Texas Gulf Coast Catholic (Corpus Christi, Tex.), Vol. 10, No. 26, Ed. 1 Friday, November 21, 1975 Page: 2 of 6
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TEXAS GULF COAST CATHOLIC
Friday, November 21, 1975
EDITORIALS
Little readings
Talks with parents
The cheerleading cult
Hy Dolores Curran
1
The spiritual life of children
There are two other matters concerning
the spiritual life of children which ought to
be mentioned here. When I was a boy,
reciting the Tong acts’ was nothing more
than a memory test. I doubt if I have said
the long acts of faith, hope and charity
since leaving school. But there are some
prayers which allCatholic children ought
to learn. Few of 4^ learn anything by heart
once schooldays are over. There is a
tendency among catechists to insist that
all prayer be addressed to God the Father.
This misunderstanding probably first
arose from confusion of private with
liturgical prayer in which most but not all
invocations are made to the Father. The
liturgy also addresses the other Persons of
the Blessed Trinity (Veni Sanct Spiritus;
Domine non sum dignus). Apart from the
liturgy some of the most venerable hymns
are to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament
<Adoro Te devote; Ave Verum).
The Catholic needs to know many
prayers which do not form part of the
Church's official prayer. Obvious
examples are the Angelus, Grace before
and after meals, the Hail May and the Hail
Holy Queen. There are still more prayers
without which an adult Catholic will be at a
loss in his devotional life and seriously
handicapped in lime of sickness and
bereavement. Of this kind are the prayer
for the holy souls, ‘O Sacrament most **oly ’
and Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you
my heart and my soul’. Certain hymns
should also be part of every Catholic’s
repertoire. It is good for us to know
Protestant hymns, but it would be said if
our own hymns to the Blessed Sacrament
and our Lady were to be forgotten, Except
lor The Lord is my Shepherd’ the vogue of
Gelineau is on the wane. Yaweh does not
make such a strong appeal to Catholics as
Jesus Christ our Lord. The popularity of
the shepherd psalm is probably due to the
fact that children think that the shepherd
in question is Jesus the Good Shepherd. It
is a capital mistake for teachers to neglect
the typically Catholic prayers and -
devotion to the Sacred Heart, our Lady and
the saints. Nor shoifld anyone leave a
Catholic school unable to sing the ