Newspaper Page Text
DISAGREEMENT
Transferring Of Pastors
By Leonard F.X. Mayhew
One proposal made in the name of progress
in the Church I disagree with wholeheartedly
is the idea that pastors should be trans
ferred from one parish to another after a
definite term of not too many years. The figures
1 have heard range from seven to twelve years.
Some of the proponents of the idea are people
of quite respectable credentials and proven in
terest in the renewal of the Church. Neverthe
less, the proposal seems to me to be based on
only a partial understanding of the pastoral
office and the very human instinct to find re
gulatory solutions to complex problems.
That parish life is stag-1
nant in far too many parishes
in the country is a fact that
escapes few laymen and not |
many priests. The "Spiritual
service station" conception of I
the parish prevails too often
and in too many places. 11
grew up in a parish with rush
ed Sunday masses hour after 1
hour, a rectory with eight Fr. Mayhew
priests and office hours posted on the front door
( a formidable emotional blockade against parish
community spirit). Parishes in a rut which do not
really touch the lives of the people in and
around them are no novelty. A solution is certain
ly called for.
The relationship between a parish priest and
the rest of the parish ought to be intense, per
sonal, flexible, a matter of service, cooperation
and leadership. These are qualities difficult to
achieve even in a relationship between indi
viduals, much less with the large numbers in
volved in urban and suburban parishes. Such
a relationship demands time, sustained openess,
conversation, a sense of belonging, roots, un
derstanding. To treat the parish priest as a
temporarily assigned functionary would hinder
rather than encourage such relationship. Really
to know and love the people of the parish —
and to be known and loved by them— would seem
rather to indicate that the parish priest de
finitively casts his lot in with his parishioners'
and with the community in whch the parish
exists.
To think that deficiencies on the part of pas
tors will be dissolved merely by shifting them
around a diocese regularly seems gravely illo
gical and naive. The real problems of the clergy
in today's Church may, at least in part, more
reasonably be traced to the kind of pastoral
training and preparation they did or did not
receive. Until very recently seminaries did not
seriously attempt to prepare their students for
the parish ministry. Catechetics, preaching,
pastoral psychology and counseling, con
temporary sociology, techniques of adult edu
cation, realistic marital Studies: all these
are "required subjects’’ for the parish priest.
The administration, spiritual and material, of
parishes promises to be a much changed thing
in the foreseeable future. The mature' laity will
certainly become involved in the policy making,
decisions, apostolate and administration of
parishes. This will go a long way to avoiding
the inevitable difficulties of making the vitality
or lack of it in a parish depend solely on the
imagination and stamina of one man, the pastor.
He will be the basis of continuity, while the
changing ‘experiences of lay leaders will gua
rantee growth and flexibility.
The parish priest cannot be the father or
brother of the parish on a shifting seven,
ten or twelve year basis. No such simple and
legalistic strategem will solve present problems
or create vital parishes in the future. Pastor
and parish should live in life-time kinship,
kept truly alive by mutual respect, honest ex
change and openess to the Church and the world.
Your World
And Mine
•By Gary MacEoin.
The information given by Clifton Daniel of the
New York Times to the World Press Institute's
meeting at St. Paul about his paper’s part in
the Bay of Pigs episode raises basic moral and
political issues. Nothing he said was completely
new, but it puts formally on the record what
was previously in part surmise and specula
tion.
For several months before the ill-fated
invastion of Cuba in April 1961, it was known
to the Times, as it was known
to other U.S. news media and to jjjg
Fidel Castro that the C.I.A.
was actively engaged in or- ■,
ganizing the invasions, and
training and arming the ' '
invasion force. It not only kept
this information from the pub
lic, but it published misin- §§
formation supplied by the Wl
United States government
knowing it to be misinformation.
Maceoin
Among those who lied to the press, by his
own admission, was Arthur M. Schlesinger, a
man with a reputation as a historian. Another
who defended government lying to the press
was Arthur Sylvester, now assistant Secretary
of Defense and currently involved in attempts
to force the press to print his version of what’s
happening in Vietnam, without checking for them
selves.
Before coming to the issues, may I note
that it is not only the government which feeds
slanted news to the press? And may I also note
that it is the rule rather than the exception for
the press to use this slanted news without in
dependent verification? I should be very happy
to tell a congressional committee of investi
gation, under oath, and under subpoena, some of
my personal experiences as a public relations
executive.
What are the issues? One, it seems to me, is
the function of the press. Should it tell every
thing? Obviously not, one might glibly say. But
is it that obvious? If government is by consensus,
then foil disclosure is essential to consensus.
