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GEORGIA BULLETIN
THURSDAY, JULY 8, 1965
ROGET HELPS
the
Archdiocese of Atlanta
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 EDITOR Rlev. R. Donald Kiemaa
2699 Peachtree N. E.
P. O. Box 11667
Northside Station
Atlanta, Georgia 30305
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Rev, Leonard F. X. Maybew
Member of die Catholic Press Association
and Subscriber tt> N. C. W. C. News Service
Telephone 231-1281
Second Class Permit -at Atlanta, Ga.
U. S. A. $5.00
Canada $5.00
Foreign $6.50
Responsible Youth?
Teenage youth are critized to
day for not taking greater in
terest in their Church or com
munity. ,In fact the criticism has
been raised that the only time a
teenager can be seen thoroughly
involved in any activity is dan
cing the “Frug”, “Jerk” or
“Wooly Body”,
Is there any reason why youth
cannot be more active? Outward
ly, no. Teenagers today are bet
ter educated than some adults,
yet they are forced to hold the
use of that education until after
college. The time to apply know
ledge is at the time it is learned.
Thus the knowledge and ex
perience are coupled together
permanently.
Often teenagers are afraid to
be seen in a previously adult
dominated position. This stems
from the stifling of their abi
lity in the structure of some
schools. Students are taught no
more about responsibility in high
school than in grammar school.
Instead of giving them the res
ponsibility commensurate with
their ability and instruction, they
are expected to wait until after
college. Then all the responsibi
lity is - received' at once rather
than in small doses throughout
high school.
Business recognizes the teen
ager as one of the best markets
available. More and more ad
vertising campaigns are directed
toward the younger strata of the
population. Yet business menare
unwilling to give youth the same
professional courtesy given an
adult. Why should they? They
are hardly more than children
However, when it comes to tak
ing their money, they are the
first to do so.
What can be done to prevent
this problem becoming more
chronic as the youth population
increases? Parents must give
children more responsibility du
ring the formative years. As a
child reaches the teen age, he
should be made aware of the dif
ficulties involved in the family
community. Rather than keep
ing him in ignorance of family
affairs, we should let him know.
Perhaps if teenagers took an ac
tive part in the family organiza
tion, they would be less free with
the parents’ money and car. Du
ring high school teenagers only
see the love aspect of marriage.
If they realized two cannot live
as cheaply as one, teenage mar
riages might dwindle
Since the school has control
over the youth for half the wak
ing hours, it should realize its
reponsibility in helping provide
a more practical application of
learning. High school students
should be given some voice in
the running of their school. If
everything is done for them
throughout school, do they not
subconsciously expect every
thing to be done for them after
graduation? Perhaps here is the
reason for voter turnout being on
the„ *,.• . ,^ ,
A greater re spansib^ity in^,
knowledge of community and
Church problems, and an ac
ceptance of the teenager as a cap
able human being would bring
about a healthier atmosphere for
youth growth and development.
It no doubt would also contri
bute to a lessening of the social
problems we are now confronted
with in this area.
At a time when youths at eight
een are able to die for their
country in Viet Nam, why are
they not recognized in their coun
try as responsible citizens?
P.K.I.
Exhausted Youth?
After ins ulating our
selves for a long time against
the extraordinary event called
the Go Go, we finally refrain
ed from switching the TV dial
and sat through not one, but
two hours of what used to be
called music and the dance. Since
it appears that no one is called
by his Christian name anymore,
AN ALTAR BOY
shark in the river.
we were introduced to groups like
The Rolling Stones, The Awful
Eight, The Righteous Brothers,
The Mad Ones, The Everly
Brothers-at least this is the way
we remember them, and anyway,
ask the kids, they will know. Two
basic requirements for pre
sentation seem to be the willing
ness to wear your clothes about
three sizes too small for you,
and never but never, visit the
barber. If you can carry a guitar,
or even play it, of course you
are really in.
After a couple of hours ex
posure without suggestiveness we
became convinced that the voices
were uncultivated and per
manently adolescent, the music
zany beyond description, the gy
rations supercalisthenic-and, let
us admit it, the total product
unmistakeable exciting. The
irrepressible adult reaction,
naturally, is to be sure thatthere
must be something evil in the
whole business, and, for all that
we will ever know, there
may be. But after two hours,
we have done all the research
we intend to do on the subject
and have come to one tiny con
clusion. Whoever called today’s
youth the tired generation came
awfully close to the truth. They’re
not just tired, they are exhausted
and small wonder indeed!
BOSTON PILOT
GEORGIA PINES
Serra Success At Miami
BY REV. R. DONALD KIERNAN
The largest convention in 21 years of Serra
International contained some ‘‘firsts*’ as far
as Georgia is concerned. The biggest delegation
of Atlanta Serrans checked into Miami’s Fon
tainebleau Hotel well in advance of the opening
session of the convention; and Atlanta’s Serrans
held their heads up with pride as our Archbishop
delivered the inspiring keynote address of the con
vention.
