Newspaper Page Text
THURSDAY, JULY 7, 1966
GEORGIA BULLETIN
PAGE 5
COMMON CONCERN
WASPS, WISCS Alike
By Leonard F.X. Mayhew
“The local church ought to be the base
from which some attempt is made to minister
to human need. It ought to be the place where
noble resolutions are put into action. It ought
to be the place least involved In the bureau
cracy of the denomination. It ought to be the
place where general needs. ..becometranslated
into flesh and blood, into the sound of hungry
babies and anxious mothers,
the place where frustrations
are shared, where heartfelt
expressions of love are turned
into action. It ought to be all
these things, but it is not.
The have-nots lie bleeding
along the road, and the haves
are passing them by on their
way to church.**
This verdict on the local ^ r *
(what we call parish) church is from “The
Ghetto of Indifference** by Thomas J. Mullen
(Abingdon Press, $2.25). The author is a Quaker
pastor and he is writing avowedly for and about
white Protestants. He employs the term WASP
(White Anglo Saxon Protestant) to describe
himself, the members of his church and those
for whom he is writing. What he has to say
fits all too well and uncomfortably also for
WISCS (White Immigrant Stock Catholics).
It has become recently popular to analyze
the cultural ghetto in which American Roman
Catholics have lived for the past few generations,
separated from the main concerns and under
takings of the rest of our society. In the af
fluent present, however, alongside the real
efforts to break out of this confining separa
tion, there is the danger that American Catholics
are entering the same “ghetto of indifference’*
inhabited by the affluent members of other
churches. This ghetto, more insidious than the
earlier form ever was, is a state of mind. It
is of our own making. Due to a multiplicity of
social changes, all of which have influenced
the way in which our local churches are set
up, a great many WASPS and WISCS are phy
sically and psychologically separated from those
in our society who are in desperate need of
our service.
To a disturbing degree, the problem is not
that we do not wish to give ourselves to the
service of our neighbor. We just are not even
aware of our neighbor’s plight, or of our own
privileged position, or of our power to do any
thing about it. In "The Other America”
(Baltimore; Penguin Books) Michael Harrington
categorizes the have-nots, as Harrington points
out, are becoming increasingly “invisible” in
contemporary America. “The business man may
drive along the fringes of slums, but it is not
an important experience to him. The failures,
the unskilled, the disabled, the aged and the
minorities are right there, across the tracks,
where they have always been. But hardly anyone
else is.”
Mr. Mullenis thesis is compelling. Certainly,
he says, we need those who will give them selves
to the service of the have-nots as a full-time
vocation. We equally need, he contends,
“Christian schizophrenics'* —those who, them
selves affluent and powerful, will also live in the
world of the have-nots by their genuine and prac
tical concern. The layman's share in the
Church's mission means more than free-time
volunteer work. It means using power, exerting
influence employing affluence, for the benefit
of other Americans. How we vote and how we
do business must also be determined by a
genuine Christian consciousness. “In our day
and in the knowledge of the ghetto of indifference
which has trapped so many of us and which has
been a plague on all our houses of worship,
the definition (of the layman in the Church) will
necessarily have to include a genuine desire
to be Christian schizophrenics.”
SOUTH AFRICA DEBATE
Your World And Mine
i ■ By Gary
Most commentators of Senator Robert P.
Kennedy’s recent tour of Africa concentrated
on its significance for the Senator’s political
ambitions. I am happy to see that Victor Riesel
is concerned with another issue it has brought
once more into sharp focus: the denial of South
Africa of freedom of Information -and-other-
basic human rights. arn °2 i2o.il; ouiusms i b,
•yllAIdU!
Victor Riesel can speak with authority in
this area. It will be recalled that he was
permanently and totally blind
ed some years ago, when a
hoodlum threw lye in his face
because of his exposures of
labor racketeering.
The experience only in
creased his crusading zeal.
About three years ago, he
backed me in a successful
move which I initiated to force
the Overseas Press Club to
withdraw an invitation to Cheddi Jagan as guest
of honor at a Club luncheon. Jagan was then
head of the communist-dominated regime in
British Guiana. Riesel and I were willing to
have him come to the Club to be crossques-
tioned about his denial of press and trades
union freedom, butwefeltit improper to “honor”
one who was publicly flaunting the principles
on which the Club is based. A majority at a
show-down meeting of the Club membership
supported us.
