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Play Ball
Spring is not the time when a
young man’s fancy turns to love.
That’s just talk and poetic license.
Spring is the time when a young
man’s fancy turns to baseball, that
game of Mudsville that gives hope
after winter and rejuvenation after
hibernation.
Baseball is the country’s
cherished pasttime. No other sport
draws the President out of the
White House to open the season,
sells as much popcorn or is quite
as healthy for the American Beer
Industry. It is a sport designed
especially to ease us into summer.
It has that relaxing quality. Sitting
in the stands waiting for the next
pitch gives you time to scan the
horizon of your life, think about
changing your job or the unkept
promises of our most recent
President.
Of course, Ole Casey’s sport
has undergone all the creeky
growth pains of other pasttimes. It
is not just a stick and ball game
anymore. It has entered the arena
of Superdom. It has its
superstars, its superdomes and its
super-prices. If the Roses and the
Messerschmidts are to pocket the
millions brashly demanded then
that relaxing afternoon or evening
at the Old Ball Park has a figure
on it that can sometimes be
resisted. Especially so, if the
hometown super-stars perpetuate
their annual slump.
Baseball is painfully partisan. It
is impossible not to take sides. It’s
okay to admire the strong arm or
the long ball slugger, come to
town, but they are lost on any
hazy afternoon as you pine for the
homeside.
You are with that hopeful
pitcher as he climbs the mound
and uselessly kicks his runway
into submission. The tobacco rolls
around the back of his tongue and
emerges like Niagara. He rears
back (always they rear?) and fires.
“Ball.” A silly call. You join the
catcher in his death look at the
umpire. A touch of rosin and
we’re ready: A knuckler
“Strike.” That’s better. You can
feel it, the fast ball is next. “Ball.”
The catcher is on his feet. If looks
could kill the Ump would be on
his way to Patterson’s. Ball, my
foot.
The see-saw of emotions goes
on all afternoon as the stands
make infallible judgements and
allow resentments to grow against
everyone, the Umpire not the
least. In the meantime, it’s like a
beehive around you. If you are
not passing cokes, you’re part of
the chain relaying the money. The
guy in front is keeping score like it
was tax deadline time. And behind
a transistor is blaring the
commercial between the innings.
Somehow' it all comes together
melodically like words and music.
Yes sir, this is the Old Ball Park.
This is Spring. This is living.
Play Ball!!
Inside This Issue:
- A Grandfather Is Ordained
-- Spring Comes To
TOCCOHART
- Text Of Papal Easter
Message
- Father Morrow Meets Mrs.
Bunny Rabbit
A CAPACITY CROWD LEAVES THE CATHEDRAL of Christ the
King following Easter Sunday Services.
——-——
Easter At The Cathedral
PHOTOS BY BARBARA GERVAIS
■
■
ARCHBISHOP DONNELLAN led the congregation in the Renewal of
Baptismal Vows during the Easter Liturgy.
THE LIGHTING OF THE NEW FIRE during the Easter Vigil ~ Father
Jerry Hardy (left), Chancellor, and Father James Miceli assisted
Archbishop Donnellan.
Pope Paul’s Holy Week
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope Paul
VI told a festive crowd of more than
250,000 in St. Peter’s Square on Easter
that Jesus’ resurrection opens up “a new
and unlimited horizon for life.”
The solemn blessing “Urbi et Orbi
(to the city and the world)” from the
main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica
capped more than 12 hours of solemn
and taxing Holy Week rites presided
over by the 79-year-old Pope.
“Life is beautiful if it is new; it is
new if it is good, if it is wise and if it is
strong - in a word, if it is Christian,”
said the Pope. The vast international
crowd below him,gathered under partly
cloudy skies in breezy weather,
overflowed Bernini’s famous square into
adjacent streets.
“Happy Easter,” shouted Pope Paul.
“We believe that young people of today
are particularly predisposed to
understand and welcome this good wish,
which is full of hope and energy.”
One week before, the Pope had
opened Holy Week in Rome with an
appeal to young people on Palm Sunday
to believe and live the Gospel. More
than 10,000 youngsters in St. Peter’s
cheered and waved olive and palm
branches when asked by the Pope to
show their commitment to peace.
Many of the same youths stood on
the rain-soaked cobblestones before the
Colosseum on Good Friday night to
participate in the Way of the Cross led
by the Pope.
Despite a heavy, driving rain, the
Pontiff knelt motionlessly on a hill
above the crowd for the first 11
Stations. He himself took the
light-weight wooden cross in hand to
pace off the last three stops of the Way
of the Cross, televised around the world.
Earlier that same day, the Pope had
stood prayerfully in St. Peter’s before a
huge statue of St. Longinus -- the
Roman soldier who pierced Jesus’ side
at the crucifixion - as prayers were
offered during the liturgy of the Lord’s
passion in Arabic, Ethiopian, Chinese,
Tagalog (a language of the Philippines)
and other tongues.
The Pontiff appeared to be suffering
greatly from an arthritic condition
during the Holy Thursday ceremonies in
St. John Lateran Basilica, the Pope’s
own cathedral.