Once an individual or a government deceives
me, the basis for a consensus,* a meeting of
minds, between me and this individual or govern
ment is gone.
Assuming, howe" a r, that the "national in
terest” requires concealment in certain cii>
cumstances, an assumption 1 am prepared to
make, who decides that these circumstances
exist? "Arthus Schlesinger or Arthur Sylvester
or Robert S. McNamara or the bead of the C.I.A.
or who? Actually, at the moment, it is none
of these. They can give or withhold informa
tion or misinformation, but the decision to in
form, non-inform or misinform its readers
rests on each newspaper.
Some exercise it responsibly, others less
responsibly, but the issue is whether this is
how it should be done? President Kennedy
didn’t give an answer, but with hindsight —
after the debacle — he made a pertinent re
mark to an executive of the New York Times.
If you had printed everything you knew, he said,
the nation would have been saved from “a
colossal mistake.’’
There is still the question whether the go
vernment should lie to the public through the
press, as it has admittedly done in Cuba,
Santo Domingo and Vietnam. Obviously not, I’d
like to say, responding to my instincts and my
training. But one of the many good things the
Second Vatican Council has taught us is to avoid
moral over-simplification. It seems to me that
it clearly envisages, especially in the Con
stitution on the Church in the Modern World, the
concrete possibility that a man can be faced
with conflicting moral imperatives, to which it
is not the duty of his pastors to give "a con
crete solution."
While I have posed these issues in terms of
the general press and national security, the slow
ly dawning realization that the Vatican Council
has entrusted to public opinion in the Church
a function analogous to that it performs in the
modern state makes them no less real for the
Catholic press. Is it entitled to mislead readers?
Should it sometimes withhold information es
sential to the forming of sound public opinion
on a current issue? If so, what sort of inform
mation? And who should decide?
Letters To The Editor
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4.)
chemical tranquilizer can compare with a clean
heart and mind for making the anguish of the flesh
bearable. The power of water behind a dam is
enormously greater than that of an ever-trickling
stream.
Maybe we need to rethink some of these plati
tudes!
MYRTLE PIHLMAN POPE
2727 ASHFORD RD„ NE
ATLANTA
EDITOR:
It is interesting to note the Bulletin’s desire to
develop the "Letters to the Editor" column. It
is disturbing that more lay people and priests do
not realize the value of a forum for airing thought
ful questions, doubts and conscientiously arrived
at opinions.
Too often I have heard valid questions raised
only to be put off by the comment, "Oh well,
they’d never print it anyway!" This is simply
not true. It has been my experience in the past
iDOSAlC
THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 1966 GEORGIA BULLETIN PAGE 5
Voice Of Confusion
By LEON PAUL •
There are many reasons why Jews generally cannot see the
Church as it really is. They often see the Church as an enemy,
as a tyrant, as a persecutor, as a hypocrite. The reason for this
is that the Church has been represented to the Jews wearing
these various masks, and acting in these roles.
Have Jews seen the real Church? Too often, no. They have
not seen the face of the Church as the face of the loving Christ
but more often they have seen the face
of the Church as a grotesque caricature of
Christ, a Christ that spews hatred toward
Jews, a Christ that condemns falsely, a
Christ that too often has acted like a devil
rather than a God.
9
Down through the centuries, Jews have
seen this mask over the face of the Church
Read Father Edward Flannery’s "Anguish Paul
of the Jews" and you will see what I mean.
Unfortuantely, Jews have not been seeing the really beautiful
face of the Church because it has so often been hidden behind
these masks.
Now along comes Bishop Luigi Carli, an Italian bishop in
Segni, who during the Ecumenical Council, and now after it
has been showing the Jews that the Church of Pope John, the
Church of the Council, is, after all, not the one they may have
been led to believe. No, he shows them that the Church is the
old anti-Semite they were told about. Those stories about the
Church being a hater and a persecutor of Jews is, fact, not
fiction, as Bishop Carli presents it.
In a 44-page article in a publication for Italian priests, Bis
hop - Carli asserts, among other things, that Judaism, as a
religion, carries by its very nature, the judgment of condem
nation by God, Last year, in the same publication, he wrote
along similar lines. He stated then that it was ’legitimate to
affirm that the entire Jewish people at the time of Christ was
responsible collectively for defoide, although only the leaders
and a portion of their followers materially committed the
crime."
Now, even after the Declaration on the Jews has been passed
by such an overwhelming majority, and officially promulgated
by Pope Paul, the bishop is still publicly condemning Judaism
as a religious institution, and that "whoever, knowing Christ,
consciously and freely adheres to Judaism participates in con
science in that judgment of condemnation."
