Newspaper Page Text
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THURSDAY, MAY 19, 1966 GEORGE BULLETIN PAGE 5
' |
ALL the monks, including their
SUPERIORS. WERE LAYMEN-THIS WAS THE
CUSTOM RIGHT UP TO THE TIME OF SAINT
BENEDICT. MONKS WERE ONLY GRADUALLY
ADMITTED TO HOLY ORDERS, f
ONE OF THE EARLIEST OF THE’ MEDIEVAL WORLD MAPS IS THE
-HEREFORD MAPPA MUNDl, once used AS an Altar-piece in
HEREFORD CATHEDRAL, ENGLAND, WHERE It IS NOW PRESERVED. CIRCULAR
IN SHAPE,THE MAP IS ORIENTED TOWARDS THE EAST, WITH JERUSALEM AT ITS CENTER,
GOOD NEWS
“Taken Up Into Heaven”
By Mary Perkins Ryan
Our Lord’s ascension, as it is described in the
Acts of the Apostles, certainly raises problems
for the modern mind —even in the mind of a third-
or fourth-grade child. We all know that there
really Isn’t any “up” but only ’’out” in all direc
tions from our earth; we know that the astro
nauts didn't enter heaven but only ’’space” on
their journeyings; we know that the greatest
telescopes and radio-wave receivers have dis
covered nothing like a “heaven”
In the farthest reaches of the
universe. Where did the Lord
really go to when “a cloud took
him out of their sight"? Where
is He now?
Of course, the picture of His
going up to a heaven physically
situated somewhere above the
earth offered no problems to
people of His own time or to many generations
thereafter. Their picture of the cosmos was a
three-decker one, with the region of the dead
who were separated from God below, heaven above.
Earth in the middle and "Up” still remains the
direction of human aspiration, but we post-Co-
pernicans know very well that the cosmos isn’t
like this at all. We need, therefore to do some
careful thinking about what Christ’s Ascension
really means or we may find that we have put
the tremendous reality signified by the Ascension
into the category of a pre-scientific legend, be
cause it is plctorially conveyed to us in Scrip
ture in pre-scientific spatial images.
Yet Scripture also gives us other ways of
thinking about it. In the Gospels of the Sundays
after Easter and in the whole Discourse after
the Last Supper from which these Gospels are
taken, our Lord is preparing the Apostles to rea
lize that through His death and Resurrection He
is going to be with the Father in a new way
and that He is going to be with them in a new
way too. He is going to “return to the Father
but yet they will see Him again and rejoice
with a joy that no one can take away from them.
Perhaps, then, we need to think of what happened
at the Ascension as meaning that our Lord be-
) came more “with” the Father and more “with”
men than He could be in His earthly life, limit
ed like ours by space and time. We all know
from our own experience that there are many
degrees of “withness” in our presence to other
people and theirs to us. One can be physically
present to someone and yet completely remote
in mind and heart. One can want to be most
intimately one in thought and sympathy with the
friend with whom one is speaking, and yet find
for some reason that real communication just
isn’t taking place. Or one can find that, through
a glance or a touch or a tone of voice, somehow
a real “withness” with the otherpersonis achiev-
1 ed, a mutual understanding of one another, a unity.
Everything that the New Testament tells us about
our glorified Lord as He Is now, “seated at the
right hand of the Father” and yet present with
His Church and all mankind, encourage us to
understand that He can now be with us in an in
timacy more intense than anything possible
between human persons on this earth. His human
nature is wholly charged with the Spirit of love
and freedom, so that as man He is not only
completely “with" the Father, but also shares
in the divine self-givlngness. He can be with each
of us and with the community of His Church and
with every person on earth as no human person
can be with us, In the many tangible modes
enumerated by the Constitution on the Liturgy —
in the Eucharist and the other sacraments, through
the proclamation of the Word, wheneverthe Church
prays, wherever two or three are gathered to
gether in His name — and in many others be
yond our definition, (e.g. “Whatever you do for
these, my least brethren, you do for Me.”)
What was signified by His Ascension, then,
was His leaving our space-time limitations and
categories to become more fully with us even
than He was with His Apostles during His earthly
life. He will “come again,” as the Acts tell us,
by somehow making Himself evident once more
within these categories. But in the meantime we
have work to do, His work to do with Him. As
the angels said to the Apostles, “Why do you
stand here looking at the sky?”
YOUR WORLD AND MINE
Church &
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4)
indicated a willingness to implement the wishes
of the Council.
