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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1965 GEORGIA BULLETIN PAGE 5
SOCIAL REFORM
Jew-Christian Dialogue
ARNOLD VIEWING
BY WILLIAM J. SMITH, S.J.
IT WAS SHAKESPEARE who said, “Lilies that
fester smell far worse than weeds.”
A Christian who allows hatred to lodge in
his heart is like a lily in decay.
The Christian believes that
he is not merely- a creature
of God but a person who has
received a special grace - the
gift of Faith - which makes
him a child of God in a spe
cial way.
HE BELIEVES that he has
been endowed with a superna-
natural life, through Baptism, that establishes
a special relationship between himself and his
Creator.
The pagan also is a creature of God; each
one fashioned by the Creator Himself. He, too,
will receive sufficient graces to be saved. But
God makes it easier for the baptized, hy the
special gift of Faith and consequent graces be
stowed upon him, to live a spiritual life.
Stubborn pride and hatred are two sins which
can cancel out the benefit of this unique covenant
between God and man. They bring about a cor
ruption of the supernatural life in the soul of
an individual. That is why Shakespeare's quo
tation is pat - “Lilies that fester smell far
worse than the weeds.”
Anti-Semitism, real anti-Semitism, based on a
hatred for neighbor — like racial injustice, is a
sin, A simple dislike of some person or thing,
however, is not a sin. A dislike can be a rea
sonable reaction to what is distasteful. There
is no such thing as a reasonable hatred.
SOME INDIVIDUAL’S specific actions may
annoy us, but the Christian is obligated to rise
above petty prejudice and to love his neighbor
regardless of all things.
When one class of people, whether they be
Irish, Italian, Jewish, German, Polish or what not
become a predominant majority in a neighbor
hood or community, and you belong to aminority,
tension often arises simply by that difference
in numbers. That is one thing and it may become
a social problem. But to hate any man because
you differ with him in his conscientious reli
gious beliefs, or his racial origins, or because
of the color of his skin, is a spiritual problem
that besets the soul of the one who manifests
the hatred or prejudice.
A Christian, whether he be Catholic or Pro
testant, who actually gives way to prejudJce?ip)-.
ply because a fellow citizen was born, of a Se
mite .Wv^qafs an'intbleraBle attitude. Mo^t
of what we call anti-Semitism today is due to
a long history of misunderstanding. It began in
persecution and counter-persecution and has per
severed for almost two thousand years as men
waded through a swampland of ignorance. The
time has long passed when both the Christian
and the Jew should have learned what is at the
root of these historical misunderstandings.
IN TOE FIRST place, the informed Christian
must accept the fact that his religion, Chris
tianity, grew out of the covenant that God made
with the Jewish people some thousands of years
before the coming of Christ. Christianity is the
flowering of the bud of Judaism. It was Pope
Pius XI who stated bluntly, “Spiritually, we
(Christianas ) are all Semites.”
How can any Christian think for one moment
that he can love God and then try to find an
excuse to hate a Jewish neighbor. It is Chris
tian doctrine that when God willed to redeem
the human race He sent His Own Son into the
world to take upon Himself a human nature;
that same human nature possessed by Jew and
Gentile alike. He willed that the Babe be born
of a Jewish maiden. A Jewish maiden forechosen
before time began. A spotless, immaculate vir
gin. The foster father of that Child, Joseph,
was a Jew.
When Christ became of mature age and set
forth to preach the new revelation (at the same
time confirming the covenant that God had made
with the Jewish people) He founded what today
we call the Catolic Church. From His first
disciples He chose twelve, with a man named
Simon, later called Peter (the Rock) as their
head, and He designated them as the first Apostles.
Every one of them was a Jew. (Judas, one of
the twelve, deserted before the Holy Spirit de
scended upon the Apostles to confirm what Christ
had done and taught.)
CHRIST GAVE UP His life voluntarily to re
deem all men. That death is part of Jewish his
tory. Millions of Jews, living at the time of
Christ, most likely had never heard of Him. What
ever guilt attaches to Jews in that death was due
to a small group of officials who misled their
own people and exploited them in the Temple
as well. The Jews, as a race, had nothing to do
with the deed.
