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4 GEORGIA BULLETIN, TIjURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9 1967
Research
BULLETIN
ARCHDIOCESE OF ATLANTA SERVING GEORGIA’S 71 NORTHERN COUNTIES
.; ; r r|
Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan
Chris Eckl
The Rev. R. Donald Kiernan
Publisher
Managing Editor
Consulting Editor
•*!««*
2699 Peachtree N. E.
P. 0. Box 11667
Northside Station
Atlanta, Georgia 30305
Member of the Catholic Press Association
and Subscriber to N. C. W. C. News Service
Telephone 231-1281
Second Class Permit at Atlanta, Ga.
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Published Every Week at the Decatur-DeKalb News
The opinions contained in these ^ditorial columns are
the free expressions of free editors in a free Catholic press.
Colleges And Politics
The struggle for neces
sary funds for higher educa
tion is as critical in Georgia
as in California. May we ex
pect that a giant might
emerge -- a man as clear
headed and stronghearted as
Clark Kerr, late president at
Berkeley?
“But he lost his job!” And
California’s political cli
mate today seems as bad as
its air, especially in the vi
cinity of the campus. Still,
as James Reston has writ
ten: “Clark Kerr didn’t lose
his struggle, just his job.**
Recently Kerr said bluntly:
“Neither immediate bene
fits, nor the desire to allay
criticism, nor honest exas
peration must tempt the uni
versity to impair the right of
scholars to search and dis
cuss what they find.**
When a man talks like that,
he probably will lose his job.
But the struggle will not be
lost.
Right now the new admi
nistration and the people of
our state need a giantlike
Clark Kerr. It might turn
out to be the head of the
Regents. Or the new gover
nor. Or a single courage
ous legislator. Or the un
named president of the Uni
versity of Georgia.
Someone is urgently nee
ded who can rise above road
building, the fish and game
appointments, and the new
pensions for legislators. He
will have to get the Legisla
ture and the citizens to build,
not just roads and governor’s
mansions, but places for
young minds to grow. Let’s
end the nonsense of inviting
neighboring governors and
their prince - consorts to
come over here to teach us
the latest chorus of “Segre
gate, segregate, we’re never
gonna integrate.’’ Someone
in Georgia has to get at the
malignancy of educational
sickness.
Regents, college presi
dents, teachers at all levels,
brave politicians and think
ing people have carried the
brunt of the state’s school
ing. They have achieved won
ders, in spite of paltry funds,
because they love learning
and they respect young intel
lects. They have been the
haves of Georgia’s history.
Here is what they are deal
ing with today:
Item: Pupil-load at uni
versity level has jumped
from 30,000 (I960) to 60,000
(1966) and will probably be
90,000 in 1970. But Georgia
is next to the last southern
state in ratio of college stu
dents to college-age persons
--only 26 per cent.
Item: We are short in col
lege teachers to the tune of
422 right now, 495 in 1967-
68, and 559 in 1968-69. Tea
chers go where they are paid.
Especially the good ones.
Item: A recent survey ex
posed the fact that Georgia
public colleges had not a
single department in the top
two categories of quality and
just one in the third category.
Quality? What becomes of the
best teachers, governmental
grants for research, the pro
posed oceanographic center?
“They fly over Atlanta,*’one
educator said.
Item: Our appropriations
for higher education (1965-
67) increased only 41.5 per
cent -- nearly three points
below the national average
while our neighbor, Alabama
increased 80 per cent and
Tennessee 57.5 per cent. De
spite the heroic work of good
educators, the state gets what
it pays for.
The governor’s Commis
sion to Improve Education,
American Council on Educa
tion, the Board of Regents,
the Georgia Chamber of
Commerce and the Atlanta
newspapers have expos
ed these facts. What do the
people of Georgia want done
about them.? # ,* - ~
-The -Hew g&Vernor and the
regents face a formidable
task. The Legislature’s apa
thy is visible in the profound
comment of the House Ap
propriations Chairman: “No
governor ever gave the board
of regents or any other de
partment all they asked for.’’