The disappointment was consequently bitter
when a Castilian bishop was transterred to Bar
celona as coadjutor with right of succession. The
action was seen as a double abuse on the part
of the state. It was not only still choosing bis
hops. It was using its control to continue its
discrimination against the language and culture
of Catalonia.
Bacelona has had no Catalan bishop since 1930.
The apostolic administrator in 1939 went so far
as to make the priests pronounce Latin with a
Castilian accent. The present 75-year-old arch
bishop is more moderate, but not to the point of
ever having tried to learn the mother tongue of
his priests and people.
Respectful but firm protests were voiced by 23
Catalan intellectuals in a letter to the nominee,
and by 25 priests of Barcelona in a separate
letter. The intellectuals urged to him to with
draw. The priests simply asked him to take
such measures as he thought appropriate. Soon,
leaflets and posters began to appear in the streets.
"We want Catalan bishops,” was their simple
message.
State In Spain
Simultaneously, other Catholic groups in Cata
lonia and elsewhere began to emphasize the gap
which exists between the current practice of the
Spanish state and the rights of the individual as
a human, as stressed by the Council. The lead
was taken in this area by illegal trades unions
affiliated to the International Federation of Chris
tian social movement known as the Vanguardla
social obrera.
The tense atmosphere was further heightened
when the police in Barcelona forced their way
into a monastery, in apparent violation of the
Concordat, and seized the identification cards of
500 university students who had fled there for
sanctuary after a demonstration for the right to
elect their own leaders in the student associa
tions. Twenty-five sympathizers were arrested.
The repercussions in Barcelona, both in the uni
versity and In the general community, were im
mediate. Protests spread to many parts of Spain,
including Madrid. It is regrettable that Miss
Herter got in the middle and felt the weight of
a police club. I am sure, however, that both
she and the State Department will be relieved
that she gave, accidental publicity, not to a
Communist-led subversive plot, but to a Chris
tian-inspired agitation for human rights.
Q. More English at Mass I Big dealt Or rather big jokel Those
funny prayers we have to read so Father won’t have to
use two books I Why don’t they dispense those of us who don’t like
English from going to Mass?
Being on the inside and following the party line you probably
know how big a kickback the bishops are getting from the book
dealers. A priest told me the missals bought
last year are not usable now, unless the people
say those funny prayers.
A. When did you begin disliking English?
What language do you speak daily? Judging
from your name maybe you prefer Gaelic,
but it is not apt to become popular in the U.S.
Those funny prayers are a translation of
the antiphons and psalm verses the priest
has been reading in Latin for many centuries at Mass. Maybe
you dislike English because you were content never to know what
the Mass was all about. We admit that those brief selections re
cited at the Introit, Gradual, Offertory and Communion are un
satisfying, because they were snipped from longer hymns and
psalms away back in the Middle Ages. But you should not blame
our modern bishops for deformations which the Mass suffered
many centuries ago — especially when you object to the changes
they are making. At some future date — probably several years
hence —• something will be done about those funny prayers. Mean
while it is more fitting that they be said by the people, to whom
they properly pertain, than by the celebrant of the Mass, who sim
ply took over this role of the people when they became separated
from the Mass in medieval times.
Book dealers, and particularly publishers, will tell you that
the Missal of 1964 and the Sacramentary of this present year
were headaches. Just after the Missal of 1964 was on the market
orders came from Rome that Latin must be included in it, along
with the English translation. It was back to the presses again, at
a considerable loss. This year, because of editing and manu
facturing difficulties one publisher did not get his Sacramentary
on the market by Passion Sunday. He must have suffered fin
ancially.
The only appropriate answer to your question about the size
of the bishops’ kickback, is a personal question to you: When are
you going to quit beating your wife?
The Missal which we bought in 1964 is being used dialy in our
church, and we would need it even more if the peopl did not
say those funny prayers. We use it only at the bench and the pul
pit, however. The Sacramentary is used at the altar. Certainly
it would have been better if the complete change to English could
have been made at one time and all of it put in one book. But only
second guessors, Monday-morning quarterbacks -- and those who
figure odds after the race is over are in position to criticize
the bishops’ lack of foresight inthis matter. And surely the person
who Is being dragged, kicking and screaming, through each change
is hardly the one to make reasonable objection that the changes
should have been more sweeping right in the beginning.
ARNOLD VIEWING
A Comic Critique
“A Thousand Clowns” is the evenzanier screen
version of the zany hit play by the Brooklyn
humorist, Herb Gardner, who created the disas
ter-prone cartoon characters, The Nebbishes.
A whimsical, high - spirited film, it combines
comedy and social criticism in a buoyant, appeal
ing style.
