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4 THE GEORGIA BULLETIN, THURSDAY, JULY 20, 1967
BULLETIN
ARCHDIOCESE OF ATLANTA SERVING GEORGIA’S 71 NORTHERN COUNTIES
Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan
Chris Eckl
The Rev. R. Donald Kiernan
Publisher
Managing Editor
Consulting Editor
2699 Peachtree N. E.
P. O. 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 editorial columns are
the free expressipns of free editors in a free Catholic press.
Pressure On Israel
Is Not Justified
There have been numer
ous speeches, articles and
discussions urging Israel to
yield control of the Old City
and accept the international
ization of Jerusalem.
The Vatican City Daily,
L’Csservatore Romano, has
reiterated its previous
strong stand for internation
alization of Jerusalem to
protect Holy Places and ease
tension in the Middle East.
Pakistan has deplored
Israel’s unwillingness to ac
cept the United Nations’
eviction notice from Arab
Jerusalem.
The National Council of
Churches has declared it
“cannot condone by silence’’
Israel’s “territorial ex
pansion by armed forces’* or
approve its annexation of the
Jordanian portions of Jeru
salem.
_ fT vs*'..* \ ? *. rl 4 f *■
The Soviet Union has
warned that “there can be
no peace*’ in the Middle East
so long as Israeli troops re
main in Arab territory.
These warnings and ad
monitions against Israel
amaze us, and overlook im
portant points.
The major point is that
Israel has lived a threaten
ed existence since 1948 and
did not start the recent war.
The Egyptians, inflamed by
Nasser, provoked the way
by blockading the Gulf of
Aqaba. Jordan, Syria and
Iraq joined Nasser in the
effort to exterminate Israel.
Now the defeated Arab
world expects the United Na
tions to side with it and pres
sure Israel. At the same
time, the Arabs absolutely
refuse to negotiate with
Israel.
The words of Abba Eban,
Israel’s foreign minister,
should be remembered. He
told the U. N. General As
sembly to “ponder long and
hard’’ before it recom
mends a division of the city
which would deny Jews ac
cess to their Holy Places as
has been the case for 19
years. He rebuked the U. N.
for not expressing dismay
because Jews could not visit
theix .Holy Places fprjtlmost
two decades.
We share his dismay be
cause those who are now so
concerned about free access
have been silent for 19 years.
The Israeli government will
preserve Christian and Mos
lem shrines and permit free
access.
And the call to interna
tionalize Jerusalem is not
only 19 years too late, it
ignores the history of the
Jews.
Heights:
Cascade
On Its Own
The failure of the Board of
Aldermen to approve the ban
on “For Sale’* signs in
Cascade Heights which is
rapidly changing from an
all-white to an all-Negro
' MEDIEVAL
GERMAN ART, 7ME
Golden Virgin of Essen
dates from looo ad. And
IS REGARDED AS A LAND MANN
IN THE N/STDRY OF MEDIEVAL
SCULPTURE.
neighborhood was disap
pointing.
The ban would have been
at least an attempt to sta
bilize a neighborhood which
could become a model of in
tegrated living. The ban--
certainly no remedy to the
situation--could have given
Southwest Atlantans For
Progress (SWAP) more time
in its efforts to create an
integrated neighborhood.
Now it is highly likely that
the many white property
owners will continue their
panic.
We will not accuse the 10
aldermen who voted against
the ban of bad faith because
questions have been raised
about its constitutionality.
But we do take exception to
the quoted remarks of Ald
erman Ed Gilliam who said,
“If you can find me 50 peo
ple who want to live in the
new order expressed in the
preamble of this ordinance,
i’ll shut up.**
Members of SWAP can
find 50 persons who wish to
live in the new order. They
can also find politicians who
need to shut up.
The Dirty Dozen 9 A Bet
On Public’s Bad Taste
TEARS of terror mark the face of this Vietnamese mother who gave birth
to her baby in a cave shortly after American planes bombed her village
near the de-militarized zone. When Marines foundher, they demonstrated
compassion and understanding in extending help. Photograph is from
“Caught in a Vietnam Crossfire,” a picture story in the July issue of
Extension Magazine, Chicago. (RNS PHOTO)
GEORGIA PINES
Rock Becomes Important
—-By R. Donald Kiernan.
New discoveries are not limited to the
theological field. A recent article in The
New York Times dealt with the possibility
that the Portuguese might have settled
Massachusetts long before the Pilgrims
set foot on Plymouth's shore.
As a young boy, the Plymouth Rock was
on the “must see” list. With the vivid
imagination of a
youth it was easy to
picture the relig
ious , freedom -
seekers standing on
the now famous
Plymouth Rock.
This event took
place almost 200
years after Colum
bus “discovered”
America. Now, according to this article,
William Bradford, the second Governor of
the Plymouth Colony, recorded a trip that
he had made up the Taunton River. There,
he found Indians who told him Of a "wood
en house and men of another country in
it”, who years before had come up the
river and settled with them.
