Newspaper Page Text
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Vol. 7 No. 22
THURSDAY, MAY 29, 1969
$5 Per Year
Dear
Reader
BY HARRY MURPHY
Notes gathered from three
days of watching religious
press cast about for the way
to carry out its mission, after,
of course, it defines its
mission:
. . . Discussing with a
priest whether the Catholic
press’ mission is to educate or
inform.
“It’s the press’ mission to
educate,” said he, “just as
Jesus Christ did.”
“But Jesus Christ knew He
had the answers,” said I. “All
I can do is try to give both
sides and let the reader decide
what is true and false. I don’t
have the answers.”
. . . Listening in
amazement to two editors
discussing what they pay
their staff theologian and
wondering what the
Archbishop would say if I
asked for one.
. . . Chuckling at
Archbishop Philip Hannan
describing the saints’
controversy as “Gina
Lolobrigida versus The Pope”
and Israel as the country
“with the highest resurrection
rate in the world.”
... Likewise, Dr. Albert
Outler, describing the
adversary tactics of secular
journalism as one of “Let you
and them fight,” and lauding
the new Vatican faces
(“They’re still not enough,
but more than there were.”)
Listening to a panel of
young people discuss the
religious press: “Being
confronted with guilt seems
to be enough for you. You
don’t know what’s going on.”
“My first impulse was to
tear them up (religious
publications sent them for
study) because they’re not
really representative of
Christ.”
“Fight dope and
pornography, not by
preaching, but by changing
souls and hearts so they
wouldn’t want these things.”
“We know we may make a
bigger mess of things when
we get your age, but the
sooner we can get on with
making our own mess, the
better.”
. . . Having Clarence
Jordan describe reporters as
“Angels,” Greek for
messengers. “Gabriel was the
head messenger and took all
the good assignments.”
And wondering what sort
of man is G. T. Miller, a third
grade Alabama dropout,
former Ku Klux Klansman
and one of Jordan’s Koinonia
Farm preachers.
“Most people don’t love
their fellowman enough to
really learn how,” Jordan
quoted him as saying, “but
just enough to make
themselves sore.”
The Sumter County
minister said he was urging a
farmer to pay off the $2,400
annual interest on a loan,
made by a New York Church,
with 20 semi-trailer
truckloads of com.
He’s espousing interest
loans to help the rural poor
and said they can buy a
$6,500 home for $25 a
month interest free or $60 a
month with interest. “The
difference between a loan
with grace and one with
interest is $35 a month.”
He contends that
Christians would be better off
helping their fellow man than
taking care of their own
“creaturely comfort.”
“A $20,000 church
remodeling job could instead
have purchased every shack in
one town for its tenant;
$25,000 for a fountain could
have been spent in getting
running water for humans.”
Archdiocesan Offices To Centralize Downtown
A three-story building has
been leased on the northwest
corner of W. Peachtree and
Fourth streets to centralize
all offices of the Archdiocese,
Archbishop Thomas A.
Donnellan said this week.
The building contains
16,000 square feet and will
house all the administrative
offices of the Archdiocese.
Father Noel Burtenshaw,
Chancellor of the
Archdiocese, said that much
time had been spent in
formulating the plans to
centralize.
“Many of our offices,” said
Father Burtenshaw, “were
housed in the old Marist
Building and the remainder
were spread in different areas
throughout the city.
“The new building will give
us the opportunity of
bringing them together to
more economically
administer the different
departments of the
Archdiocese,”
The new building, which is
almost ten years old, will
house the Archbishop’s
Office, the Chancery, the
Metropolitan Tribunal, Office
of Catholic Education,
Office of Religious
O’CONNOR OUTSIDE MILLEDGEVILLE HOME
With Peafowl She Raised As Hobby
Georgian O’Connor Sees
Hope For Catholic Novel
CATHOLIC PRESS FEATURES
MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — The great hope for the
American Catholic novel lies in the Protestant,
fundamentalist, Bible Belt South, in the opinion of
Flannery O’Connor, the late, famed Georgia
authoress whose ideas on religion and writing have
just been published.
In “Mystery and Manners,”
a collection of previously
unpublished lectures and
articles brought out in book
form by her publisher, Farrar,
Straus & Giroux, it is revealed
that Miss O’Connor believed
“the opportunities for the
potential Catholic writer in
the South are so great as to
be intimidating.”
