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4 GEORGIA BULLETIN, THURSDAY. JANUARY 18. 1968
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 Peachteee N. E.
P. O. Box £1667
Northside Station
Atlanta, Georgia 30305
Member of the Catholic Press Association
and Subscriber tp N. C. W. C. News Service
Telephone 261-1281
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Published Every Week at.the Decatur-DeKalb News
The opinions contained in these editorial columns are
the free expressions of free editors in a free Catholic press.
The Bishops Speak
“The Church in Our Day,”
first in a series of collective
pastoral letters issued by
American bishops, is a good
indication of how bishops
think.
The 35,000-word pastoral
reflects a desire for updating
the American Church, but
generally it seems to want
renewal carried out in a
traditional way and with less
controversy.
In the 78-page Our Sunday
Visitor edition of the pas
toral, 20 pages are used to
discuss the episcopacy, 12
pages to outline the problems
of priests, 6 pages on the role
of the layman and 1 page on
social implications. Most of
the book is consumed with
discussions on Church
structure.
The bishops are quick to
point out that “Tradition as
sures us, however, that the
layman never speaks to and
for the community in the
same way as must those who
possess apostolic authority.
No one would maintain, for
example, that an individual
layman or all the laity to
gether should be heard by
the Christian community in
the same way that the Pope
in his office of Chief Shep
herd, or the College of Bish
ops are to be heard.”
It is our impression that
there are too many bishops
in America who fear that
laymen are trying to usurp'
some of their authority. We
know of no one who questions
the authority of bishops, but
there are many who question
its use for reaction instead
of action.
We were disappointed with
the brevity of the section on
social implications. In a
time when America is faced
with many internal prob
lems -- urban riots, poverty,
to mention but two--we think
the bishops could have spent
more time urging Catholics
and men of other faiths to
prompt and decisive actions
in these fields. A strong
statement, backed with ac
tion, would have gone a long
way in answering critics of
the Church who maintain it
is more interested in cath
edrals than human suffer
ing.
In spite of certain disap
pointments, we do commend
the bishops of America for
issuing their first collective
pastoral. It was an encour
aging development in col-
legiality and we look forward
to further reports from
them on problems- and op
portunities facing the Church
in America.
We hope the next state
ment will deal concretely
with the introductory state
ment of the first pastoral—
“The Church of Christ is
living today a privileged
hour. Seldom in her long
history has there been so
much to do, so many new
possibilities, for everything
except that mediocrity which
Pius Piux XI, in the early
moments of this hour, repu
diated for all Christians.”
‘VALLEY OF THE DOLLS’
Awful Book,
By JAMES ARNOLD
Some fairly good films have been made
from awful books, but there was no real
chance with "Valley of the Dolls,” which
was a compilation of cliches from every
bad film Jacqueline Susann had seen. And
she had seen them all.
Director Mark Robson, who warmed up
for this chore some years ago by filming
the original "Peyton Place,” cheerfully
makes the best of it. He offers such a
sincere tour of the cornfields that "Dolls”
may actually be enjoyed as a classic of
soap opera camp.
There are tlje three young things trying
to make it in Show Biz. ("It’s a rotten
business...But I love itl”) Barbara Par
kins is the small-town innocent who falls
for a smooth agent (Paul Burke). Sadly,
he’s not the marrying kind, so after a few
years of living in glamorous sin, she flies
back to her roots in New England and the
arms of Grandma, and gives him the "Per
haps someday, fella” speech.
Patty Duke is the talented singer who
claws her way to the top, gets a fat head
("success is too big for you” scene),
goes on dope and booze, and falls to Skid
Row ("that’s me singing On the jukebox”
scene). We take the sanitarium cure with
her (wrestle-with-the-nurses scene), en
joy her revenge on fading Susan Hayward
(her wig gets flushed down the ladies room
john), and then gag as she bangs around
in the rubbish of an alley crying out for
all her lost friends and God. Miss Duke
makes it even better with the worst acting
since Khrushchev retired.
As an aspiring sex symbol, SharonTate
clearly is marked for the full treatment.
She marries a pretty-boy singer (Tony
Scotti) who comes equipped on the honey
moon with a possessive sister (Lee Grant)
Awful Film
He quickly develops an incurable disease,
and to pay the bills Sharon goes to Paris
to make ("I’ve hated this”)nudiemovies.
("You posed undraped before.” “Butthat
was before I married Tonyl”) To get the
idea, we see a five-minute out of one of
her best performances. Then she comes
home, gets (the ironyl) breast cancer, and
gently kills herself.