Riesel is now president of the Overseas
Press Club. Outraged by South Africa’s ban on
foreign correspondents during Senator
Kennedy’s visit, he has committed the Club
to a continuing campaign of exposure of the
situation in that country. The first step is an
Invitation to Nobel Prize winner Albert Luthuli,
confined for many years in a reservation near
Durban, novelist Alan Paton, and South African
student leader Ian Robertson, to attend (all
expenses paid) a meeting of protest at the Club
headquarters in New York. South Africa’s Minis
ter of Information is also invited, at his own
expense. Riesel believes in free speech.
1 think it rather unlikely that the South
African regime will grant the travel permits
to the guests, but if they don’t, their fear of
truth will once more be emphasized. Even if
they do not, the Club has other members, as
well as me, who have evaded the official sur-
veill^^e qf, tfie jot^llt^rlan . regime to visit
“bla(^,sppts’“, aflrtqqligpj flr^t-pepgpn evidence
of die .continuing denial of human rights. We
can still have a fact-packed “Freedom of the
Press South African Night.”
I don't believe the point has yet arisen for
mally, but if travel permits are denied, I
should oppose the granting to South African's
Information Minister a right of reply. He must
first let the victims speak.
The Press Club campaign must inevitably
force a hard new look at the support by the
United States government and business com
munity of a minority regime whose racist policies
deny basic human rights to the vast majority
of the republic’s citizens. Direct U.S. private
investment in industry based on slave labor
totals half a billion dollars and is rising annually
at a rate of $50 million. Surely this is the first
hole we should plug in our balance of payments.
Portfolio investment adds another $250 million
contribution by this country to injustice in
South Africa, and it is likewise increasing.
Each year, you and I and our fellow citizens
buy $250 m illion worth of South African products
and sell that country $400 million worth. We
are not so hard up that we could not survive
without this blood-stained trade.
I do not suggest anything simple as a
straightforward breaking of diplomatic rela
tions or an immediate total economic boycott.
But we have political and economic weapons
which we are not using because South Africa’s
propaganda and the cupidity of a business com
munity which rates moral issues low in its
scale of values have produced an atmosphere
of apathy in the United States. If Bob Kennedy
and Vic Riesel change that situation, I at least
shall thank them.
MacEoin
Letters To Editor
EDITOR:
May 1, in friendship, correct a small but signi
ficant error in the editorial titled "The New
Valenti," in The Bulletin of June 30.
Warner Bros., producer of “Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf?,” does require exhibitors tobar
admission to the film to anyone under age 18
“unless accompanied by a parent”—not an adult
as the editorial noted. The difference, I think, is
apparent.
When I went to see the film here, opening
eight, and eyed some of the patrons, I noticed a
number who, I would swear, ARE under 18 and
were NOT accompanied by an adult OR parent.
Indeed, one couple brought a child who certainly
was under six.
Perhaps the title led them to believe that this
was a contemporary version of the drama about
the three pigs and that OTHER wolf. But, surely,
the content, shortly after the film opened, dis
abused them of THAT. They remained through it
all, and one could weep for such parental idiocy.
Norman Shavin
CDOSAIC
The Radio Priest
-By LEON PAUL
I was trying to remain silent about Father Charles Coughlin
and his recent statements about his retirement as pastor of his
shrine at Royal Oak, Mich. Since he was about to also celebrate
the golden jubilee of his ordination—I felt that this was no
time to stir up old animosities.
But the excessive praise by Boston's Cardinal Cushing
honor of the Radio Priest’s 50th ordination anniversary made
me take an opposite view of my silence.
There was a historical record that had to be
set straight.
I was not sure I was reading the news
paper article correctly. Was this great
and magnificent friend of the Jews, this
courageous cardinal from Boston who has
received more awards from Jewish or
ganizations for his substantial contributions
to the cause of brotherhood and understand
ing between Catholics and Jews, this great
defender of the Jewish people at the Ecumenical Council—
was this great prelate who in so many, many ways was like
Pope John—was he the same man now extolling the virtues
of one of the most anti-Semitic priests ever to darken the
American scene?
It was simply unbelievable— incredible I It is difficult for me
to believe that Cardinal Cushing is unaware of the immense
harm done by Father Coughlin toward the cause of Catholic-
Jewish understanding. Fr. Coughlin published vile anti-Semitic
articles in his weekly paper, “Social Justice”—material which
often echoed Nazi propaganda!
He published die false “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”
with the lame excuse that even if they weren’t true, they seem
ed to be an accurate picture of what the Jews were trying to
do in taking over the controlling the v.hole world. Father
Coughlin’s affiliation with the notoriously anti-Semitic "Chris
tian Front” movement was a scandal no Jew of the 1930’s
will ever forget.