When an Atlanta legislator
said this was probably the
reason for today’s dismal
situation, the chairman re
plied: “Georgia’s come a
long ways in the last ten
years.’* So it has. So has
Stone Mountain.
Other news from the State-
house highlights the cross
treatment of higher educa
tion. A $50 million bond pro
gram for new roads seems
to be assured plus a new
pension plan for the legisla
tors themselves. The At
lanta Journal calls this “the
most extraordinary piece of
legislation in
“incredible.’’
GEORGIA PINES■
Charity Is Quiet
— By R. Donald Kiernan .
FR. KIERNAN
1967.’’ It is
Art Buchw.ald put it well
in a recent column about
cutting a budget:
1st. Congressman: “Why
do we need the Oka-
luchee Dam at $40
million?’*
2nd. Congressman: “Be
cause it’s in my dis
trict. That’s why we
need it.**
The governor and his ad
ministration can, by skillful
leadership, make a real
break-through in Georgia’s
higher education. It will take
all the vision and fight that
the governor call for in his
inaugural.
If he summons up these
virtues in defense of Geor
gia’s beleaguered colleges
and universities, he willfind
that he has summoned also
every Georgian who is as
anxious for the state’s future
as he is proud of her past.
Much has been written lately about the -
poor and the relationship of the Church to
the poor. According to some writers the
Church is not making its presence felt
among the poor, that it has no real con
cern for the poor, that the Church is in the*
real estate business and is more concern-)
ed with the preservation of the status-quol
than becoming identified with the less for-|
tunate.
No doubt there
are some solid ba
ses for these char
ges in certain
areas, butthe over-
a 1 1 or blanket
charge of non-con-
c e r n is without
foundation. We are
living in a "Madi
son Avenue” world where unless a BIG
SHOW is put on, then the project is an
utter failure. The old idea of not letting
your right hand know what your left hand
is giving away seems to have disappear
ed with the cigar-store Indian. Then, of
course, we have today that class of image-
seekers whose charity is governed and
geared more to public response than it is
to actually alleviating the needs of the
poor. In one small article it is im
possible to define the areas of charity
and welfare; where the Church should
begin and where the state should take
over. Equally impossible would it be to
discuss the merits or the faults of or
ganized charity. But what I am interest
ed in today is dispelling the notion of the
"headline seekers" that the Church, and
its clergy, are not tuned-in on present day
problems of poverty social justice, hous
ing and employment.
In a very personal way this came for
cibly to me in a conversation with one of
the members of my parish recently. "Why,
Father”, this lady said, "are we not do
ing something for the poor in our area?
Why are we not more involved in com
munity projects?" "Lady”, I said, "the
problem is that we are involved, but you
are not." Now no one likes to be rebuff
ed, and she certainly didn’t either. But
to me it is one thing to ask a question,
and quite another to make an irrespon
sible charge. The conversation contin
ued, "Do you know that your parish
school gives out 20 free lunches a day,
thats 100 a week and during the 10-mon-
th school period it would amount to 4,000
free meals. Of course it is done without
any fan-fare, but do you know of any
other organization in West End that gives
out 4,000 meals every year?”
How true this is in every church across
the country. Much done, little talk. I don’t
know of any priest who is not proud of his
St. Vincent de Paul men. When you add up
the number of man hours these good men
give to the poor every week it would make
it look as if the church is involved with
nothing but social work,
We have a tendency to take for granted
what we alrady have. We likewise have
the tendency to look upon routine as lack
of activity. These two factors combined
with the lack of publicity give some people
the impression that nothing is being done.
Years ago at thelmmaculateConception
Church there were two men who literally
■’ dedicated themselves to the poor, Je-
! rome Masters and Tom Clark. To me
. the greatest job they did was not so
j"much their man hours spent or even
their physical labors but rather the tra
dition that they initiated and the spirit
, that still exists as a result of their
1 dedication. One always gets into trouble
. by mentioning names, either you for-
^ get the most obvious or your offend
8 someone’s privacy. But I cannot help
' but mention another "team” that is car-
1 ried on by their sons, the late Clarance
, Haverty and Col. Jack Spalding. Grover
; Heiser, Joe Murphy and John Thomp
son: all names that do not appear in
headlines, but all names that are im-
il portant to those in need.
