Newspaper Page Text
GEORGIA BULLETIN THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1963 PAGE 5
GEORGIA PINES
Prize Of Faithful Friend
BY FATHER R. DONALD KIERNAN
Among the blessings and enjoyments of this
life, there are few that can be compared to the
possession of a faithful friend, who will pour the
truth into your heart, though you may wince
under it, or a friend who will defend when you are
unjustly assailed by the tongue of lies, who will
not forsake you when you have fallen into disgrace,
who will counsel you in your doubts and perplexi
ties, who will open his wallet to you without ex
pecting any return, w ho will rejoice at your pros
perity and grieve at your bad luck, who w ill bear
half of your burden, who will add to your joys and
diminish your sorrows by
sharing in both.
Holy Scripture defines a
friend in the following way:
"A faithful friend is a strong
defence, and he who has found
him hath found a treasure P*
A poor man may be said to
be rich in the midst of his po
verty, so long as he enjoys the interior sunshine
of a devoted friend. The wealthiest of men, on
the contrary, is poor and miserable, if he has no
friend whom he can grasp by the hand, and to whom
he can disclose the secrets of his heart.
Why then all this about friends andfriendships?
The thought occured to me that there will be many
friends made and many friendships formed out of
the coming archdiocesan census project.
NOW THIS might be strange to say, however,
let me illustrate it by an example-! recall visiting
a church in which classmates from my seminary
days were stationed. It seemed that this parish
had just completed a successful drive forfundsto
renovate the church and to pay off the school debt.
The feeling of satisfaction on the part of the
pastor was not so much the funds accumulated
as the feeling of friendship which was not estab
lished in his parish. People who had gone to the
church for years now were joined in a bond of
friendship as a result of working together over a
period of months. Parishioners who had never
visited each other's homes were now joined in a
bond of friendship and it was now being reflected
in other parish projects and endeavors.
This pastor also told me that the parish had
benefited spiritually too. Attendance at Holy Name
meetings and Altar Society meetings had doubled
and many had returned to the frequent reception
of the Sacraments.
IT IS essential to true friendship that it be re
ciprocal. A parish project engenders this feeling.
Often, people attending church get tofeelingthat
their worries and anxieties are of little or no con
cern to their neighbors. The frequent reunions de
manded by parish projects tend to nourish and fos
ter the bonds of friendship, and people begin to
find out that their neighbor is really interested
in their problems and often wants, like a friend,
to add to the joy or diminish the sorrow by shar
ing in both.
Already in many parishes the bonds of friendshjD
have been enkindled by the preliminary planning
meetings of the coming census project. More
friendships will be formed as the census project
•'gets into high gear". People from different
parishes have already got to know their neigh
bor and have felt the effects of friendship.
Yes, the coming census project will be of con
cern to us all, but I know that after the last figure
has been tabulated on the IBM machine, and the
lights of the meeting halls have been extinguished,
many, many sparks of friendship will begin to
glow in the years ahead.
QUESTION BOX
Adam’s Skull A Dud?
BY MONSIGNOR J. D. CONWAY
Q. IT HAS BEEN SAID THAT THE SKULL
WHICH WAS DUG UP TOMAKE PLACE FOR THE
CROSS OF JESUS ON CALVARY WAS THE TRUE
SKULL OF ADAM, AND THAT IT WAS IN THE
SKULL OF ADAM THAT THE FALL OF MAN
BEGAN, SINCE SATAN SHOWED HIM HOW TO
LET EVE TAKE THE BLAME, AS MAN HAS
DONE EVER SINCE.
A. Adam did place the blame on Eve, but she
shoved it quickly onto the slimy back of the ser
pent, thus setting an example in rationalizing for
her daughters.
Your theory has as many holes in it as Adam’s
skull probably did by the time of the Crucifix
ion. First, it presumes that the soldiers dug a
hole into which they placed
the Cross of Jesus. Possibly
they did, but the Gospels do
not tell us so. It is quite
possible that the upright pole
of the cross was already
standing, and that the soldiers
crucified Jesus by fastening
the cross-beam to it.
Secondly, your theory sup
poses that the soldiers dug up a skull w hile digging
their hypothetical hole. The Gospels make no hint
of such discovery. They merely say that the place
of the Crucifixion was called Golgotha (kranion,
in Greek; Calvaria, in Latin - the skull, the
cranium). That was the name of the spot; it
doesn’t mean that a skull was buried there. It
probably got its name from the shape of the mound
- skull-shaped.