“Among the many voices raised in those days.” Cardinal
Cushing said, “one was the eloquent and persuasive call
of a young priest who refused to be satisfied with want in the
midst of plenty and misery in the midst of wealth.” The only
tragedy is that this eloquent young priest put most of die blame
for this suffering and misery and want — on the Jews. Yes,
he stormed against Communism, but before he was finished,
“Communist” and “Jew” and “international banker” and a
few other names all meant the same person in the public
mind.
In none of his recent statements (or past statements for this
matter) have I read any repudiation by Fr. Coughlin of the taint
of anti-Semitism that is synonymous with his name. But the
record of the past concerning Fr. Coughlin and his published
writings in “Social Justice’*-some of his radio talks, his
“Christian Front” affiliations and many other things are all
too well documented to try to deny, evade or whitewash.
While Fr. Coughlin may be a very holy and dedicated priest
today, and may indeed be doing much good privately—his public
record of the 1930’s is the biggest black eye given the Catholic
Church in this country!
"y*ft -<n'a --• eys"-fr'' arfT er>tl
To Jews who lived through tl»t era, the name of Fr. Coughlin
is synonymous with all that is hateful and anti-Jewish in the tra
gic past history of the Church.
Pope John has done a heroic and Godly work which to a great
extent has nullified Fr. Coughlin’s anti-Semitism. But not
even Cardinal Cushing’s eloquent praise of the Radio Priest
of the 1930’s can change the record of those days one single
bit. We can try to forget it, yes, but history we cannot change.
Nor should anyone try.
Q. We have recently moved from a small town to a large city.
My son, who is in eighth grade, finds that his companions have
a different code of behavior than that which we taught him. For
instance, stealing small items from a store or a truck, or from
a parent’s purse, is not a mortal sin, and so need not be told
in confession. It is nothing to worry about. The same applies to
lying about one’s age so one can bowl at a lower rate, etc. CXir
son feels that these values are wrong, but obviously wonders
if mine are not too rigid.
A. While the occasional stealing of small
articles is not a mortal sin, a child should
be taught rigid honesty. We must be careful
not to frighten him and thus make him scru
pulous; but he should be taught honesty in
a positive way, as the right, honorable, de
sirable and manly course of action: as the
way of showing love for God and neighbor in
a practical way. He might well be asked how
he would like to have other children stealing
his things; what he would think of parents he
could not trust.
He should not be given a false conscience. Never tell him
that venial sins are mortal sins. But he should be advised to
confess any sins of dishonesty. He has nothing but venial sins
to tell in confession anyway; and stealing is probably the most
serious of these.
Sometimes the insistence on restitution, even for small arti
cles, is a salutary lesson against stealing.
Dishonesty seldom begins with major theft. It grows.
Q. I recently read the following in our Catholic paper: “In
a recent action at the Vatican Ecumenical Council in Rome,
strictures were removed against participation of Catholics in
interdenominational services.”
Does this mean that Catholics children attending public schools
will again be able to attend baccalaureate exercises at the
schools?
Msgr. Conway
Paul
Verse Held Constitutional In Schools
At a Protestant funeral, will it be permissible to sing along
with the congregation during the services?
CHICAGO (RNS)—A tradi
tional verse of thanksgiving,'
from which the word “God” had.
been deleted, does not consti
tute a prayer when recited by
children in a public school kin
dergarten, a federal judge ruled
here.
The ruling came in response
to a request of Mr. and Mrs.
Lyle Despain of DeKalb, Ill.,
who held that the Constitutio
nally guaranteed religous free
doms of their five-yea»old
daughter were being violated
when she was asked to recite
with her kindergarten class
mates:
“We thank you for the flowers
so sweet.
We thank you for the food we
eat.
We thank you for the birds
that sing.
We thank you for every
thing.”
Mrs. Esther Wayne, 63, the
kindergarten teacher, said that
after an initial objeettion from
the Despains she eliminated
“God” from the last line.
Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are closed with the Lord’s
Prayer. May we (Catholics) go on with the Protestant people
in the group to say, “for thine is the kingdom” etc.?
A. The answer to all three of your questions should be affirma
tive. There remains question about the advisability religious
baccalaureate services — separation of church and state, you
know. A Protestant funeral is not an interdenominational ser
vice, but I see no harm in singing the hymns. And that ending
to the Our Father, “for thine is the kingdom,” etc., is used by
Catholics of Byzantine Rite. So we may properly use it.
ARNOLD VIEWING
Little Bit Of Sophia Loren
By James Arnold
Into every life, a little Sophia Loren must fall.
She has been falling with increasing regularity
this year, appearing in almost as many films
as the the MGM lion. In “Arabesque” and
“Lady L,” Miss Loren tends to be surprisingly
overshadowed by opulent productions.