A concelebrated Mass by ten Archbishops and
Bishops before a gathering of 3,500 people was the
highlight of the'' convention.' W choir df 500
voices from South Florida parishes and diocesan
seminarians sang during the
Mass. Bishop Carroll of Miami,
who preached at the Mass, said,
"In 1565 a diocesan priest and
a layman worked most closely
together inestablishingthefirst
permanent Christian settlement
in this country...TTiis was 55
years before the Pilgrims
landed at Plymouth Rock; 210
years before the American Re-
IT’S REAL difficult to make comparisons bet
ween the different conventions. I have attended
conventions in New Orleans, Los Angeles, Pitts
burgh, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Chicago, and
Philadelphia. Each convention was unique and dis-
tinct. One can readily see, especially at this con
vention, the role of the emerging layman. So
many outstanding Catholic laymen gather from
places as far away as Italy, England and Hong
Kong for the sole purpose of aiding and foster
ing vocations for their Church—it is truly an
age where layman andclergy are working close
ly together.
Delegates to the convention were truly in
spired when the keynote speaker, Archbishop
Hallinan, told of the magnificent work of the
Georgia Laymen’s Association and how this
organization aided the Church at a time when
official statements from the Bishop would only
have been treated with suspicion. “It was an
organization of Catholic laymen who fought back
with intelligence, vigor and courtesy, and over
the years enhanced the Catholic name in a state
where 15,000 Catholics made up less than afrac-
tion of percent of the whole population. The
Georgia Laymen’s Association was conceived
and planned, financed and carried out entirely
by laymen...”Archbishop Hallinan said.
THE ARCHBISHOP conducted, “Tods/ the' 0
Church asks that you give yourselves, your
concerts, your questions, your will to speak
up, to offer your own initiatives. As every
married man knows, it is easy to give an an
niversary gift or a birthday remembrance, but
it is the fulness of love to give your own self."
Workshops, lectures and official dinners crow
ded the days for busy delegates. Reports on the
conditions of the Church in Santo Domingo were
heard from the Apostolic Nuncio to that coun
try; Bishop Mark McGrath spoke about the'Church
in Central America; and the greetings of the
Holy Father were extended through the Secre
tary of the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries
and Universities, Archbishop Divo Staff a.
Serra was established back in 1907 in Seat
tle, Washington, by seven laymen. When Atlanta
joined the international group back in 1954, we
were the 120th club to become affiliated. Today
the Club has 11,000 members and is established
in 19 countries. The club is composed of dis
tinguished Catholic laymen who through their pray
ers, works and efforts foster vocations to the
priesthood and the religious life. It is truly a
a partnership of the layman and the priest.
What’s In
A Name?
BY GERARD E. SHERRY
ONE OF OUR READERS has requested that we
go one step further than last week’s column on the
semantic tangle and clarify or substitute for the
term “Liberal’’. This because so many people
lump the Catholic and the secular Liberal in the
same package.
We did this once before when Roget’sThesaurus
was paged
through, but no
really acceptable
alternatives for
the word were
found. So then the
pages were turned
to conservative
and its synonyms.
The general head
ing “conserva
tion-preservation" offers no immediate an
swers. It does, however, provide excellent am
munition for polemic exchange: Next time one re
fers to a worthy Conservative opponent it is.pleas
ing to know that the verb, preserve, counts among
its synonyms dehydrate, pickle, and embalm 1
This little research convinced me that one can’t
really avoid calling oneself a Liberal. Even if
there was a suitable synonym, the word itself has
been used too long to be replaced.
ANOTHER SUGGESTION comes from a deep-
seated suspicion of any doctrinaire position. The
doctrinaire Conservative, who refuses to entertain
any new idea of any new approach just because
it’s new, is no worse than the doctrinaire Liberal,
who wants to change everything for the sake of
change and attacks every Conservative position
simply because it’s conservative.
The non-doctrinaire Liberal is a person who
tries to accept and conserve basic immutable
truths by searching for ever new ways of bringing
them to bear on the life of modern society. He is
ever working for a better understanding of eternal
truths, trying to conserve the essential by re-en-
fleshing it in the ever-changing language of the
present.
Here the operative word is trying. The non-doc
trinaire Liberal is pragmatic. He experiments. He
tries, fails, and tries again till eventually he dis
covers a viable way of giving truth a new birth,
fashioning for it a modem, contemporary body.
This is his way of conserving truth.
