Newspaper Page Text
THURSDAY, APRIL 28, 1966
GEORGE BULLETIN PAGE 5
During the Easter Mass in Florence
Cathedral, Italy, the deacon on the
High Altar sets light to a rocket/
THE ROCKET, WHICH IS SHAPED LIKE A
DOVE, IS GUIDED ALONG A STEEL CABLE
TO IGNITE A HUGE FIREWORK CARRIAGE
WAITING OUTSIDE THE CATHEDRAL
THIS
unique custom
IS SOME 600 ,
Years old.
IT \
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epKOB
g™ CENTURy
GREEK
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201* CENTURY
RUSSIAN
THIS ANCIENT MS. ILLUSTRATION
DEPICTS ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS
LEQENDS CONNECTED WITH
ST MARTIN OF TOURS - HIS
IMPULSIVE GESTURE OF
DIVIDING HIS CLOAK WITH M&'- **
A SHIVERING BEGGAR.
Ml$ s f£
IAA&
<jke
CYRILLIC
ALPHABET
IS NAMED
AFTER,
ST CYRIL
ahd is a
modification
• OF THE ORIGINAL
Greek alphabet
introduced By
THE .SAINT DURING
{JijSsjSTWE EASn
Mowr sr
N/ c</
PARIS
STJEAN*DU-DOIOT
RENNES
TOURS
FRENCH VILLAGE
_ OF stjean-du-doight
OF THE FlhlGER, IS
r S0 CALLED BECAUSE A FlhJGER OF THE
E\/AMGELIST HAS BEEN PRESERVED THERE
R5R MANy CENTURIES . SUFFERERS FROM
OPTHALMIA-INFLAMMATION OF THE EYE - ARE
SAID 70 HAVE BEEN CURED 8/ CONTACT W/TH THE RELIC.
GOOD NEWS
‘Mine Know Me’ Gospel
BY MARY PERKINS RYAN
THE GOSPEL of the Second Sunday after Eas
ter, “Good Shepherd Sunday,’’ in its references
to sheep and their shepherd, may not, to those
of us who have very little first-hand acquain
tance with sheep, convey the fullness of mean
ing it did to its first auditors and to members
of more generally pastoral
societies than ours is. (In New
Zealand, I understand,Jew.peq-,
pie have problems about the II
Good Shepherd figures and par
able.)
But all the modern studies
of inter-personal relationships
perhaps open out to us even
greater depths of meaning than
previous Christian generations have been able to
glimpse in the Lord’s astounding statement, “I
know mine and mineknowme, as the Father knows
me and I know the Father.’’ We are the Lord’s
“sheep’* — and yet we are invited to know Him
as He knows the Father! An eminent theolo
gian, discussing what “theology for the laity’’
should consist, of, once wrote (to Frank Sheed’s
vast amusement) that it should hot be the same
as theology for the clergy because “the shepherd
is not supposed to get down and crop grass
with the sheep.’* He certainly had not thought
out what he was trying to say in the light of this
Gospel.
For “knowing’’ another person, in the biblical
and the human meaning of the term, means an
intimacy far beyond that of sharing the same fare.
It means what we imply when we say, “I know
John Jones very well. He’s one of my best
friends.’* It means not only knowing about the
other person, but knowing him, in a relation
ship of mutual self-revelation and self-giving,
of growing likeness, love, union, as in a deep
friendship, or a marriage really lived. When our
Lord says that our knowing Him is like His
.knowing the Father, all these meanings are carried
for beyond the limitations of even the deepest
relationship possible between two human persons.
How can we “know” Christ in this way? Ob-
,4 NEW DIMENSION
Your World And Mine
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4
of Assisi failed), the Christians become a mi
nority concentrated in the barren deserts of upper
Egypt.
There they remained until this century, in po
verty, in ignorance, cut off from other Chris
tians. They number at least two million, perhaps
twice that number. Even today, it is imprudent
to be precise. What is significant is that the
flame has been kept alive, and that men like
Cam lie Mossad are devoting their lives to re
kindling the fire.
The Copts and their sister Churches are acute
ly conscious of what they have lost through
isolation and the ignorance caused by poverty.
The institute in Cairo, now apparently due to be
integrated into the proposed common center for
theological study and research, is their great
pride and hope.