The basis for this new claim is another
Rock, called Dighton Rock. In the cen
tury past Dighton Rock was a favorite
resort area. Carvings on this rock were
always noticed, but a Professor Edmund
Delabarre from Brown University, Pro
vidence, R. I., made a 33-year-study which
resulted in Dighton Rock being associated
with the Portuguese.
FR. KIERNAN
Prof. Delabarre's work.was continued
after his death by a Rhode Island intern
ist, a Dr. Manuel Da Silva. Doctor da
Silva claims that the inscription on the
Plymouth Rock, 1620, was not put there
until 1880, while the inscription on Digh-
ton's rock dates back to 1511.
Backers of . the Portuguest-first theory
add weight to their claim by saying that
the Pilgrims never claimed that they were
the first settlers in Massachusetts.
Cape Cod is filled with many, many
descendants of Portuguese fishermen.
Many of their ancestors came from the
Azores, and an equal number came from
the Portuguese mainland. But even here
there is a theory that the Portuguese were
antidated by Norsemen who sailed as far
south as Martha's Vineyard Island.
I guess that it will be next to impossi
ble, to ever find out whose foot was first
on the new world's soil. Studying history
is fragments, as wedo, webecomeclouded
by isolated events. Sometimes we for
get that as the Pilgrims hacked out a
meager existence on New England's soil,
that flourishing communities dotted the
California coast.
Growing up, Dighton Rock meant noth
ing more to me than an old decadent rec
reation park. This new discovery adds
importance to this long forgotten area.
By James Arnold
Watching “The Dirty Dozen” in a
crowded theater is something like sitting
in on a lynchingorgettingapassto Himm
ler's box at Buchenwald. If there was
ever any doubt that the beast lurks close
to the surface of the skin in modem Ameri
cans, it should be removed by the deca
dence of the film and the decadence of
the response to it.
The film’s box-office pizzaz is frankly
phenomenal. In its
first week national
ly, “Dozen’’ gros
sed $1 million, not
even counting New
York, a new rec
ord for parent com
pany MGM. If the
pace holds, the pic
ture will takein$25
million worldwide ARNOLD
on an investment of $5.4 million. This
is nice going even in the Mafia, and may
help save the jobs of present proxy-
embattled MGM management. Stockhold
ers tend to take their profits without
asking where they came from.
Director Robert Aldrich is noted for
shrewd betting on the bad taste of the
customers (cf. "Sodom and Gomorrah,”
“What EVer Happened to Baby Jane?”).
Assuming that the man does not really
enjoy his own movies, his utter contempt
for the public and skill in giving it what it
wants are the best investment this side
of AT&T.
The trick here was simply to perceive
that the great popularity of James Bond
fijrns and "Fistful of Dollars" westerns
(and even such upper-level delights as
-“Virginia Woolf”) has been due to two
crucial factors: (1) uninhibited andimag-
inative violence for its own sake; (2) a
hero unrestrained by normal compassion
or conventional notions of right, wrong or
fair play. Viewers may not want to
imitate this sort of fun in their ownlives,
but they seem to have a powerful im
pulse to observe and root for those who do.
Thus, in- “Dozen,” we soup up the vio
lence to maximum voltage, expand the
number of ruthless heroes to twelve-
plus-two, and reduce the human feeling
to all but absolute zero. (The. "all but”
is a hedge to include fleeting moments
near the end when the men seem to be
pained at the death of a buddy. One thing
in its favor, the film has no more than
30 seconds of sentimentality in its two-
; hour length); A civilized audience ought i
to be repelled, but the theater resound^' 1
with glee; the haunting doubt is whether
they (we, you, I) might be similarly amus
ed if they had bought tickets to a real,
instead of a fantasy slaughter.
This Aldrich creation is based on the
E. M. Nathanson novel that posed an old
barracks question: wouldn’t condemned
criminals be more adept at the bloody
business of war than ordinary soldiers?
(The answer is obvious: such men are
seldom especially tough or brave, and of
ten pitifully neurotic.. This fictional film
is thus fake in its basic premise).
The adaptation is by twopros, Adlrich’s
regular writer Lukas Heller, and veteran
Nunnally Johnson, destined to be identi
fied forever as the adapter of “The
Grapes of Wrath.” Throw in the tight
acting, especially by Lee Marvin, John
Cassavetes and Telly Savalas, and the film
is altogether as expert as the liquidation
of Lidice.
Marvin plays a renegade major assign
ed “by some lunatic” to train a dozen
incorrigibles, some only a few days from
the hangman, for behind-the-lines butch
ery of German officers just before 19-
Day. Between the amoral major and his
sullen crew, the chief operative motives
are brute power, fear and survival. Both
hatred of authority and nastiness to in
feriors are justified by the plot situation,
and indulged as they couldn’t be in the bit
terest “normal” war drama.
Doubtless the most notorious sequence
is the final caper, a half-hour symphony
in mayhem that includes, besides all the
routine horror of commando combat, the
heroes' cold-blooded massacre of prison
ers and the slow stabbing of a blonde by
a turned-on sex maniac. In the piece de
resistance, the Germans and their women
are herded into a bomb shelter, where they
are doused with gasoline and impersonally
blasted into eternity with the spectacular
pow of summer fireworks.