Here we have a modern day John Chrysostom, for all prac
tical purposes, bent upon widening the breach between Catholics
and Jews, dynamiting all the bridges which have so laboriously
been constructed to provide two-way access and communication
between these two communities. Here is one bishop who has
placed a mask over the face of the Church which Jews can
justifiably fear—and hate,
Morris B. Abram, head of the American Jewish Committee
has denounced the opinion of Bishop Carli as an "anti-Semitic
attack." He said that the bishop's article was in direct op
position to the Second Vatican Council and the best answer to
such thinking is widening of the ecumenical movement which
"puts into flesh and blood the indomitable spirit of the sainted
Pope Jofoj XXIII, and the thoughts expressed by Pope Paul..."
Msgr. John Oesterreicher, an expert on Judaeo-Christian af
fairs and teachings said that Bishop Carli’s judgment of Judaism
"completely contradicts the letter and spirit of the Second Va
tican Council."
‘These opinions are not new," said Msgr. Oesterreicher.
'The bishop of Segni propounded them before and during the last
session of the Council; indeed, he made every effort to wreck
the conciliar statement on the Jews, even the whole Declaration
on the Church’s Relationship to Non-Christian Religions. His
attempts to persuade the council Fathers to side with him were
soundly rejected.
There are other voices of confusion speaking today, not only
Bishop Carli’s. They do not speak with the Voice of Christ.
They do not speak in the language of Christ which is the lang
uage of divine and fraternal love. They do not show the Church
as the Face of Christ.
But what about ourselves? What sort of a mask are we putting
over the Face of the Church seen by the Jews we know? Do
they see the Church as the arch-persecutor of the Jews? As
a tyrant? As an enemy? Or do they see in us the Face of Christ?
Do they hear from us the Voice of the loving Christ? The under
standing, patient, forgiving, sympathetic Christ? With what voice
do we speak when we talk to the Jewish people we know?
N§
mm
Msgr. John 0. Conway
HHS
Q. Dear Aunt Rose,
'This letter is from Our Lady of Fatima, requesting you to
make a novena to Our Lady of Fatima.
"All you have to do is say one Hail Mary, and one Our Father
for nine days.
’This is the fourth time around the world.
nine
two or three years as a subscriber to the
BULLETIN to have been met with an openess, in
deed an appreciation, in participating in such a
forum. Every letter that I have written, except
one, has been published. I realized later that
one was perhaps too long.
More often than not, the response has been
very encouraging. What is discouraging to me
is the statement in Archbishop Hallinan’s note
book last week "that it will take at least 10
years to motivate and train laymen to do the se
cular Work priests have been doing." Surely
there are some laymen who are talented in the
secular field who need only to transfer their
ability and efforts to comparable work now done
by priests. They need to be encouraged to come
forward and be assured that their initiative will
be respected and accepted. If the assistance of
such laymen were solicited on a personal basis,
the response would be edifying. It would be in
teresting to attempt the experiment.
MRS. N.J. LOMBARDI
1879 MT. ROYAL DR., NE
ATLANTA
"One thing you have to do is copy the letter and send it to
friends within four days. If you do
not wish to do this, send it to Sister Bastus,
Buenos Aires, Argentia. Don’t forget this let
ter must not be broken in your name. On
the fourth day you will receive some great
honor from Our Lady.
"Remember to add the name of the person
who sent ti to you. This is not a chain letter.
It is a prayer for peace. I received the letter
from Linda G.” '
What do you think of a letter like this.
Msgr. Conway
ARNOLD VIEWING
'Shop On Main Street 9
By James Arnold
’The Shop on Main Street" is a warm but
honest film about what happens when a decent
little man is confronted by an enormous moral
problem. While the situation itself is extreme
(Nazi persecution of the Jews), the hero is so
ordinary, so much like ourselves, that the film
seems to have vast relevance for all times when
men must fact up to their consciences.
'‘Shop" is the first Czech-made movie ever
to get wide U.S. circulation, and it is technically
marvelous without being terribly avant-garde
The Oscar for best foreignHKHMHKN^j|'
film may not mean much since^^^^^^^^^^^
thr rules were changed to|
allow each country to nomin
ate only one entry, a selec
tion which may not be based!
entirely on matters of art. I
(The Italians chose "Mar-1
riage Italian Style" over se-|
veral better but less com-j
merical pictures). But "Shop" Arnold
is a winner that no one has to be ashamed of.
It is a variant on the ancient prisoner-re-
forms-the-jailer theme. The setting is 1942
Slovakia, a province the Germans have turned
over to local Nazis. The only unusual wartime
activity seems to be an enthusiastic official
anti-Semitism, which most of the non-Jewish
population greets with total indifference.