There is one fine moment in "Dolls,”
when pretty Miss Parkins wanders through
the snowy New England woods while on the
sound-track Dionne Warwick belts out the
pretty title song. Its appeal may have
something to do with the fact that it’s
the pretty end.
Don’t Blame Church
For Shape Of World
LANCASTER, Pa. (RNS)--D:. Carl F. H.
Henry said here that the church is not to
blame for the "world’s predicament."
The editor of Christianity Today, the
theologically conservative fortnightly pub
lication, told a local group concernedwith
church ;and society issues at the First
Presbyterian church, that the world is
responsible for its condition.
"There is much breast-beating and
scape-goating today,” he declared, "and
it.is common practicetoblametheworld’s
misfortunes upon the church. Insti
tutional Christianity has many weaknes
ses indeed, but it is not wholly faithless,
and deep down it is not to blame for the
world’s lost condition.”
Dr. Henry noted that evangelical Chris
tianity had not made a program for social
action but that it probably would have
"made little difference in the American
public areas” had it done so.
John Gogley
Politicians Are Trailing Issues
There may never have been a stranger
political year than 1968.
Take, first, the political parties them
selves. They never looked so much alike,-
and the sameness is due to their pallor.
In a hospital the infirm share a strong
resemblance. Both the GOP and the
Democrats, it seems, have been stricken
with the same sort
of malady — the
national sickness —
and as it eats into
their structure,
' they are becoming
ever more indistin
guishable.
The diverse coa
litions that served
the Democratic New Deal, and the New
Frontier are disintegrating. The Demo
crats no longer have a credible claim on
the nation’s Negroes. The intellectuals
and academic community on whom the
party could depend are largely alienated
from Lyndon Johnson’s Washington. The
aging czars of the labor movement can
still set up a United front of support for
the President, but it is becoming clear
that "front” is precisely the right word
for it. Industrial workers can no longer
be delivered.
ocrats as the "party with a heart” has
been hopelessly blurred as a result of the
Republicans' general acceptance of most
of the social goals their rivals once stood
j for, as well as the general disenchant
ment with the way many programs of the
Great Society have worked out.
The Republican Party, four years after
the Goldwater debacle, is undergoing a
similar identity crisis. Who speaks for
it — liberals like Nelson Rockefeller,
George Romney, and Charles Percy; the
new-style Goldwaterites like Ronald Rea
gan; or the refurbished Richard M. Nixon
of 1968?. More to the point, who really
cares?
Then, there is the changed electorate.
Great numbers of the young have de
spaired altogether of conventional politi
cal action and are relying on protest, dem
onstration, and "disruption” to get
things done their way. Since they have
given up on politicians of whatever stripe,
they are not particularly concerned about
which of the parties or party leaders to
harrass.
Others of the same generation have
copped out totally. They are only in
terested in doing their thing — and their
thing is definitely not rallying around a
call to political action.
The issues upon which the older gene-
The once clear-cut identity of the Dem-
■HH
"■* j:
MIGRANT BOY "For I am poor and needy.” (Psalms 86:1). ,(RNS Photo)
GEORGIA PINES—i
Forgotten Servants
- By R. Donald Kiernan ———
The little boy was home sick from
school. He was one of the 300,000 in
Georgia who had been hit by the flu bug.
1 stopped by his house, on the way home
from a hospital Call. When 1 entered his
room his enthusiasm overan his “ill
ness” as he was more than anxious to
show me his little league trophy, his col
lection of sea shells and his matchbook
covers. As 1 looked at these converted
trophies I noticed hanging on the wall a
framed poem. I walked over to it in ord-
der to examine it more closely. To the
best of my memory it read:
"There is no one on earth to rest upon,
All things are changing here,
The friends of life We gaze upon,
The ones we hold most dear;
Ah, but OneFriend alone is changless,
The One so often forgot,
Whose love has stood for ages,
Our Jesus, changes not”. .
I asked the little
lad where he got
that poem. "Mom
my”, he replied.
Then he added, "she
told me never to
forget it because it
tells how quickly we
are forgotten.” The
poem made enough
an impression on the little tot for him to
realize that he was last year’s hero on
the little league team and possibly, with
luck, he would only be a rookie on next
year's bigger team.
Driving 'back to the rectory, I thought
about the little boy, his impression of suc
cess and how fleeting it was. He knew
that he would soon be forgotten. Then
too I thought about a priest whom I once
knew. Popular and respected in life, the
priest was not even remembered on a
single All Soul's Day card the November
following his death.
If this is true of priests it is equally
true pf parishioners, forgotten that is.
Strangely enough this forgetfulness oc
curs for some While they are still living.
We had an open house at our rectory
last week. We asked all of the parishion
ers to stop by, in an informal way, and
have a cup of coffee with the priests.
