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[A?S 71 NORTHERN COUNTIES
VOL. 6, NO. 44
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1968
Editor
Named
‘Act Of Faith’ Is Becoming
More Difficult, Pope Says'
At Center
Priest Talks On
Problem Of God
The Reverend R. Donald
Kiernan, Pastor of Saint Jude’s
parish in Sandy Springs has been
appointed Acting Editor of the
Archdiocesan newspaper, the
GEORGIA BULLETIN by
Archbishop Thomas A.
Donnelian. The appointment
follows the resignation last week
of Editor Chris Eckl.
The assignment is not new to
Father Kiernan. Since 1962, he
has served as Consulting Editor
and from 1956 to 1962 he filled
the position of Managing Editor.
For the past eleven years, his
column “Georgia Pines” has
appeared in the Archdiocesan
, publication.
In announcing the assignment,
Archbishop Donnelian said that
he was most gratified in having a
man of Father Kiernan’s
experience to step into this
important position. “In almost
any diocese in the country,” said
the Archbishop, “bishops and
editors are taking a hard look at
diocesan publications, and during
the next few weeks, we will be
doing likewise in Atlanta. With
the help of Father Kiernan and
the Archdiocesan Board of
Communications, this important
apostolate will receive our close
attention.”
Father Kiernan’s assignment is
effective immediately.
“The problem of God is the
key problem in modern
thought and makes faith
extremely problematical for so
many of our people,” Father
James J. DiGiancomo S.J., said
in a talk to 100 Religion
teachers and parents at the
Cathedral Center.
Father DiGiacomo,
instructor at Brooklyn Prep
and Fordham University, said
in the past man was willing to
use God to fill gaps in his
knowledge and ability.
“With the advances in
knowledge and technology,
the God of the gaps becomes
more superfluous as men find
they can <io for themselves
things they used to want God
to do for them.” He added
that in the past 100 years
some men have discovered that
either God was a mistake or
“we were mistaken about
God.”
However, the priest pointed
out that man in his most
important areas of life bears
witness to the fact that he
believes in another kind of
knowledge besides scientific
knowledge. He pointed to
faith as a personal relationship
which cannot be defined.
Father DiGiacomo said, “In
teaching religion we stress the
virtues of obedience and
dependence which are proper
to children, but we leave out
the virtues of creativity,
independence, initiative, and a
healthy skepticism which are
adult virtues.
Sisters
Senate
Elect
Sister Placide C.S.J. has been
elected president of the
Archdiocesan Senate of Sisters,
replacing Sister Mary Melanie
R.S.M.
Other officers elected were
Sister Kristen R.S.M., vice
president;. Sister Catherine
Laboure G.N.S.H., secretary; and
Sister Laetitia I.H.M., treasurer.
There are 21 sisters on the Senate
including officers.
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope Paul VI observing that an act of faith
is becoming more difficult in this “civilization of the image,”
complained that some remedies offered are as dangerous as the
malady.
“Do Christians from the
time they are six or seven get
the idea that to be a Christian
is to accept a call to do
something, or it is just a call to
keep from rocking the boat?”
The speaker said, “We do
not teach religion to young
people to reinforce
conventional morality, but to
challenge them to love more.
The priest was invited to
Atlanta by foui Northside
parishes—St. Jude’s, the
Cathedral, Holy Spirit and Our
Lady of the Assumption-and
by Father Michael A. Morris,
director of the Office of
Religious Education.
Catholic U To Honor
TV’s Danny Thomas
WASHINGTON, D.C. (RNS) ~
TV comedian Danny Thomas will
receive the Cardinal Gibbons
medal, highest award of the
Catholic University of America.
The award will be presented at
the annual dinner of the National
Alumni Association. Ed
McMahon of the “Tonight Show”
is chairman.
DENVER—Newly-elected officers of the National Council of Catholic
Women are, seated left to right, Miss Mary Lee Cambre of Alexandria,
La., second vice-president; Mrs. Norman Felda of Omaha, president;
Mrs. Reginald V. Batt, Denver, first vice-president; and, standing left
to right, Miss Mary Margaret Curran of Wheeling, W.Va., secretary;
Mrs. David J. McCarroll of Shaker Heights, Ohio, treasurer; Mrs.
