Newspaper Page Text
THURSDAY, JULY 29, 1965
GEORGIA BULLETIN PAGE 4
ESCALATION
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 “Rev. R. Donald Kiernan
2699 Peachtree N. E.
P. O. Box 11667
Northside Station
Atlanta, Georgia 30305
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 Atlanta, Ga.
U. S. A. $5.00
Canada $5.00
Foreign $6.50
Christian Response
Catholic leaders from all over
the South will be in Atlanta start
ing today, for a conference on soc-
cial change and the Christian Re
sponse. We welcome the bishops,
priests, nuns and laity who have
come to discuss and make rec
ommendations on the problems
of human relations in the South.
Sponsored by the Archdiocese
of Atlanta and the National Cath
olic Conference for Interracial
Justice, the meetings will ex
plore changes in the social fab
ric of our region, consider the
implications for the Church, and
suggest possible responses. In
addition to the formal presenta
tions a principal feature of the
Conference will be a number
of private work-group discus
sions to explore the presenta
tion material in depth.
Speakers and resource per
sonnel from all walks of life will
be on hand to be of service to the
participants and the general
theme. Our own St. Martin’s
Human Relations Council will
provide volunteers and delegates
to further the success of this
most important event at a crucial
period of transition in the. South.
The clergy and laity of the
archdiocese are urged to attend
the various general sessions, and
the community Masses will
be concelebrated. We are re
minded of the 1965 Pentecost
Statement, issued by the Bishops
of the Province of Atlanta which
said in part:
“The times call for religious
understanding and racial har
mony. Every period of chal
lenge demands vision and cour
age.. The Catholic Church in
the past has done what could be
done. Now she can do no more...
Our readers are welcome at the
Hilton Inn at the airport, today,
tomorrow and Saturday. We are
sure you’ll find it a rewarding
tomorrow and Saturday. We are
sure you’ll find it a rewarding
experience.
Willie Brewster’s Gone!
J W iljie B rev/ste r *.wa s a a Negro
who had never been active in a
civil rights demonstration. Last
Saturday they buried himatMun-
ford, Alabama, after he had
been fatally wounded by night
riders on a desolate stretch of
the countryside of that strife-
torn state.
Willie Brewster was no “out
side agitator” allegedly stirring
up trouble. He was a citizen of
Alabama peacefully driving along
the road returning home from
his job. But they shot' him down
and drove away. Eyewitnesses
say the assassins were white
men who had trailed Willie’s car
before they opened fire. And
like in many other similar
incidents in Alabama the
murderers have not yet been ap
prehended. Nor is there any
hope that they will ever be pun
ished if they are caught. The
anguished cry of justice goes
unheeded anJ!"the"^§lain are for
gotten. / f\\\
Willie Brewster joins the ranks
of the countless Negroes who
have been sacrificed at the altar
fi hate and prejudice. Their
only crime has been a difference
of pigment of skin. Sorrow is out
of place. Just anger can be the
only reaction of concerned men
of good will. When will the
slaughter stop? Will the so-call
ed moderates again reiterate
their fearful platitudes? Will
they plead again for patience and
understanding? Will the elected
officials continue to act with
callous indifference to the wel
fare of an oppressed minority?
Will the Churches continue to be
silent “because it is the prudent
thing to do?”
Willie Brewster has gone to
his maker. But while his family
mourns in the desolation of such
a loss, the night riders continue
to burn and kill. Is this really
Americanism?
Smeared
GEORGIA PINES
He Called Him ‘Friend’
BY REV. R. DONALD KIERNAN
There was no man in his time on whom our Lord
pronounced so many eulogies as on the great Pre
cursor. He calls him "a Prophet, yea, and more
than a Prophet;” and “a burning and shining
light,” and He declares that “among those bom
of women, there is not a greater Prophet than
John the Baptist.” ,
But among the encominiums bestowed upon John
by his Master, there is none so tender and en
dearing as the title,, “...Friend...”