We all thought that it would be a good way
to "get acquainted”, and at the same time
to look upon the rectory as the parish
"White House” instead of a cold institu
tion only to be approached on official
business.
The coffee hour was a success in many
ways. Listening to the conversations was
better than reading a history book of
the parishioners. In some ways the con
versations were a bit sad though. In par
ticular I remember one person talking who
recounted her experiences in form er years
with the Girl Scouts, the school cafeteria
and the altar care. Presently, this person
is a forgotten entity in the parish because
she is no longer actively Involved.
But, the fact remains, she did her part
in the past and possibly more than her
share. No one knows this today and in
some ways she has been the buff er of caus
tic remarks. Sort of reminds me of the
politician who was seeking redaction. Go
ing around visiting h'is constituents here-
minded them of what he had done for them
in the past. "Yeah”, said onewag, "but
what you done for me lately”.
I wonder as we are working to become
a "church of the day” if at the same time
we are not singing a requiem for good and
faithful servants. Everyone cannot donate
a stained glass or give an altar with their
names appropriately inscribed. But how
are they to be remembered? I think every
parish ought to have some sort of a rec
ord book, a sort of monthly or yearly
chronicle....even if it is no more than a
spiral notebook. It seems to me the very
least we can do for good and faithful ser
vants.
ration built their political lives — the
welfare state or private enterprise, po
litical isolationism or worldwide respon
sibility, the containment or expansion of
the cold war, for example — have,, even
for many of them, become magnificently
irrelevant in an era of general pros
perity and ideological exhaustion.
A replay of' old speeches by F.D.R.,
Truman, Eisenhower, Stevenson, even
J.F.K. now sounds as remote from con
temporary realities as the Gettysburg Ad
dress, maybe more so. The inevitable
blast of "Happy Days Are Here Again”
at the Democrats’ convention will be noth
ing more than a discordant warning of the
anachronisms swelling with the outmoded
oratory as the meetings proceed. The
only up-to-date thing we can look forward
to at the Republican’s gathering may be
a speech by Senator Dirksen, the best
stand-up comedian on any circuit today.
The personalities dominating the politi-
cal scene in 1968 are generally lackluster.
L.B.J. will doubtless be cheered to the
rafters, but the sound will be as hollow
as one of his own preachments. A mis
understood martyr the President may be, a
lonely Lear he may be, he may even be
the greatest American Statesman of the
century, as Eric Hoffer believes. But a
genuine hero who can ignite the political
passions again, he ain’t.
Nature and history, heaven knows, en
dowed Robert F. Kennedy with political
pizzaz aplenty; but,'barely beyond age 40,
he is already becoming a little too familiar
to set the juices flowing. By denouncing
the war and at the same time endorsing
the re-nomination of L.B.J., he may have
outsmarted himself. Certainly the heroic
posture no longer befits a man everyone
hoped against hope would turn out to be a
profile in courage.
Eugene McCarthy, who has taken a stand,
could, if his low-key style caught on,
"get this country moving again” — but it
will take a miracle of popular understand
ing for him to overcome the obstacles
confronting him as of now.
Nixon? Nixon. Sigh. Again?
The voluble Hubert Humphrey will cer
tainly be heard from, but his career, it
Seems, is one of the more notable casual-
ities of the war in Vietnam. He has sim
ply lost all credibility as the man we
once knew, and the new Johnson-made
Humphrey doesn’t have anything going for
him.
Romney, Rockefeller, and Percy, each in
his own Way, evokes the essential Repub
lican image of a safe establishmentarian
— and while that may be good enough to
win an election, even in 1968, it isn't
enough to revive the political enterprise.
The nation has changed a great deal
since Rocky could get loving coverage
for eating a hot dog on the lower East
Side. Romney’s musings on motherhood
can’t be translated into political passion.
Percy suffers from the suggestion of being
a structured personality, prefabed in the
1950s when the grey flannel suit was
en vogue.
Ronald Regan just might do the trick,
as far as Republicans are concerned. He
has flare, wit, poise, and on the political
stage he is a new face, with all the ad
vantages of familiarity, thanks to the late-
late show. But Reagan has already de
clared war on both the younger generation
and the academic community, and it is
doubtful if he will be able to negotiate a
peace soon enough to put a halt to their
alienation.
A strange political year, 1968. The is
sues are new. The politicians, by and
large, haven’t caught up with them, though
great masses of the people have. We
can still hope for miracles, and I do.