THIS SHORT DIP into Roget gives us another
clue to the emotional undertones of the semantic
tangle. The clue comes from the justaposition of
the term Liberal and the term Freedom. With this
cdhnotation the fat is really in the fire; this be
cause it is in his love for freedom that the Catholic
Liberal most closely approaches his sedularistic
counterpart. At the same time, it is in this con
nection that the Catholic Conservative feels most
comfortable with the nineteenth century condem
nations. Both the secularist Liberal, especially
the nineteenth century brand, and the Catholic Con
servative insist on a world of the “either-or”,
while the Catholic Liberal valiantly struggles to
maintain a realistic world which includes the
“both-and" dichotomy.
“Either liberty or authority”, “either freedom
or obedience", “either the church or con
science". These are the simple alternatives that
seem to express the reality of our friends. Where
as we see a more obscure, less definitive setting
of "both freedom and obedience”, “both liberty
and authority”, "both the church and conscience”.
This difference has become all the more pro
nounced as a result of recent encyclicals by Pope
John XXIII and Pope Paul VI. The reaction of
Catholic Conservative spokesmen in relation to
these encyclicals has been most illuminating.
BECAUSE THE POPES point to the fact that
there are no black and whites in relation to the po
litical and economic scene, our Conservative
friends have suddenly developed what can only be
termed the “grey sickness.”
Take for instance Pope John’s stress on the
need for individual responsibility—he didn’t stop
there. He also recognized at once the responsi
bility of the State for the welfare of the people.
He said in Mater et Magistra:
FOREIGN AID STUDY
Your World And Mine
REAPINGS
AT
RANDOM
BY GARY MacEOIN
MANY PEOPLE will welcome for many rea
sons the Senate’s move for a radical re-ex
amination of our foreign aid programs over
the next two years. I vertainly welocme it. I
believe we waste much of our present spending.
I believe we are not spending nearly enough
to make a significant impact on our problem. I
believe that the almost universal public dis
satisfaction results in great part from lack of
understanding of our goals and mininformation
about our actions and their results.
The first need is to distinguish the types of
foreign aid, and to clarify the motives for grant
ing it. Here three main divi
sions quickly reveal them-
sions quickly reveal them
selves — military aid to our
allies, emergency aid to meet
the operating expenses of
friendly regimes threatened
with bankruptcy, and develop
ment aid to help backward coun
tries modernize their econo
mies.
1 would suggest that we start from the clear
principle that the only justification fro grant
ing roreign aid in any of these categories is
the benefit of the United States. I believe we
have in fact always acted on this principle,
but we have not clearly seen ourselves as
doing so. We have deceived ourselves into think
ing of our aid as generosity and charity, when
it was in fact self-interest. That reasonably
angers the recipients, thereby lessening the ef
fect of the effort. It also confuses our own
judgement. When a program goes wrong, we
tend to drop it in annoyance at the perversity
of the recipients, not asking ourselves if our
own interest demands perseverance in a hos
tile enrironment until we gain our objective.
IF WE EXAMINE foreign aid in this light,
I believe that we will reach the conclusion that
the third category alone is Important. Military
aid to small countries has done little for our
national interest. Rather, it has often done
much against us, because the weapons end up in the
wrong hands. ^Emergency aid for operating ex
penses may sometimes be unavoidable, but it
may also mean no more than postponing the
inevitable. It certainly will achieve nothing unless
backed up by adequate development aid to eli
minate the conditions which demanded it in the
first instance.
Now the harsh fact is that we have been doing
very little in what I consider the most importan:
area, that of development of the under-developed
world. Recently in Surinam, I asked a government
official if there was an opinion for closer inte
gration with neighboring South American countries
in order to share the benefits of the Alliance for
Alliance for Progress. “Are you crazy?" he re
plied. “Our present aid from the Netherlands is
about three times as high as would be our pro
portional aid under the Alliance, and on much more
favorable terms.”
On this issue, misinformation is widespread.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 5
“The public authorities must not remain inac
tive, if they are to promote in a proper way pro
ductive development on behalf of social progress
for the benefit of all citizens.. .
‘TT CANNOT BE denied that today the develop
ment of scientific knowledge and productive tech
nology offers the public authorities concrete pos
sibilities of reducing the inequality between the
various sectors of production, between the var
ious areas of political communities, and between
the various countries themselves on a worldwide
scale.”
Small wonder that our Conservative friends
cried, “Mater, si; Magistra, nol" They are back'*
to the “eithe'r-or” situation. They would ac
cept the Church as the Mother but would deny it
the freedom of being the Teacher. Of course, if
Papal encyclicals ever are to their liking, they
are only too willing to accept their disciplined
truths.
The unhappy faculty to see both sides of real
tension puts the Catholic Liberal at odds with both
sets of his friends. Because he recognizes a real
role and value for authority, obedience and socie
ty, he is suspect to the Secular Liberal. Because
he has a real, sincere love for God’s great gift
to man, his Freedom; and because he realizes
that there are limits to the teachings of the
Church, and that the application of these teachings
depends upon day by day prudential decisions by
this particular Catholic, he is suspect to his fellow
Catholics who sport the Conservative tie.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 5