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The Georgia Bulletin
November 5,1981
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A Real Drug War
Two moves are afoot in the federal
government which could put greater
manpower into the battle against drugs.
One, reportedly under consideration
by the Attorney General, would allow
the FBI to become actively involved in
drug investigations. The second, an
amendment in Congress co-sponsored
by Sen. Sam Nunn, would let the
military become involved in a limited
way, by sharing information on the
movements of ships in coastal waters
and providing people to operate
radar-equipped craft.
Recent news stories have made
vividly clear the ways drug traffic and
politics can become intertwined,
hampering investigations into known
drug havens or transfer points off the
southern coast of the United States.
The implication was that at
some level of government, there was
always a higher priority to be
considered than drugs - a priority too
high to be jeopardized by dealing in
tough terms with countries where the
drug business is synonymous with the
economy.
The actions under consideration by
the Justice Department and the
Congress are hopeful signs that the
endless talk of a “war on drugs” may
translate into more men and women
freed to do the work. And they seem to
be creative ideas, drawing on the
resources already available in key states
and along the coast.
The glamourization of drugs, which
prevailed socially in this country for a
number of years, may yet collapse
under the weight of so many lives
damaged or destroyed.
- GRK
Resound ... Resound
To the Editor:
Congratulations to Sheila Mallon on her
“Baby Buying” story in last week’s Bulletin.
She verbalized beautifully the “gut feeling” I
have had since I first saw the dolls in a
downtown shop over four years ago. And then
they were only $60.
At that time we were waiting to adopt our
first child and had been through several hellish
years of examinations, interviews, waiting,
waiting - all the traumas involved in adopting
a child through a qualified, legitimate agency.
I did not then, nor do I now find the thought,
of plunking down a large sum of money to put
a stuffed doll under the arm of a child or inane
adult appealing or cute.
This “baby boom” is an indication of
thoughtless, materialistic attitudes so
rampant in our society. Mr. Roberts,
obviously a clever man, has made a fortune
capitalizing on those attitudes. $125 would go
a long way in helping an agency provide care
for a pregnant woman needing help. It would
help a social service agency provide
professional counseling to a mother, supply
food and clothing to mother and child, or
provide funds for foster care for the child.
Mr. Roberts has made a fortune off of the
cute adoption idea. I don’t suppose he would
be interested in channeling some of the
resources he has reaped from the concept into
real babies and real adoption agencies?
Susan Burns
Atlanta
Families Can’t
Beat A Retreat
Dolores Curran
“We save up all year for the Family Retreat
and it’s the best deal for our money
anywhere,” a young dad told me as he left our
annual Labor Day family retreat last fall.
I agree. I have rarely laughed as hard as I
did at the young teen’ teen’s show skit on
Adam and Eve being put out of The Garden
for throwing apples at one another and going
back to the city “to raise a little Cain as soon
as they were Able.” Or reflected so seriously
with 18 couples on how to pass on good
morals and faith in a bewildering climate. Or
experienced a family liturgy as simple and
moving as the one designed by three volunteer
couples who had never done so before.
“A family retreat?” others exclaimed
when I told them where we were spending
Labor Day weekend. “Ugh.” But they’re dead
wrong when they judge before they
experience.
Wander with me, if you will, through the
weekend. Take a beautiful spot — El Pomar
(meaning apple orchard) Renewal Center at
the base of Pike’s Peak in Colorado Springs.
The scene of usually more sedate gatherings,
this Center, run by the Sisters of Charity of
Cincinnati, becomes a mecca for families one
or two weekends a year. There’s an elegant old
mansion with an oak library with actual
moving bookcases that reveal hidden
passageways — right out of a Gothic novel,
which the kids love. (Director Sister Barbara
Counts said it took her a year to discover a bell
that it took enterprising kids two hours to
find and ring.)
Add acres of gardens and shrubbery
disclosing Stations and statues and hiding
places for nightly Kick the Can, plus a lake, a
swimming pool and an assortment of grottos,
patios, and other surprises. To this, add a
balance of learning, fun and spirituality
designed to make families with a desire to
share the Good News with each other and
others like themselves. Basically, it works like
this. We start at 10 a.m. Saturday with
opening prayer and instructions. Then we
intersperse nine hours of peer learning with
six of shared family activities fostering
communication and spirituality. The
remainder of the 2Vi days are devoted to
leisure and sharing.
We invite skilled religious educators to
direct the learning in peer groups. This year
we had three older teens who opted to learn
with the parents, eight younger teens, 15 and
16, twelve junior highers, eleven 4-6 graders,
ten 1-3 graders, and eight preschoolers, all of
whom learned and discussed matters of faith
and family with qualified instructors.
