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SOMETHING FOR ALL
Come To The Congress
BY REV. LEONARD F. X. MAYHEW
' THE SOUTHEASTERN Liturgy Congress will be
held in Charlotte, North Carolina, nextweek from
Thursday evening to Saturday afternoon. There
is still time for delegates to register for this
precedent-setting event. The amazingly zealous
and efficient committee in Charlotte has made ex
cellent arrangements. The ho
tels will guarantee confirmed
reservations until next Monday.
Even after that, the committee
will see to housing delegates.
As of this past Monday, over|
seven hundred pre-registra
tions had been recived and they
are coming in at better than!
fifty a day.
Unfortunately, there is a difficulty for many
people with the word, 'liturgy.” It sounds too
academic to arouse much interest for many peo
ple. If we change it to “public and/or communal
worship” then we have another difficulty. Most
Catholics have not come to the realization that
they need to be renewed in their grasp of worship.
I guess that the realization that we personally
need to grow and change in the area of worship
must precede any deep interest or enthusiasm for
the Church’s liturgical renewal and such events
as the Liturgy Congress.
This is too bad, because an experience such as
the Liturgy Congress will offer will be a tre
mendous stimulus to the people who attend as
well as to the parishes and dioceses to which they
belong. The Congress will stimulate interest;
but; if there is no interest beforehand, how can we
get people to attend! This becomes a real puzzle.
Archbishop Hallinan expressed the function of
the Liturgy Congress very exactly in a letter to
the parish priests: “It will have something for
everyone -- the laymen and his wife and children
in the pews; those who find the new changes hard
to accept, organists, directors and choirs; teach
ers in Catholic schools and Confraternity class
es; lectors and commentators.” For everyone of
these people, the Liturgy Congress would be a
great experience. It is very difficult to communi
cate the exact nature of the experience to those
who have not already had it. Yet it is precisely
to*them that such an invitation is mainly address
ed. What we can promise is that the dry defini
tions will take on real meaning, that the sermon'
-instructions will corns to life, that the desire of
the Council will take a personal importance. The
idea of such an effort is to begin or to continue a
profound re-orientation of our religious lives.
AGAIN, THE archbishop’s letter hit precisely
the right note: “The renewal of the Church in our
times must occur in our minds, our hearts and
our lives. It will not be brought about by fault
finding or resistance. Nor will conferences alone
produce it. But a conference’s purpose is to study
and exchange; Unless these events are offered,
the liturgical life of a diocese will stagnate as if
the Second Vatican Council had never been held.”
The great sources of the spirit of renewal which
can be felt so tangibly at such a Liturgy Congress
are mainly two: the actual experience of the com
munal worship itself, shared with so many people
who are equally interested and involved; and, the
shared interest throughout the program and in in
formal contact. It is impossible, in my opinion,
to be part of such an event -- especially for the
first time — without being caught up in the spirit
of it and the real, concrete promise for personal
and communal renewal that it holds out.
GOOD NEWS
There Was A Wedding
BY MARY PERKINS RYAN
A WEDEING is undoubtedly one of the most
human events in human life. Two people give
themselves to one another to become “two
in one flesh”, to live their lives together in a
companionship involving not their minds or souls
only, but also their bodies — their whole psy
cho-physical selves; a companionship carried
out through the whole stuff of daily life. Two
people give themselves to one another this way,
and so establish a new unit of
human society,a living unity i
that will be a source of life !
to new human persons as well |j
as
to
> to the couple themselves, and ^
their community.
And so weddings have always
been occasions for social cele- f~
brations, for they concern not J
only the couple being married,
but also their parents and friends and community.
Weddings call for feasting •— easting, drinking
and rejoicing. For a wedding represents the whole
of human life, in all its physical and spiritual,
its interpersonal and social, its historic and crea
tive dimensions.