The simple fact is that anyone who claims to be
a Christian and denies the intimate relation
ship between the old covenant which God made to
the Jewish people, through Abraham, and who
would reject the truth that the original members
of the Christian Faith were Jewish, should ques
tion his own claim to the right of calling him
self a Christian.
On the other hand, for our Jewish friends I
would suggest that in the interest of mutual
harmony, they do a bit of studying of their own
history. Jesus Christ is a fact of history. He
is the most predominant figure in the history
of the Jewish race and of universal history.
AS RABBI Morris N. Eisendrath, President of
the American Hebrew Congregations, an organi
zation which represents 654 Reformed Judaic
Temples in the western hemisphere with more
than a million worshippers said last year attheir
convention:
"Inter-religious understanding based on mu
tual respect is not a one-way street.”
He deplored the fact that “some Jewish scho
lars have minimized the significance of Jesus
pointing to the Jewish prigins ©f His teach
ing.” He then went on to ask his audience,
“How long before we can admit that His in
fluence was a beneficial one -- not only to the
pagans but to the Jews of His time as well and
that only those who later took His name in vain
profaned His teaching?”
“NEEDLESS TO say,” continued Rabbi Eisen
drath, “Jews never can and never will accept
Jesus as the Messiah or as the Son of God.
Despite this constant reality there is room for
improved understanding and openness to change in
interpreting Jesus as a positive and prophetic
spirit in the stream of the Jewish tradition.”
An honest and sincere dialogue between Chris
tians and Jews is a vital necessity of the day.
This does not mean an argument between the
two groups. It simply means an open mind as
they explain the meaning of their respective
Faiths to one another.
GOOD NEWS
U
The Body Of Christ!”
BY MARY PERKINS RYAN
AS THERE ARE accidental advantages to the
custom of standing rather than kneeling to receive
Communion, so there are to the new formula,
“The Body of Christ” to which we respond,
“Amen.” R>r one thing, it must be a good
deal easier for the priest distributing Communion
to say such a short phrase meaningfully over
and over again rather than the
long formula, “May the Body of
our Lord Jesus Christ preserve
your soul into life everlasting.
Amen.” For another, since we
have to answer, “Amen,” we
don't have to look nervously
down the altar-rail as the priest
comes nearer, wondering just
when to open our mouths and
get our tongues ready, and
sometimes feeling very silly with our open mouths
when the priest delays for a second or two at
the person ahead of us, or has to go back to
the altar to get another ciborium We can just
wait peacefully until he gets to us.
But there is another, and deeper, advantage
to the new formula because it calls for an in
dividual and personal response. We do not now
come to the altar rail like small children who
are simply going to have something given to
them, done to them, who are simply being fed.
We are coming like human and Christian per
sons to whom a gift requires a response, to
whom Christ’s total gift of His Body “given
up for us” means our effort totally to respond
in self-giving to Him and to what He asks of us.
When the priest says to each of us, “The
Body of Christ!” he is summing up for us
everything that the Eucharist means and should
mean to us — Christ’s self-giving in His sacri
fice to free us and bring us with Him into the
Father’s presence with the gift of the Spirit,
to gather us together into a community of love
with one another and with God.
Q. A few weeks ago I heard Chet Huntley say during one of
his newscasts that this session of the Vatican Council was
going to revise the divorce laws. Did I hear a true and correct
statement from Mr. Huntley? If the Vatican Council does revise
the laws on divorce will they be made easier?
A. I did not hear Mr. Huntley, but I imagine that he was speak
ing about an, intervention made in the Council on Sept. 29 by
Archbishop Eliaz Zoghby, Melchite Vicar in
Egypt. The subject of marriage was being
discussed at the time, and the archbishop
urged that consideration be given to the grave
problems faced by an innocent spouse who
had been deserted and abandoned, and also
by a person whose spouse had become per
manently insane. Could the Church, without
prejudice to her doctrine on the indisso
lubility of marriage, use her authority to
aid such innocent party?
