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PAGE 4 — The Georgia Bulletin, December 24, 1970
taemmmsx. or atlanta itim Georgia's it northeiix oh vni*
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The Village’s Present
A favorite saying this time of year by
beleagured parents, trying to find some
justification for their efforts, is that
Christmas is for children.
This is a grown-up attempt to keep
from being sentimental, but it seldom
works.
Christmas is for everybody and all
should be able to share in its joys and
pleasures.
dependent children, has its collection
taken up in parishes on Christmas Day.
For after we have run our bodies and
pocketbooks ragged providing for our
own children, we should make one final
effort to provide for the dependents of
Christ’s family of man.
“Suffer the little children to come
unto me, and forbid them not; for of such
is the kingdom of God.” (Mark 10:14).
It is appropriate that the Village of St.
Joseph, the Archdiocesan home for
Give the Village kids their present on
Christmas Day.
Carter Fights Prejudice
Gov.—elect Jimmy Carter is to be
commended for carrying out a campaign
promise to place blacks on state boards
and commissions, particularly those
which deal extensively with Negroes.
His first such appointment, Dr.
Thomas Jenkins to the State Pardons and
Paroles Board, was an excellent choice.
Carter said he didn’t pick Dr. Jenkins
because he was black, but because “He’s
the best qualified man in Georgia for the
job.”
This is as it should be.
Negroes should be neither picked nor
rejected for positions because of their
race.
But it stands to reason that, of all the
thousands of jobs in state government,
more would be held by blacks if a fair
system of recruitment existed.
Not only should all state jobs be open
to Negroes,, but the state merit system
should actively seek blacks by sending
recruiting teams onto predominantly
Negro campuses and such.
Dr. Jenkins took a $10,000-a-year pay
cut to take the pardons and paroles
position, no doubt feeling that long-term
benefits to his race would make the
sacrifice worthwhile.
He probably can return to his position
at Georgia State University in four years
and take up the vice presidency reins
again.
We hope that the governor-elect
continues the pattern he has set
concerning appointments.
He has pledged to try to wipe out
prejudice in state government and we
hope and pray that he is successful.
THE NINTY-SECOND CONGRESS
Washington Letter
BY BURKE WALSH
WASHINGTON (NC) - The 92nd Congress,
convening here in the first days of 1971, will be
interesting to watch. It may turn out to be
historic.
Virtually everything of importance done by
the new Congress will be weighed for its impact
on the 1972 elections. This aspect of
Congress-watching seems to be setting in earlier
than usual. This will bring into sharper focus the
differences - policywise and otherwise -
between the Nixon Administration and the
Senate and House of Representatives. President
Nixon will be making his stretch run to vindicate
his administration and to win a second term. In
the Senate, on the Democratic side, there are six
or eight senators whom observers feel are already
candidates for the presidency. And, as one
veteran political observer said, in times like these
virtually every member of the Senate is a
presidential possibility, everything depending on
where and when “the lightning strikes.”
The Democrats have a numerical advantage in
both the Senate and the House, but some
Republicans, including the President, are hopeful
that the “ideological balance” may be more
favorable to their legislative proposals, because
some lawmakers ran as. “Independents” in the
last election, and not a few ignored party lines in
their voting before the November election recess.
Detracting from this hope is the report that Sen.
Harry F. Byrd, Jr., of Virginia, perhaps the most
celebrated “Independent” in the late elections,
has told the leadership in the Senate that he will
ccontinue as a Democrat. 1
This is the first Congress to assemble since
passage of the Legislative Reorganization Act of
1970. Naturally, the practical effects of this Act
remain to be seen. However, it does not affect the
longstanding custom of assigning committee
chairmanships on the basis of seniority. It does
prohibit a senator from holding places on two of
the more important committees at the same
time. But, this prohibition applies to new
senators, not present members. It will not have
much immediate effect. Sen. Byrd has seats on
both the Finance and Armed Services
committees, both prestigious. However, he is not
a new senator and would not be affected by the
1970 Act in this respect. But there are some who
would punish him for turning his back on the
Democratic organization last November. As of
now, nothing seems likely to come of this
sentiment.
The Congress comes together just after the
1970 Census has shown the population of the
U.S. to be more than 204.7 million, of whom
more than 1.5 million are Americans overseas
with the armed forces or on business. As a result
of population shifts, along with the growth, nine
states will lose 11 seats in the House beginning
with the 1972 elections, and five other states will
gain them. Congressmen from these 14 states can
be expected to be particularly attentive to home
sentiment during the next two years, because of
the redistricting that must take place.
The House is limited to 435 members, a figure
set in 1912. There have been moves from time to
time to increase the number, but these have been
beaten back handily. On the other hand, there
have been proposals to decrease the number. The
House, some say, is already too unwieldy. The
last attempt to increase the size of the House was
made in 1962. It turned into a shouting match,
and was put aside permanently.
Only custom retains the practice of assigning
committee chairmanships on the basis of
seniority. There have been persistent attempts to
change this practice, but they have been
defeated, usually by the argument that*“there is
no substitute for experience.”'
But despite whatever readjustments Congress
may have to make, and notwithstanding the
hundreds and even thousands of bills that will be
poured into the legislative hoppers in a matter of
days, the lawmakers are expected to be acutely
attentive to what they hear from their home
constituencies, more so than to party lines on
some issues. The war in Vietnam and the nation’s
economic plight will take precedence over all
matters now in evidence, with the rise of
unemployment (7.5 million persons cut of work)
and increasing inflation shoving even the war
issue slightly to the side.
Few persons, indeed, are willing to believe
that the Vietnam war will not be ended by 1972,
and that increase in joblessness and prices will
not be halted and turned around in the next two
years. But how?
How the 92nd Congress deals with the'se two
issues will determine the distinctive
place-favorable or unfavorable--it will have in
history.
Peace Is Here
THIS IS CHRISTMAS
It Seems To Me
Joseph Breig
This is the. time, ofxyear
when theology, which
certainly has its great uses,
seems unnecessary, not to say
mere fussy make-work. In the
Christmas season we are
drawn away from the
complexities about God-the
arguments and the
hair-splittings-and find
ourselves
"Y heart-stopping
Y! j T directness and
Now we
meet God not
as the Omnipotent and
All-Wise One who made us-
from nothingness and keeps
us in existence, but in the
person of a baby born
homeless in a cave, under the
earth, and destined in
maqhood for a terrible but
glorious death on a hill, above
the earth.
Thinking upon this, we
begin to understand \vhat
Jesus Christ meant when he
said, “Blessed is he who is not
scandalized in me,” and what
he meant too when he said
that unless we become as
little children we cannot
enter into the kingdom of
Heaven.
The goodness of God, if
we face it squarely, is .indeed
nearly scandalous, and has
scandalized a great many
people. But a child is not
scandalized by goodness but
only by wickedness; only by
the absence of goodness,
kindness, love. In the
presence of unkindness, what
We see in the eyes of a child is-
incredulity.
The child has no
difficulty/ however, in
accepting, in embracing, the
fact that God'is so good that
suffering and sorrow and
death are part of his life, part
of his infinite happiness. And
the adult who is like a child
in trust in God is not shocked
by the shattering statement
of that great mystic, St. Paul,
that God emptied himself to
enter into our nature and
become one of us.
This is God’s greatest
glory--his emptying of
himself. He is all-powerful
but made himself helpless; he
is all-wise but made himself
ignorant; he created all things
and possesses all things but
made himself destitute; he is
the Creator but made himself
a creature; in his divine
nature he cannot suffer but
he entered into our nature to
suffer excruciatingly in body
and spirit; he is Life Itself and
the author of life but he
became one of Vs to die in
agony.
The..: “God -is . dead”
theologians, ' who are no
longer in vogue, meant any
number of things with which
I am unquainted. But they nev
er mentioned the one
overpowering, heartbreaking
sense in which their words
were true: God truly is dead.
All that God is and does is in
one timeless act; in him
nothing is past and nothing
future, it is all present, all the
Eternal Now. And so our
living God is also our dead
God. Our God who lives in
light beyond light lives also
inthedarkness of Calvary. Our
God who possesses glory,
before which the angels jjow-
to cry Holy, Holy Holy-this
is darkness of Calvary. Our
God who possesses everything
is poorer than the most
destitute among us. And this
his greatest glory, before
which the angels bow to cry
Holy, Holy, Holy - this is
accomplished in our nature. It
is for this, as well as for our
own eventual glory in
Heaven, that we the human
family were created. And for
our patience in suffering and
dying with God, he embraces
us, and prepares for us joys
which the mind of man
cannot on this earth imagine.
He embraces us-and in the
child of Bethlehem we
embrace him. This is
Christmas.
The Yardstick
By
Msgr. George G. Higgins
Director, Division of Urban Life, U.S.C.C.
WHEN THE OPPRESSED UNITE ...
In the last release of this column I felt obliged
to defend the good name of Msgr. Geno Baroni of
the USCC Task Force (and of others.who share
his concern about the problems facing ethnic
working class Americans) against the charge of
copping out on the issue of white racism in this
country. I said, among other things, that Baroni
need not apologize to anyone, white or black, for
his record in the area of race relations and
pointed out, in addition, that he is working night
and day to put together viable coalitions between
black and ethnic blue collar workers-coalitions
which, hopefully, will help to bridge the
potentially dangerous gap that now divides them
in so many communities throughout the United
States.
Msgr. Baroni knows better than most of us
how difficult it will be to achieve this objective.
He knows that there is little hope of solving the
so-called race problem in this country unless and
until blacks and urban whites learn to pool their
resources in a joint effort to solve their commoti
problems. Experience has also convinced him
that this will never happen, however, until the
ethnics themselves become more conscious of
their own identity and more convinced of their
own ability to reform the system and get off the
treadmill on which they are now marking time.
In this respect, Msgr. Baroni would
undoubtedly agree with Charles Reich, Professor
of Law at Yale University, when he says in his
new book, “The Greening of America,” that “the
real question, for the (white) worker just as for
the black man, is ‘Who am I? What sort of culture
should I have, what is my heritage, where should
my pride be?’ ”
“Redemption,” Professor Reich continues,
“might mean, among other things, a search for
one’s origins, background and uniqueness. One
possible beginning might be a search for one’s
ethnic identity, the course pursued by the
militant blacks. Most whites, when they came to
this country, lost their ethnic identity in the
melting pot. White youth, in searching for a
culture of their own, have in large measure
looked to black culture as a model; the whites
started with none of their own. But white people
have lost traditions too; folk music, arts and
crafts, myths and legends, history, - cooking. To
rediscover this is to rediscover some of one’s
sources.”
Professor Reich doesn’t think-and neither
does Msgr. Baroni-that middle and lower middle
class white ethnics are necessarily an ultra
conservative, much less a reactionary, force in
the United States. They could, of course, become
just that, and Governor George Wallace, for one,
is desperately hoping that they will. For his own
part, however, Professor Reich is convinced that
when white ethnics develop a greater sense of
their own identity and discover what he refers to
as their “servitude,” we are likely to see “a real
explosion in America. Black rage, black pride,
black militance, give us some idea of what it will
be like. But with whites, the self-deception has
been greater, and perhaps that will make the
truth all the more infuriating. Students are
beginning to discover their servitude, and are
angry, but objectively speaking the servitude of
students is not very great. . .Workers are far
behind the students and the blacks in awarenss,
but when’that awareness finally comes, they will
repossess their intellects, their selves, and their
manhood.”
When ethnics like Msgr. Baroni say things like
that, many white liberals, as previously
indicated, accuse then of copping out on the
issue of white racism. Curiously enough,
however, I haven’t noticed any of them making
this same accusation against Professor Reich
despite the fact that his Ivy League credentials as
an activist in the area of race relations and his
personal knowledge of the ethnic problem are
much less impressive than Baroni’s.
Be that as it may, I am sure that Professor
Reich was favorably impressed—even if some
liberals and some black militants were not-by
Baroni’s success in helping to put together, just a
few weeks ago, what would appear to be a viable
working class pressure group, the Calument
Community Congress, in Gary, Indiana.
The CCC, which brings together into one
umbrella organization, approximately 150
community organizations of widely different
social and political coloration, has adopted a
10-point action program to combat pollution
and political corruption, seek tax reform and
find open space for people in a county crowded
by giant steel mills. As Haynes Johnson pointed
out in a recent story on CCC in the Washington
Post, “The Congress. . .thus symbolizes an
attempt- to demonstrate that the white ethnic
American can be enlisted in a campaign to create
change at a local level and through an appeal
based not of fear, nor prejudice, but on a positive
political program.”
There are undoubtedly some who will say that
the establishment of the CCC in Gary is simply
one more indication that white ethnics are
concerned only about their own problems and
are running away from the issue of white racism.
Bill Kovach of the-New York Times reports,
however, that local black leaders in Gary do not
share this opinion. The meeting at which CCC
was organized, Mr. Kovach wrote in the Dec. 7
issue of the Times, “was closely watched by
black organizers who are pulling together a
parallel orgnization in their community in the
city of Gary, which has an 80% black population.
As Obadiah Simms, the central black organizer,
watched the issues develop in the marathon CCC
convention, he expressed optimism that the
organizations would eventually unite “because
once they start working they’ll begin to smoke
out common enemies.”
Msgr. Baroni can be counted upon to do
everything within his own power to put together
such a black-ethnic coalition throughout the
United States. He and his associates may or may
not succeed in their efforts, but I, for one, am
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