Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 4 — The Georgia Bulletin, December 7,1972
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Most Rev. Thomas A. Donnellan - Publisher
Rev. James J. Maciejewski - Editor
Michael Motes - Editorial Assistant
Marie Mulvenna - Editorial Assistant
Business Office
756 West Peachtree, N.W.
Atlanta, Georgia 30308
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Send all editorial correspondence to: THE GEORGIA BULLETIN
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Published weekly except the second and last weens
in June, July and August and the last week in December
at 202 E. Sixth St., Waynesboro, Ga. 30830
The opinions contained in these editorial columns
the free expressions of free editors in a free Catholic press.
Non-Consuming Christmas
(EDITOR’S NOTE: We offer this week a
challenging guest editorial on a radical new way to
celebrate Christmas.)
No other season in the American year
focuses on material consumption the
way Christmas does. What would a
non-consuming Christmas be like?
The idea was recently set forth in a
provocative essay written by the staff of
the Capuchin Peace and Justice Office in
Milwaukee.
“In 1972, in the face of world
poverty, in the face of gigantic nuclear
arms power, in the face of material
consumption, Christmas offers an
opportunity for Christians to respond to
this holy day in a fresh and prophetic
way. American Christians can celebrate a
non-consuming Christmas. They can
choose to stop all the buying of
non-essential things as long as their
brothers and sisters around the country
and world cannot even possess the bare
essentials for living. They can choose to
return to the first Christmas spirit and
give without any expectation of return.
They can ask their friends and relatives
to take the money they would have
spent on them and together give to those
who possess nothing.”
What the essay suggests is that a better
celebration of Christmas may mean that
instead of giving gifts to one another, we
give gifts with one another to those who
cannot return to us in any reciprocal,
material way.
Recapturing the spirit of the first
Christmas, such a thought reflects that
the Father’s gift to us was not so much a
reciprocal gift-giving, as it was a giving to
those who could not return a gift.
The proposal is not meant to
condemn various traditional customs and
ways of celebrating Christmas. Rather it
suggests to us that “by not sharing
superflous gifts with friends and
relatives, by inviting our friends to give
the essentials of life with us to those in
need, we DO Christianity and Christmas
in a more pure and full way.”
In the process materalistic values are
challenged and a radical kind of witness
is offered, as Christians stand on “the
system’s fringe, behaving in a new way,
declaring Christmas, a world holy day.”
- Sister Janet Valente, GNSH
How to Celebrate
(EDITOR’S NOTE: And where do we find the
needy and poor who can use our help this Christmas?
Another guest editorial offers suggestions.)
A fine trio of Christmas programs,
meriting our support and enthusiastic
response, are those sponsored this year
by the Christian Council of Metropolitan
Atlanta, Inc. The programs, all rather
unique, will help bring the warmth and
joy of the season to hundreds of
low-income families who presently face a
bleak Christmas indeed.
The “Friends for Christmas” project
of the Christian Emergency Help Center
of the Council provides a lengthy list of
names and addresses of families whose
need for help has been well verified.
Anyone wishing to share the happiness
of the season with those who see little
happiness may personally take Christmas
gifts and blessings to a family by calling
523-6202. Or one may send a check,
marked “Friends for Christmas,”
thereby providing food, gifts or toys for
struggling families. The Council’s address
is 167 Walton Street, N.W., Atlanta
30303.
A second project is called
“Continuous Christmas” and is a rather
special and noteworthy idea, providing
help with basic neceslities throughout
the year: the utility bill in February, the
rent in August, etc.
Still another avenue of sharing
Christmas is the Council’s “Coordinating
Christmas Giving,” a cooperative project
with Volunteer Atlanta. Through the
program, anyone wishing to provide a
party for adults or children, sing carols,
furnish gifts etc. has merely to call the
Council for the name of a group needing
such help. There are many of them.
Every response will be a generous gift of
love.
The warmth and generosity, so openly
expressed at Christmas, sometimes has a
way of fading in succeeding weeks and
months. The Birth of Christ is a happy
occasion and a sustaining one that
should carry us for many, many days
and weeks. We can share this beautiful
season with many others and in many
ways, bringing the true message of
Christmas to all men. ......
