Newspaper Page Text
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■ST. LOUIS SURVEY-
Motivational
Patterns Of
Priests Probed
Break the hate h
BY ROBERT J. BYRNE
ST. LOUIS (NC) - The
duties of a priest are many
and varied, sometimes
challenging but sometimes
repetitious too. What makes a
man continue in these duties,
especially the routine ones?
A survey of priests in the
St. Louis archdiocese
disclosed there is no single
motive. Rather, a priests’s
motives depend largely upon
his age and the position he
occuDies in the Church.
This is the general
conclusion of a research
study conducted earlier this
year biy Father James L.
Winzerling, graduate student
in sociology at St. Louis
University and associate
pastor of St. Phillip Neri
parish.
Data for the study was
obtained by a questionaire
mailed to 150 diocesan
priests in the St. Louis
archdiocese under the
auspices of the university’s
department of sociology.
The questionnaire focused
on four areas of the
priesthood: preaching,
ministering, celibacy and
recitation of the divine of rice.
Respondents were grouped
according to those ordained
prior to 1943; between 1944
and 1957 and between 1958
and 1968. Motives of the
replies were- categories as
being of three basic types:
legal compliance (required by
authority and enforced by
threat of penalty); personal
satisfaction expression
(individual skills and abilities
are utilized in job
performance, and
performance is rewarded);
internalization of
organizational goals
(individual identities closely
with the organization,
adopting its goals and
successes as his own).
«isaS hss ssysriu i
Based on a 71% response
from the priests, Father
Winzerling drew these major
conclusions:
-The older (pre-1943)
priests tended clearly to
identify with the
organizational goals, as did
those priests of any age who
were pastors, chaplains or
officials of the archdiocese.
-The younger (post-1958)
clergy indicated clearly they
performed such duties as
recitation of the divine office,
only because they were
legally required. On the
subject of celibacy, some
observed it because of the
law, but others considered it
a matter of self-expression.
—Regarding preaching,
priests of all ages indicated
they performed the task
because it was an
organizational need, and not
because they found preaching
personally rewarding or
satisfying.
In a digest of his research
study, Father Winzerling
offered several implications
about the results.
Indentiticaiton with the
ecclesiastical organization-ex
pressed by the older priests
and by those in certain
official posts-comes from
men who “participate in
decisions about group
objectives, contribute to the
group performance by their
offices of administration or
share in the rewards of
prestige and privilege that
their years of service can give
them.” “The individual can
regard the organization as his,
for he in fact helps to make
it,” Father Winzerling noted.
Those who like
self-expression and the
exercise of their own skills
and talents find personal
satisfaction or some sense of
rewarding experience in his
clerical tasks .. .he is likely to
have a strong attraction for
the ecclesiastical
organization. On the other
hand, such a person is not
tied to a given organization
and may seek alternate job
possibilities to attain his need
v for self-awareness or
self-fulfillment through his
acitivity of interest,” he
stated.
Those priests who do their
duties simply because they
are legally required “are not
attracted to the organization
for its own sake, and their
continuance within the
organization depends only
upon their desire to stay
within the system because of
i some dependance on the
system for a way of life, fear
of reprisal or hope of a
substantial change in the
organization which would
either capture their internal
assent or at least provide
better means of achieving
self-expression,” he said.
“If the opportunity to
enter into a different system
which affords better means
for achieving one’s own goals
or satisfaction in performance
presents itself, a legally
compliant person my seek to
leave one organization for the
other,” he added.
FAQ OFFICIAL SAYS
High-Yield Cereals
Could Stop Hunger
ROME (NC) - New
varieties of cereals yielding
three times the normal grain
harvest could “wipe out”
hunger in the world within
the next decade, an official of
the United Nations’ Food and
Agriculture Organization
(FAO) has declared.