James Herdis Rounsaville of Jacksonville, Texas, fourth
vice-president; Mrs. Thomas F. Palmer of Miami, third vice-president.
The medal is named in memory
of James Cardinal Gibbons of
Baltimore who was closely
associated with the founding of
Catholic U. Previous recipients of
the Gibbons medal include the
late President John F. Kennedy
and R. Sargent Shriver, now the
U.S. Ambassador to France.
He also ascribed this difficulty
to biblical research that is
“deprived of the complement
furnished by tradition and of the
authoritative assistance of the
ecclesiastical magisterium [ the
Church’s teaching authority 1.
Pope Paul was speaking at a
regular weekly general audience
(Oct. 30).
He began by referring to the
Credo of the People of God that
he pronounced June 30 at the
end of the Year of Faith. He
described this as “a repetition,
amplified with explicit references
to some doctrinal points, of the
Nicene Creed.”
The Nicene Creed, he said, is a
“brief synthesis of the principal
truths believed by the Catholic
Church,” and has taken on “the
solemnity of an official act of our
faith.”
He drew a careful distinction
between objective faith, which
consists in truths that are
believed, and subjective faith,
which is the virtuous act of assent
to these truths.
Pope Paul said he was drawing
the Church’s attention to “this
bivalent profession of faith” for
two reasons: because of the basic
importance of the faith and
because of the difficulty of an act
of faith today.
On the first point Pope Paul
quoted the Council of Trent
( 1 545-63): “Faith is the
beginning of human salvation, the
foundation and the root of every
justification, that is, of our
regeneration in Christ, of our
redemption and of our present
and eternal salvation” (Session
VI, C8).
He also quoted the Epistle to
the Hebrews: “Without faith it is
impossible to please God” (11,
6).
For his own part he added:
“Faith is the irreplaceable
principle of Christianity. It is the
source of charity. It is the center
of unity. It is our religion’s basic
reason for existence.”
Turning to his second reason
for calling the Church’s attention
to the twofold aspect of faith
Pope Paul ascribed the difficulties
modern man finds in making an
act of faith to a doubt in the
power of reason itself.
“If thought is no longer
respected in its intrinsic rational
requirements, so too, faith itself
suffers from it. We must well
remember that faith requires
reason. It transcends it, but it
requires it. Faith is not fideism.
that is, belief deprived of rational
foundations. It is not merely a
twilight search for some religious
experience. It is possession of
truth. It is certainty.”
He observed that an act of faith
has become more difficult
psychologically as well.
“Today man knows principally
by way of the senses. We speak of
the civilization of the image. All
knowledge is translated into
figures and signs. Reality is
measured by what is seen and
heard. Yet faith requires the use
of the mind, which addresses
itself to a sphere of realities that
flee sensible observation.
“And we say further that the
difficulties arise also from the
philological, exegetical, historical
studies applied to that primary
font of revealed truth which is
Holy Writ. When deprived of the
complement furnished by
tradition and by the authoritative
assistance of the ecclesiastical
magisterium, even the study of
the Bible is full of doubts and
of problems which disconcert
faith more than they strengthen
it. When this study is left to
individual initiative, it generates
such a pluralism of opinions as to
shake the faith in its subjective
certainty and to take away its
social authoritativeness.”
The remedies proposed for this
crisis of faith are often fallacious,
he said, citing the attempts to:
-Reduce the content of the
faith to some, basic propositions;
-Pick and choose among “the
many truths taught by our Credo.
-Make the modern mentality
“the method and the yardstick of
religious thought.”
On the other hand, he praised
the attempt to express the truths
of the faith “in terms accessible
to the language and the mentality
of our time.” His objection in
this field centered upon the
“passing over in silence, softening
or altering certain ‘difficult
dogmas.’ ”
Pope Paul concluded his
audience with a prayer for faith.
He asked God to make his faith
“full, without reserve.” He asked
for a faith that is “free,” one that
is “sure, sure through an external
congruency of proofs and an
inner witness of the Holy Spirit.”
He asked for a faith that is
“strong, that does not fear to be
contradicted by difficulties,” for
a faith that is “active, and gives
to charity the reasons for its
moral expansion.”