Miss O’Connor, who died
from an arthritic disease in
1964 at the age of 39 and
who was famed for the
grotesque and violent imagery
in her novels and short stories
about sin and redemption,
(“Wise Blood,” “A Good Man
Is Hard to Find,” “The
Violent Bear It Away,”
“Everything That Rises Must
Converge”) said one of the
strongest advantages for the
Catholic novelist in the South
was the firm Scriptural
heritage there, followed
closely by the strong
emotional nature of religious
expression common to
Southern Protestants.
“If the Catholic faith were
central to life in America,”
Miss O’Connor explained,
“Catholic fiction would fare
better, but the Church is not
central to this society. The
things that bind us together
as Catholics are known only
to ourselves. A secular
society understands us less
and less. It becomes more and
more difficult in America to
make belief believable, but in
this the Southern writer has
the greatest possible
advantage. He lives in the
Bible Belt...
“To be great storytellers,
we need something to
measure ourselves against,
and this is what we
consciously lack in this
age ... The Catholic has the
natural law and the teachings
of the Church to guide him,
but for the writing of fiction,
something more is necessary.
“For the purposes of
fiction, these guides have to
exist in a concrete form,
known and held sacred by the
whole community. They have
to exist in the form of stories
which affect our image and
our judgment of ourselves.
Abstractions, formulas, laws
will not serve here. We have
to have stories in our
background.”
She added that in the
Protestant South, Scripture
has traditionally provided the
people with stories in which
“everybody is able to
recognize the hand of God
and its descent,” making it
easier for the modern
religious novelist to use
allegory and symbolism and
also to stimulate his creative
juices.
“Our response to life is
different if we have been
taught only a definition of
faith than if we have
trembled with Abraham as he
held the knife over Isaac.
Both of these kinds of
knowledge are necessary, but
in the last four or five
centuries, Catholics have
overemphasized the abstract
and consequently
impoverished their imagina
tions and their capacity for
prophetic insight.”
Miss O’Connor saw the
Catholic Church’s revival of
interest in the Bible—the
lectures and articles were
composed in the late 1950’s
and early 1960’s—as being
the best possible insurance
for the future of Catholic
fiction in the U.S.
As for the emotional
fundamentalism common to
the Protestant South--Miss
O’Connor’s works are filled
with backwoods prophets,
wild-eyed preachers and
revivalists-she said that living
in such a society furnishes the
Catholic novelist “with some
very fine antidotes to his own
worst tendencies.”
“The Catholic novelist in
the South is forced to follow
the spirit into strange places
and to recognize it in many
forms not totally cpngenial to
him. He may feel that the
kind of religion that has
(Continued on Page 6)
Education, Catholic Social
Services, Family Services,
Office of Urban and Rural
Affairs, Agency for
Exceptional Children, Office
of South American
Resettlement and the Georgia
Bulletin Office.
The buildine will also
contain a 100 seat auditorium,
two conference rooms, an
audio-visual library and a
Flannery
O’Connor
Quotes
(From “Mystery and Manners ”)
Since we live in a world
that since the sixteenth
century has been increasingly
dominated by secular
thought, the Catholic writer
often finds himself writing in
and for a world that is
unprepared and unwilling to
see the meaning of life as he
sees it.
This means frequently that
he may resort to violent
literary means to get his
vision across to a hostile
audience, and the images and
actions he creates may seem
distorted and exaggerated to
the Catholic mind. The great
mistake that the unthinking
Catholic reader usually makes
is to suppose that the
Catholic, writer is writing for
him.
♦- 1
I think that if writers with
a religious view of the world
excel these days in the
depiction of evil, it is because
they have to make its nature
unmistakable to their
particular audience.
* * *
If we intend to encourage
Catholic fiction writers, we
must convince those coming
along that the Church does
not restrict their freedom,
but insures it, and to
convince them of this
requires, jperhaps more than
anything else, a body of
Catholic readers who are
equipped to recognize
something in fiction besides
passages they consider
obscene ... Catholic readers
are constantly being offended
and scandalized by novels
that they don’t have, the
fundamental equipment to
read in the first place, and
often these are works that are
permeated with a Christian
spirit.
* * *
It is one of the functions
of the Church to transmit the
prophetic vision that is good
for all time, and when the
novelist has, this as a part of
his own vision, he has a
powerful extension of sight.
chapel. It is hoped that the
necessary renovations on the
building will be completed
within two months.
The lease of this building
has been made possible
through income that will be
received from parking on the
Archdiocesan property on Ivy
Street.