Proper introduction of
Such high-yielding varieties
could ‘‘wipe out
undernutrition, i and even
hunger, that have been among
the most permanent features
of the history of man,” said
Dr. Otto Emst Fischnich,
assistant general director of
FAO.
his
^AO’s
statement
V biennial
onference. opened
(Nov. 8-z /j here, Fischnich, a
West German, said that the
performance of the new
varieties has been
“outstandingly promising.”
“A 15% increase in yield
can be a very worthwhile
advance. But when yields are
doubled and tripled there is
no doubt from when the
crops start ripening that
something unusual is going
on,” he said.
I
He claimed that the new
high-yielding rice could be
increased from 10 million
acres to 100 million acres
■IN magazine article
PAGE 3 — November 13,1969
Today’s Jesuits Called
A “Society In Flux
RELIGION IN AMERICAN LIFE inaugurates this month a new mass media advertising campaign
based on the theme, “Break the hate habit. Love your neighbor.” Ronald Chereskin, New York
graphic artist, designed the outdoor poster, 19Vi feet long. The theme will be spread through radio
and TV sport announcements, in newspapers and magazines, in posters and car cards for transits
system. RIAL’s message is formulated by its supporting religious groups representing major
Catholic, Jewish, Orthodox and Protestant denominations, and disseminated through a public
service campaign conducted by the Advertising Council. (NC Photos)
BOSTON (NC) - The
Society of Jesus, more
commonly known as the
Jesuits, is undergoing a vast,
“agonizing reappraisal” which
will, in time to come, have a
profound national impact.
This is the view expressed
by a young Jesuit
priest-author in an article
appearing in the current issue
of the Atlantic Monthly
magazine.
Father John L’Heureux,
S.J., who is a staff editor of
Atlantic Monthly, and
writer-in-residence at Regis
College, Weston, Mass.,
calls the Jesuits “a
society in flux” which, he
claims, will do anything in an
effort to “make the Jesuits
the dynamic Christian force
they were at their inception.”
(The Society was founded in
1540 by St. Ignatius Loyola).
In his article, Father
L’Heureux states that
“throughout the United
States, consulting agencies
have been hired to advise
Jesuit officials on
99
restructuring the entire
American organization-
phasing out schools,
redistributing manpower,
turning colleges over to lay
trustees.”
Father L’Heureux,
ordained in 1966 and a
member of the Jesuits’ New
England province, asserts that
“major superiors are showing
greater concern for the
spiritual and intellectual
welfare of the individual
Jesuit. They are prepared to
(Continued on Page 6)
$ BY FATHER DANIEL
LYONS, SJ
;!•: (Editor, Twin Circle-
•:•: The National Catholic Press)
£: (NC News Service)
$5 WHEN I DEBATED
■:•: Father John B. Sheerin,
•:•: CSP, in New Jersey last
|:|! year, he condemned the
|:|j war in Vietnam as immoral
on several counts. Since he
ift held that it was immoral
to be fighting there, I took
£•; for granted that as a moral
:•:$ theologian he felt we
SS should pull out. But on
the drive back to New
York he said that we could
not pull out, at least for
ijij awhile. It was strange
theology, I thought; but
$ just one of many strange
things coming out of this
?:•; imbroglio.
Who can defend the
:|S Vietnam war? No one can
j£j: defend the way it has been
^ fought. I am not referring
ij: to who the aggressor is. It
-is obvious that the North
is trying to conquer the
South, and not vice-versa,
it is also obvious to
% anyone who values
freedom and who knows
the situation in both the
$• North and South, that the
:*:• people in the South are
:•:• better off free than under
communist rule.
The trouble with this
;j> war is not that we have
:•£ defended South Vietnam.
& The trouble is that our
over the next 17 years. Wheat
could be expanded from 10
million to 40 million acres,
and maize, millet and
sorghum from 5 million to 47
million acres.
But he warned that such
yields can be gained only if a
number of requirements are
fulfilled.