IT IS NOT sufficiently realized by us In the
West that the poverty of scholarship among
the Orthodox Is one of the major obstacles to
unity. A member of Holy Synod pointed this out
to me when I visited Patriarch Athenagoras in
an
»•
Istanbul. “We have lived for centuries as
underprivileged minority in a backward culture,
he said, “while you in the West had the ad
vantage of a favorable intellectual climate in
countries in which scholarship was advancing with
the technological economy. Even with your techni
cal help, it will take us a long time to reach your
level of theological sophistication. Yet that is a
necessary prerequisite to fruitful dialogue.”
The Copts and their sister Churches are start
ing from an even lower base than that of the
Orthodox associated with Constantinople. Most of
their priests, for example, have no more than
five years of post-primary education, just enough
to equip them for pastoral work in primitive
villages.
Their leaders, nevertheless, have a higher
vision. They are ecumenical-minded, ready to re
ceive the help which other Christians may feel
Inspired to offer. Here is an area in which tech
nical assistance with no strings attached from
Christians of the West would undoubtedly pro
duce dividends. To help build up the projected
theological center would be to add a new di
mension to the Christian witness.
ARNOLD VIEWING
66
pSRpPJI
Q WHEN CAIN slew Abel, he was thrown out of Paradise,
and he moved on the east side of Eden and got himself a wife.
Now as I understand, there weren’t any women at that time
besides Eve, since Adam and Eve were the first people.
Angels” A Delight
Where did Cain get his wife?
A. This
Genesis,
it?
question gave no concern to the sacred writer of
so why should we worry about!
viously not just by reading or studying about Him.
When we want to know someone, we do want to
find out all we can about him from other people
or any possible source. But this is in order to
know him -- and for this we need to be with the
other person, to talk with him, to do things with
him, -- not only to share his hopes and plans,
but to work with him in carrying them out.
If we. could only learn about Christ, we could
never come to know Him. But we can also meet
with Him and work with Him. We believe, of
course, that He is present in the celebration of
the Eucharist and the other sacraments, that He
is present whenever His Word is proclaimed
and whenever two or three are gathered together
in His Name. All these are opportunities to
come to know Him through the community and
the persons, the actions and the words, that are
the signs of His self-revealing presence.
BUT, STILL MORE, we can meet Him in our
daily lives. A new book. The Theology of Re
velation, by Brother Gabriel Moran (Herder &
Herder) spells out the fact that God's revelation-
in Scripture and the Liturgy and Christian teaching
enable us to recognize and interpret His reve
lation to us in our daily lives, through every
thing that makes up the texture of our lives.
We can come to know Christ not only in our
prayer but also in our work and our play, In
our concerns and those of our neighbors, in the
issues of the day ahd its events, — above all, in
other people and our relationships with them.
We can come to know Him and work with Him
in the whole texture of our lives.
So we do not have to turn away from other
people and fromlife in order to come to know
Christ more and more fully and so to “grow up
In all things in Him.” We have to try to be
open to His self-revelation and action in the
Eucharist, in the words in Scripture, in our prayer,
and so be enabled to be^fepen to His presence
and His demands on us in our daily lives. For
“this is true life, that they should know You,
the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you
have'sent.”
May I suggest, that you read the third
and fourth chapters of the book of Genesis? |
It would seem that Adam and Eye were
thrown out of the Garden of Eden before
either Cain or Abel was born, and it was
somewhere east of Eden that the murder
took place.
If you will read these and the following chapters, through 11,
26, you will find that our sacred writer has compressed the
entire history of primitive man - which must have lasted at
least a hundred thousand years - into a few generations. What
does that tell you about the nature and purpose of his writing?
You will also notice that from man’s second generation on
earth he was engaged in farming and herding, and by the eighth
generation people were playing harps and flutes, and were
about ready to forge vessels of bronze and iron.
Even if man’s civilization had developed in this rapid manner,
without any place for the cave man or the barbarian, where
did our sacred writer get all his information about it? He wasn’t
there. Certainly men were not writing in those primitive days.
Are we to believe that all these details were transmitted through
thousands of pre-literary years by an infallible oral tradi
tion? Or should we postulate that God revealed all these banal
details to our sacred writer?
Revelation there must have been, but only of some basic re
ligious truths: God created man as a creature of the earth,
but He made him in His own likeness, giving him dominion over
the other creatures of earth,- ordaining him to fill the earth and
subdue it. God created man male and female; He made man and
woman of the same flesh, made them for each other; and He
gave them special privileges of living in happy, immortal union
with Him as long as they would be faithful to Him. But man’s
faithfulness was of short duration; sin came into the world and
with sin death and the loss of Eden: the happy state of man’s
union with God. And as a sequel to the first sin came fratri
cide; and later sins so numerous and vicious that God’s wrath
ful punihment came down on man: the flood.