Your third supposition is that Adam’s skull was
buried there; it might just as w ell have been buried
in a billion other spots on the face of the earth.
It would be a fitting coincidence, but the odds are
against you.
Finally, you suppose that Adam’s buried skull
was still preserved. Are you taking into account
the probability that it had been buried for300,000
years?
***
Q. WHY? WHY? WHY7 WE ARE URGED TO
PRAY FOR PEACE, AND THE WARNING FROM
FATIMA IS WELL-KNOWN, AND YET IN OUR
PARISH AND MANY OTHERS THE 3 HAIL MARY’S
AND OTHER PRAYERS ARE OMITTED AFTER
MASS. I ALWAYS UNDERSTOOD THESE WERE
FOR THE CONVERSION OF RUSSIA. I ASKED
OUR PASTOR AND HE SEEMED CONCERNED
ABOUT THE TIME ELEMENT.
A. Your poor pastor. Do you suppose he hasn’t
heard about Fatima. He should be so fortunate?
If you will stop being frantic for a moment I
will try to explain about those prayers after Mass.
They had their origin in 1859, when Pope Pius
IX ordered special prayers for his secular do
main, the Papal States, which were then in grave
danger of being infolded into a unified Italy.
These prayers w ere continued even after the Papal
States were lost.
In 1884, Pope Leo XIII was trying to regain
the freedom and rights of the Church, especially
in Germany where Bismarck’s Kulturkampf had
infringed on them. So he extended the prayers
of Pius IX to the entire Church, and later changed
them to their present form, including an inten
tion for the conversions of sinners.
Pope Pius X added the threefold invocation of
the Sacred Heart, in 1904 - merely granting
permission for its use. Custom seems to have
made it obligatory'.
There is no official version of these prayers
in any popular language: so each diocese, or
each priest, uses the translation locally or pri
vately preferred.
For practical purpose these prayers became
identified with the "Roman Question" - a solu
tion of the thorny problem of the Pope’s inde
pendence - and most people had this intention
in mind when they said the prayers during all
the years the Pope was "Prisoner in the Vati
can" - three score of them.
After the "Roman Question" had been lhappily
settled by the Lateran Treaty, in 1929, queries
were presented to Pope Puis XI as to whether
these prayers should be discontinued, since their
main purpose had been achieved. The good Pope
decided in the negative. The freedom and rights
of the Church were still being infringed in many
parts of the world, and he had particular com
passion on the poor Russian people, who were
then being deprived of their religion, their lands,
and often their lives through the demonic influence
of old Joe Stalin, general secretary of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party.
LITURGICAL WEEK
Approach
Continued From Page 4
THURSDAY, FEB. 28, THURSDAY AFTER ASH
WEDNESDAY, Today's Mass stresses prayer as a
key to the mystery’ of life and health. Lenten re
newal is impossible without prayer—worthy, at
tentive, devoted prayer. Providence itself was
turned by the king's prayer (First Reading). The
centurion’s servant was healed through confident
prayer (Gospel). Entrance Hymn, Collect, Gradual
—all point to prayer as that which brings us into
the orbit of God’s protection, forgiveness, grace.
FRIDAY, MARCH 1, FRIDAY AFTER ASH WED
NESDAY. The dominant note today is the familiar
warning against being carried away by external
religious practices, by formalism without heart.
We ask in the opening prayer of the Mass that our
To Lent
Lenten practice may be informed by a "sincere
spirit."
The First Reading expresses God’s contempt for
hypocrisy, for pious practices unmatched by love.
And the Gospel command to perfection tells us
that perfection is interior and that the public
esteem won by piety is no measure of its value
in God’s sight.
SATURDAY, MARCH 2, SATURDAY AFTER
ASH WEDNESDAY. Continuing yesterday's theme
from the Book of Isaiah, the First Reading speaks
again of concrete love and generosity as a princi
pal means to the restoration of lost harmony and
unity. It also reaffirms the Sabbath as a kind of
sacrament of the Lord’s presence. And the Gospel
presents Jesus as the restorer of harmony in His
mastery over the elements and over the enemy we
call sickness.
Saints in Black and White
ST. STEPHEN OF HUNGARY
LADIES GUILD PREPARES
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ACROSS
Freth Water Fiih
Repeat
Loathe
Death
Larva
Whistle Blower
Tenor
Men; Slang
Pen
Between 13 and 19
Encore
Displease
Cycle
Duck Genus
Seaport in Southern
Iraq
Pat
Child; Scot.