- Mane Mulvenna
Happiness Not
To Be Found in Fads
Dr. Armand DiFrancesco
Phineas Taylor Barnum, the American
showman, is noted for two memorable sayings:
“Every cloud has a silver lining” and “There’s a
sucker born every minute.”
I don’t like to put it that crudely but the
majority of people have problems, needs,
anxieties, naiveness and suggestibility. Ever
since the fiasco of the Garden of Eden, there
have always been charlatans, cheaters and
smooth-talking salesmen who have played upon
and exploited the natural weaknesses of man
for their benefit although the sad part is that
some of these “smooth talkers” ai, misguided
doctors, psychologists, “pseudo-scientific”
writers and many others of their ilk.
While their primary unconscious or conscious
motive is money (as always), they tout their
“product” to promise ecstacy, joy, fulfillment,
virility, longevity, a fantastic memory and a
cure for every ill that besets mankind.
I’m personally a sucker for crabgrass killers
and lush lawn ads (alas, alas). However, faddists
are another thing because some fads can be
dangerous and create more problems. It’s bad
enough losing money but getting a bonus of a
few more hangups is pathetic, if not downright
criminal and immoral.
Take sex, for instance, and you’ve got a
classic example. Everybody is naturally
interested and our movies, bookstands and
periodicals are loaded with books, articles and
subject matter on every aspect, including the
bizarre and perverse. Some of these books teach
some accurate facts but most teach untruths,
being unrealistic, inaccurate and focusing on
the mechanical.
It goes without saying that pornography is
harmful psychologically and to society. The
real reason many buy sex books is for
stimulation of the body rather than
illumination of the mind. Sex is a
billions-of-dollars selling force and motivation
in the advertising of any product.
Similar attitudes are found among the food
faddists. I find that a lot of people eat anything
and everything until their middle years when
they find themselves saying: “Well, maybe next
week I’ll feel better.” Concern about advancing
age, losing virility, beauty, zest, etc., drives
these individuals to eating health foods,
soybean nuts and going on a Vitamin E kick.
The last 20 years have seen a boom in
psychological fads. T-group, sensitivity-training
(used to be called brainwashing), encounter
groups, nude therapy, marathon therapy, and
many others. Then there are the
how- to-be-happy-better-adj usted-stronger-mind
courses of every variety offered everywhere for
a couple of hundred bucks in some hotel. You
see, there have always been unhappy,
frustrated, lonely, bored individuals and people
who feel inferior, lack-confidence, etc.
It’s an Argument,
But Not Theology
Rev. Andrew M. Greeley
Slam Door
On Women?
Joseph A. Breig
A woman phoned to say that a couple of her
women friends were so mad they were
threatening to stomp right out of the Church,
because they thought Pope Paul had slammed
the door on the Christian equality of women.
They thought so because they had read it in a
newspaper or heard it on a newscast.
But the Holy Father had done nothing of the
kind. He had merely remarked, in a brief
document on liturgical ministries, that “in
accordance with the venerable tradition of the
Church,” formal installation in the offices of
acolyte and lector was reserved to men. Not the
offices - just formal installation in them. And
he didn’t say forever.
Why, then, didn’t Pope Paul say something
like “for the time being?” I think the answer is
that he was afraid the communications media
would leap to the conclusion that he was saying
that women soon would be ordained - that he
was deciding the question before the
theological studies of it had matured.
Reports from Rome indicate that. Paul VI has
yielded to the pressure of conservative cardinals
(a not infrequent response) and decided against
expanding the College of Electors who choose
the Pope. The reason given, according to the
press, is “theological:” The Pope is Bishop of
Rome, and the Bishop of Rome should be
chosen by parish priests of Rome.
The argument would be fair enough under
two sets of circumstances: (1) If the Pope were
only the Bshop of Rome and did not exercise
worldwide administrative control in the
Church; and (2) if the cardinals were really/
parish priests of Rome in anything but the
thinnest legal fiction.
But in the present state of Church structure,
the Pope is not merely the Bishop of Rome, not
merely the presiding bishop of the Catholic
Church; he also exercises direct and immense
control over what goes on in every parish in the
world. To pretend that his election is merely a
concern of the clergy of Rome is to overlook
the worldwide administrative power of the
papacy.