Through the help of the
Archdiocesan Finance
Council and the Archdiocesan
Property Commission, a lease
on the Ivy Street parking will
bring $43,000 per year to the
Archdiocese. In order to set
up this parking facility the
Marist Building and the
Crawford Building will be
demolished.
The new center on West
Peachtree Street will cost
$52,000 per year while it is
being leased. The Archdiocese
has a firm option to purchase
in three years.
The lease on the building is
a gross lease to the
Archdiocese, which means
that all operational costs,
including utilities and
maintainance will be paid by
the landlord.
SLATTERY .
LaGrange
BELTRAN
Jonesboro
O’CONNOR
Rome
OFFICIAL
Changes 19
The appointment of a new pastor and shifts for
three others were among 19 changes announced this
week by Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan.
Following are the changes:
Very Reverend Joseph J.
Beltran, V.F., from Pastor,
Saint Mary’s Church, Rome
to Pastor, Saint Philip Benizi
Church, Jonesboro.
Reverend Edward
O’Connor, from Pastor, Saint
Peter’s Church, LaGrange to
Pastor, Saint Mary’s Church,
Rome.
Reverend Simon S.
Slattery, from Assistant,
Sacred Heart Church, Atlanta
to Pastor, Saint Peter’s
Church LaGrange.
Reverend Michael P.
Hogan, from Assistant, Saints
Peter and Paul Church,
Decatur to Assistant, Sacred
Heart Church, Atlanta.
Reverend Michael A.
Woods, from Assistant,
Church of the Holy Spirit,
Atlanta to Assistant, Saints
Peter and Paul Church,
Decatur.
Reverend Patrick J.
Padden, from Assistant, Saint
Thomas More Church,
Decatur, to Assistant,
Cathedral of Christ the King,
Atlanta.
Reverend Jacob A.
Bollmer, from Assistant,
Cathedral of Christ the King,
Atlanta to Assistant
Secretary, Catholic Social
Services with residence at the
Village of Saint Joseph,
Atlanta.
Reverend Raymond F.
Horan, from Assistant, Saint
Thomas More Church,
Decatur to Teacher, Saint
Joseph’s High School with
(Continued on Page 6)
Parish Liturgy
Groups Boosted
Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan has encouraged
the formation of liturgical committees in every parish
where they do not exist “so that there may follow
the spirit of rebirth which is the most basic concern
of the Church in this post-conciliar era.”
Press Meeting
Sought Truth
BY HARRY MURPHY
“It is not without affection and deep respect that
he is sometimes referred to in this country as Johnny
Unitas.”
Speaking was W. C. Fields, president of the
Associated Church Press, as he stated in Atlanta last
week the purpose of the first joint convention of his
organization and the Catholic Press Association.
Writing all pastors, the
Archbishop asked that they
write by Juiy 1 to Liturgy
Commission Chairman Lou
Erbs giving the names of their
committees.
The action was lauded by
Erbs and Father Henry C.
Gracz, the commission’s
priest secretary.
“For any commission to
function, it needs contact
with people on the grassroots
level,” said Erbs. “The
Archdiocesan Synod
recognized this fact in
recommending the formation
of parish liturgy groups.
“We lpok forward to
working with these groups
with the hope that there will
follow a continued vigorous
growth in our parishes.”
Said Father Gracz:
“.Our liturgical renewal
often has become a rather
heady affair which never
reaches the layman with all
the factors that have gone
into its formation.
(Continued on Page 6)
He was referring to the late
Pope John XXIII, but his
comments were typical of the
convention’s tone:
ecumenism, levity and
searching for truth.
“We have begun to shift
from diatribe to dialogue,”
Fields said of Catholics and
Protestants.
“This spirit, like a seawind,
is moving with surprising
force across the earth. It
breathes upon us here today.
On such an occasion we are
reminded afresh of the
impact on the world of that
remarkable man, Giuseppe
Roncalli, by the grace of God
Pope John III.”
Fields, now searching,
expressed fear for the role of
churches in men’s lives. “Now
when people are in trouble,”
he said, “they turn to the
government, not the
churches.
“The role of the state is
expanding while that of the
church is becoming more apd
more marginal. The man of
the moment, especially in the
South, is the politician. He is
the adjuster, the arbiter, the
broker of the many
conflicting and competitive
interests of our time.
“He and his colleagues are
the movers and shakers of our
society. With business and
industrial leaders, the
politicans are remodeling
southern life.”
Atlanta Archbishop
Thomas A. Donnellan
(Continued on Page 6)