The hero (Josef Kroner, a sort of prole
tarian Max Schell) is a hen-pecked carpenter
whose brother - in - law is the local fuehrer.
Kroner is a simple, half-comical fellow whose
main concerns are to avoid serious labor and
the prodding of his hardworking, ambitious wife.
As a kind of gift, he is appointed "Aryan con
troller" of a Jewish shop. Like many of his
fellow townsmwn, and with hardly a thought of
moral implications, he looks gratefully for
ward to making bourgeois money.
On one level, the situation is a shocker for
Americans, who may be unaware that such
things happened or that greed is such a simple
explanation for much depression-born Nazi
anti-Semitism. Probably the greatest shock,
however, comes from Kroner’s utter matter-
of-fact attitude. This is simply the way things
are done. One ought to make the best of it;
if he doesn’t, someone else will.
On another level, it is Ironic comedy. All
the wealthy shops have by now gone to bigger
fish, and Kroner is given charge of an un-
prosperous button shop run by a sweet but
batty old lady (Ida Kaminska) who insists on
treating him like a blundering shop assistant.
He puts on a brave front for his wife and fellow
Aryans, but quietly accepts his status out of
liking for the old lady and for a secret stipend
from the Jewish community.
Slowly, however, Kroner is -changed by his
affection for the old woman, his deeper under
standing of the Jews and their friends, and the
increasingly clear greed of his wife and cruelty
of the fascists. Eventually the crisis comes:
the town's Jews are being rounded up and de
ported, and Kroner must choose between what
is right and his own personal safety. The film
makes it a truly agonizing decision, and the
heartbreaking ending, while perhaps a bit con
trived, is genuine and uncompromising.
Clearly, "Shop" is telling us that we often
participate in gigantic evil without giving it a
thought. But once it personally touches our lives,
we can no longer ignore it. Even then, despite
all our best instincts, the right action requires
a heroism that men, unaided, seldom can muster.
As the product of a state-operated film in
dustry in a Communist country, "Shop" is more
notable for its human than its revolutionary
values. There is some propaganda mileage in
showing the appetite for wealth as the main
source of evil (at one point the Nazi shouts,
"We must get rich for God and fuehrer!”).
The final 15 minutes, however, are harrowing
and unforgettable. Kroner grapples with his
conscience in the darkened shop as the Jews
are gathered cn the square; the loudspeaker
rasps out names and forceful Nazi orders; oc
casionally Kroner goes to the window where
we see both the pitiful crowds and the reflec
tion of his tortured face. At last, in death.
Kroner and the old lady move in slow motion
into the bright sunlight of the now empty square,
dancing in freedom and joy to the nostalgic
music of an old oom-pah-pah band.
OLD AND NEW
Theological Gamesmanship
A. I think it is rediculous, false and superstitious. Your
niece must be a nut, and Linda G. A dolt, who received the letter
from the dupe who composed it. Break their chain of inanity....
now?
Q. Was John the Baptist born without original sin?
A. It is commonly believed that he was sanctified when Mary,
the Mother of Jesus, visited his mother, Elizabeth, before either
child was born. The sanctifying grace which he received at that
time removed original sin from his soul.
Q. When a priest is giving Holy Communion to the people and
he says “Body of Christ" to all communicants except one indivi
dual, does that have any special meaning?
A. It means that Father goofed onlvonre. a rather o-ood average.
By Gary Wills
' If is Robert McAfee Brown’S guess that, if
any change is msfde in the Catholic position
on contraceptives, it will begin: "Rome has
always taught..." Some Catholics have quoted
this, witticism to claim that the "Rome has
taught” rubric expresses nothing but insti
tutional face-saving and theological games
manship. That is carrying the joke too far.
Since Christianity is not simply a series
of improvised answers to new questions, but
a body based on an historical act and revela
tion, it must patiently, endlessly, acknowledge
its dependence on that act, trace all its ties
back to - the Incarnation. To separate what is
lasting, what is ephemeral in our attitudes,
we must test them over andj
over against the community’s |
past life in Christ, beginning j
with the life of the community I
that wrote and approved the M
New Testament documents. If H
change is announced, not only W
will it contain some mention ip
of “what Rome has always
taught.’’ It should do so. (The I
best book on Rome’s attitude Wills
toward contraception -— John Noonan’s — ends
with a statement of the principles that have
"always been taught”).