In the context of society as a whole, “Clowns”
Is a rebel yell, a Bohemian protest at the de-
humanization of the Well Or
ganized Square World. In the
context of the arts, however,
“Clowns” is tidily In the tra
dition of blast-the-bourgeois.
It has been a long time since
any playwright has sympathized
with established middle class
values.
Basically, this is the same story
Sandpiper,” of inglorious memory. A dedicated
non-conformist attempts to raise a child accord
ing to his lights, and society objects. Social
workers arrive, briefcases in hand, and stuffily
survey the environment. Shape up, they tell the
hero, or lose the child. The hero struggles, but
he shapes up. Happy ending. Or Is it?
"Clowns” Is several cuts above "Sandpiper"
mainly because It is terribly funny, regardless
of whether you agree with its argument. There is
one qualification: Gardner’s humor is of the
swinging New York variety that often brings only
puzzlement to the provinces. (Do they really dig
it in Albuquerque when a character says he sees
King Kong sobbing on the Time-Life building?
Or when you spoof the idiocies and egos of TV,
or the pretensions of young PhD’s in psychology?)
In every audience, reactions will rangefrom hys
teria to bewildered questions like “What did he
say?”
The customers, further, are under direct
attack. Gardner is chopping away at the revered
Protestant ethic, the work-hard-make-a-buck-
and-something-of -yourself seriousness that has
deep roots in America. He kids with justice,
what most of us do for a living and in our aff-
hours. He joshes our values, some good as well
as many bad. It takes maturity and insight to
laugh in self-criticism, but it helps that Gardner
is so clearly a lover of humanity: this is a
movie without bad guys.
Non - conformist hero Murray Burns is a
thoroughly delightful fellow, as good-naturedly
played by Jason Robards. A wackily spontaneous
and witty TV writer (he may strike video fans
as a Jack Douglas-type), he lives with an in
fectious, Zorba-like zest. Murray is not so much
OLD AND NEW
How To Read A Dirty Book
a rebel as a Peter Pan - a boy who refuses to
grow up, to trade the world's fun and magic
for responsibility.
When he finally surrenders, trapped by his
love for a girl and a child, he somehow makes
it seem universal and right, if not completely
happy. In each of us there Is a twinge of recog
nition, for we all have made that choice, con
scious or not. The film may stress what we have
lost rather than what we have gained, but it is
a valuable and beautiful memory. Gardner re
minds us again of all of life’s “wild possi
bilities.”
“Clowns” is the first film directing job for-
Fred Coe, who directed the stage version and
brought along most of the original cast, in
cluding Robards; Barry Gordon, who Is touching
ly genuine as Murray's precocious nephew; and
William Daniels and Gene Saks, who are amusing
ly three - dimensional as, respectively, a prim
child welfare investigator and an insecure, un-
talented TV kiddie show comedian. The only
additions are Barbara Harris, perhaps Broad
way's top light actress, as the young psycho
logist liberated by Murray’s Fun approach to life,
and sturdy Martin Balsam, whose brilliant ca
meo as Murray’s long-suffering conservative bro
ther won him an Oscar.
Coe is clearly a noble influence on American
theater. As a producer of more than 500 TV
dramas, he was regarded as the most respon
sible TV magnate, a key man in the "golden
age” of the 1950’s. After stepping into film
production with properties like “The Miracle
Worker,” he has begun directing with an ex
citing feel for the possibilities of film. Much of
the appeal of “Clowns” comes from its exu
berant photography, imaginative editing, and wild
use of music.
E.g., in half a dozen sequences, Robards, Gor
don and Miss Harris romp about the streets and
sights of New York, demonstrating in motion
the world -is-a-playground spirit that could
be expressed on stage only in words. (The
camera work Is by Arthur Omltz, who so memor
ably treked those teenagers around the city In
last year’s "Henry Orient.”) There are rio
tous real-life sequences of urbanites plodding to
work, running for buses, gulping down hot dogs
(somewhat irreverently, to the tune of the “Hal-
lelulia Chorus”). When irrepressible Murray hol
lers to his neighbors to wash their windows or
to put classier garbage in their cans, Coe sends
him out into a real city street to shout at the
silent tenement walls.
There is one typically beautiful passage when
the reluctantly job-seeking Murray is listening,
with increasing horror, to a TV braodcast. The
hollow cheers of the audience cut suddenly to
swinging doors which seem blown open by the
noise (actually Murray is running out), then to a
seagull in flight, a mournful boat whistle, and
Murray sitting dejectedly on a pier staring sadly
at his beloved harbor.
