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FAILURE, EXPERIMENT
High School Catechetics Needs Renewal
_ By Leonard F.X. May hew,
One thing that is — or should be
evident to anyone interested in
catechetic effort (by which I mean spe
cifically here the communication of the
Christian gospel to the young), is that
we are falling on our face with re
gard to the high school student. This
goes for Catholic high schools as well
as C.C.D. classes for teen-agers in
public high schools. There is enormous
dissatisfaction with what we have been
able to accomplish — both among the
young people and among those who at
tempt to teach them religion. Thank
God, some efforts are being made to
remedy the situation.
For some time we have been will
ing to believe that the only concern
was what we were
teaching. If the faith
was being presented
accurately, that
should be enough. It
is becoming increas
ingly obvious (how
could we ever has
missed it?) that the
really important
consideration is how
much and what is be
ing learned, no matter how true and
good we think the content of what we
are teaching is. From this false phi
losophy of religious education it was
a simple matter to reach false con
clusions.
The first was that the main thing
was to compel adolescents to attend
religion classes regularly, every day
if in Catholic high schools, as often
as possible if they were not. Thewide-
spread resentment against religion
Fr. Mayhew
Your
by Gary MacEoin
among the immediate graduates of our
high schools is fruit of that approach.
The next false conclusion was that re
ligion could properly be taught in the
same environment and manner as geo
metry and Spanish. The immediate re
sult was that the teen-agers had as
much regard for religion as they have
for geometry and Spanish. Religion be
came a bore or a good * 'subject” or
a bad ‘ subject” or a course to be
passed or failed. It certainly failed to
spark real ' religion” -- a compound
of worship, service and love of nei
ghbor, personal growth in virtue and
prayer. On the whole, the students
* 'could care less.”
high school of religion has as its pur
pose "to form Christians. This for
mation takes place through the im-
partimg of the essentials of the Faith,
but also and more directly in the ex
periencing of true religious encoun
ters. The authorities recognize that a
series of lessons alone does not lead
students to such encounters, and there
fore they have a program of field trips,
lab work, guest speakers, Bible vigils,
discussions, seminars, debates, lea
der formation, as well as a full sche
dule of required and elective courses.
Each of twelve teachers is prepared
to conduct a limited number of courses
of short duration. Some courses are
required of all students over the four
years of attendance, some are purely
elective, some are open only to stu
dents recommended by the faculty, and
some have a prerequisite of other
courses. This may still be too aca
demic but, along with a solid family
and parish liturgical life, it does offer
some truly personal experience of re
ligion to die teen-ager struggling to
ward maturity. Catholic academic high
schools and high schools of religion
might well take their problem of re
ligious formation seriously and pay
attention to such new directions.
ARNOLD VIEWING
One problem which both Catholic high
schools and Schools of Religion will
have to face is the growing dissatis
faction with teaching religion in the
classroom setting. A growing number
of persons intensely involved in reli
gious formation doubt that the school —
not just the poor school but the school
as such — is an adequate instru
ment for bring young people to Christ
or Christ to young people, once they
are past puberty. Regret it or not, we
must take our young people as they are.
And, it is evident that the search for
independence and the conflict with au
thority which accompanies it largely
center on student - teacher relation
ships. This conflict melds with reli
gion and hinders catechetic effective
ness when religion is "taught” in a
classroom environment. It may not al
ways have been true. It seems to be
true now.
Some promising new directions are
being followed. A California parish
CELIBACY-POVERTY
6 Woolf 9
By James Arnold
In “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”
we get our celebrated chance to go
to the movies and be shocked by words
we are used to hearing only in the pri
vacy of reality. Aside from that doubt
ful pleasure, there is little more to
say :for it.
"Woolf’* is an
overrated play whose
success is due di
rectly to the exor
bitant value our thea
ter places on novelty
and shock. In the
film, Edward Albee’s
doughnut is present
ed to us closeup,
whereas before we Arnold
had to peer at it from stage-distance.
Overrated
But except for the added thrill of
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton
in the main roles, it is the same
doughnut.