Charity to me is quiet, steady and
dignified. I don’t know of any parish
where a family stands out as "our pro
ject”, but I do know of many, many
parishes where many families are help
ed but their names are known only to
the committed confidence of the dedi
cated members of the St. Vincent de
Paul Society.
Getting back to that lady. As we ter
minated the conversation I remarked,
"The church is concerned with the poor,
the only thing we lack is good public re
lations. Less than a half mile from the
spot you are now standing is proof con
clusive of the Church’s identity with the
poor. It’s the Cancer Home on Washing
ton Street. The only entrance require
ments are that a person have terminal
cancer and that they are poor."
MODERN CHURCH in La
cut lines and functional art
posteoncilinr arch
Paz, Bolivia, with simple clean-
angement, marks new trends in
itectvire. (NO Photos)
ANOTHER VIEWPOINT
Try, Try Again
Or Forget It?
By Austin Ford
When a space experiment fails, we
Americans shrug off the $25 million dol
lar loss. Try, try again. When a poverty
program fails, in a year or two, to turn
the slums into garden cities, we say
--Oh, forget it. The poor you have with
you always. We make Jesus sound as if
he meant that God wills that we should
have. What Jesus meant was that as long
as there are selfish rich people -- and
he had met enough of them to identify
them as a tough breed -- there will be
plenty of the poor who are their victims.
Our national re-
venue increased
$44 billion dollars
in 1966. We could
rebuild slums in
America with less
than that. But we
aren’t going to.
With the exception
of Head Start, the poverty program has
been gutted this year. And President
Johnson gave welfare a kick in the teeth
the other day when he cut $30 million
off the budgetary appropriation of $1.9
billion. The war on poverty is over.
Thirty-two million American poor are
its casualties.
The Churches could revive the war if
they would. Last week, in Chicago, I
witnessed a little Christian skirmish of
this sort at theUrbanTraining Center for
the Christian Mission. The Center is
located in the heart of the slums; be
cause of the storm I had to reach it
partly on foot and got a chance to see
Chicago's incomparable Negro ghetto
close up.
The Center is funded by various Chur
ches and foundations, notably Ford. It
seeks to train Christians to enter the
slums with an understanding of the dyna
mics of inner-city life, and of city power
structures.
Going on from Chicago to Philadelphia
and New York, I saw some instances
where Christians are at work in the
slums. In Harlem, the East Harlem Pa
rish offers an encouraging example of
practical ecumenism. Presbyterians,
Congregationalists, Anglicans, Roman
Catholics — perhaps others — unite
under a common staff and divide up the
work they are doing according to the
skills and resources of the various par
ticipating groups.
Particularly interesting to me wasEm-
maus House, a Center founded by two
Eastern rite priests, who have since' been
joined by an Australian Roman Catholic
and an Anglican. They bought an old
brownstone and turned it into a house of
worship, dialogue, and hospitality.
Around the center there is gathering a
Christian community of families and in
dividuals who support themselves at their
jobs, but are pledged a year at the time
to serve the- work of the Center as well.
They live in rooms and apartments in the
area, and undertake to work in the com
munity as the Spirit moves them.
One is impressed by the tremen
dous devotion of those who are making
this kind of Christian witness. But along
side it, the indifference of those who
have power in the Church — the average
Christians of suburbia -- becomes all
the more glaring and scary;
Armageddon is approaching in the
slums. The Lord has lost so many
battles — suppose he loses this one?
Father Ford is rector of St. Bar
tholomew’s Episcopal Church.
Freedom Is The Need
Of Christian Education
MACEOIN
By Gary MacEoin
On paper there is an immense diffe
rence between the decision of the Loretto
nuns tp turn Webster (College over to^a
board of lay trustees and the proposa}
of -the Indiana province of the Congrega
tion of Holy Cross to make laymen equal
sharers in the power, responsibility and
control of the University of Notre Dame
and the University of Portland (Oregon).