The archbishop recalled to the Fathers the long-standing prac
tice of the Christian Churches of the East which has found a
merciful solution to such problems, and noted that similar prac
tices had been known in the West at times. Even the Council of
Trent, in declaring Catholic teaching on the subject of divorce,
carefully chose a formula which would avoid offense to Orientals-
some of them Catholic - who were following a contrary practice.
About all the Archbishop did was recommend careful study
of the problem, and the negative response of the Fathers indicat
ed little interest in the matter.
The Vatican Council will NOT revise any laws about divorce.
Q. All my life I have done my best to make good confessions.
Now I discover that one sin I confessed was not confessed pro
perly. What do I do now?
A. Forget it. When you honestly try to make a good confession
you make a good one, and your sins are forgiven. Thank the Lord
and be happy.
Q. Will the bishops ever say the Mass on the beautiful marble
altar again? We are so unhappy looking at the cheap kitchen table.
The priest has his hinder part turned towards the holy tabernacle
all the while he says Mass. Let us go back and use the marble
altar which Christ installed over 2000 years ago.
A. You should review your history, and read again the Gospel
stories of the Last Supper. Jesus never saw a marble altar;
he faced His Apostles when He gave them His Body and Blood
to eat, and washed theirfeet, rather than turning His back to them.
His altar of sacrifice was the rough-chopped cross of wood.
‘Great Race’ A Smasher
BY JAMES W. ARNOLD
ABOUT THE only mistake producer-director
Blake Edward makes in “The Great Race” is
trying to spoof every old movie ever made instead
of just most of them. When Edwards flails you
gleefully with gags for nearly three hours without
intermission, it’s not ; just that you feel like an
overly toasted marshmallow, but a marshmellow
that has been toasted, baked, grilled, chewed and
stomped into oblivion.
Yet there be no doubt; “Race” is a smasher
of a movie, brimming not only with humor but exu
berance, charm, wit, beauty,
elegance. The produ ction abso
lutely soars, lifted by some of
Henry Mancini’s better music,
breathtakingly pretty photogra
phy by Russ (“Lust for Life”)
Harlan, and scrumptious Edith
Head costumes. It’s “second
act” difficulties are small
compared to those in such ex
cellent slapstick spectaculars
as "Hallelujah Trail’’ and “Those Magnificent
Men.”
Can anyone remember when we have had so
many visual comedies in a single season? Buster
Keaton, get out of those beach pictures and off
those TV commercials. The message has finally
gotten through.
MOVIES HAVE matured to the point where
young directors like Edwards (“The Pink Pan
ther”) can imitate, emulate, and even heckle the
film styles they knew and worshipped as children.
(“Race” is dedicated to Laurel and Hardy, al
though its true models are the schmaltzy melo
dramas and chases of the early silents). Edwards
seems to say, “Here is what you could have done,
you belovedly nitwitted fathers of the screen, if
only you’d had such modem marvels as color,
sound, music, panavisionjack Lemmonand Natalie
Wood.”
Doubtless part Of the current crush on madcap
comedy is due to a camp taste for the corny and
outrageous. But mostly films like "Race” are
directed to a generation of customers raised on
artless movies that really moved. During their
lifetimes a whole film literature has accumulated
so that now, for the first time in this youngest
of art forms, there is a common heritage that
can be referred to, commented on, satirized,
loved.
OLD AND NEW 9
New Chesterton Book
AND WHEN WE say, “Amen,” We are not
only making an act of faith in Christ’s sacra
mental presence. We are saying that we agree
to receive this gift and allow it to transform
us into true Christians, persons who give them
selves to others in loving service to give them
life, as Christ is now giving Himself to us to
give us life. We are saying that we will try to
cooperate with the working of the Spirit in
ourselves, and ii) our world, to build up the
Body of Christ in love. We are saying that we
pledge ourselves to carry out Christ's work in
our world, to help free people from every
kind of slavery to needs and pressures and op
pression, to give all men the opportunity to at
tain human fullness of life and the still more
intense life that Christ came to give us all.