“Arabesque” is perilously close to being a
great film - in its class, the sophisticated co
medy thriller. Without a wasted moment or a
wasted shot, it exploits Miss Loren’s varied
abilities as a clothes horse
(for Christian Dior), athlete
(she runs at least six miles
in heels), and comedienne (her
attempt to break up a dead-
panned Buckingham Palace
guard is one of several bits
that seem inspired and impro
vised on the spot).
Combining die gloss and
magic confusion of “Charade” Arnold
with the photographic whimsy of “The Ipcress
File,” “Arabesque” manages to be superior
to both of them. Real movie fans, in short,
ought to burn their old Bogart stills rather than
miss it.
Producer-director Stanley Donen, whosefllms
(“Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” “Funny
Face," “Charade”) always have incredible zest
and glitter, apparently intended to “do” the
definitive wild-suspense film. If he can be fault
ed for anything it is over-enthusiasm.
The story, even more incomprehensible than
usual, involves an American archeologist
(Gregory Peck) in London who is asked to de
cipher a hieroglyph containing a message about
the planned assassination of a friendly Arab
diplomat. The Hitchcock plot, with its twists
and turns, is kidded outrageously. At times, it
does Hitchcock one better: e.g., an hilarious
sequence in which Peck and Loren follow a heavy
who is munching on hard candy and tossing away
wrappers, not knowing that one of them contains
the Message.
When it gets too complicated, all you need
to remember is that Peck is good, that various
bad guys are after the cipher, and that Miss
Loren is nice to have around, whether she is
a spy or counter-spy, or whether she just
wandered into the wrong place for a beauty
appointment.
The visuals, by Donen and cameraman Chris
Cahills, are so fresh they make Mod fashions
look like Whistler’s Mother. This is true of
the big scenes ( a surrealistic murder in an
optometrist’s office; a mad chase through an
aquarium—zoo full of monsters, screeches and
reflected Images; a finale in which the villains
in a helicopter pursue the heroes on horseback
across English wood and dale).
One astomishlng bit has Peck, groggy from
a truth drug injection, staggering amid the fuzzy
colored lights and sounds of a freeway, think
ing he is a matador and the passing cars are
bulls. Challis’ passion for reflected images
is a running juke: most of one dialog scene
is shown entirely in the glass of an unused
TV set; a murder attempt from a car is re
flected in wet pavement, etc.
Adding to the general kookiness are a bad
guy with sinister sun glasses and a pet hawk
(Alan Badel) and an Arab guerrilla chief (Kieron
Moore) who talks like a swinging U.S. hips
ter. Henry Manclnl’s music, less tuneful than
usual, sounds as if a child were trying to play
"Greensleeves" on a toy piano.
“Lady L” sets Loren to romping about in
turn-of-the-century garb to save a dashing
anarchist (Paul Newman) from throwing bombs
at members of the ruling class. On the rebound
she marries an Incredibly rich and eccentric
duke (David Niven), and the major joke is that
instead of having to choose between love and
security, the heroine gets them both.
Writer-director Peter Ustinov has made this
terribly silly story (adapted from a Roma in
Gary novel) into a terribly silly movie. At best
talented and funny, Ustinov can also be coy and
precious, and “Lady L“ will seem thoroughly
comic only to someone at the tail end of a
seven-day binge. The farce (the Intrigues of a
bawdy house, the bungling of the Paris police)
is heavy; often it is hard to know if yuks are
Intended (the camera pans the teary, ecstatic
faces of prostitutes as they listen to a con
cert of good music; an old beggar woman sud
denly dies when Newman impulsively gives her
a precious necklace).
Still, “Lady L“ is partially saved by its
magnificent European castles and hotels and its
plush interior sets, and especially by the few
moments of Ustlnovian satire that work. Some
random samples;
-Ustinqv himself, is a cameo as a dodder
ing prince marked for assassination, who cat
ches a dud bomb and then cheerily begins to
play catch with it.
-A running spoof of the English stiff-upper-
lip, which climaxes when a Nanny implies that
the Britist Empire is founded on the fact that
Englishmen bathe every day.
OLD AND NEW
The Emperor’s Gloze
By Gary Wills
Tolerance of Ineptness runs high in Catholic
life. This is a point I have tried to make be
fore; but it is much better made in last week’s
Commonweal, where Daniel P. Moynihan’s
commencement address at Seton Hill College
is quoted at length. Mr. Moynihansaid, among
other things: “The time has come to suffer
mediocrity less than gladly...Protest is in or
der. The time has come to walk out on ser
mons that are so puerile as to threaten the
very bases of faith. ..”