God Love You
BY GARRY WILLS
Mr. and Mrs. Irving Sussman, the authors of
How to Read a Dirty Book, remind me of Agnes
Cooch as she rushed out with the cry “I want
to really L-H-I-V-E.” They want to really R-
H-E-A-D what they call “dirty books.” Only
they can’t find them. They tell us, for instance,
that — (brace yourself) — there is one scene
in Romeo and Juliet that is "embarrassingly
vulgar” and “downright dirty” ■— a scene where
Mercutio “embarrasses Ju
liet’s nurse.” One might more
easily embarrass a mountain.
The nurse is a roaring bon
fire of bawdiness. Even in the
Friar’s garden, with Romeo
writhing on the ground in de
spair, she absent-mindely bub
bles up three clever obsceni
ties in seven lines. She makes
her every scene "dirty” (in
the wide and rather dirty way the authors use
that word). But these blinking Gooches are too
obtuse to find the very ”dirt” they thirst for.
Another dirty author they love is Salinger. But
they think Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenter
“takes Its title from the Advent psalm.” The
title Is directly from Sappho, and In the original
It is a bawdy joke. Since they cannot find the real
thing, they conjure up non-existent “dirty books”
— as when they remark darkly that Horace is
famous for his “Lesbian odes." (Horace wrote
in Lesbian metres, but the famous “Lesbiaodes”
belong to Catullus — and they are not “les
bian”). Some one should write a little guide for
the Sussmans, called “How to Find a Dirty Book.”
The authors do not want us to read “dirty
books” like Chaucer because they are good
books. We read to "become cultured”: “all
man’s history, the culture of his past, must be
known (at least recogniged by name) In order to
grasp the living present.” The Sussman’s follow
their own easy rule, and are acquainted withmost
cultures only by name, or in mangled snatches.
It occurs to them that Terence’s famous dictum
about “all things human” would fit their purpose,
and they try to quote it. But another tag from
their “cultural survey” courses — one by De
scartes — gets tangled up in the Terence:
Nil humani alienum puto ergo homo sum. (They
are no more successful In their attempts to quote
English: Mercutio’s “fishlfied” - which Is also
connected with a bawdy jest — comes out “fi
nished”). Similarly, they do not demand that we
actually read or see Leroi Jones’ Toilet, only
that we culturedly “know it by name”: "It Is
not necessary for one to go to see this play, or
to sit through the offensive and repellant language.
But It Is necessary for the Christ-minded person
to know about it, to read about it.”
The rule the Sussmans repeat everythere Is
“Read It whole.” Tims the one “dirty” scene
in Romeo and Juliet Is made up for by the moral
of the whole story —— that marriage is noble.
In the same way one can take the bawdy tales
in the Canterbury Tales, safe In the knowledge
that Chaucer gives the Parson the last tale
(“stringent antidote to the poison of the vul
garity”). Othello “reveals the envy of small-
souled people” — (and should be called How
lago Got His?) The Doll's House “teaches that
husband and wife have to respect each other.”
Sometimes It is hard to find a moral in the work
Itself. Then reading it "whole" means reading
it in the tradition of wholeness they derive from
Dante. If Christianity is not in the work, put it
in (“To read with wholeness is to .be aware of
what is not In the book”). The moral of James
Joyce, for instance, is: This is what happens
to artists when they stop being Dante. “Finne
gan's Wake embodies all that can happentowords
when they cease to express meaning" (I) But,
naturally, it is better to have the moral in the
work already; so, with religious chauvinism, the
authors tell us our guys can write better dirty
books than their guys; Christian writers “match
up to, and indeed go far beyond, the most ardent
of the unattached pilgrims.”
The Sussmans are positively dizzy with their
own daring. They actually read Mauriac, Ber-
nanos, and Greene. They even read about Leroi
Jones. The rhetoric Is all of release, openness,
and scorn for the Philistines. But behind the gaudy
rhetoric is that deep philistinism which could make
a “problem” out erf reading Greene, and place
the whole discussion under the rubric of the “dirty
book.” They call Shakespeare “dirty” in order
to get their kicks; but they play it safe by re
flecting (on p. 80) that, after all, our Lady at
Fatima wants us to read dirty books. They boldly
title one chapter “Don’t Ask Your Parish Priest.”