Our Lord’s attending the wedding at Cana
in Galilee and there performing His first “sign”
at His Mother’s request was no accident. It
shows us that the Son of God really became man,
“like us in all things save sin,” a man who,
like other men, attended weddings with His Mother
and His friends — weddings at which things could
go wrong. (One commentator has suggested that
perhaps the wine gave out because Jesus' dis
ciples drank more thanhadbeenplannedfor.)TTiis
event of the wedding at Cana shows us that the
Son of God became man to make His own the
whole of human life, not as a visitor from another
planet, but as a man living an ordinary life
among men -- a family life, a social life, just
like the other people of His own time and country.
TOURSDAY^JANUARY 21, 1966 GEORGIA BULLETIN PAGE 5
ARNOLD VIEWING
OUR LORD carried out this “sign” of chang
ing water into wine at the beginning of His public
life, when He was beginning to show Himself as
more than the “carpenter’s son.” It shows us
that He came, not only to share our human con
dition, but to make human life more human. By
all the miracles recounted in the Gospels, He
cured people of ailments thatpreventedthem from
living their human lives fully — deafness and
blindness, paralysis and lameness, sicknesses of
all kinds; He even restored life itself. By this
first of His miracles at Cana, He helped .the
wedding guests to enjoy themselves; He made
that wedding a better party than it would have
been otherwise.
So He shows us that the life he gives us as
Christians, or sharing in His own life by the gift
of the Holy Spirit, should make us more human,
not less so. His life in us, if we cooperate with
the work of the Spirit, will gradually cure of
the spiritual ills that make us deaf and blind
in our relationships with other people and with
God, that paralyze or cripple us in our service
of other people and of God. His life will make
us more alive, happier and able to radiate happi
ness, as wine makes people feel more alive, less
ground down by the cares of daily life, more
cheerful and more communicative. His life will
make us His instruments in helping other people
to live more fully.
IN SEVERAL of the parables, the kingdom of
heaven is compared to a wedding feast; the
Apocalypse speaks of thelife of the world to come
as the wedding of the Church with her Bride
groom, Christ. Life in the City of God will be
human life healed and made perfect in all its
dimensions and carried beyond all its limitations
to share the life of the Son with the Father in Spirit.
The first of our Lord’s miracles at a wedding
shows us His final purpose,to bring us all to take
part in this eternal "marriage feast,” of which
the Eucharist is the anticipation and the pledge.
CRISIS OF CONSCIENCE
Your World And Mine
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4
the regime represents the students, as “contrary
to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
of the United Nations,” and they called for an
amnesty for students and professors who had
been punished for expression of opinion.
This action was the culmination of several
months of intense activity in the universities of
Madrid and Barcelona. Many professors, had been
expelled or had resigned in protest, and many
students had been expelled, imprisoned or fined.
IT IS GENERALLY agreed tha the Vatican
Council has contributed greatly to the crisis
of conscience in Spain of which these incidents
are an expression. The assimilationof Church
and state after the Civil War forced all Catholic
organizations into support of the regime. The
Council’s decree on religious freedom and in
deed its entire temper have encouraged a pro
cess of divorce. Even the higher clergy no longer
constitute a solid front with the regime in spite
of their close structural connections with it and
the temporal power they wield.
Extremist groups understandably seek to utilize
the unrest in Spain for their own purposes. The
great majority of the dissidents, however, have
quite modest objectives. These were set out for
cibly and with dignity in a document circulated
to many Fathers in Rome during the final weeks
of the Council. It carried 62 signatures, and the
signers were identified as current or former
office-holders and chaplains of Catholic Action,
Pax Romans, Pax Christi, Young Christian Work
ers and other Catholic organizations in Barce
lona.
The first 'need in Spain, they said, is re
spect for the rights and liberties of hum an beings
in public and political life, the rights of associa
tion, expression, suffrage and representative in
stitutions. Next comes the need for human and
social progress for workers, free trades unions;
right to strike, land reform. Finally, the policy
of repression of Spain’s regional cultures should
end, and specifically the continuing efforts to de
stroy Catalonia's language, culture and institu
tions.