Unarlsen
Eager Interest
Voice
Musical Craze
River in Western
Germany
Account of; Abbrv.
lair
Mask
Wind Again
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Collection of old Norse 12.
Poetry
A Pronoun
Grandmother; colloq.
Fume
Idle
French Title
Wood Used for
Shipbuilding 31.
Alder Tree; Scot. 32.
Prefix meaning half
Prior 34.
Narrow strip of wood 35.
File 37.
His son's name 39.
Woowwind Instrument 42.
Moslem name for Satan
Plume 43.
To dip into water 44.
Recent 45.
Atlas 46.
An assessment; Ireland48.
This; Sp. 49.
Leaven
DOWN 52.
Gig
Qualified 54.
Seat 55.
Flint 56.
Torpedo; Slang 57.
Linen 58.
He was King of ... 63
Get 65.
By
Nod 67.
Caster cr wheel; Scot.
Indolent 69.
Go 70.
To Fold Again 71.
Hexa 72.
Simper 75.
Rhinal 78.
Degree; Physics
Tern; black
Chills and Fever
Niels .. .; Danish
Physicist
Honey Eater Bird
First Class; Colloq.
Part of the Anatomy
Looked well on
Charles . . .; Newspaper
Ed.
Outlet
Brim
Fanciful Notion
Adventure
Football Term; Abbrev.
St. .. . ordered his relics
enshrined
Worthy of being
mentioned
Courage
A Semitic Language
Chant
Unqualified
Rather
Void
German Nazi Official-
Last Name
English Statesman; Last
Nome
One of the Great Lakes
Feminine
Castor's Killer; Myth.
Coin
View
Electric Unit
Once again we approach the
holy season of Lent and each of
us resolves to make this Lenta
good one, realizing it may be our
last. We never know. The beau
tiful and sacred Shrine of the
Immaculate Conception, nestled
as it is in the heart of Atlan
ta’s business section, has al
ways been an oasis of peace
and spiritual refreshment for
Catholics and non - Catholics
alike.
On Ash Wednesday when the
Angelus bell peals out over the
hustle and bustle of our City,
hundreds of the faithful will
be seen hurrying towards the
Shrine of the Immaculate Con
ception to attend the 12:10Mass
offered year-round at this same
hour. Hundreds will receive Our
Eucharistic Lord on this day and
on all the following days of Lent,
knowing in the Blessed Sacra
ment Jesus in His very Person
never ceases to give to souls
the gifts and blessings He
merited for them by His in-
camatio'n and redemptive suf
ferings.
THE FRANCISCAN Fathers
are in charge of the Shrine and
are noted for their kindly zeal
in assisting Catholics of all pa
rishes. Rev. Leonard A. Kelly,
O.F.M., Pastor, announces as
an added convenience for the
ones attending the 12:10 Mass
each day that Lenten lunches
will be served, at a minimum
charge, from Mondays through
Fridays each week of Lent, im
mediately following Mass.
The Ladies Guild of the Shrine
will prepare and serve an inte
resting variety of sandwiches,
salads, soups and hot beverages
in the spacious Social Hall..
Mrs. Francis J. Walsh, the
Guild’s President, assures us
of prompt service so those
rushing back to their offices
will be able to report back on
time. A very warm and cordial
x welcome is extended all those
wishing to take advantage of
this pleasant time-saving ser
vice.
PAUSE FOR COKE
BOTTLED UNDER BUTHORITY OE THE COCA-COLA COMPANY BY
MARIETTA COCA-COLA BOTTLING CO
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ARNOLD VIEWING
Kookie Bronx Bohemian?
God Love You
MOST REVEREND FULTON J. SHEEN
What did I see at the Council? I saw the fruit
of tribulation and the operation of the basic law
of our Faith: unless there is a Good Friday in
our lives, there will never be an Easter Sunday;
unless there is a crown of thorns, there will never
be a halo of light. Only those who suffer with Christ
will have glory with Him.
One day at the Council, a certain archbishop
spoke in favor of putting St. Joseph’s name in
the Canon of the Mass. His voice was nervous
he spoke very quickly, in an oratorical fashion
which was a bit out of place in a deliberative body
such as the Council. He exceeded his time limit
and was stopped. After he had
finished, I turned to the bishop
next to me and said: "This
archbishop will put St. Joseph
in the Canon of the Mass."
