play, charmingly and lavishly produced,
even in a movie house. But if Catholics are to
take the business of movie art seriously (and
they seem anxious to), they mustfaceup to basic
questions. Most basic of all; when is a movie
really a movie? How is it different from a book
or play? Which differences are important, which
only superficial?
Looking at it simply as theater, I enjoyed MFL,
although the woman next to me insisted on hum
ming along- a calculated risk with, a show as
familiar as this one. Rex Harrison and Stanley
Holloway are undeniably the definitive perform
ers in their roles. While Miss Hepburn seems
to lack the vulgarity, especially invoice, to bring
off the Cockney segment, she has the beauty
and emotional range for the post-transistion scen
es. That first shot of her in the Beaton crea
tion at Ascot must be as lovely an image as
stage or screen has ever produced.
THE PLAY, finally, is remarkable for more
than its physical splendor, comedy, wit, or
technical excellence. It remains, in every per
formance, a stirring tribute to the beauty that
lies near the surface in every human soul.
OLD AND NEW
>rroTq^ofr
Whimpers On The Left
BY GARRY WILLS
The right-wing kook is a familiar figure in the
demonology of our times. When certain of our jour
nalists are tucked in their beds, visions of tennis
shoes dance in their heads. The tennis-shoed
caricature is so vivid that some of the Pyg-
malions who helped create it are disappoint
ed when it does not come to life around them.
Thus, sophisticated commentators were act
ually surprised that Goldwater
supporters at last summer’s
Republican convention were not
Herblock cartoons animated in
Disney color— a surprise that
prompted Claire Booth Luce to
remark to one of these jour
nalists, “Well, Ted, that’s the
way the kooky krumbles.”
The real kooks of the right
,b have given strange assistance
to the iconographers of the left. Theirs is such
a vivid, self-caricauturing lunacy! Herblock
himself, in his highest flights ctf satire, could not
have invented idiocies as memorable as Robert
Welch’s own authentic pronouncements. In fact,
the John Birch Society is a kind of Herblock
cartoon galvanized into hideous energies of
righteous suicide. One of its leaders thinks
that William Buckley is a Communist. Its score-
board of Communist infiltration regularly lis
ted not only Ike’s administration but Chiang-
Kai-Shek’s as run by the emissaries of Moscow.
With "friends” like this, no one would need
enemies.
BUT VIVID and pitiful as the Birchers are,
, there is an even more interesting paranoia at
work on the American scene. The Bircher has
to check at night, before he goes to sleep, to
make sure there is no Communist lurking under
his bed. But more and more luminaries of the
left are to be found, these days, glancing ner
vously under their beds to make sure there
are no Birchers there. One group is literally
"scared silly" by an omnipresent conspiracy at
the disposal of the Kremlin. The other group
; dithers when it feels Itself being sucked down in
i the vast swamps of Welch’s ideological choco-
, late. With the paranoid’s gift for self-hypnosis,
r- the leftist gingerly touches his face to trace
• the “Keds" imprint left there by the stampeding
I little old ladies.
Do I exaggerate? Listen to one of the most re
spected analysts of ouf society. These are the
words of David Riesman: “The organizational
weight and media outlets possessed by the
racial right help constantly to polarize dis
course so that the minority who hold a less neg
ative and emaciated vision cannot even always
hold on to it, let alone get it discussed and its
detailed consequences examined and tried out."
MR. WELCH is a candy merchant; and. though
this honorable trade .does not give him a char
ter for irresponsibility, it does not, either,
make us expect much profundity from him.
Yet that is what we expect from a sociologist
of Riesman’s standing. He is a man bound to use
words precisely; and here he says, precisely,
that public discussion is controlled by the ra
dical right; that the poor leftist can hardly
get a word in edgewise; that the barrage of
kooky propaganda brainwashes even the con
vinced leftist. That sounds, for all the world,
like Robert Welch describing the Communist
propaganda apparatus!
The ironic thing is that Riesman wrote those
words in one of the many ingenious liberal at
tempts to prove that right-wing propaganda ign
ited the assassin’s mania in Lee Oswald’s mind.
This propaganda, you set, so fills the air
around us that, when any oddball has breathed
it to the saturation point, he rushes out and
shoots the first leftist he comes across. But
the one kind of propaganda we know Oswald
pored over and collected and passed out is
the kind disseminated by Mr, Riesman’s cir
cles— the literature of the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee.