THE SIGNATOREIS of this extremelymoderate
manifesto stress a point on which I have found
general agreement. It is that the Catholic Church
is identified with the restrictive policies and
activities described, and that the regime could not
maintain them without the support of the Church.
If the couse of religion was being advanced,
the position of the Church authorities might
seem more understandable. But even pragmatic
justification appears to be lacking. I have failed
to find anyone to challenge the manifesto’s com
ment on this point.
“The religious situation of the Spanish people
is characterized, above all,” it says, < “by a
growing process or de-Christianization, especi
ally marked among the intellectual, the working
class and the young... The percentage of prac
tising Catholics in Spain is notoriously lower
than in other countries where the Catholic faith
has no official or compulsory character.”
‘Cat’ A Good Gimmick
Q. MY FRIEND states that one can receive Holy Communion
more than once a day. I disagree. She says, for instance, that
one can receive at the 7 a.m. Mass on the first Friday, and again
at the 7 p.m. Mass that same first Friday.
A. Your friend is wrong. The only times
you are allowed to receive twice the same
day are Christmas and Easter. On those
days you may receive at the mid-night
Mass and then again at a Mass during
the day. I was pleased to see many peo
ple making us of this privilege this past
Christmas.
OtherwisYOU MAY receive twice the same day only if the se
cond Communion is Viaticum, and I hope you will not need that
for a long time.
Q. I WANT to say that I back up your statements on the John
Birch Society 100 percent. I can’t understand why Catholic could
possibly join it. However, I am becoming more and more aware
of narrowness in Catholics. I believe that the Communism which
Catholics of this sort seem to fear would never have become a
menace if Christians had had more concern for the deprived and
less fortunate of the world. The encyclicals of the popes on social
justice seem to have been ignored. Thanks to Pope John and
Pope Paul we are now waking up.
A. There was a time, about 25 years ago, when we had reason
to worry about the growth and infiltration of Communist in
fluence in this country. We still have a sprinkling of radicals,
and always will have, especially among our youth, but most of
them disdain the old-style Communist as too stodgy for the modem
day. Communism as they see it practiced in the world today has
little appeal to them; it is inimical to the liberties they prize.
It has become Establishment, and they they oppose, as by in
stinct.
The John Birch Society is not primarily concerned with these
radicals. Naturally its members have no sympathy with them. But
its primary target is the whole range of liberal opinion in poli
tics, economics, social problems and international cooperation.
It sees Communism in the UN) on the Supreme Court, in labor
unions, and in every organization and movement for racial equa
lity. It even sees our presidents as Communist stooges.
MANY EVILS result from this mis-labeling and this indis
criminate, scatter-gun attack. It distracts us from the real dan
gers of Communism in the world, and prevents us from seeing
and grappling with the grievaus social and economic problems
which tend to breed Communism in vast areas of the world. And
on the other hand it gives Communists undeserved credit for
many of the solid gains our country has achieved especially
in social legislation and in our efforts to vindicate and secure
the basic rights Of man in our country.
I have never met a repentant Bircher, but if One ever comes
to confession to me his penance will be a careful study of Pacem
in Terris. If he returns to me after a subsequent fall his pen
ance will be a similar study of the Constitution on the Church in
the Modern World, especially those portions which deal with
culture, economic, social and political life, peace and the bomb,
and the development of our international community and or
ganization. But I would be fair enough to warn him that our bishops,
in union with the Pope, have used that horrid word “sociali
zation” again, with evident approval, that they give explicit
praise to civil rights movements, and apparently want the UN
made much.stronger.
BY JAMES W. ARNOLD
IF " THE Tenth Victim” is a tolerable movie
because the director works within the limita
tions of an exploitation film to pull off intelli
gent effects, much the same can be said for the
new Walt Disney production, “That Darn Cat.”