On the other hand, it is absurd to argue that
the cardinals really are the parish clergy of
Rome. If the Pope is essentially the Bishop of
Rome and if the theological right to elect him
resides in the clergy of the diocese of Rome,
then he should be chosen by those who are in
fact and not in fancy the clergy of Rome. As it
is now, the electors represent neither the parish
priests of Rome nor the Catholic people of the
world; they represent, rather, the
self-perpetuating power structure that runs the
Church.
Whether this power structure is doing a good
or a bad job may be a matter for differences of
opinion; whether it ought to stay in power or
not may also be subject to debate. But it is less
than honest to contend that the power
structure represents the interests and the
concerns and the theological rights of the
priests and people of the city of Rome.
Logically there are two choices. If the Pope
is going to be the administrative head as well as
the spiritual leader of the whole Church, then
the whole Church should participate in his
selection - in line with the canonical dicta,
“QUI PRAEFUTURUS EST OMNIBUS, AB
OMNIBUS ELIGETUR” (He who presides over
all should be chosen by all) and “QUOD
OMNES TANGET, AB OMNIBUS
DECIDETUR” (What affects all should be
decided by all). If, on the other hand, he is to
administer only Rome and act as presiding
Bishop and religious and spiritual leader for the
rest of the world, his selection might well be
left to those who are involved in the day-to-day
ministry of the people of Rome. There is no
theological or historical reason against the latter
alternative. Indeed, worldwide papal
administration is a recent phenomenon; if it
does flow from the theological essence of the
papacy, then that theological essence was
ignored for the first twelve hundred years of
Christianity.
What makes the “theological” argument
against expansion of the papal electors so ironic
is the assertion that theologically the right to
elect the Bishop of Rome belongs to the clergy
of Rome. One can make a good historical case
for the argument.
But the case can be made with equal validity
for all dioceses. Indeed, the argument that the
Bishop of Rome should be elected by his own
diocese is merely a conclusion from the larger
historical, canonical, and perhaps theological
proposition that the right to elect a bishop -
any bishop - belongs in the diocese over which
he is to preside.
The conservative cardinals have pulled
another fast one. They have resurrected an
ancient canonical principle to justify the
continuation of their own power. They have
blithely applied the principle to the Diocese of
Rome and ignored the fact that if it applies to
one diocese it should legitimately apply to all.
And there’s not a chance of that happening.
Me
swers
s it poss
s, it is
/ to God?
"■ and indeed necessary, but first some
The Christian shares in the very life of God. From the very moment when this life with
God becomes conscious, there is prayer. Prayer is the elevation of a soul towards God.
One could also say that prayer is man’s consciousness of what he is and what he lives in
the life of Grace. This is true prayer, completely God-centered, the very overflow of the
Divine Life within us: the child of God in union with his Father and Lord. In this sense,
praying is something simple, natural. But too many Christians do not believe that they are
called to nourish their God-Life. They don’t realize that to live as a Christian implies
believing, loving, hoping in God. To them anything of this type seems “out of bounds”,
superfluous or, at any rate, restricted by the very nature of things to contemplatives.
From that point it is only one step to the opinion that prayer to God is useless. When
they rediscover the true sense of Christian life and holiness, the essential will be
accomplished; prayer to God will no longer seem useless and without meaning.
The matter, the stuff from which prayer centered on God is made is faith, love, hope.
Withot doubt, when we pray we recognize the sovereign rule of God over us. We render
Him justice for His supreme dominion. But its “matter” is concerned with God. I pray
when I say “My God, I love You or, at least, I want to love You as well and as perfectly
as I should” or “Lord Jesus I believe in You, I have faith in You, I commit myself to You
as much as my weakness permits, I place my confidence in You and I trust in You as my
firm support” or again “Lord, I await Your coming, despite all the appearances which are
against me. I want to come closer to You despite all the obstacles which still exist. I
desire Your glory and Your reign. I ask for Your help, I hope in You”. To say these
things under a thousand and one forms, to repeat them is to create a state of soul, to
nourish our life which we share with God and to realize one aspect of our condition as
Christians. In short, although it is a moral virtue, religion can be deeply theological.