Don’t be priest-ridden when it comes to reading
dirty books. No, let the Catholic press be your
guide I (Here, they name nine guides, including
Franciscan Herald and The Way — and the Catholic
weekly newspaper they quaintly think is called
The National Observer). The book is a mish
mash of philistine titillations, perverted mo-
rallsm, mixed metaphors (we get “the dirty
minds in the stuffed* shirts” when “the eye of
the beholder does not enter into the heart of the
work” — better that, Dr. Bedakeyl), and the most
appalling grammar ever perpetrated by two Eng
lish teachers: "Though not a great play, only
an imperfectly good play. The Toilet dare not
be carelessly judged or timorously banned or
burned.”
The important thing about this book is that it
proves what patsies supposedly informed Catho
lics are — especially yesterday’s liberal who is
nervous about getting left behind. Although the
book Is ignorant and ghetto-minded (“our guy
Greene”,) the cover copy and the opening pages
make it sound rebellious and “aggiornamental.”
That is all that is needed, these days, to get a
big play in the "progressive” Catholic press.
The National Catholic Reporter devoted a half
page to reprinting its opening chapter. Anne
Fremantle called It “this luminously intelligent
book.” A reviewer In The Critic calls it ex
tremely well done — "literate, positive, speci
fic and compassionate.” This prompts the specu
lation: if the “cultured” Catholic is such a sucker
for the label put on this trash, does he even get
past the modishly liberal label put ongoodbooks?
Perhaps some one should write a manual for Miss
Fremantle and others called “How to Find a
Progressive Book.”
MOST REVEREND FULTON J. SHEEN
Sometimes I meet readers of this column who ask, "Why does
not the Holy Father's Society for the Propagation of the Faith
allow me to send my money directly to a particular project, ra
ther than to him?” There are many reasons. First of all, he does
not forbid it. But since the Holy Father knows more about the mis
sion world than any of us, he has the means of knowing the merits
of each request and the real needs in every area. Second, indi
vidually-designated donations to particular projects result in tre
mendous inequalities. For example, one diocese sent six million
dollars to a certain mission where a big
cathedral was erected while in the same
country only 400 miles away, there was an
other diocese where 150 priests had to make
ends meet for the entire diocese on $12,000
a year.
Third, you are no longer troubled by ask
ing "Is this appeal deserving?” or “Will
they buy more property with this in the Uni
ted States?” or “Will they really send it to
the Missions?” Fourth, the Holy Father’s Society for the Pro
pagation of the Faith makes no investments of any alms you sa
crifice to the General Fund. It is distributed by the Holy Father
within the fiscal year to the poor of the entire world. You do not
help yourself spiritually when you give to make the rich richer.
Many of our institutions in the United States are too rich. If you
want your money to escape Investment in Wall Street or real
estate In the United States, if you want it to find its way to the
poor missions and the poor of the world now when it is needed,
then give it to the Holy Father and his Society for the Propaga
tion of the Faith. This is why the Holy Father says that he should
“first and principally,” not only as an after thought.
Finally, it requires a little extra faith to allow the Vicar of
Christ to dispose of your alms rather than to do it yourself. There
is a certain amount of egotism in all of us, and we like to have
the satisfaction of letting our left hand know what our right hand
does. But the one person In the Scripture who was praised above
all others for her charity was the widow who gave her few pennies
to the Temple Instead of deciding where they would go. Giving
to the Church and to Paul VI will mean one thing: You may not
know whether your alms went to a leper In Africa, a slum in
Latin America or to refugees in Asia, but you will know that
your pennies, dimes, dollars or hundreds of dollars went where
the need was greatest. God Love You I
GOD LOVE YOU to an “anonymous repentant” for $25...to
C.M.D. for making a $53.06 gift to the Holy Father’s Missions
through another...to A.T.K. for $550. "To be used as directed
by out Holy Father.”
Now is the time to plan aheadfora special Father's Day, birth
day, anniversary, bridal or Ordination gift. THE POWER OF
LOVE, one of Bishop Sheen’s most recent books, is available ,
in both paperback and a deluxe slipcased, hardbound edition. THE
POWER OF LOVE shows how love belongs in every major area
of our lives; how it can give us direction in the complexities and
distractions of our time. This will be an important contribution ■
to your daily life and the lives of all to whom you give It — Ca
tholic and non-Catholic alike. It is available for $.60 in paperback;
$3.50 hardbound, by writing the Order Dept: The Society for the
Propagation of the Faith, 366 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10001.
CUT OUT this column, pin your sacrifice to it and mall it to
Most Rev. Fulton J. Sheep, National Director of The Society fpr
the Propagation of t&e Faith, 366 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.y.'
T0001, or to your Diocesan Director, Rev. Noel C. Burtenshaw
P. d. Box 12047,2699 Peachtree Road, N.E. Northslde
Atlanta S, Georgia. 30305