Our Amen at Communion, then, is not a mere
formula, it is a promise. We are pledging our
selves to take part in Christ’s sacrifice, to give
ourselves, our time, our effort, our energy, in
love for our fellow men, as He is here giving
Himself in love to us, as our food. And we are
promising to try to live as members of the
community of life and love established among
all those who are one Body because they eat
the one Bread. We are giving ourselves up to
the workings of Christ’s love making us all one,
and at one, in the Spirit.
Many of the Post-Communion prayers — which
we shall soon, thank God, hear* directly in
English — express this idea in one way or another.
But perhaps this one, from the 15th Sunday after
Pentecost, most beautifully sums up what the
Lord’s gift and our cooperation with it should
bring about in each of us; “May the working
of this heavenly gift, O Lord we pray, take
hold of us mind and body, so that our own
notions and wishes may not prevail in us, but
rather its effectiveness.” Amen!
BY GARY WILLS
WHILE HE LIVED Chesterton scattered his
words to the wind; and his literary agents are
doing the same thing after his death. “New”
books by him keep appearing, pasted together
from an inexhaustible supply of old newspaper,
work — books assembled, for
the most part, from the wrong
sources and on the wrong
scheme. Chesterton met his
thousands and thousands of
deadlines with a strange im
partiality, pouring out his best
or worst into whatever recep
tacle was at hand; with the
result that his best is some
times hidden or lost in a fugi
tive journal. But, if one can make any rule
in the matter, his worst tended to be in that
place — The Illustrated London News — that
was most frequently tapped for his collections
of .essays.
The primary difficulty with the posthumous
books is that they are organized on the wrong
principles. The editors assume that those who
like Chesterton want him to stick to “his”
subjects — the glory of common things, the
meaning of nonsense, the (Jungian?) patterns of
fairy tale. But Chesterton often fell back on
these staples because he had no new stimuli.
At his best on his favorite themes, he is very
good. But he is often restating his favorite ideas,
in yesterday’s newspapers, because the yester
day of that particular issue was ticking toward
its midnight and he had no time or energy to
tackle something new. This is something every
journalist understands. But Chesterton’s posthu
mous editors do not. They make the limits im
posed by a deadline in (say) the twenties cripple
a more leisurely form of publication in the sixties.
The other false principle governing their choice
of old columns and reviews is even more per
nicious than the first. In. an attempt to trans
cend the ephemeral references of. daily jour
nalism, their editors selected his most general
columns, those clearly labeled “essays.” They
by pass his pointed arguments with forgotten
men, his reviews of forgotten books. Yet Ches
terton was always best when engaging other minds
Shaw’s in Heretics, Blatchford’s in Orthodoxy,
Wells’s in The Everlasting Man. We should re
member that he did engage others, that he talked
more fruitfully to more types of men than any
religious writer of his day. Indeed, Belloc had
surly doubts about his sincerity, since he got
along so well with “the enemy.” Those who
present Chesterton as a pre-ecumenical "ghetto
Catholic” are simply deficient in historical Sense.
He could reach other minds, even hostile ones,
because he was so responsive to the moods that
carry thought this way or that. In one sense, his
greatest talent was as a psychologist (a term
he had enough Greek to like, since psychology
offers only an “account of the soul,” whereas
psychiatry makes the more sweeping claim that
it can effect a “cure within the soul” — some
times, he thought, by offering to cure man of
his soul).
CHESTERTON’S ability to enter into another
mind is the secret of his prescient literary
criticism. He anticipated much that we think
Of as “modern criticism.” His earliest writings
treated language as gesture. Long before the
“Intentional fallacy” was fixed in the school
boy list of capital literary sins, he maintained
that "poetry always means more than it means
to mean,” (Some will consider that sentence
a mere word game.I suspect they would say the
same thing about “If it were done when *tis
done, then *twere well / It were done quickly”
if they did not already know its source. Many
competent people would guess that sentences
written by modem critic?, who have concentrated
on verbal paradox and metaphysical conceit, were
written by Chesterton (or vice versa). Who, for
instance, wrote this? “The critic is endeavoring,
so to speak, to keep himself in a steady startled
state; as if he were about to be haunted.” Not
Chesterton, though he might have. R.P. Blackmur.