Basically, "Cat” is a com
mercial mishmash designed to
appeal to Disney regulars from
toddlers to doddlers. It is part
animal picture, part FBI vs.
kidnappers suspense, part su
burban farce involving teen
agers, young lovers, andmeddl-
ing neighbors. It also has Hay-
ley Mills, which gives it about
50 yards head start.
The movie’s central joke is that a kidnaped
woman puts her wrist watch around the neck of
a Siamese cat who happens to be wandering by
on his nightly scavenger hunt. The cat, inevi
tably a lovable rascal, belongs to a lovably over-
dramatic adolescent (Miss Mills) who gets the
message and calls in some lovable G-Men. Their
happy task is to trail the wandering and in
dependent - minded feline back to the kidnapers’
lair.
YOU WOULDN’Tbelieve how thoroughly veteran
Disney director Robert Stevenson ("Flubber,”
“Mary Poppins”) and his writers milk this situa
tion; milk it, indeed, about 30 minutes too long.
There are at least three full-dress pursuits of
the cat; there is an FBI man (Dean Jones)
who is allergic to cats and who insists on con
ducting the investigation from the bedroom of
Hayley’s high-strung sister (Ebrothy Provine).
If you think this couple fight and thenfall for each
other, go to the head of the class.
Among other characters glued into this college
are Canoe, Hayley’s unkempt boy friend (Tom
Lowell), a kind of surfboard Henry Aldrich;
Roddy McDowell, who as a ssuffy suitor of Miss
Provine keeps trying to blast the cat with a shot
gun; a nosy neighbor and her henpecked-but-re
bellious husband (Elsa Lanchester, William De-
marest) who perceive all this activity as some
how immoral; and of course the kidnapers (Ne
ville Brand, Frank Gorshin) who can’t quite de
cide if they are doing “The Untouchables” or a
skit on the Jackie Gleason Show.
What we have then is a good gimmick film
(adapted from a book by the Gordons, whose
last movie story was "Experiment in Terror”),
padded rather severely by standard situation co
medy. What saves it is partly the acting: this
is a deft cast, ranging even to the frantic kid
nap victim played by Grayson Hall, who almost
won an Oscar last year for her neurotic school
teacher in “Night of the Iguana.”
Reapings Continued|
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4
proves of. Yet he is able to goto Rome and claim
protection from high sources. Imagine any of the
other 13 priests who recently had disputes with
their bishops or superiors, getting away with sim i-
lar tactics. Each of these other priests (all
alleged liberals, by the way) have been involv
ed in service to the poor and needy, practic
ing the social justice they preach. Yet when they
were told by their bishops to stop, they did.
None of these priests were "silenced” because
they were underminging positions taken by the
Council fathers; none of them were propagating
outmoded theories. Yet, they had no champions
in high places. More important, they obeyed their
bishops or superiors with humility and a spirit
of resignation. They certainly felt that they had
done no wrong; but for the good of the Church,
they subdued their personal protests.
WE SAID BEFORE that there were a lot of
unanswered questions in the case of Father
DePauw — and so there are. There have been
many inaccuracies flying around impuning the in
tegrity of American cardinals. One wonders too,
whether Cardinal Ottaviani, one of the highest
prelates in the Church, has not been maligned
by the half truths bandied about in the case.
We think it is a tragedy that there has nottaeen
more openess in regard to this case. Nobody
likes to see a priest in conflict with his superiors.
We hope Father DePauw’s difficulties will be
ironed out and that he might find a niche for his
talents. In the meantime, we should all pray
that he makes the right decisions.
OLD AND NEW’
Lynching The Sheriff
BY GARRY WILLS
A SOCIETY is emotionally tugged toward lynch
law whenever it decides there is "a criminal
type”. When a crime is committed, it had to be
done by the man who, society agrees, was a cri
minal even before he did anything: the Jew,
the Negro, the “outsider.” A trial is not necessary
for one so securely “typed.”
And even if it turns out that
he did not commit this parti- i
cular crime, he would have
committed others like it if we
had let him live. Good rid
dance.