The two high points of the weekend are the
Sunday family liturgy designed by families
themselves and celebrated by the Vicar of
Family Life for the diocese and the Sunday
evening talent show, which is worth the price
of the weekend.
When I look at the weekend in retrospect,
it tells me that this is the way to go with
families today. We live in an ad hoc culture —
one in which it is increasingly difficult to get
parents out for a six or eight week course of
faith, parenting or anything else.
In a pure time sense, it’s the equivalent of
15 weeks of CCD or adult classes. Add to that
the bonus of being able to share what families
learn in the relaxed yet structured climate and
the charge they get for increased family faith
on their return home, and it’s easy to
understand why that dad said it was “such a
deal.”
Catholic A rckdwee:sc of A t In nta
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‘First Fervor’ Gives Way To Growth
Father John Catoir
“Early in the life of prayer we experience a
special delight in God; His will is sweet to us
and religion seems full of wisdom and love. We
are at peace with ourselves and full of spiritual
ambition. Then we learn that the very same
spirit of love which flooded our consciousness
with fresh energy at the start, continues in
new and ever relentless ways, transforming
our day to day life into something we didn’t
expect. Life makes many demands on us,
some of them not so nice; the demands of love
are inconvenient and frequently distasteful.”
Evelyn Underhill
Have you ever heard the expression “first
fervor”? First fervor is passionate, euphoric
religious devotion; but like a wild horse, it
needs to be harnessed. A wise spiritual
director will try to channel the powerful
energies of the beginner when he or she strikes
out on extreme fasts and severe penances.
That’s why a spirit of obedience is so
important in religious life.
It isn’t long before the euphoria receded,
and that same Spirit of Love begins to ask fot
faithful perseverance and long-suffering. A
period of purification begins as the Holy
Spirit gently reveals the limitations of our
nature, teaching us what ft means to depend
on God’s strength alone. Inordinate spiritual
ambition is burned away in the heat of reality
and grace.
The life of Jesus is a model for the spiritual
journey. Early in His public ministry He was
lifted up in the joy of the Transfiguration. His
face shone as the sun in His communion with
the Father. But afterward when His work
began He was gradually plagued with
disappointment, monotonous drudgery and
rejection. His mission often wearied and
exasperated Him. The Holy Spirit led Him to
the cross, the ultimate humilation. As He
uttered these words, “It is consummated,”
Jesus became one with the most despised, the
most despairing of human beings. He touched
the depths of human suffering to liberate all
who are caught in the web of pain and misery.
The joy of first fervor is only a beginning.
Being able to say with Jesus, “It is
consummated,” I have finished the job God
has given me to do: that is the supreme joy.
In spite of conflicts, weakness, sufferings
and sins, which are all part of a spiritual
maturing process, we are joyful always,
praying continually and thankful in all
circumstances for “This is what God wants of
us in our life in Christ.”
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
November8,1981
THE W ORD
THIS W EEKEND
Paul Karnowski
Wisdom 6: 12-16
1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18
Matthew 25: 1-13
There’s something inherently innocent
about a Boy Scout. It’s not his enthusiasm out
in the woods on his camping trips; nor is it his
merit badges so proudly displayed on his
uniform.
It’s his motto: Be prepared.
Innocent, because we adults know how
little prepared he is for the remainder of his
years. Even if we could, we wouldn’t have the
heart to tell him of the hours of preparation
that await him. He wouldn’t understand the
financial security that insurance companies
offer, or the perils they “protect” us from:
sudden death; lengthy illness; auto accidents;
business interruption; destructive storms.
Statistics will tell him that his marriage will
have a fifty percent chance of success; that he
will probably be underemployed most of his
life, not enjoying his work. Before we know it
he’ll be grown and spending large amounts of
time preparing himself for a state that will
never exist (perfect security), or for an
inevitable event that is shocking, no matter
how prepared he is (death).
There’s nothing wrong with trying to be
prepared. In today’s gospel, Jesus extols the
virtue. Five sensible bridesmaids and five
foolish bridesmaids await the arrival of the
groom. The sensible ones bring extra oil for
their torches and the foolish ones do not.
When the groom finally arrives, the foolish
bridesmaids realize that they do not have
enough oil for their torches. While they scurry
off to find more, the groom comes and takes
the five sensible bridesmaids into the wedding
feast. Upon their return, the five foolish
bridesmaids find themselves locked out. “The
moral is,” Jesus says, “keep your eyes open,
for you do not know the day or the hour.”