When Chesterton was working hard at this
job as a young book-reviewer, during the early
years of this century, he wrote some of the finest
literary criticism of the century. But that part
of him is still largely buried in back issues of
The Speaker and The Daily News and more shadowy
magazines. The result of the poor anthologizing
that has gone on since his death is that each
book reaches a smaller audience. In fact, the
very latest is not, apparently, to be published
in America at all; and even in England it was
put out by an obscure firm in his own village
of Beaconsfield. This is a shame, since the
book (The Spice of Life, published by Darwen
Finlayson) is a cut above its predecessors. For
one thing, only 20% of it is from his bad years
( a major slump from 1914 to 1922, a minor
one from 1923 to 1927). With some important
exceptions, Chesterton did his best work between
1900 and 1913, and 12 of the new book's 31
essays are from that period. During his early
years in London, before he was captured by the
war, by Beaconsfield, by the Distributists, he
was astonishingly receptive and wide-ranging. He
seems to have read everything and forgotten
nothing during that first decade. I am increasing
ly impressed by his familiarity with the late
classical and early Christian period — a know
ledge built, of course, on Gibbon, but supple
mented and balanced in surprising ways. This
is the knowledge he relied on two decades later
when his slumbering powers were reawakened
in The Everlasting Man. An example of this
knowledge: though we live with the disturbing
history brought home to us these days by John
Noonan or Dan Sullivan, Chesterton was already
writing in 1903 that “The Stoic philosophy and
the early Church discussed woman as if she were
an institution, and in many cases decided to abo
lish her.”
THERE ARE good things in this book — an
essay on the eighteenth- century ideal of to
lerance, the Britannica article on “Humor” that
so impressed the eminent critic Hugh Kenner.
But he is best in this book as in all his work,
when he touches one of the primary touch
stones of his thought, William Shakespeare. His
essay on Macbeth is as good even, as his analy
sis of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Of many good
things, I quote only one. Arguing with those who
think Lady Macbeth masculine because she con
trol her husbnad, he says-“Masculine women may
rule the Borough Council, but they never rule
their husbands. The women who rule their hus
bands are the feminine women.”
"Race” is chiefly about the comic contest of
skills between classic hero and villain - the in
credibly virtuous Great Leslie (Tony Curtis doing
an imitation of Cary Grant), whose teeth, eyes
and personality glow with goodness and whose
every move is' a graceful leap through space, and
the incredibly wicked Professor Fate (Lemmon),
whose hideous cackle of triumph is always follow
ed by disaster. It is the timeless struggle be
tween Born Winner and Born Loser; if we like
Lemmon a bit more, it’s not just because he's
funnier, but because in him we see the worst in
ourselves made ludicrous and bearable.
ALONG the way Edwards kids the all-American
girl heroine (the energetic Miss Wood) - the ag
gressive beauty meddling in masculine conflicts,
flaunting sexual emancipation but demure at
heart, settling joyfully in the last reel for love
and marriage. Among other subjects:
The horror movie: Lemmon inhis gloom-shrowd-
ed Victorian mansion, moodily playing the organ
while his bungling assistant (the incomparable
Peter Falk) vaguely hums along as he serves
dinner.
The desert romance: Curtis pours champagne
(without looking) for the awed girl reporter
in his lushly appointed tent, while a phonograph
plays a duet from “The Desert Song.”
THE SUBMARINE drama: Lemmon and Falk,
ten feet apart, shout orders at each other through
a message tube. Attheorderof “Up, periscope!”
Lemmon catches his thumbs in the gadget and dis
appears through the roof.
The western: a spoof dance hall routine, live
lier than those in most legitimate horse operas,
featuring a raucous tease-the-boys song by Doro
thy Provine, hilariously clever use of a feathery
yellow boa as a gag motif, and an inspired brawl
in which everything but the walls of the set is
gaily destroyed.