“Production of pure seed
must be recognized as a first
priority. Yet in almost all
developing countries seed
production is one step behind
in terms of development,” he
said.
Fertilizers, adequate water
supply, land levelling, better
land drainage systems, pests
and disease were among other
problems Fischnich cited.
He said that where
sharecropping is widely
practiced, tenure
arrangements must frequently
be changed “to give the
cultivator a higher share of
the profits and the landowner
a higher share of the costs.”
Fischinich said that credit
must also be made more
available to farmers and extra
facilities provided for drying,
milling, processing and
storing the increased yields.
g BY FATHER JOHN B.
$ SHEERIN, CSP
g (EDITOR, CATHOLIC
8 WORLD)
(NC NEWS SERVICE)
| THE PUBLIC
DEMAND for an early end
ijijto our military
& involvement in Vietnam
fe continues to grow in
g: volume and intensity. The
g; Administration’s gestures
!$ in the direction of peace,
» including draft cuts and
.$•: token troop withdrawals,
& do not satisfy the
increasingly impatient
3$ American public.
» As the casualty lists
g: continue to come in, many
I citizens who once called
£ij for “peace with victory”
now want “out” of the
Asian quagmire,
demanding substantial
troop withdrawals at the
earliest possible date. They
see no point in sacrificing
American lives to shore up
a wobbly, corrupt military
regime in Saigon.
In their 1966 Pastoral,
the American Bishops
stated that every Catholic
must keep the moral issues
of the Vietnam war under
constant scrutiny.
Moreover, they noted that
this is a personal
obligation which cannot
.be delegated to someone
else.
I would prefer to
review our Vietnam
involvement in the light of
the Just War theory. Some
churchmen in recent years
have tended to discredit
this theory as a moral
criterion because they
deemed it irrelevant to
VIETNAM DEBATE
Pro: We Have Kept People Free
political leaders have
pretended all along that if
we just practiced
“restraint” the enemy
would go home, that if we
made it easier for him to
wage war against the
South by granting him
sanctuary, then the enemy
would pull out.
Why we ever figured
that way has never been
explained. If Lyndon
Johnson had only listened
to his Joint Chiefs of Staff
regarding one thing, the
closing of Haiphong, the
war would have ended
years ago.
All along our leaders
have refused to face
reality. They have even
pretended that this is not a
war. But no one has been
able to convince any of
the 80,000 parents whose
sons came home in boxes
that their boys had been
away, At summer camp.
NO ONE CAN DENY
that the Vietnam war has
lasted far too-long. Either
we should have
surrendered or we should
have forced the enemy to
give up years ago. When I
polled every priest in the
United States, in 1966, I
found that 87% wanted
Washington to adopt a
firm policy of winning.
It is immoral to fight a
no-win war. It is immoral
to fight a war in which our
own men have gotten
killed because we granted
sanctuary to the enemy
just across the border.
There was never any
hope of winning the war
the way it has been
fought. We could have sent
five million troops to
Vietnam and still the war
could have lasted 30 years,
if we kept ’ granting
sanctuary. All the North
has to do is keep sneaking
in guerrillas, even in small
numbers.
The greatest tragedy of
our time is that we have
not learned from our
mistakes. We have yet to
realize that the war in
Vietnam is a continuation
of what the Kremlin
started right after World
War II. We have pretended
all along that Ho Chi Minh
and his cohorts were
independent of the
Kremlin. We even
pretended that Ho was a
Vietnamese nationalist,
despite the fact that he
conquered another race
when he invaded Laos.
For awhile we tried to
discourage Hanoi from
taking over Laos. But in
1961 we pulled out of
Laos because Hanoi agreed
to do so. Instead, however,
Hanoi then conquered half
of Laos, the half it needed
to attack South Vietnam.
When we let, Hanoi take
over Laos we gave them a
400 mile border into
South Vietnam. The lesson
is clear: we got a far bigger
war in Vietnam by pulling
out of Laos.