But if they are not forthcoming, by 1972
we will be living in a nation where poli
tics as we have understood them just won’t
m atter much anymore. The parties Will
both be a little closer to the death hover
ing over them now. The demand for
radical, revolutionary, not necessarily
desirable, basic changes in the nation’s
political structure will be dominant.
The year 1968 may be our last chance
to conserve what, in our wiser mom
ents, we know we should not give up.
But the conservatives are too worried
about bringing back yesterday to think
clearly about tomorrow; and the liberals,
stuck in hardened dogmas of the recent
past , are too ready to believe that the
tried and true will work yet once more.
Here is news for you, gentlemen —
it won’t.
Gary MacEoin
Young Americans Go |
Places In Peace Corps
"Dollar for dollar, you get more re
wards and returns out of the investment
in the Peace Corps than almost anything
we are doing as a government and as a
country.
It is seldom a politician makes a judg
ment on an important national issue which
finds as wide a spectrum of support as this
statement of Vice-
President Hubert
Humphrey. Mount
ing costs in Viet
nam bring pressure
to cut tourist trav
el, most kinds of
foreign aid, over
seas investment,
poverty programs
at home. Yet the
Peace Corps gets its funds and gets them
with few strings attached.
In its seven years of existence, the
Peace Corps has grown to almost 15,000
current members, of whom 2,000 are in
training, the rest scattered in 58 countries,
with more than 500 each in India, the
Philippines, Colombia, Brazil, Malaysia
and Micronesia. The average volunteer
is just under 24, male, and a college
graduate. He is a picked man. Of every
20 applicants, 4 are accepted for train
ing, and 3 make the grade.
Half the volunteers are in education, a
quarter in rural and urban community
development, and the rest in health, agri
culture, public works and public admin
istration. The two-year tour of duty is
preceded by 14 weeks of training, with a
heavy and growing stress on languages.
The number of different languages taught
is close to 200.
What can a 24-year-old accomplish in a
strange environment in two years I Some-
times, nothing. Sometimes, a lot of harm.
But the hard evidence continues to mount
that he usually achieves a surprising
amount of good. I went to South America
.with one of the first groups involved in
rural development more than six years
ago to observe and evaluate. At that
time, the best we could do was to make
more-or-less intelligent guesses. Now
we have scientific studies.
A Cornell University group, for exam
ple, has measured the progress in 15
Peruvian communities served by 50 vol
unteers with that in 5 communities without
volunteers, • awarding points for develop
ment of such services and institutions as
churches, schools and clubs. .The in
crease in the communities with volun
teers was nearly three times as fast over
three years as in' the control group.
In the long run, however, I remain con
vinced that the principal impact of the
Peace Corps is going to be on the United
States, a viewpoint which also has no
longer to be taken entirely on faith. The
number ‘of veterans is already greater
than the number currently in service, and
studies of their views and behavior permit
a projection of the impact they will be
making on the country when the number will
have grown by 1980 to 200,000.
"Two things impress the volunteers
most when they return,” according to
J ack Vaughn, director of the Peace Corps.
"They are shocked by the indifference
most Americans show towards the less
developed nations, and they know they
don’t have to be grey at the temples and
over 40 to carry responsibility.”
Those selected have leadership poten
tial to start, and the work quickly de
velops that potential. Where the effect is
already apparent is in the Peace Corps it
self, now staffed in large part by its own
veterans. Many of the nearly 200 overseas
posts they occupy, while still in their
twenties, involve responsibilities not us
ually entrusted to foreign service officers
before the age of 50. Opportunity for
young people in decision-making positions
was a major factor in building America.
A return to that situation should have
startling consequences.
Where the results can be expected to
show first will be in our foreign policy,
because the Peace Corps training is pro
viding for the first time in our history a
reservoir of candidates who know what
it’s all about. "I think that by 1980,”
Jack Vaughn says, "We will have re
placed the Ivy League as the provider'of
the most ambassadors and the most sen
ior government officials. By then, two
years in the Peace Corps will have re
placed the Ph.D. as the basic union card
for diplomacy.”
The newest dimension to the Peace
Corps is the imitation effect. All kinds
of countries are flattering us by starting
similar projects, and I think it is clear
that the trend is to internationalization of
the Peace Corps operation as of other
forms of foreign aid. The process should
increase the benefits both to the receiv
ing countries and to the Corps members
themselves.
Vatican Joins
Refugee A id
UNITED NATIONS (NC)«With a dona
tion of $2,500, the Holy See has joined 33
other governments contributing to the
programs of the United Nations’ High
Commissioner for Refugees. Donations
from the 34 governments so far total
$2,442,302.
The Vatican’s donation was announced
by Msgr. Alberto Giovanetti, permanent
observer of the Holy See at theUnitedNa
tions.