The nature-is-terrible-in-Alaska bit, which be
gins with a blizzard and an intruding polar bear
and ends up with the cast afloat in a dense fog
on the Bering straits on a melting iceberg. This
over-long sequence atones for its abundance of
pratfalls with outrageously funny dialog.
THE SWGRD and buskin adventure, in which the
true prince is kidnaped and replaced by an impos
tor. This preposterous sequence, which ends'
with a classic pie-throwing orgy in full color, has
little relation to the race. But it allows Lemmon
to chomp gustily at still another part (his decadent
prince never quite achieves its possibilities) and
to fall into the goo of a huge cake twice - once
as each character. Curtis and Ross Martin also
have a chance to do an exciting and gently funny
takeoff on the old fencing matches between Errol
Flynn and Basil Rathbone.
When there is so much in a film (we have
hardly mentioned the race itself, with its careen
ing jalopies and jubilant crowd scenes), some of
it is bound to be off-target. For one example,
the suffragette sit-ins. Edwards is not the sort of
man who rejects any idea easily. But for those
who are not affronted by innocent, messy slap
stick, played to the hilt, this is a 95 percent funny
film. When the percentage is higher, the computer
has made a mistake.
God Love You
MOST REVEREND FULTON J. SHEEN
Two girls from England visited Lourdes. They did not know
each other and had not even seen each other until they lay side-
by-side on stretchers before the shrine of Our Lady. As the
procession of the Blessed Sacrament came near, one girl
prayed: "Oh Lord, this poor girl is suffering. Heal her and let
me bear my pain.” The other girl made
exactly the same prayer. Both were cured.
We, too, perhaps, would more quickly be
cured of our anxieties, fears and problems,
if we prayed for others more than for our
selves. Many sufferers have been healed of
their disabilities when they forget them selves
and helped someone else. We read in the
Book of Job that “the Lord turned the cap
tivity of Job when he prayed for his friends.”
parables in the New Testament follow out this
And how many
theme, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you’
Many of the people who write to us, sending money to the
Missions, do it in someone else’s name. “I send this $100 in
thanksgiving that daughter did not have cancer,” “Please accept
this request for prayers and $55 for the vocation of my son.
I may not live to see him a priest because I have multiple
sclerosis, but I can give up smoking and send the money from this
sacrifice to the poor.” “Here is $10 to thank God for the gift
of faith. I never realized just how priceless this gift was until
I witnessed the joy of my wife (and later her parents) at being
received into the Church. The least we can do is to share what
we have so that others may be given the same gift.” ...“It
took the birth of our fifth child, who is blind to make us see how
blessed we are. We pray that God will never let us forget how
much * others need help. Please accept this $8.50 earned by
ironing as a gift from my son, that others who cannot see will
get the same care that we give him.” Empty yourself for some
one else so that Christ may reign in your heart. God Love You!
IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS GIVING: The recorded talks, which
for over 40 years Bishop Fulton J. Sheen has used privately
to help people of all faiths find meaning and a greater happiness
in life, have been made available to the general public in a specail
25-record RCA long-playing, high fidelity album, TOE LIFE IS
WORTH LIVING SERIES after innumerable requests from priests,
schools, parishes, and individuals for such a series. In 50
talks of about 30 minutes each, His Excellency offers wise and
inspiring guidance on problems affecting people of all ages in
their daily lives — love, marriage, raising children, suffering,
anxiety, loneliness, alcoholism, death as well as , including the
principles of a Christian faith. The complete set, priced at
$57.50 can be ordered from Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, 366 Fifth
Avenue, New York, New York 10001.
CUT OUT this column, pin your sacrifice to it and mail it to
Most Rev* Fulton J. Sheen, National Director of The Society for
the Propagation of the Faith, 366 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y.
10001, or .o your Diocesan Director,Rev. Harold J. Rainey, P. O,
Box 12047, 2699 Peachtree Road, N.E. Northside Station,
Atlanta 5, Georgia.