If a gentlemen’s agreement supports medio
crity in many areas of Catholic life, this is
largely the fault of the Cath
olic press. But how canthat
unwieldy entity fight incom
petence elsewhere when it is
so diligent in congratulation
it falls into every year as
it hands out Catholic Press
Awards to itself. Everyone
who is anyone in the Catholic
press has a fistful of these
awards, so why should he de
value diem? The game is Wills
kept up, much as (in Rogers’ famous descrip
tion) the team of British historians used to
perform:
Ladling butter from alternate tubs,
Stubbs butters Freeman and Freeman butters
Stubbs.
Ponder this sequence: In May, the Catholic
Press Association (whose president is William
Holub, general manager of America) praises
America for its “spiritual courage” — this
is the very year America whitewashed the Ber-
rlgan affair. In the issue of May 28, America’s
editor publicly congratulates the C.P.A. and
its president (William Holub, of America)
for a fine convention, and the magazine’s
“Press’* column praises Ave Maria and its
“dynamic editor.” On June 1, I criticize
America for .(among other things) whitewash
ing the Berrigan affair in the very year it was
hailed for spiritual courage. On June 18,
America’s “Press” column returns, even
more lyrically, to the subject of Ave Maria
(“trenchant, provocative”), and—on the same
publication date — Ave Maria defends America
against my “unprecedented exercise in trivial
criticism.” I do not suggest that this is a
casual sequence. The butter gushes back and
forth so copiously that my intervention was
scarcely needed to keep it flowing. Which is
my point: this is an automatic lubricating pro
cess meant to anticipate any friction that might
arise in the iittle world of mutual butterers.
Ave Maria’s performance is typical of the
tactics used when one of “the club” is at
tacked. The magazine quotes two of my gen
eralizing condemnations of America, and tsk-
tsks that such general and sweeping criticism
is not constructive. One would never guess.
from this, that I made a great many very spe
cific criticisms (not as many as I have on
hand, but as many as I could fit into a single
column) to argue cumulatively that America
lacks Intellectual rigor and — well, and spirit
ual courage. Rather than addr itself to my
arguments, the editorial make, gratuitous, un-
substaniated guesses atmymotives (very sin
ister, these, and very obvious to the clair
voyants at Ave Maria — who but an unbalan
ced person would call a Catholic journal
inept?). The odd thing is that the magazine
does this precisely while it is piously admon
ishing me that the Catholic press should never
indulge in personal attacks. (I attacked no per
sons or their motives, but criticized the maga
zine on its published record).
Ave Maria closes its editorial with a bit of
heavy-handed advice for editors who publish
my column. In blunt language (which, of
course, is not used), the advice is: Don’t.
At last I realize the nature of my offense:
in the Catholic press one does not argue with
what an opponent says, one tries, in one’s own
measure (however slight), to prevent him
from saying it. After all, that is the policy of
America Itself, which refused to accept paid
advertisements for works by Evelyn Waugh and
Louis Dupre (as unsettling to their readers’
faith) and suppressed reviews by the very
men the editors had chosen as competent re
viewers because the results did not toe the
magazine’s curiously wavering ideological
line. The natural instinct of the Catholic
press is still not toward argument but toward
suppression.
Ave Maria might be justified in ignoring
my (specific) arguments and searching for
my (fiendish) motives if the arguments were
patently a) false, or b) idiosyncratic, or c)
trivial. The editorial did not claim that what
I said was false; it did claim (Implicitly)
that it was idiosyncratic and (explicitly) that
it was trivial. Is it, then, trivial that a maga
zine is cited for spiritual courage in the very
year it cooked the Berrigan story; when every
one knew this; when few others (none that I
know of) were “impolite" enough to advert
to this ridiculous state of affairs in print?
Or are my criticisms idiosyncratic—a pri
vate aberration, as the editorial implies 7
Hardly. It is an open secret that America is a
mess. I did not discover what distinguished
Catholics have said to me on many occasions;
I simply printed it (prompting one well-known
journalist to ask me, “Why say the obvious?”)
As I mentioned in the original piece, I have
discussed America with many Jesuits, and
every one thought, the magazine disgraceful.
The editor of a Catholic magazine writes me
that I simply put into print what N.C.P.A.
people...have been whlsperingfora longtime.”
That is the trouble. What calls for a cry of
“Foul I” brings forth only a whisper.
It startles Freeman into dropping his ladle
(which leaves Stubbs a bit naked) whenever
anyone simply says out loud that — underneath
all the butter—this emperor has no clothes on.