That liturgy, during which the Pope
washed and kissed the feet of 12
seminarians, required the Pope to walk
great distances. He walked haltingly
throughout the service and had to be
steadied by a papal master of
ceremonies at the elevation of the
chalice.
But on Holy Saturday night the
resplendently robed Pontiff participated
spiritedly in Easter vigil services in St.
Peter’s. He showed no adverse effects
from his hour of kneeling in the rain at
the Colosseum the evening before.
At the Easter vigil, the Pope baptized
a Korean woman, two Korean men, and
three African men - one of them a
father of seven.
The “exultet” - an ancient hymn of
praise sung in Gregorian chant before
the paschal candle during the vigil
services - was chanted by an American
deacon, James Smith of Powers Lake,
N.D.
The papal ceremonies drew huge
crowds of tourists. Government tourism
officials estimated that the number of
visitors in Rome for the sacred triduum
was up 15 to 20 percent over last, year’s
totals.
Greeting not only the hundreds of
thousands in St. Peter’s Square but the
millions of Christians around the world,
the Pope said “Happy Easter” in 13
languages from the Basilica’s Balcony of
the Benedictions.
Greetings were given in Greek,
Arabic, Russian, Japanese, Zulu, English
and other major European and world
languages.
Observers attached special
importance to the Pope’s decision to
extend greetings in Slovak. The Church
in Slovakia has been under stepped-up
pressure in recent months by
Czechoslovakia’s Communist
government, and the papal greeting was
seen as a special encouragement to
Slovak Catholics.
Before giving his blessing, to which a
plenary indulgence is attached, Pope
Paul proclaimed from the
maroon-festooned balcony that through
the resurrection a “new world is
established: a new way of life is begun.”
“Christ is not the only one to rise
from the dead; He is the first among
many,” announced Pope Paul.
“Bodily sleep is not the inexorable
end of our existence; it is the sleep that
precedes a new day without end.”
As dozens of brightly colored
balloons were released from among the
crowd, the Pope asked Christians to
reread the beatitudes and to make the
“scale of values” of the Sermon on the
Mount a “scale of duties in relation to
which we must construct our life.”
Before leaving the balcony to begin
several days of rest, the Pope received
“Bravos” from the crowd and ruffles
and flourishes from the Italian military
bands present with the Swiss Guards in
the square.
The outdoor Mass which preceded
the Easter blessing was transmitted live
to nine European countries and to the
Philippines. The benediction was seen
live in France, Ireland, England and
Belgium. Twenty-two other countries
including the United States and Canada
saw a half-hour synthesis of the Mass
and blessing.
The events were carried into
Communist Eastern Europe and around
the world by Vatican Radio.
FOOT WASHING - At a Holy Thursday service at St. John Laterar.
Basilica in Rome, Pope Paul VI pours water on the feet of a seminarian. In
remembrance of Christ’s washing the apostles’ feet at the Last Supper, the
Pope washed and kissed feet of 12 seminarians.
BviLLftilVS
Fatima Special Representative
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope Paul VI has named Cardinal Humberto Medeiros of
Boston to be his special representative at ceremonies in Fatima marking the 60th
anniversary of the apparition of Mary there. The anniversary will be celebrated at the
Portuguese shrine on May 13.
Court Rules In Nuns’ Favor
HACKENSACK, N.J. (NC) -- A Superior Court judge has overturned part of a
Teaneck municipal ordinance used in an effort to prevent nuns from living in
one-family homes in residential areas. Superior Court Judge Harvey Smith ruled that
Teaneck cannot bar persons who are not relatives from residing under the same roof.
Members of the Sisters of the St. Joseph of Peace, who administer Holy Name Hospital
and help staff other nearby institutions, have been fighting the ordinance for more
than a year.
Silver Jubilee
CINCINNATI (NC) -
Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin
will celebrate the 25th anniversary
of his ordination to the
priesthood with a Mass in St.
Peter in Chains cathedral April 26.
The 49-year-old prelate was
ordained April 26, 1952, in
Columbia, S.C., his native city, for
the Diocese of Charleston.
On April 26, 1966, he was
ordained a bishop at Charleston to
serve as auxiliary of the Atlanta
archdiocese.
He was named archbishop of
Cincinnati in 1972 after serving as
general secretary of the National
Conference of Catholic Bishops
and the U.S. Catholic Conference
since 1968.
Program ‘Woefully Inadequate’
WASHINGTON (NC) - American programs of food aid and agricultural
development assistance for poor nations are “woefully inadequate,” a U.S. Catholic
Conference (USCC) official told a Senate committee. The official. Father J. Bryan
Hehir, USCC associate secretary for international justice and peace, testified before the
Senate Agriculture Committee on the U.S. Food for Peace program, also known as
P.L. 480. Father Hehir urged Congress to set a minimum of six million tons of food
aid a year for each of the next five years. He also urged a more creative use of Food
for Peace to encourage agricultural development in poor nations.
He is a member of the
Vatican’s Congregation for
Bishops, a U.S. delegate to the
world Synod of Bishops and an
elected member of the synod’s
permanent council, and president
of the National Conference of
Catholic Bishops and the U.S.
Catholic Conference.
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