We know not how God revealed these religious truths to
and then inspiring chosen writers to put their religious aware
ness into literary form. There may have been more explicit
revelations, but our writers make no mention of them. They
rather used ancient popular traditions and previously written
scources.
The point is that the authors of Genesis were not writing his
tory as we know it. They were tying together religious truths,
based on a few historical realities; but they were telling the
story in their own style, full of imagery, often poetic, but little
concerned With accurate geography or chronology. And they
couldn’t care less where Cain found bis wife. Such curiosity
would spoil a good story and obscure its moral.
(N. B, Much that I have written here applies only to the first
11 chapters of Genesis. When l Abraham appears on the scene
time and geography become more important, and other elements
of history appear; though it remains history bent to religious
purposes.)
BY JAMES W. ARNOLD
HOLLYWOOD HAS rediscovered the box-office
charm of the Happy Nun, which is an improve
ment over the perennial tart with the golden heart.
But the latest entries, “The Singing Nun” and
“The Trouble With Angels”, ,
indicate that mother superiors I
everywhere are in for their j
longest season since Ingrid |
Bergman and Loretta Young j
retired from the habit.
Neither film is awful; infact,
convent-educated girls of all |
ages, as well as their priest-
or brother-educated admirers,
may find “Angels” a nostalgic and sentimental
delight. It is fresher, funnier, visually more
expert, and shrewdly acted. Only in comparison,
however, does it seem like a classic.
Unsurprisingly, these movies have many basics
in common. Both deal generally with the theme
of convent tradition vs. the rebellious female
spirit, and show, in upbeat endings, the endless
compatibility of the religious life and personality.
Both are at pains to show that nuns are “really”
happy, and there are remarkably similar fi
nales. In each the heroine’s best friend must be
convinced that she was not Shanghai-ed into re
ligion. This is probably for the good, public re-
lations-wise, but it is still grating, like the
perpetual need to show that intellectuals are
neither sissies or Communists.
“The Singing Nun” is about a guitar-playing
Belgian Dominican (Debbie Reynolds) who is talked
into making records to support the order's good
works. She becomes such a worldly success that
she risks losing her vocation. Several near-
tragedies snap her back to her senses, and she
trades her guitar for the African missions.
(The film is loosely based on the brief career
of the real Singing Nun, Sister Luc-Gabrielle,
and uses some of her songs. For story rights,
the producers paid her order a flat fee, as well
as a percentage of the gross. The Sisters had
a veto over the general treatment, but not over
the final screenplay).
“Angels,” adapted from Jane Trabey’s novel,
“Life With Mother Superior,” is mainly a series
of gags about prank-playing girls at a fancy
convent high school (it was shot in Ambler, Pa.).
But it concentrates on the largely comic personal
struggle between the chief student conspirator
(Hayley Mills) and the stern but predictably human
headmistress (Rosalind Russell).
The Reynolds movie Is an old-style Hollywood
hack job, a compendium of every nun film cliche,
updated only by bright references to aggiorna-
mento. It begins with Miss Reynolds, veil-flapping,
hurtling through the countryside on a motor-
scooter, and includes such familiar types as the
square - guy priest (Ricardo Montalban), the re
sentful older nun (Agnes Moorehead), the all
wise and sugary superior (Greer Garson), the
heroine’s agnostic ex-sweetheart (Chad Everett),
and the showman with the clean, family-type show
(Ed Sullivan) who is willing to trade a charity
donation for a high rating.
Stationed in a slum social center, the singing
Sister is handed a set of proletarian soap opera
problems, The chief one is a cute urchin (shame
lessly milked for heart-appeal), who is saddled
with a brutal alcoholic father and a wayward
(but gorgeous) sister. The most absurd movie
scene in years is a full-scale moral debate be
tween Debbie and the sister (in tight slit-skirt)
outside a bar, while inside the child guzzles beer
with a sailor.
Despite its patronizing nonsense (Catholics are
expected to like it), “The Singing Nun” is helped
by the genuine Belgian locales and occasionally
catches the innocent charm of Sister Luc-Ga-
brielle’s unpretentious music. It also teeters
on the brink of making good points about the
moral emptiness of commercial Show Biz and the
contaminating effect of money. Mantalban has one
almost-splendid scene in which he realizes that
promotional zeal in a priest is not an unmixed
blessing.