.and.en-, , n ~.
joyments of this life, there are
few, that can be compared in
value to the possession of a
faithful friend, who will pour
the truth into your heart, though
you may whince under it, of a
friend who will defend you when
you are unjustly assailed by the
tongue of lies, who will counsel
you in your doubts and perplexities, who will open
his purse to aid you without expecting any returns
for his favors, who will rejoice at your favors,,
who will rejoice at your prosperity and grieve
at your adversity, who will bear your burdens,
who will add to your joys and diminish your sor
rows by sharing in both.
He that has found a friend, has found a treas
ure. A poor man may be said to be rich in the
midst of his poverty, so long as he enjoys the
interior sunshine of a devoted friend. The richest
of men, on the contrary, is poor and miserable,
if he has no friend whom he can grasp by the
hand, and to whom he can disclose the secrets
of his heart.
Friendship has certain essential characteris
tics without which it is unworthy of the name.
The basis of a true friendship are self-sacrifice,
disinterestedness, truth, virtue and constancy.
It is essential to ,true friendship that it be re
ciprocal. A one sided attachment can never be
called a friendship.
The friendship of Christ enables and sanctifies
human friendship. It elevates it to a higher plane.
It is the bond which strengthens it and makes it
lasting. You will never be disloyal to a friend,
as long as you are loyal to Christ.
“A faithful friend is a strong defense.” When
you are openly or secretly assailed by an enemy,
or when any danger threatens you, your friend
will rush to your aid, regardless of personal
danger,. He, will make yoUr 'eause.his own. .A.
beautiful, example. of ffiismMiityfof meodSrjip c>
is fpfnisijWd iniHe^opK Of .jangsf^octose'wfth^uie
friendship between Jonathan and David, that as the
■Bible expresses it, “The soul of Jonathan was
knit with the soul of David.” When the enmity of
Saul was aroused against David, and when he re
solved through envy to slay him, Jonathan, his
sterling friend, hastened to warn David of the
danger which threatened him, and to hid him in a
place of security. He then so eloquently pleaded
before his father the innocence of his friend, that
Saul promised to be reconciled to David. When
Jonathan was slain in battle, David rent his gar
ments and fasted til evening, as he exclaimed,
“As a mother loves her only son, so did I love
thee.”
The late Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore once
used the preceding in a sermon to describe his
ideas Of friendship. Its a strange commentary
on life that with all of the advances in science,
medicine and technology that the principles un
derlying true friendships has never changed. Too,
its a strange commentary that as humans progress
we seem to have lost the ideas of what friend
ships are all about. Today, if a man can truth
fully say that he has one real friend, he is more
than lucky.
Psychologists can blame it on selfishness,,
psychiatrists can lay the blame on insecurity but
one fact remains that when you stop working at
keeping a friend, you’ve lost him.
COSTLY FRIENDSHIP
Georgia’s Image
Your World And Mine
The Civil Rights Bill has been
the law of the land for over a
year yet we still find instances
of flagrant violations of the law
all over the country. There are
some in this State who look with
superior eyes at the events in
Alabama, Louisiana, and Miss
issippi, but are blind to the hap
penings right on our own door
step. These people have the
stance of Pharisees.
When We look at the situation
of racial justice in Georgia, we
inevitably think of the good image
which is spread abroad by State
officials and some newspapers.
Yet apart from Atlanta, and a
few other communities, the Ne
gro gets little benefit from the
Civil Rights Act. Despite the law,
de facto segregation in many of
our schools is the reality; dese
gregation of public accommo
dations in some Georgia com
munities is all but non-existent;
attacks and even murder still go
unpunished. One can truthfully
say that our self-righteous atti
tude is unbecoming of honest men.