The practical effects, nevertheless, are
not likely to be very different, and the
decision of the Jesuit-owned St. Louis
University to transfer property and control
to a lay-dominated board indicates that
we are involved in a wide ranging trend.
The Webster plan
as published envi
sages a total di
vorce from the Lo
retto congregation,
placing the College
in a situation com
parable to that of
Harvard or Colum
bia, which today re-
tian only vestigial traces of earlier Church
relationships. The Notre Dime plan pro
vides that half of the twelve members of
the controlling body will be Holy Cross
priests, and that "the essential character
of the university as a Catholic institution
of higher learning shall in no way be al
tered” except by a two-thirds vote. The
Portland plan incorporates a deed-in-trust
providing for return of control to Holy
Cross if at any time the College ceases
to have "an integral academic and pasto
ral program of Catholic thought and cul
ture."
Whatever the legal technicalities, how
ever, the process once initiated seems to
me as irreversible as those which have oc
curred at Harvard and Columbia. It may
well be that in this respect our Protestant
brothers read the signs of the times long
before we recognized them.
What some of these signs are has now
been underlined by Holy Cross proponents
of the change. Their first point is the Vati
can Council’s call to religious orders to
disengage themselves from the admini
stration of property and wealth, when this
is possible without damage to the aposto
lic works of the Church, and the broader
challenge of the Council to the religious
orders to put the interests of the people
of God, whom they profess to serve, before
those of their own institutions. This fits
in perfectly with the Council’s stress on
the equality of status and responsibility of
the laity in the institutional life of the
Church.
The proponents also stress the economic
motivations of various kinds. The mount
ing cost of operation is becoming an im
possible burden for a religious congrega
tion, and in practice the widening of the
responsibility for financing demands a
parallel sharing of the decision-making
processess. The University of Ottawa
and other Catholic colleges in Canada
long ago recognized that fact and have
made or are making the appropriate chan
ges. Our resistance here to giving public
aid to Church-affiliated institutions adds
weight to the argument.
r One should not/ however^make econo
mics automatically the villain. It may Ba
ther be the" angel telling us to do what wd
should have done for better reasons. It
played that part in the abolition of slavery.
The official statements have played down
what I think must be recognized as a fur
ther vital factor. Academic freedom can
no longer be avoided as an issue. Tension
is mounting between the needs of intellec
tual research and the limitations tradi
tionally imposed by Catholic institutions.
The question is not whether these res
trictions are objectively right or wrong.
It is that they are extrinsic to a process
which permits only intrinsic limitations.
In addition, the Catholic should have the
humility to recognize that they were often
exercised arbitrarily and harmfully.
When administrators and faculty were
mostly members of a religious order, the
situation was technically controllable and
the intransigent easily silenced. In Notre
Dame, and generally, 90 per cent are to
day laymen. We have recently had a dis
tressing open clash in one big Catholic
university. Notre Dame deserves con
gratulation for anticipating and heading
off a similar scandal.
Recognition of the autonomy of educa
tion must quickly focus attention on an
other institution which has developed
in the Church under strict tutelage, the
press. Ave Maria, a weekly magazine
published by the Cqngregation of Holy
Cross at Notre Dame, has used the uni
versity issue to formulate the problem.
It broke the story, of the proposal for
restructuring the university. It did so
in a framework of full objectivity, there
by helping the creation of a sound public
cpinion. It did this in spite of, not be
cause of its institutional control. At the
pleasure of the institution, those respon
sible could be censured or replaced.
The fact that crisis is showing in edu
cation earlier than in the press perhaps
reflects the historic concern of the Ame
rican Church for education and the con
sequent greater evolution of our educa
tional system. But the conciliar Church
simply cannot function without public opin
ion, and this need is forcing the issue
of press autonomy. It will soon move to
the center of the stage.
Urges Renewal
VATICAN CITY (NC)—Pope Paul VI,
addressing the crowd waiting below his
window for his customary Sunday bless
ing, urged Catholics to an "inner re
newal” through Lenten penance, prayer
and charity.
"This is a precious period for our
spiritual formation,” Pope Paul told the
crowd on the last Sunday before Lent.