Although "Woolf” is not quite ori
ginal (cf. Strindberg), its unrestrained
verbal war between middle-aged mar
ried qualifies at least as offbeat. The
shock comes from two sources: the
vulgar language and the violence of
the verbal aggression which defies all
our conventions of man-woman pro
priety.
Neither has much, really, to do with
art. Vulgarity is a cheap way to keep
the audience awake. The excuse here
is realism, but that quality is lacking
in so many more vital details that
the inevitable impression is of a non
adult mimicking adult surface beha
vior but lacking the perception to go
more deeply. Even the vulgarity is
overrated; it wouldn’t shock a sop
histicated Boy Scout, and some of
the grosser phrases have been bleach
ed from the film.
World And Mine
Just as the Council was about to end,
a group of bishops last Dec. 7 distri
buted a document which they symbo
lically dubbed Schema 14 as represent
ing a logical continuation and result
of the Church's encounter with today’s
world in Schema 13. The number and
names of those who sponsored the docu
ment, and who informed the prehh of
their intention to put its principles into
pracfice |el fir their own xlvtes, was not
disclosed. This was characheristic of
the entire press attitude to the Council.
It was ruthless in exposing improper
attempts at secrecy, it was sensitive
ly respectful of confidences. The im
portance of the "Church of the Poor”
group among the Council Fathers, how
ever, makes it legitimate to infer that
the sponsors were both numerous and
illustrious.
One bishop has not gone on record
publicly as a signatory. He is Father
Alberto Devoto, bishop of Goya, Ar
gentina. I call him
"Father,” because
such is his request.
"We refuse to be
called in speech or
writing by names or
titles which suggest
high position or po
wer (Eminence, Ex
cellency, Monsig
nor). We prefer to be MacEoin
called by the evangelical name of Fa
ther.” Such Is No. 5 of the thirteen
commitments undertaken by the group
of bishops. In the letter to the people
of his diocese, Father Devoto said that
he was one of a group of twenty bis
hops who joined in subscribing to the
thirteen commitments, "the fruit of a
long period of reflectionanddiscussion
during the Council,” at a concelebrated
ON A HOT SUNDAY
Mass in the Roman catacombs.
No. 5 is far from being the most re
volutionary of the commitments. Father
Devoto, as he has told his people,
will live like one of them, eat the
same food, use the same means of
transport, have the same kind of
home. -No? more expensive clothing;'
no flamboyant f colors j or -precious- or— •
naments. No more ownership of mo
vable or immovable property, no more
bank accounts. If the needs of the
diocese require any ownership, it will
be in the name of the diocese or of
a social or charitable institute, And,
"to the greatest possible extent, fin
ancial and material administration will
be entrusted to a committee of lay
men, chosen because they combine
professional competence with an apos
tolic dedication.”
Personal poverty is to be com
pleted by social poverty and a pri
mary commitment to the poor. Le
vels of solemnity of baptisms and
weddings based on ability to pay
are out. So are banquets that even
seem to give preference to the rich
and powerful, and plaques or other
honor to record the gifts which the
faithful will be urged to regard as
"a normal participation in worship,
the apostolate and social action.”
Existing "charitable” activities will
be transformed as fully as possible
into social works designed to help all
who need help over the whole range
of their needs, and in the form of
a service to the competent public
organizations. Catholic opinion will
be channeled into encouraging and help
ing the clyil authorities to bring the
laws, structures and social institu
tions into confQrmity with social jus
tice. High priority will be given to
the commitment to the improverished
two thirds of mankind which is impli
cit in the Council’s declaration of the
collegial responsibility of bishops. And
finally, Father Devoto has undertaken
to spend more time with his people
and to do the things which he finds they
want Him to do.
It is an impressive program, but
it has touched me particularly deeply
because of an experience I have just
had. In a period of two weeks I have
been interviewed about the meaning
of the Vatican Council on twelve ra
dio and television shows, many of them
national distributed. The interviewers,
Catholic, Protestant and Jewish, are
people who hold their jobs because
they know what Americans are thinking,
what are the kind of questions to which
they would like to have answers.