“Angels,” in contrast, brims with nuns and
students who are characters rather than stereo
types, and who face nothing more profound or
contrived than the slightly exaggerated trials of
adolescence vs. maturity.
OLD AND NEW 9
The Met And Tradition
BY GARRY WILLS
THE METROPOLITAN Opera House ended its
life, as it had begun it, with the garrish reli
giosity of Gounod’s “Faust” — a work which
is a oleaginously blasphemous toward the Devil
as Norman Vincent Peale is toward God. (God
and the Devil should form some kind of mutual
defense pact against their more damaging ad
mirers). When the Met’s strong voices had given
up, at last, on this imbecile
music, the journalists’ pens
scratched a perfunctory chorus j
of regret. It was time, theyBIll
knew, to shed a ritual tear afj
ink.
The holy place yields up its jj
relics bits of chipped wood
snipped curtain; plaque, board,
gilt; for all I know, each chunk
of brick outside or plaster inside.
IF I WERE to wrest an amulet out of my ex
perience with the Met, it would have to be a bit
of cement from the sidewalk running along the
south wall of the building. That is where I
waited, on Saturday, in the standing room ($2.00)
line -— first come, first served (and for the
best performances it was a matter of first-
coming by several hours at least). Best per
formances, and — most of those along the south
wall thought — best audience. We were snobs
to eclipse all the mink and diamond snobs in
boxes.
It was an inverse snobbery. Bare-shoulder
fashions demand youth. The sidewalk fashion ran
to age. Most of us there were young; but the
most negotiable commodity was the longest mem
ory, and the few old ones were the true aris
tocrats — like the man who had calibrated on
irreplaceable instruments the exact impact, all
around the standees/ corral at the orchestra
level, of every voice since Bori’s. He woud tell
you the reason that slender stream of sound
was more audible, everywhere, than the raw,
stringy efforts of Maria Callas. The house and
his head had been paired sounding boards for
over three decides, \feices we knew only from
books and records he had felt humming off
those pillars behind which a tidal drift of elbows
lodged him every week-end. He was an Italian
immigrant in the days when Wagner pushed the
Italian reportory into the shade. In our day, he
had more crowds to cope with on the Italian
afternoons and evenings. But he also had his
weapon — authority. He lived in a house alive
with echoes, and relayed them to us. He had
said good-bye to two generations of singers;
and perhaps the most important farewell to the
house was given, not from any box or seat —
not on radio or TV, not in the papers — but
from this old man in the wash of young standees.
The Met has its failings of course. Indeed,
one of the advantages of its eminence is the fact
that one could grumble about it without endanger
ing its existence. (Critics grow protective around
shakier endeavors, and feel obliged to encourage
any sign of quality). To remain the summit of
aspiration, a house must take fewer chances,
be less experimental, wait for stars to come to
it. Some of the finest voices of our day have
not been heard at the Met very often, or in
their prime — Marian Anderson, Eileen Farrell,
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Caterina Mancini, Giu
seppe Taddei. The house has had a tempera
ment to match its performers — with Gigli,
Melchior, di Stefano, Callas. Though it stays
well stocked in all other categories, it has always
been unable to get or keep the best lyric tenors
—- Clement, McCormack, Schipa. Even the best of
the current crop — Valletti and Alva — have not
been steady fare at the Met.
OTHER HOUSES surpass the Met In this or
that way; find fresher talent; try harder things.
But the standard against which these occasional
flashes must be measured is the level of the
Met’s steady exellence. As a matter of fact, the
Met’s depth of greatness is almost self-obscuring.
A Boris Christoff, Nikolai Ghiaurov, George
London, Giorgio Tozzi make people forget Jerome
Hines. A fine singer like Frank Guarrera moves
in the shadow of Gobbi, Siepi, Merrill and Geraint
Evens.
Some think the fond memories of opera goers,
the maintenance of a “summit house,” is stifling
to young talent. But only this discipline gives
the evanescent achievement of the performer a
permanence useful to others, keeps the expendi
ture of vocal talent from being a series of isolated
accidents. Every house, every singer, profits
from the Met’s sturdiness, even when that dura
bility acquires an inevitable touch of stodginess.
That is why there is reaspn for some appre
hension as the Met moves to new and young sur
roundings, breaking the physical ties that have
symbolized and supported its tradition. Rudolf
Bing said ol the house, as he surrendered It to
the wreckers: “The Queen is dead. Long live the
Queen.” But the new house looks more like a teen
age princess, and many will expect her to kick
up her heels a bit.