Because of that talk? No I But
few knew his background. He
was from Yugoslavia, had suf
fered through one of those long
trials made famous by the
Communists and was then sen-
BY JAMES W. ARNOLD
Once upon a time a fortyish, just-becoming-
successful writer named William Gibson ("The
Miracle Worker") decided to write a play about a
bad girl who was not really bad but, in an offbeat
way, rather touchingly good. She was to be one
of those rare persons who is a giver, instead
of a taker, in the ratio of two-to-one.
The idea wasn’t very fresh, since modern au
thors seemed to have dedicated their lives to
describing the golden hearts of bad girls. Gibson
hoped to add novelty by making this girl a kookie
Bronx Bohemian named Gittel Mosca, who is end
lessly either brash "Am I too
sexy, I mean, over-sexed?"),
■j "somewhere out in Califor-
nia’’) or philosophic (her life
^ is "a little here, a little there,
the rest is unemployment in-
E9yKW] surance"). Yet even in the
kookie category Gittel is not
jUUv V'-' unique: She is a kind of Jew ish
dialect, downtown reading of
HollyGolightiy ("Breakfast at Tiffany’s").
AS HE explains in his book, "The Seesaw Log,"
Gibson’s Gittel never quite came to life. The two-
character play that arrived on Broadway in 1958
was shaped instead by demands of producer, di
rector, box-office, and especially of the male star
(Henry Fonda) who didn’t want Gittel (Anne Ban
croft) hogging all the snappy lines and sympathy.
Now the movie version of "Two for the Seesaw"
has been further filtered through scenarist Isobel
Lennart, among others. The inspiration, small
enough to begin with, has all but disappeared.
"SEESAW" l' s still Gittel’s show, mainly because
of the remarkably cinematic Shirley MacLaine,
whose capability for suggesting moods and com
plexity is second only to Freud’s. (She is less
effective as a speaker of Greenwich Village argot,
whose perfection requires something like Bronx-
born Miss Bancroft’s life-long study). Her co-
star is the likeable but clearly outmatched Robert
Mitchum, who is able to look either bored or very
bored and recites with a casualness that makes
Perry Como seem hypertense.
In her final evolution, innocent-bad Gittel emer
ges as nearly a saint: "You are," the hero tells
her with numbing sincerity, "the way people were
meant to be." She is a Major Scobie-type saint.
who sins out of unselfishness and a childlike
love for life and other humans. Yet she lacks
Scobie’s awesome self-knowledge, and her love
next to his is microscopic.
GITTEL, to be sure, is hard to dislike Her
compassion pops up at the darndest times, The
phone rings. Why answer it? "It’s another human
being," she says. "At least you find out why
they’re calling.” But is it charity or sentimen
tality? She decides to give herself to the lawyer
from Omaha because he’s lonely and it’s his
birthday. The world in which Gittel, for all her
attractiveness, can stand as an ideal, is a world
peopled by emotional, wise-cracking children.
In outline, the story seems lurid; in person,
it is not. The lawyer is drifting in New York while
being divorced by a rich, over-protective wife.
He meets Gittel at a beatnik party (righly stereo
typed, with vacant-faced girls doing the twist,
beards, berets and debates on whether art should
communicate), finds himself attracted by her
warmth, generosity and unique approach. Samples:
she won’t scream for help because nobodv’ll
come, it’s New York." When there are bugs in the
apartment at night, you go to sleep and "tomor
row you get the kerosene and find where they come
out of the wall."
All seems smashing for the Bronx dancer and the
Omaha lawyer (they seem concocted out of a writ
er's plot cards: let’s see now, what would make a
really wild combination. . .), but apparently he is
unwilling to let go of that wife back on the plains.
Mitchum, in fact, is unable to register much of
what he is fretting about, and everyone in the
theater is likely to be surprised (and perhaps
disappointed) by his decision at film’s end.
VERBALLY, at least, the institution of marriage
comes off rather well. The distress of both charac
ters is plainly related to the impermanence of
their relationship. The lawyer also makes one elo
quent little speech about the futility of "severing
the bonds of matrimony" between persons who have
lived so closely for 12 years one can hardly tell
"where one leaves off and the other begins." Ul
timately both he and Gittel face reality and act,
with courage, like adults. But that Omaha spouse
sounds like a witch on the phone, and Mitchum
returns to her with the enthusiasm of a recaptured
convict going back to Alcatraz.