/ one
spiritual and in his theological roots, prayer can be many in
tion. Certain prayers are vibrant with a dramatic emotion. Such is
f the sinner to his Savior “Out of the depths I have cried to vou. O my Lord!”
idigal son, “Father, I have sinned against Thee.” The Christian, even in the
: sin, ought to continue to pray, such a one perhaps more than the others,
that one has been unfaithful in one or two of the commandments does not give
ight to neglect others! It is a grave error to cease to pray because one is not in
of grace. This is both a theological and a practical error. The Scriptures in a
fashion underline the value of calls of distress hurled by the sinner to his
Ve must remember that each day this Father climbs to the highest point in the
> see if His son is not coming back. Beside theological prayer, the call of the
'pears especially dear to the Lord. There is more joy in Heaven over one sinner
5 penance than for a hundred just who need no penance.
Why is the pope gun-shy about the media?
Well, consider what an incredible mess they
made of the reporting of the reform of the
Church calendar - a reform made to center
devotion more upon Christ. And recall what
happened in 1964 when Pope Paul announced
appointment of a commission to put before
him all the latest arguments for birth control.
What happened was that the media jumped
seven leagues to the conclusion that the
Church’s teaching on contraception was about
to be changed; and millions were badly misled,
including not a few priests.
The media leaped because journalists
covering the Vatican had never done their
homework; and never studied the 20-century
history of the teaching, not even the recent
teaching of Pius XI, Pius XII, or John XXIII
and the Second Vatican Council. The
journalists did not even realize that the teaching
concerns divine law, not Church law.
So the media ran wild. Pope Paul tried to
save the situation. He issued a grave warning
that the Church’s teaching authority was not in
a state of doubt, but merely in “a moment of
reflection concerning matters put before it as
worthy of the most attentive consideration.”
But the damage was done; and when the
pope issued his encyclical “Humane Vitae,”
reaffirming the moral law, many people felt
betrayed.
Therefore Pope Paul, having learned a bitter
lesson about the press and radio and TV, is now
a very cautious man. He merely mentioned in
passing that formal installation as acolyte or
lector is reserved to men as has traditionally
been the case; but again the media, thirsty for
sensational headlines, accused him of slamming
the door on women.
I will concede that there is room for
improvement in the Vatican’s handling of news.
But this is a two-way street. Journalists at the
Vatican should provide themselves with some
background knowledge of things Catholic.
After all, editors don’t send, to cover football,
men who don’t know a punt from a pass. And
further, the Vatican journalists should recite 10
times a day the motto of the old International
News Service: “Get it first - but first get it
right.”
Pointers
For Parents
Rev. Joseph Dean
As long as a child is under the parents’ eye he
has good habits, he goes to church, he does
what he’s told. But as soon as he is away from
home and parents, he will do what is right, only
if he has formed basic convictions, based on the
real values in life, and on a moral code that he
sees makes sense to him.
For instance, he needs to be taught a high
ideal for marriage, that sex is sacred, and holy,
and a gift of God, a sharing with husband and
wife in the creation of new human life. He
should be shown that the period of courtship is
a preparation for the married state, that the
best wedding gift he, or she, can give the
marriage partner is a life of virtue, a pure and
unsullied body, a character of self control. If he
can be trusted with his companions of the
opposite sex before marriage, then he can trust
himself after marriage.
Marriage should be presented, not as it is
portrayed in the amusement world, as merely a
sexual union, but it should be presented as a
composite union, a union of mind, of heart and
will, a union of 2 persons with the same basic
convictions on life and morality, a harmony of
temperament and character, a union of
individuals with mutual interests and
sympathies, a union of people whose emotions
and feelings at least balance off.
These types of union are the ones to be
stressed in time of courtship, for they will last
throughout the marriage, long after the physical
attraction wears off at the end of the
honeymoon period.
If a young person is convinced of these
truths from early teens, then he will use good
judgement on what he does with his eyes, ears,
speech, companions and free time, every day.
He will see clearly why he should have a
variety of friends, and not to be tied down to
going steady until he is out of high school. He
will see the reasons why his parents show their
love by their concern. He will in turn become a
responsible parent with responsible,
appreciative children.
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