A funny thing is happening
to our tendency to “type” cri
minals. Some people these days
are ready, whenever, a crime Js committed,
to lynch the sheriff. The police themselves are
our "criminal types." Whenever police brutality
could have occurred, one presumes that it did
occur. Any arrest is represented as a crime
(e.g., the arrest that started the Watts rebellion).
The cry is instantly picked up and spread abroad,
without further confirmation — as when James
Farmer and others took up the charge of mur
der because a policemen had killed an armed
teenager in New York. A jury, which included
Negroes, unanimously cleared the policeman, who
was off duty and need not have intervened. Per
haps the next cop will not “get involved.” This
one’s reward was a nationwide campaign of vi
lification and mob-denunciation that is still going
on, though he has been proved innocent. You see?
Lynch law. To this kind of "justice," trial
procedure is irrelevant.
Undoubtedly there are police abuses — not
only individual ones, but patterns and whole
procedures. There is, especially, too loose con
trol on the use of police guns. There abuses
should be corrected. But if a man were to at
tack corporation crimes by calling all business
men capitalist exploiters, or criticize union ex
cesses by calling all union leaders strong-arm
hoodlums, people would justly suspect that his
concern was not fair law-enforcement but ideo
logical gratification. The same is true of many
of those now calling for police review boards.
Their own actions are far from judicial, and they
have displayed no correlative concern over the
growth of crime and of danger to policemen.
Satisfying their demands would not lead to ra
tional reform, but would confirm the growing
intellectual tendency to lynch policemen without
trial.
In the thirties, the movie stereotype of‘the cop
on the beat was Pat O’Brien, the saccharine
sergeant, the cute constable. Of course, no such
paragon ever existed in real life. But, as a myth,
he told us important things about the immi
grant society he appealed to. That darling man
was not really the one anybody expected to find
hovering over his car when he had left it by
a fire hydrant. But the mythical Irish cop “made
sense” to the people in their fantasies because
they did conceive the law itself -- beyond all
the vagaries of particular contact with its re
presentatives — as a beneficent, humane in
stitution. That is a dream we seem no longer
to indulge. A policeman who has lectured in
high schools for the past twenty years says he
has sensed the change, over that period, as one
might feel the atmosphere stiffening with cold in
the path of a glacier. Where he once walked
the halls of schools receiving courtesy and good-
natured banter, his uniform now attracts rude
ness and hostility. It is a blue lightning rod for
the discharge of smoldering emotions.
WHY THE CHANGE? Is it simply because
policemen have become sadists? Or because we
have all of us — including the teenagers —
become better informed about the Mr. Hyde
lurking under Pat O’Brien’s Jekyll smile? It
is unlikely. Particular police crimes or faults
have as little to do with the new picture of the
cop as handsome sergeants had to do with the
creation of the Pat O'Brien broth of a cop.
The earlier myth reflected an entire conception
of law. So does the later. The new myth gives
vent to a deep instinct that law, Civilization,
society are not beneficent things, but evil in
ventions which suppress the good we would all do
spontaneously if we were just left alone. An escap
ist, utopian, “noble savage” dream runs through
the entire New Left, with its demonology of “the
power structure” that has nothing better to do than
prevent us from “living beautifully.” The same
dream runs through the adolescents, the discon
tented of all sorts, the truly oppressed. For them
all, law itself is the Foe, and the cop on the beat
is law’s prophet. Color him damned.
ASK YOURSELF, the next time you hear apass-
ionate outburst against the police, whether you
are being told more about the police or about the
man who speaks. The myth you are listening to
may be a confession instead of an indictment.
I remember talking to a well-known priest very
active in the civil-rights movement. I asked him
about police brutality. He did not tell me anything
specific. Instead, he launched into these genera
lizations: “Oh well, what can you expect of the
police? They are the dregs of society. Stupid,
uneducated, unambitious. They wouldn’t have this
job if they could do anything else.”