An inevitable question was clerical
celibacy, sometimes against the su
perficial backgrounds of the contem
porary fixation on sex. But as soon as
I sketched the historical development
of celibacy as one of the three basic
constiuents of the monastic life, which
in the Latin Church later was applied
to all priests, a deeper current of
thought emerged. I can formulate fair
ly a whole series of convergent rea
ctions, as follows, reactions which I
regard as a fair experssion of Ameri
can opinion. "The institutional Church
insists on two of the evangelical coun
cils, celibacy and obedience, for all
its priests. From where we sit, the
third would seem at least equally per
tinent.”
My reply? What do you think? "No
comment.”
As soon as you dare say that
"Woolf’s” main appeal is sheer vio
lence - spectators always enjoy blood,
with or without meaning or finesse-
Albee’s defenders begin to argue for
profundity. The play is an outlet for
our repressed sexual hostility; it re
presents the human condition; George
and Martha are really George and Mar
tha Washington; Martha;s father is really
God; their imaginary son, if not a
Christ figure, represents the impo
tence of man.
On the surface, the movie is as un
believable as the play. The charac
ters’ sado - masochism and shrill
cruelty is still more typical of ho
mosexual in-fighting than what it sup
ports to represent. We are still teased
rather than informed about characters.
There is still no reason for the young
couple to stay and witness this orgy
of abuse, or later to participate in it.
The souces of humor are still con
trived and primitive: outrageous in
sults, incongruent sexual metaphors,
shotguns that shoot Japanese umbrel
las, funny drunk-reactions, irrelevant
plays on words ("our blond-eyed, blue
haired son”).
The verbal combat remains as spec
tacular as ever, and almost as exhi
larating (the throb and smell of the live
actor is missing), but potential view
ers ought to weigh this asset against
Albee’s sick Images of women, sex
and marriage, and the emphasis on re
pulsive physical details dealing with
sweat, bathrooms and vomit. This is
■probably the only serious drama in
stage history in which the first act
curtain drops on a character running
out to throw up.
The
By Chris Eckl
There’s usually not much demand for
Roman Catholic bishops in Whistleville,
Ga., but Bishop Joseph L. Bernardin
was the exception Sunday.
It was his job to dedicate St.
Matthew's Church, a mission of St.
Joseph’s in Athens. Whistleville is on
Highway 29 near Winder which is about
25 miles west of Athens. It reportedly
got its name because trains blew their
whistles as they passed through.
The mission is the only Catholic
church between Atlanta and Athens and
serves about 40 people. It reminded
Bishop Bernardin that the Archdiocese
of Atlanta is still mission territory and
is probably the only archdiocese in
America which counts individuals and
not families. When the archdishop or
bishop say there are 45,000 Catholics
in North Georgia they mean just that—
not 45,000 Catholic families.
The church had been a rural, red
brick school which was closed because
of consolidation. It was built in 1932
Bishop At
and looks exactly like what it was —
a rural, red-brick school. In charity,
it is best not to mention the name of
the architect. It’s that kind of building
on the outside. But inside the door there
is a modem altar and lectern which
tells the visitor that Whistleville does
have a Catholic church. The school’s
architect could have received some
very good pointers in taste and style
from the man who did the altar.
The bishop received a warm wel
come from Father John J. Mulroy,
pastor of the mission and the church
in Athens, and the mission’s parisho-
ners, but the weather outdid them. The
sun gave the bishop, the choir from
Holy Cross parish, priests, nuns and
church members a blazing welcome
and served as an excellent reminder
of the reported heat of another place.
"What is this mission?” the bishop
asked in his sermon. "It is more than
attendance at mass and supporting the
church. The bapitzed Christian has the
unique task, while remaining and living
in a normal enviroment, of making the
Whistleville,
truth, selflessness and love of the King-
down of God known. The Christian must
represent at his station of life in the
world the victory of grace, love and
faith and he must bear the witness
of these realities.”
As the bishop spoke, the sun burned
down on the field behind the church,
creating wiggling heat waves which ap
peared to be fleeing from the baked
red soil. A motorcyclist in a red
shirt rode down the dusty road beside
the church, followed by a cloud of chok
ing dust. In the church, several window
fans whirred, but there was no cool
air to bring inside the church.