Our efforts in Vietnam
have been infinitely more
costly than they should
have been. But they have
not been in vain. We have
kept 15 million people
free from Communist rule.
We have kept hundreds of
thousands from being
slaughtered out of reprisal,
or because they might
resist a communist
takeover. We have made it
possible for Indonesia, the
fifth largest nation in the
world, to overthrow the
three million members of
the Chinese Communist
party there, as the
Indonesians attest.
We have prevented
Hanoi and Peking from
taking over Thailand,
Cambodia, Malaysia,
South Korea, Singapore
and other Asian states that
admittedly would have
had to succumb to Hanoi
and Peking if we had made
it known that we were
abandoning our
commitments by scuttling
Vietnam. Had we
abandoned Vietnam we
would have encouraged
Peking to move in and
take over India, Burma,
Taiwan, the Philippines,
and eventually Japan.
The great unanswered
question when the doves
say we should “pull out of
there” is: Pull out of
where?
GRANTED WE HAVE
MADE colossal blunders in
our Vietnam policy.
Granted that it was an
incredible mistake to think
that the enemy would quit
if’we did not threaten him,
that he would somehow
reciprocate if we showed
great restraint, that he
would either give up easily
on the battlefield or at the
talks in Paris.
Granted we failed to
see that the enemy is not
Hanoi but Moscow and
Peking, that without them
Ho Chi Minh would have
spent his life as an
unknown revolutionary
•tramp, that without them
the war could not last six
weeks.
Still, the South is free
and we have halted Red
expansion in that half of
the world. We could have
done much worse. None of
Asia has been lost to
communism since the
Geneva Treaty in 1954
which divided Vietnam.
Everyone wants peace,
Con: The War Is Unjust
nuclear warfare. But this is
not a nuclear war, and I
feel that the Just War
theory can be of service in
enlightening conscience as
to the morality of this
war.
THE THEORY is that
no nation may participate
in a war unless (1) it has a
just cause and an upright
intention, (2) has made a
formal declaration of war,
(3) has exhausted all
peaceful means to avoid
the conflict, (4) that it
wages the war according to
rules of natural and
international law, and (5)
that it has a reasonable
expectation that the
benefits accruing from the
war will outweigh the evils
it will produce.
I would like to
concentrate special
attention on this last
condition: Will the good
results outweigh the evil?
What good purpose did we
hope to achieve by
intervening in this war?
The State Department
has said many times in
recent years that our
purpose in becoming
involved was to insure free
elections for the
Vietnamese. Our
government has abjured
any notion that we sent
troops to Vietnaih to stop
the Vietnamese from
becoming communists.
President Nixon has
clearly restated our goal as
‘‘free elections in
Vietnam.” He said at the
United Nations last
summer: “What is
important is what the
people of Soutii Vietnam
want for South Vietnam.
To secure this right and to
secure this principle is our
one limited and
fundamental objective.”
That was a far cry from an
all-too-prevalent notion
that our purpose in
Vietnam was to stop
communism. The
President made it
crystal-clear that the
Vietnamese may choose a
communist regime if they
want it: we will not stop
them.
HElfe THEN is the big
question: Is there a valid
proportion between this
benefit, (a free vote at the
ballot box) and the
incredible death and
devastation we have
brought to all of Vietnam,
North and South?
The mightiest military
power on earth has
dropped far more bombs
on tiny Vietnam than we
dropped on Nazi Germany
during World War II. We
have laid waste whole
countrysides, disrupted
family life, killed more
than a million civilians,
left about five million
refugees homeless.
We speak of the heavy
price we have paid in,
American lives and it is a
heavy price (45,000 dead)
but the cost to the
Vietnamese on both sides
has been 20 times as great
in military casualities, not
to mention the agonies of
the aged, the sick, the
orphans.
Certainly a free vote for
the corrupt Thieu regime
in exchange for all these
thousands of deaths is a
very bad bargain.