A funny sensation came over me. If I closed
my eyes, if I slowed the voice to a drawl (as
one turns a tape to a lower speed), I could have
been listening to a Southern sheriff describing
the faceless Negroes his indiscriminate net
dredges, every night, into his fail: They’re all
the same.”
God Love You
MOST REVEREND FULTON J. SHEEN
NOTHING MAKES one so Catholic as to love the Missions. He
must rise above nation, race and color before he can throw his
arms around the world. It seems that this gesture of embrac
ing the universe is the echo of the Incarnation when God became
so small that a woman could hold Him and
even.kiss Him.(whjch even the angels could
'not 0 do). One' V/onders'ft our 'church-life
has not lost this quality of embracing hu
manity on the one hand, and divinity on the
other. Humanity escapes us because we think
in terms of our parish, our diocese, our
order, instead of the millions who have hungry
stomachs andfamished hearts. Divinity es
capes us because we see the Church as an
“it,” something over and above us, a build
ing to which we ride on Sundays, an institution by whose laws we
live. But is an "it” a “bride,” a “body”? For these are the two
ways that Scripture describes the Church.
We do not see Christ in the Church or, if we do, we see Him as
our eyes see a daffodil by the river’s edge as an object. We do
not see Him as looking through our eyes, as feeling with our
hands, as hearing the lepers moan with our ears. He is not be
hind our eyes coloring all we see, fighting His fight, champion
ing His cause. He is in front of our eyes, an object rather than
a subject as He should be - “I live, no, not I but Christ liveth
in me” as St. Paul says.
For over 15 years we have written this column seeking to deep
en the pool of our responsibility to the world. We see more and
more that this cannot be done except by making ourselves other
Christs. One might almost formulate this law: only those who
suffer with all humanity have Christ in their hearts. Once Christ
is not "way up there” but “in” us will we begin to feel towards
the hungry and sick as He did, agonizing with them. This missio
nary work is hard because the world is at our doorstep. But
thank God our work is not for a part of the world but for the
whole world - the world that Christ died to "reconcile to Him
self.” You readers are good to particularities; this parish,
that school, this society. But every now and then become “ca
tholic,” become missionary, become cosmic. Let the little things
you love slip through your fingers and use your arms - make
them circle the globe of the earth. You will find that they will
not fit aroudn the earth until you have let the arms of Christ
embrace you. If He does not possess all of you, you will not love
all mankind. If He does possess all of you then you will so give
that your alms do not end up in stocks and bonds or in new build
ings but in the arms of the poor. If we do not see Christ in the
poor we may not see Christ at all. It is the glory of The Society
for the Propagation of the Faith that it never invests your alms
but everything you give is spent on the poor within one year.
If you send us your stocks as alms (and many do), we sell them
immediately and give the money to the poor. This kind of charity
is Christ-like, it is pontifical, it is the work of The Society for
the Propagation of the Faith.
GOD LOVE YOU to JyA.S. for $5 sent in reparation “I re
fused a hearing to a poor blind man who was trying to earn a
living by selling from door to door,” ...to M.P. for $10 “I
would have paid this much for a new permanent but there are so
many people in the world who need help more than I need curls.”
...to the friends and customers of Canty’s Cafe who collected
$74,79 for the sick and starving in mission lands.
The GOD LOVE YOU medal, a lovely cameo of the Madonna
of the World, 'is one you would be proud to give or delighted to
receive. Designed by the world-renowned jeweler Harry Winston
and blessed by Bishop Sheen, it is available in a classic Floren
tine gold finish or sterling silver. Send your request and cor
responding offering to The Society for the Propagation of the
Faith, 366 Fifth Avenue, Neew York, N.Y. 10001. $2 small
sterling silver; $3 small 10k gold filled; $5 large sterling sil
ver; $10 large 10k gold filled.
CUT OUT this column, pin your sacrifice to it and mail it to
Most Rev. Fulton ,. 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,
-tlanta 5, Georgia.