In the midst of all of our other
preparations we sometimes forget to prepare
ourselves for God’s arrival. We know that He
will come at the end of the world and we
prepare ourselves in a general way for that
event. But we forget that He appears in the
most unexpected places, in the most
surprising faces. Unlike the groom in the
parable, He usually is not melodramatic. He
usually shows up in the middle of an ordinary
day.
The strange thing is, He still catches us
unprepared.
Directing The Pope’s Story
Michael Gallagher
NEW YORK (NC) - Krzysztof Zanussi, the
distinguished Polish director who made
“From a Far Country,” the film biography of
Pope John Paul II, was in New York in early
October for the New York Film Festival. One
of his latest films, a biting satire of
contemporary Polish life called “Contract,”
was an entry and, in fact, turned out to be one
of the festival’s best received films.
I went up to Zanussi after a press
conference and seized the opportunity to ask
him if he would be kind enough to put in an
appearance and say a few words at an
ecumenical film seminar held at Fordham the
next afternoon. He not only came to the
seminar, where he spoke briefly but
effectively about the differing pressures a
director has to contend with in the East and in
the West and of the need to resist compromise
and to make moral choices, but he gave me an
interview afterward. This despite his suffering
from jet lag, his being scheduled to leave New
York early the next morning and, finally, with
the gala festival screening of “Contract” being
little more than two hours away.
Zanussi, who for the most part has done
quiet, understated films probing motivations
and aspirations, had been considerably less
than overjoyed, he said, when approached on
the subject of doing a film on the pope. And
even after he had consented to the project, he
had hoped for some means of escape. “Like a
coward,” he said, speaking in fluent, precise
English, “I dreamed that one of the great
powers involved - the Polish government, the
capitalists who were putting up the money or
the Vatican -- would have second thoughts on
it. But not one of them did.”
He took an example from recent
ecclesiastical events to explain his state of
mind. “The new bishop of Milan, Italy, is a
Jesuit. When the pope informed him that he
had been chosen, he refused twice, since
Jesuits are not supposed to become bishops.
But then, when the pope asked him a third
time, he had to consent. The situation was
much the same with me.”
But, I asked, why did he have to consent,
because, unlike the Jesuits, Zanussi certainly
hadn’t taken any special vow of obedience to
the pope?
“If I didn’t consent to make the film, the
chances are that it would be done by a
non-Polish director, perhaps an American,
and probably filmed in Yugoslavia. It would
be the loss of a unique opportunity. I’d be
severely blamed by my compatriots and other
people whom I care about. I felt this pressure.
They’d say that Zanussi was more concerned
about his artistic freedom and his career than
about the obligation to his country and to his
fellow countryman, the pope.”
He smiled. “I suppose it’s hard for
somebody who is not Polish to understand my
state of mind. Especially in countries like
France and Italy where individualism is so
intense. I wonder about America, which is a
mysterious country. I wonder how many
American writers and directors would ever
feel obliged to make a sacrifice for America?”
I was tempted to give him a rough estimate,
but instead I asked him why he was so
reluctant to take on a film about the pope.
“I thought a film of this kind was
unnecessary and impossible. But then I began
to see that I was probably wrong about its
being unnecessary, as I’ll explain in a moment.
As to the problem of impossibility, I hit upon
a way by which it might be possible. I was
inspired by the Andrei Tarkovski film,
“Andrei Rublev,” about the great Russian
painter of the Renaissance. Since next to
nothing was known about the painter’s life,
Tarkovski took a panoramic view of Russian
history. So I decided to do the same with the
pope - to make him a witness of his times. To
show the times that helped make him the way
he is.”
As Zanussi spoke earnestly of his concept,
I remembered reading how moved John Paul
II was at a recent Vatican screening of “From
a Far Country” and how he spoke of his joy at
seeing the lives of his contemporaries
re-created.
And how did Zanussi come to see that the
film was necessary, after all? “Perhaps such a
film, I thought, would help the pope in
making his message understood. Because -
and I see this clearly - his message is not well
understood. His words are deformed and his
intentions misunderstood. I know because,
being Polish, coming from a different part of
the world, my intentions are misunderstood
in the same way. Many people misunderstand
my reactions to many issues simply because
they have no idea of the kind of events that
affected me. And so, because J find such
misunderstanding extremely painful, I
wanted to do something to alleviate it.”
“So what I wanted to do in this film is to
show the conditions that helped to make the
pope the way he is,” Zanussi said. “By so
doing, I hoped to do something useful. First
for him, secondly for our country too. For
Poland is not well understood, and today we
stand desperately in need of the world’s
understanding.”
(Michael Gallagher is on the staff of the USCC
Department of Communication.)