One has only to objectively ap
praise the situation in Americus
where four , Negro women have
spent almost a week in jail be
cause they had the affront to at
tempt to enter the white entrance
of a polling booth. Where is Geor
gia’s sense of fair play when such
incidents are written off as “Ne
groes being unreasonable.”
We are also disturbed by the
apparent indifference of top State
officials who continue to con
sider the situation in Americus as
a local affair. We believe it
should be the concern of all
Georgians. As long as there are
centers where injustice against
the Negro minority is perpetrat
ed and perpetuated, then we have
no right to smug superiority over
Bogalusa,! Selma and various
places in Mississippi. Let’s get
our own house in order.
BY GARY MacEOIN
The mass media of the press, radio and tele
vision are doing a tremendous technical job of
moving the news onto our breakfast tables and
our livingfoom screens. With the satellite hover
ing 21,300 miles above the Atlantic, we can now
be served sensations' in almost any part of the
world live or instant frozen.
But our knowledge of significant events is al
most as spotty and inconclusive as in the days
of the mule express. The great
news-gathering services are
unforgivably inadequate in this
area. They specialize in trivia
and look for slick superficial
ity as the. primary qualifica
tion in . their fieldmen. To
maintain, their absurd claim of
total world coverage, they pre
sent as fact the managed news
of totalitarian governments
rather than face expulsion of their correspon
dents. And since they sell news worldwide, they
are subject to official pressures in all countries
where national pride can be hurt by the truth.
What all the great commerical agencies of the
press, radio and television have failed to do for
many years has now been done in the case of
South Africa by the National Education Television
network. In two one-hour shows, it has offered
American viewers a penetrating and balanced
picture of the racial issues in South Africa. That
situation, as it properly concluded, is of vital im
portance to us. We must know the facts in order
to make a correct moral judgment. We must alsp
know them in order to make the political judg
ments that are right for the United States and for
the free world.
THE SOUTH AFRICAN government maintains a
well-oiled, well-financed and sophisticatedpropa-
ganda machine all overtheworld. Itcan afford to.
Indeed, it cannot afford not to. The 19.3 per cent
of South Africans who are white and who alone
have a political voice enjoy one of the highest
living standards of the world. The Republic has
great natural resources, and they monopolize the
benefits through a system of terror and repres
sion which enables them to exploit the cheaplabor
of the 80.7 per cent of the citizens who arc PPb-
white.
• yd bab
As the NET program pointed out, United States
government and business are making an important
contribution to the maintenance of this system.
We have a satellite tracking station in South Africa
(and, I may add, have yielded to South African
government insistence that we send no Negroes to
work in it). Our private investors are reaping
big profits by their contributions to the growth of
an economy founded in and dedicated to the denial
of human rights.
The South African propaganda machine works
CONTINUED ON PAGE 5
Travail For
Vietnamese
BY GERARD E. SHERRY
This week’s momentous decisions made by
President Johnson in relation to Vietnam point to
further hardships and sacrifices on the part of
the American people in the interests of world
freedom and peace.
One may well question whether an escalation
of the war is in the interests of peace—but the
answer lies less
in Washington
than it does in
Hanoi and Peking.
The American
commitment to
uncondition
al peace talks
have led the Asia
tic Communists to
the real escala
tion and a stepping up of powerful military :forces
to impose their will on the South Vietnamese,
THOSE OPPOSING U. S, policies argue that
both sides in Vietnam have violated the Geneva
Accord of 1954 and that the simplest solution is
for the U. S. to get out and let the Vietnam people
sort the problem out themselves. This, however,
can only presuppose that the other side is honor
able and is also willing to abide by the Accord. It
is true that there should have been free elections
in the South and discussions with the North on
unification. The late President Diem reneged
on this part of the Accord, but so did the Com
munists, who could never risk a free election
and their claim to the whole of the country.