THE MET CANNOT be the home of experiment
In the same way that she is the center of opera
tradition — not, that is, without abandoning her
indispensable role as themalntainer of standards.
Others will surpass her achievement, In one direc
tion or another, only If she is toweringly
there to be struggled with. As Chesterton said,
the past must be kept alive in order to be fought
with. "Among the dead I have living rivals. In
the future all my rivals are dead because they
are unborn.” The Met must keep looking back
as well as forward. She is living proof of the value
of tradition.
God Love You
MOST REVEREND FULTON J. SHEEN
How often during the day do we say, or hear someone else
say “I can’t help you, I am too busy”? Busy? Yesl But busy
doing what? Being busy takes on a different meaning
in the Missions. The following are a few
of the stories a Belgian priest who recently
visited this office brought back from the
Missions. One lay missionary, a woman in
Africa, teaches 2,100 children a day. The
school has only one classroom. She teaches
200 pupils an hour, then clears the room
and another 200 come in until all have
had their lessons every day. . . We priests
in the United States are busy. Many are
overworked. But one priest in Africa has
230 missions, each of which is as large as someof nur big parishes,
Why must we have 20 or 30 priests in some of our large city
rectories and chanceries - priests working on insurance, invest
ments and real estate when the Missions need priests so badly?
Another priest, in one mission country recently under per
secution, received 18 machete wounds from Communist-inspired
rebels. After a year of recuperation., he returned again to his
people who constantly surround their “saint” with guards,
so dearly do they love him. Is not the Christ with wounds loved
for the same reason? Thomas was right: No adoration except
for a wounded Savior. The Christ with scars is the Christ
we love. . In a boarding school of 1,300 children, the poverty
is so great that each prepares his one poor meal in the crudest
possible bowl with no fires. Their dormitory is the kitchen.
Could not our boarders in colleges give up something for the
poor by sacrificing at least $1 a month for the Holy Father to
aid such need?. . .One village of 30,000 people promised to
become Christian If a priest would come to teach them catechism.
He asked each to carry a stone to the place where he taught
all day long. They will use them to build a church and school.
One nun had served the lepers for 17 years. Her mother su
perior thought that at 90 she should be brought back to our
“civilization” where she could die in comfort. She did not
carry a placard about the leper camp saying, "Down with
superiors,’’ but her heart was broken just the same. She obeyed
and packed her bags to go into retirement. The next day when
the car came to take her “back home” they found her dead
beside her packed bags. She was buried with her lepers.
Missionaries in their discomforts are happier than we are in
our comforts. Missionaries with their supra-human schedules
are accomplishing more than we with all our frantic “busy
ness.” Priests in the Missions have more work, yet there are
over 100 conversions a year per priest In many mission lands.
Priests here average only a little over two a year. We spend
too much money on our motherhouses, churches, rectories
and seminaries in the United States and too little on the Misslors
where there are souls and bodies in real need. We are religious,
but do we have faith? Being religious Is doing a certain act now
and then but faith penetrates the core of our being. Think about
it and write to me. God Love Youl
GOD LOVE YOU to S.C.M. for $200. . .to an anonymous
86-year-old lady for her gift of $50. . . to Mrs. A.F. lor $10.
“Having received an unexpected increase in my widow’s pen
sion, I want to share my good fortune with the less fortunate."
In answer to innumerable demands, the recorded talks to
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, which he has used privately for over
40 years to help people of all faiths find meaning and deeper
happiness in life, are now available to the general public on
25 records - THE LIFE IS WORTH LIVING SERIES. In 50
talks of about 30 minutes each, His Excellency offers wise and
inspiring guidance on problems affecting all age groups, such
as love, marriage and raising children, suffering, anxiety and
loneliness, alcoholism and death, as well as the principles
of a Christian faith. Prices at $57.50 and sold only as a com
plete set, the RCA custom LP high-fidelity album can be oi>
dered from Bishop Fulton J. Sheen at his office, 366 Fifth
Avenue, New York, N.W, 10001.
CUT OUT this column, pin your sacrifice to it andmail it to
Most Rev. Fulton J. Sheen, National Director of The Society for
the Propagation of die Faith, 366 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.y.'
10001, or ,o your Diocesan Director, Rev. Noel C. Burtenshaw
J Box 12047,2699 Peachtree Road, N.E. Northside Station,
'Atlanta 5, Georgia. 30305