But the matter is admittedly complicated by
eager dogmatists who tell us that "Rome has
always taught” things that, in fact, .it only re
cently, or rarely, or never promulgated. The
truth of a need for continuity in the life of the
Christian community is easily stretched to cover
false claims of unwavering doctrinal clairvoy
ance. A case of this is now very amply docu
mented in the Journal for the Scientflc Study
of Religion (April, 1965). There Dr. Carl
Re Herman, of Berkeley, published "Birth Con
trol and Catholics,” a survey of the Catholic
position as it was reflected and defended in the
first fifty-five years of America’s publication.
(He chose America — properly, I think— as the
most representative educated voice speaking
often and connectedly over so long a period. His
article reflects no judgement on the magazine,
but on the community it served for a half-cen
tury. More horrendous things could have been
quarried from less central publications).
The century opened with attack on the "race
suicide” that would inevitably follow any form
of limitation on the birth rate. There was no
possible reason for limiting the number of chil
dren in any family: "Argument, economic, es
thetic, purely selfish or drawn from whatever
other source, is futile” (1916). "Existence, no
matter how sordid, is immeasurably better than
non-existence" (1915). "Suppose a child born
deaf, dumb, blind, idiotic, in utter poverty, and
that its parents know before hand that such
would be its condition. Has any crime been
committed? Surely none against the child, which
has received God's gift of endless existence"
(1912).
The moral position Was buttressed with earth-
lier motives (or bribes) for fertility: 1) "It
is the large families who are the best” (1909;)2)
birth control is psychologically unbalancing
and "in some degree damagingto health" (1915);
3) the nation tha: rejects birth control will be
more powerful than its suicidal neighbors (1909);
and 4) "In the struggle for existence which the
use of contraceptives has created, the Catholic
element in our population will survive because
it is the fittest to survive" (1915).
The position of the first three decades could be
summed up in two statements: "Against the whole
theory and the sinful, selfish unpatriotic, pro
foundly immoral practices of birth-restriction
the Catholic Church has sternly and uncompro -
m '.singly set her face. They are of the devil..."
(1917). "Catholics know that since conscious
birth-restriction is intrinsically evil, no sup
posed necessity, however great, can serve to
justify it" (1917). The key word is "restriction”
(or the equally popular "limitation”). The attack
is not on unnatural birth limitation, but on any
limitation; and the moral issue, at this stage, is
not the natural law, but any restriction placed
(for "supposed necessity”) upon the size of one’s
family.
Over the next three decades, the position
shifted. Now birth-control limitation became
permissible or even obligatory: "Parents are
required by Christian prudence, in view of our
present social circumstances and the availability
of rhythm, to exercise their human providence
before launching'into existence lives which for
better or worse will have an eternal destiny”
(1962). "The Church does not forbid birth re
gulation” 1965). Contrast this with earlier re
marks about foreseen idiocy, the blessings of
"existence, however sordid,” and Catholics’
duty to outbreed the "less fit.” Now die debate
centered on method — a development made pos
sible by the Oglno-Knaus "rhythm method,"
discovered by 1929 and made available to the
public in 1931.
"Rhythm" came to America’s attention in 1932
when a brief review recommended a book on the
method as of interest to specialists. The debate
blossomed rapidly after that, and those familiar
with the arguments over “the pilP’willfeelas if
they had been there before. America’s editor,
Wilfrid Parsons, played it safe; on the one hand,
he said this "new theory...has received the un
savory apcrcl’Kion of ’Catholic Birth Control’”
and developed into a "commercial racket." But
he also says of the method: "It is simply the
old one of die ‘safe period,’ familiarto Catholics
for centuries.” (The first so-called safe period
had been "discovered" less than 90 years before
Parsons wrote. It was not widely used for the
good reason that it did not work: It’sdiscoverer,
Pouchet, had the cycle almost exactly reversed.
This "period" had been the subject of an ambi
guous statement by the Roman Penitentiary in
1880 — a statement hardly "familiar to Ca
tholics." It had never before been mentioned in
America).
Parsons went on: "Those who call (it) new
are those who think that the opposition of the
Church to birth control is based on an ima
gined prohibition of the dlberate limitation
of offspring, which it never was”. (Feb. 1933).
"It has always been taught" that the family
can limit its size by use of the "sterile pe
riod, if there is such a thing.” By 1933,
then, the strategy was chosen: Ogino-Knaus
would soon be read back into an encyclical
written before "rhythm” became known
(Casti Connubii, 1930). Thirty years of at
tack on the "devilish" idea of family limi
tation would be conveniently forgotten, and
what "Rome has always taught" would, onc-s
more, become whatever it is convenient to
say at the moment. No wonder men wince
at Dr. Brown’s crack. It strikes home.