This is what bothers me in relation to our
domestic critics of our government's actions in
Vietnam. They qoute the 1954 Geneva agree
ment as an argument for the unconditional with
drawal of our forces; they criticize the South
Vietnam government (or is it governments') and
accuse it of atrocities against the Vietcong
guerrillas; they say the South Vietnamese peo
ple are tired of the war and don’t want the Ameri
cans; indeed, most of these critics haven’t got a
good word to say about the U. S. or South Vietnam
efforts. What is more distrubing is the fact that
they are hardly ever heard criticizing the Vietcong
and its atrocities against individuals and whole
communities. They ignore the fact that the ma
jority of the Vietcong are infiltrators from the
North not South Vietnamese seeking liberation.
It is fairly obvious that the Communist side
never has had any intention of honoring its signa
ture at Geneva. They want the whole of Viet
nam; and they are prepared to risk an atomic
holocaust in achieving their aims.
THERE IS no doubt that the South Vietnamese
government bears some responsibility for the
present situation. So does our government which
has compounded mistake with mistake in its eval
uation „ojt both the .military ,and political pitfalls
^involved'jhe„ cpmmitjjiepi; ,piadp 3 Jjy Presi($eqts
Eisenhower,' ‘Kennedy _ anal Johnson.'''j But! their
promise to help the South Vietnamese obtain their
freedom from Communist oppressionwasmade in
good faith and this should not be an issue.
VALID CRITICISM is healthy in a democracy,
but it ought to be tempered by objectivity based
on facts not emotion. I would suggest that many
of the critics have let their emotion run wild at
the expense of truth. One can have a certain
sympathy with them for our government has
been less than honest in reports to the people.
Defense Secretary McNamarra has contributed in
no small measure to the confusion by his fre
quent visits to and his optomistic appraisals
of South Vietnam. His latest visit seemingly
impressed upon him the reality of die situation.
He said conditions had deteriorated and that a
greater American effort was required.
IN ITS SIMPLEST terms, it means more Ameri
can soldiers and hardware. It means an expanded
graft and the call-up of reserves. It means a
semi-war footing similar to the days of the Ko
rean conflict. And while we still have the right
to ask the whys and wherefores, once the de
cision has been made, we can do no more than
loyally support the government in the difficult
days that lie ahead. There are a lot of unknowns
in the situation. Will our increased efforts bring
in the Russians more openly on the side of the
Vietcong? What about Communist China? Will
it throw in its teeming masses of ground troops
to bolster the troops of its Cong satellite. Will
the powers involved resort to other andconven-
tional armaments in seeking whatever victory is
possible; or will the mad clamour from the Ex
tremists in both camps result in nuclear warfare
and all that it implies?
There are many responsible Americans who
feel that the war in Vietnam is already lost to
our side. They are not harping critics but con
cerned public and private officials who are know
ledgeable and loyal. But significantly, they do
not demand our unconditional surrender to Com
munist tyranny. Rather they justify our “es
calation” of the war on the grounds that we
should be jn the best position to extract conces
sions from our enemies—this in order that any
future settlement be an honorable justice to our
Vietnamese allies. One gathers that this is'the
prime motivation behind the current efforts of our
government. We have repeatedly insisted that we
seek no territory in Asia or anywhere else. And
unless the critics (especially those among our
allies) forget, only American power has frus
trated the frequent communist attempts to take
over large areas of the free world.
WAR ON ANY SCALE threatens the stability
of the people involved and there will be much
tragedy and sense of loss experienced by most
families as a result of the Vietnam situation.
The citizens of this country therefore have an
obligation both to loyalty and service in the cause
of an eventual peaceful solution. While construc
tive critics will still have their part, both on the
political and social levels, it beholds us all to join
ranks locally and nationally, in support of our'
President in the awesome tasks that lie ahead
for him. Our basic cause is just. If the mis
takes of the past are not repeated, an honorable
settlement is in our grasp. The attainment of
peace is never easy. Like war it requires cour
age, dedication and sacrifice. And this is our
national heritage.
REAPINGS
AT
RANDOM