In his first movie since "West Side Story," di
rector Robert Wise uses the city of New York
and languidly pretty background trumpet music
(by Andre Previn) to distract us from the fact
that nothing much except talk happens on the
screen for two whole hours. In the later scenes,
when Miss MacLaine is vaguely apprehensive and
Mitchum is vaguely dissatisfied, the movie seems
as endless as riding a local from Coney Island to
Yankee Stadium. Ted McCord’s photography is so
moody and murky one often has to squint to see,
but some sequences (g.g., of Gittel dancing alone in
a bare loft studio) are lit with poignant insight.
"Seesaw" is variously funny, sad and g«ntle,
and in its best moments, brave and real. Too
often, it is merely cute and glib. But most cru
cially, its people are neither as important or as
moving as author Gibson, in a dream once, hoped
them to be.
Altar Society Meet
St. Jude
The February meeting of St.
Jude’s Altar Society was held
at St. Jude’s School Cafetorium
last week.
The program consisted of a
panel discussion and review
ional Convention of the National
Council of Catholic Women re
cently held in Detroit, Michi
gan. Panel members were—
Father Michael Manning, ACCW
Spiritual Moderator, Gladys
Gunning, ACCW President,
Eleanor Bochman of the Cathe
dral of Christ the King parish,
Dorothy Chapman of St.
Joseph's parish in Marietta,
Georgia, and Elsie Dennon and
Murphy Faust of Saints Peter
and Paul parish of Decatur,
Georgia. The Panel Moderator
was Hazel O’Donnell, President
of St. Jude’s Altar Society.
tenced to four years in prison. He and other pri
soners were then put on a train, which was de
liberately wrecked in an attempt to kill all aboard.
The archbishop survived, but both his hips were
broken.
Broken in body but not in soul, he dragged his
poor body, so frail and nervous after imprison
ment and brainwashing, to the Council. Then he had
the added humiliation of being interrupted for
overtime and for "preaching". Aware that God
sends a cross before a crown, a Gethsemane
before an Emmaus. this writer knew that, by suf
fering, the Archbishop had merited, as much as one
man can merit, to have St. Joseph in the Canon
of the Mass. The Holy Father, who followed the
proceedings on television in his apartment, an
nounced two days later that St. Joseph would be
so honored.
It would have been worth going to the Council
just to have met brother bishops such as this.
No American bishop can ever be the same again.
We rubbed shoulders with saints; we touched the
hem of the garments of martyrs; we spoke with
brothers in Christ who are strong, as the Cardinal
of Poland said, "because we have nothing material
to defend"; we say how much we bad and how
little they had (of wealth), and how little we had
and how much they had (in their con-Crucifixion
with Christ).
Friendsl We cannot go on building larger and
larger gymnasiums and richer and richer semi
naries while bishops, priests and laity elsewhere
in the world go on suffering. What good does my
voice do in this column week after week!Now and
then it inspires readers to sacrifice for such as
these: "Oh, 1 ought to send something to Bishop
Sheen!" Bishop Sheen is not begging for an or
ganization, for one area of the world, for one
missionary society. As head of the Holy Father’s
own Society for the Propagation of the Faith in
the United States, he is begging in the name of the
Holy Father. All he receives goes directly to the
Pontiff. God grant that your Faith may inspire you
to daily sacrifices, so that St. Joseph may inter
cede to give you a happy death for having shared
the death of Christ!
GOD LOVE YOU to A. for $454 "This is my
annual contribution to help the Holy Father’s
Missions." ...to Mr. and Mrs. N. M, for $10
"In gratitude to God for happy times, times of
trial and times of spiritual fervor." ... toR.W.B.
for $1 "Many times I have given my last 50<
to the Missions, only to receive an unexpected
$5 before the end of the week. The returns on
charity are always high."
WORLD MISSION, a quarterly magazine of mis
sionary activities edited by Most Rev. Fulton J.
Sheen, is the ideal gift for priests, nuns, semi
narians or laymen. Send $5 for a one-year sub
scription to WORLDMISSION, 366 Fifth Avenue,
New York 1, New York.
Cut out this column, pin your sacrifice to it and
mail it to Most Rev. Fulton J. Sheen, National Di
rector of the Society for the Propagation of the
Faith, 366 Fifth Avenue, New York 1 N. Y. or your
Archdiocesan Director, Very Rev. Harold J. Rainey
P. O. Box 12047 Northside Station, Atlanta 5, Ga.