I JAKE Professor Riesman as one of many
examples of this spreading hysteria of the left.
In the same issue of the New York Review of
Books in which Riesman divulged his conspi
ratorial views of history, Irving Howe wrote
that "the most aggressive and determined
political pressures have been coming from the
right." Even before that prime bug-a-boo-
the evil wizard, Welch— appeared, Bishop Pike
had put the nation on the alert, predicting that
a new McCarthy would arise, and telling the loyal
left to search him out. And when the news broke
that there was a John Birch Society, the libe
ral journalists ran toward it as flagellant so
ciety females used to run for Stephen Ward’s
house. The liberal does not feel true to his tra
dition unless he is being persecuted— even when
he has to go out and round up ineffectual per
secutors to wield the scourge. .
The panic is spreading. It has become fashi
onable now to be scared to death by the right
wing, (I must tell , you sometime the terrible
ordeal of Johnny Carson). Men go around with
ears pricked for thunder on the right. They draw
up elaborate charts— the equivalent of Welch’s
own scorecard on Ike and Chiang— to prove
just how long the Birch tentacles are. They talk
of Goldwater as the "front” and "puppet” of
W’elch, just as Birchers recite their lists of
Communist "fronts." They predict "takeovers,"
and set up terrifying countdowns of disaster
"unless we do something." The rhetoric is en
tirely Welch’s own.
This fashionable hypochondria, this fadfor ner
vous breakdown before the spectre of Robert
Welch, has just been imported into the Catholic
press by Commonwell editor John Leo—■ tp
whose fears I shall address my next column.
IGNATIUS HOUSE
1 if*? X ^ >4 —v ! ' ^ A «■*!. ^ e r f ^
RETREATS BY JESUIT PRIESTS
Weekends For Men
And
Weekends For Women
6700 Riverside Drive N. wl 255-0503
Atlanta, Georgia 30328
God Love You
BY MOST REVEREND FULTON J. SHEEN
The faithful laity in this country are becoming more and
more Christ-like, Letters come into our office of which this is
typical: "I am becoming more particular where my alms
go. I do not want to be a part of any missionary society which
invests alms in stocks and bonds." Our Catholic people,
judging from this correspondence are insisting; 1. That the
very poor and starving of the world be aid
ed before we add barn to barn in excess
ive and luxurious buildings; 2. That the
money given, be distributed immediately;
3. That there be some accounting of what
is distrubted to the poor.
This new mentality on the part of the
laity has helped The Society for the Pro
pagation of the Faith because; 1. It belongs
to the Holy Father and he, himself, app
roves the amounts given to Africa, Asia, Oceania, Latin Ame
rica and other parts of the world; 2. Not a cent of the alms ,
given by the faithful is invested in Wall Street or in real es
tate. It immediately finds its way to the poor missionaries,
the hungry and the needy throughout the world; 3. Every cent
received by The Society for the Propagation of the Faith in
the United States is given to the Holy Father and an account
is rendered each year explaining how the money is spent.
You may get more praise from men by giving to those who
already are rich, but if you want to do something for your soul,
to make reparation for your sins, to thank God for all He
has given to you and to help somebody needy NOW, then direct
your charity to the Holy Father through his Society for the Pro
pagation of the Faith. God Love You!
GOD LOVE YOU to a baby sitter for $1 "Irealizethat $1
isn’t very much, but I earned it baby sitting and I hope that it
will help to make someone’s New Year happier. I think that the
work of SPOF is just wonderful and I want you to know that I
pray for the Misssions each night." . . . to two Senior Citi
zens who have given all they have "The enclosed $50 is sent
with love to those who need help and are our brothers in Christ
Our savings were depleted after two major operations thi% year
so I cashed our last three bonds to send you this." .to’,.
J. M. for $10 "I saved this for the Missions by shoveling
snow."
Strengthen your New Year’s resolution to become more mis-
sfonminded by reading MISSION, a pocket-sized bi-monthly
magazine edited by Most Rev. Fulton J. Sheen to keep you
up-to-date on missionary activities the world over. Let us put
you on our subscription list for only one dollar a year.
Cut out this column, pin your sacrifice to it and mail it to Most
Rev, Fulton J. Sheen, National Durector of The Society for the
Propagation of the Faith, 366 Fifth Avenue, New York, N, Y. 10001,
Or to your Diocesan Director, Rev. Harold J. Rainey, P. O. Box
12047, Northside Station, Atlanta 5, Georgia.