The Georgia bulletin (Atlanta) 1963-current, July 08, 1965, Image 4

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PAGE 4 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