But more typical of the movie’s basic
spirit is the scene where warm-hearted
Marvin, feeling the boys deserve a reward
for their labors, brings in a truckload of
whores gathered at random in London.
The moment is used for whoopee, comedy
and pathos; it also threatens to say some
thing about race prejudice, since one of
the men (ex-footballer Jim Brown) is a
Negro.
However, nothing happens: thefilm only
titillates us on this theme from the
start (with just-for-fun racist remarks
and a reference to near-emasculation).
Later, Marvin justifies the sex binge on the
grounds that “it is done” by half the
men and officers in the army. Clearly,
no opportunity for poetry or wisdom is
bypassed.
All of “Dozen” might conceivably be
interpreted as an ironic comment on the
black nature of war - this is war bluntly
stripped of all its flag-waving hypocrisy,
etc. But nothing in the film provides a
framework for this judgment.
i ; Wbep qne indicts sin, he doesmorethan-
’sell tickets to an orgy; the’tour, like
Dante’s of hell, must keep its distance and
establish a point-of-view. But this movie
leaves its audience all aglow-from the
feast, hungry for a sequel. Perhaps, “The
Sorority House Massacre,” "TheKinder
garten Caper,” or "Throwing Molotov
Cocktails at the Old Folks Home.”
CURRENT RECOMMENDED FILMS:
For general audiences: A Man For All
Seasons, Grand Prix.
For connoisseurs: A Man and a Woman,
Georgy Girl.
Better than most: Up the Down Staircase,
Hombre, The Bible, Divorce
American Style.
Ireland Responds
To Vatican II
MACEOIN
PITTSBURGH—Pietro Raimondi and his family smile at their Pittsburgh suburban home
on hearing the news that Pietro’s brother, Archbishop Luigi Raimondi, has been named
Apostolic Delegate to the United States. Pietro, 38, is the only member of the Archbishop’s
family living outside Italy. With his wife, Sara, are (from left): Jo Anne, 5; Joseph, 10;
Paul, 3; and Albert, 7. Maria, 9, was away when the photo was made.( NC Photos)
By Gary MacEoin
DUBLIN. The Irish insist that the navy
saying is merely a variant of an old
Gaelic triad. The original, they claim,
ran something like this: “Three ways to
■ do a thing, the right way, the wrong way,
the Irish way.”
Very much in the third of these three
ways, Ireland is to
day beginning to re
veal a significant
response to the call
for Church renewal
of the Vatican
Council. The mood
is encouragingly
different from the
combination of ig
norance and resis
tance I observed eighteen months ago,
shortly after the Council ended, or the
apathy still prevalent nine months ago.
It is still, however, very Irish. There
is nothing simple about it.
We have just had, for example, the
epoch-making and epoch-ending reception
of the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury
and his colleague, the Church of Ireland
Archbishop of Dublin, by the RomanCath-
olic Archbishop of Dublin. The host is
the same bishop who felt it necessary to
assure his "flock” just eighteen months
ago that the prayer in .common at a lec
ture on ecumenism in a Dublin auditorium
would be the Catholic Lord’s Prayer.
The unanimous approval of the meeting
of the three archbishops by the Irish
Catholic in the street is a lesson that should
not be lost on political and religious
leaders. It shows that he recognizes,
perhaps has long recognized without being
able to say so, that religion is no justi
fication for separate stratification of the
nation’s social and cultural life.
This is not yet ecumenism. Louis Mc-
Redmond, one of the very few young in
tellectuals who attempt to express the
mood of their generation, describes it as
pre-ecumenical — an emotional sensing,
that ‘ 'official Catholic attitudes are inade
quate, insulting to Protestants, frustrating
for Christians who want to give expres
sion to the generous instincts of the age.”
But if not yet ecumenism, it is a mighty
step towards it.
Another major step, also being taken
with Irish indirectness, is the proposed
incorporation of Trinity and National in a
single Irish university. F ormally, neith
er is denominational. National is not even
de facto Catholic in any organic or con
structive sense. Trinity, though still ban
ned by the Archbishop of Dublin as,a dan
ger to the faith, has a Catholic head, a
largely Catholic faculty, and a largely
Catholic student body.
What actually exists in Ireland is half
a dozen colleges, each attemptingtocover
an educational spectrum far wider than
its resources and narrower than national
needs, all limited to the same spectrum,
the effort complicated by the false Cathr
olic-Protestant labels. The institutional
Church which long exercised and still
arrogates to itself exclusive authority in
all areas of national life showed no un
happiness with the situation. It is signi
ficant that the State has finally decided
to take a major independent initiative. The
colleges survive through major State sub
sidization, which means that the State can
here make its decision stick.
Surprisingly again, the public reaction
has been universally favorable. Without
ever having been told what Vatican II
meant when it spoke of the signs of the
times, the Irish public has instinctively
recognized this as one.
These and similar instances show that
the thinking young people, lay and clerical
alike, crave a leadership which is notor-