In closing, Bishop Bernardin con
gratulated the pastor, nuns parishoners
and choir. He said, "May the blessing
of God descend upon those who will use
this building—those who will worship,
those who will teach and those who
will learn.’’
After Mass, sandwiches and punch
were served to the parched gathering
but no one could have a drink of water
because the church’s well has not been
Ga.
tested. Several seminarians who had
worked on the mission said they had
been drinking the water without ill
effects, but others decided no: to make
that act of faith.
Father Mulroy then took the bishop
to the church in Athens and to the
"Brooklyn” section of the university
city—an area of rundown houses oc
cupied by Negroes. The Negroes the
bishop met were in good spirits be
cause sewers were being installed to
replace outhouses.
They were told they had a real bis
hop as a visitor. As Bishop Bernardin
and Father Mulroy began to walk out
of "Brooklyn,! a Negro man sitting in
his front yard said, ‘*Y’all be good
now.” Father Mulroy replied, "We’re
paid to be good.’’
When Joseph L. Bernardin left
Atlanta he was pastor of Cathedral of
Christ the King and auxiliary to the
archbishop of Atlanta. When he returned
home he was also the bishop of Whistle
ville and Brooklyn. He’s got a pretty
good diocese.
THURSDAY JULY 14, 1966 GEORGIA BULLETIN PAGE 5
OLD AND NEW
The Conservatives
By Garry Wills
Recently in fact, on the day James
Meredith was shot — I wrote a column
expressing indignation at the shooting.
A conservative now writes me that this
was a very un-conservative thing to do.
I could understand him if he were a
liberal charging that disapproval of at
tempted murder is not part of the con
servative’s makeup. I confess 1 am
dumbfounded when a conservative im
plies the same thing.
abstract ideal of each man's atomic
freedom. The inconsistent man is not
the conservative who sees an aberrant
tradition in the racist South, and op
poses it precisely because he knows
how important tradition is. The incon
sistent man is the liberal who admits
no debt of students or others to their
country, who claims an absolute free
dom for the individual; yet who suddenly
discovers the fact of social interdepen
dence when he wants to condemn the
South of complicity in race murders.
Not that my correspondent condones
all violence. He wrote die approvingly
when I criticized the
Watts rioters. There
seems to be an ideo
logical selectivity in
his disapproval of
murder, depending
on the degree of his
sympathy with the in
tended target. In this
he reminds me of
the ideologically se- Wills
lective liberal, who
considered it illiberal to criticize the
Watts rioters. Civil rights workers
seem to be "fair game” for some
hunters on the right -- just as there
is "open season" on policeman among
some leftists.
Another conservative writes that
Meredith’s assailant was, after all, one
man, and the whole South is not to be
held guilty of his act. Agreed. Not the
whole South. But a great part of it —
the racist part. What has become the
inevitable comparison — Lee Oswald’s
irrational act — is invalid here. It
would be valid if U.S. Presidents were
assassinated every year or so; if half
the assassins went free; if the other
half were idolized by important seg
ments of the country. If that were the
case, we would have reason to consider
assassination a social pattern and not
a purely individual act. And a compar
able pattern does exist in parts of the
South, where there are dubious legal
penalties and no socia.1 penalties for
killing a Negro or his White friends.
Again, I am puzzled that a conser
vative tries to deny the complicity of
society in these acts. The conservative
is by principle aware of man*s debt
to tradition, to society, to civilization
as an inherited trust, a joint endeavor
not to be endangered by reckless dis
regard of what we owe others and the
past. But iLwe caabspgfit.froffi segjefy,
if virtues .aretelearly derivable-from
it, then obviously society’s flaws threa
ten the individual and are, in some mea
sure, his responsibility. This is not a
one-way street. If what we do now can
perpetuate civilization for our descen
dants, then it is equally true that what
we do now can wrap society, make it
tolerant of certain evils; and silent
acquiescence in this is a participation
in collective guilt. There is nothing here
to surprise a man who believes in
a Burkean social fabric — though much
to pain John Stuart Mill, with his
I am constantly struck by the distance
between positions which everyone as
sumes to be "conservative," now, and
principles that are equally recognized
to be the conservative ones. This is
partly the result of political alliance,
for practical aims, with people whose
adherence to conservative principle is
weak or non-existent — the Southern
racist, th paranoid Bircher, the fun
damentalist theological authoritarian.