Another important
condition of the Just War
theory is that the nation
waging the war must have
a just cause. Catholic
theologians are agreed that
the only possible
justification for war today
is defense against unjust
aggression. In the Korean
War the enemy unjustly
transgressed a recognized
international boundary
line.
In South Vietnam,
however, the situation was
radically different. There
was no boundary line
between North and South
Vietnam because it was all
one country. The Geneva
accords in 1954 provided
for a temporary military
line to be drawn at the
17th parallel. The
communists promised to
stay behind this line
pending the outcome of
the free elections to be .
held in 1956.
Diem, from his palace
at Saigon, refused to allow
these elections, discontent
developed and eventually
peasants in South Vietnam
rose up in rebellion against
him. (President
Eisenhower in his memoirs
said that the communists
would have won the
elections had they been
held.)
America entered the
war in 1961. What began
as a clash between a
motley crew of peasants
and the Diem regime
developed into a people’s
revolution controlled by
communists and a military
regime controlled by
Americans. Hanoi helped
the National Liberation
Front with aid for the
Front which many
Americans claimed was
equivalent to an invasion
from the north.
'j There are other
Americans, however, who
contend that our
intervention was not a
defense against unjust
aggression at all but a
meddling in a civil war in
South Vietnam between
the NLF and the Diem
regime. If it was a civil
war, we had no right to
intervene. We remember
how violently we reacted
when the Soviets
intervened in the 1956
Hungarian rebellion.
IF OUR INTERVENT
ION was not a case of
helping a victim of unjust
aggression but a meddling
in a war that was not our
business, we may have
I obstructed national
independence and social
progress by opposing the
peasants’ rebellion. True,
the National Liberation
Front is Marxist-oriented
as are many new regimes
we are supporting in the
developing countries, but
we must remember that
these new regimes are not
anxious to exchange their
old colonial tyrants for a
but we want a lasting
peace, a peace that
protects free countries and
discourages aggression.
What should we do?
\
Politically, the die is
cast. Washington has
decided to withdraw
gradually, rather than
force the enemy to
withdraw. The only thing
that can be done is let our
allies do what we should
have done long ago.
The government in
Saigon must be given more
authority, to match the
added responsibility we
are placing on its
shoulders. Saigon must be
allowed to use troops,
planes, and pilots from
Taiwan, something we
have never permitted it to
do. Saigon must be
allowed to send troops
into Laos to prevent the
infiltration. It must be
allowed to destroy the
guerrilla bases in Laos,
Cambodia and North
Vietnam.
We must not interfere
with the government of
South Vietnam by forcing
it to have a communist
coalition. We must not
force it to put faith in any.,
agreement with the
communists. We must give
South Vietnam the
freedom to do whatever
must be done to keep its
people free.
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communist tyranny.
The Vietnamese, both
North and South, are rabid
nationalists. For eenturies
they have loathed the
Chinese as a national
tradition: as far as we
know, Ho Chi Minh gladly
accepted aid from China
but did not permit a single
Chinese fighting-soldier on
Vietnamese soil.
The Vietnamese have
driven out the Japanese,
they have driven out the
French and are now
striving to drive out the
Americans. Is it reasonable
to think that after 30
bloody years of fighting
foreigners, they will
suddenly capitulate to
Moscow or Peking?
Space limitations will
not allow for a detailed
application of the
remaining conditions of
the Just War theory but
they bear close study.
Has U. S. policy been
motivated by “free
elections” or national
prestige? Our Government
has not made any formal
declaration of war: can the
Tonkin-Bay resolution be
deemed a “moral
equivalent” to such a
declaration? Did the U.S.
exhaust all the
peacemaking resources of
the U.N. before getting
involved? Has the U. S.
lived up to natural law
(especially with regard to
bombing of civilians) and
to international treaties we
have signed (e.g. in regard
to treatment of
prisioners.)?
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