Many who agree with conservative prin
ciples dp not profess them because it
would lead to "guilt by association”
with others who use these principles
for selfish or silly purposes.
There are several levels of this with
drawal. At one level, a man may agree
with Goldwater’s constitutional scru
ples over the transparently opportu
nistic use of the "interstate com
merce” idea in civil rights legisla
tion; but, in existential terms, he may
think this a lesser evil than the con
tinued discrimination against the Negro
that was sought by Southern opponents
of the legislation. And so, without aban
doning his principles, he voted against
Goldwater. This is partly the result of
conservatives’ failure to maintain
simultaneous concern for the Constitu
tion and for the Negroes who must be
governed by it.
But, at another level, the intelligent
conservative may withdraw not merely
from action on his principles in this
concrete case, but from all action on
them, even the enunciation of them.
Thee are some fairly noble motives
for this, and many that are not so
noble. There is, I am afraid, plain
intellectual cowardice behind some of
these withdrawals. An intelligent men’s
views are not "in” with the intelli
gentsia; so why hurt himself by ex
pressing them?
R R$ TRT "*-f| **-”•» ft Rf ft
- But the hurt is not done to him
alone. The dialectic tension between
tradition and innovation is sadly dis
turbed at present by the lack of re
flective men who will uphold the cur
rently less popular pole of that ten
sion. Ther are excuses for many of
those who fail to do so. But, whatever
their motive, the state of public dis
cussion suffers as a result; the con
servative position is caricatured by in
competent spokesmen; and the liberal
position deteriorates for lack of ad
versary scrutiny.
Q. Would you please explain Existen
tialism to me?
A. Existentialism is not a system of
rational philosophy; it is rather a ten
dency or a complex
of attitudes. Itfc at
tention is centered
on man as a person,
and its primary
concern is with
man’s will rather
than his intellect.
It highlights the
freedom and im
portance of the hu- M Conway
man person, and is
concerned about man’s obligation to
make personal decisions with honesty
and integrity.
You and I say that anything actual
exists, be it a stone or a dog. The
existentialist does not argue with us,
but for him this type of existence is not
important. He is concerned with the
existence of the human being as per
son. For him existence means the
reality of each person as an individ
ual; each person is unique and cannot
be explained by a metaphysical system
or by scientific laws. He is him
self, and you can know him only as
this person, here and now.
Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philo
sopher and theologian, who lived from
1813 to 1855, is the originator of exist-
entiaiist thought, but his work remained
quite unknown until it was translated
into German just before World War I.
After that was his thought became wide
ly popular, first in Germany and then
gradually in other parts of Europe. Its
wide popularity in the United States
dates from World War II, but it is
hardly an exaggeration to say that it
has influenced every great Protestant
theologian of the past 50 years, and is
a determining factor in the thought of
many of the leading Catholic theolo
gians of recent decades. Its influence is
clearly seen in many of the decrees of
Vatican Council II.
Pope Pius XII in his encyclical
Humani Generis in 1950 pointed out
and warned against some of the errors
which easily derive from Existential
ism. Two of its commonly accepted
attitudes are particularly repugnant to
Catholic thought: (1) it deprecates
any reliable natural theology, and (2)
it rejects the universal validity of moral
principles. The Pope particularly de
cried its excessive voluntarism which
tends to substitute the will for the in
tellect.
Existentialism began largely as a
reaction against the rationalism of
Hegel, and it became popular largely as
a reaction against the determinism of
the Marxist dialectic. It is opposed
to the concept of the human person as
a helpless plaything of historical pro
cesses and natural forces. Man cannot
be explained as the end product of bio
logical, economic, or social evolution.
He exists, and if you do not know him
as existential, you don’t really know
him at all.
Existentialism is contrary to mater
ialism, but it can be atheistic. Jean
Paul Sartre is its best known atheistic
proponent. But it can also be deeply
religious, insisting on personal in
volvement and commitment and on hon
est religious convictions, which it calls
authentic.
It is easy to see why existentialism
is both praised and damned. It is a
source of much good, and can lead to
great harm.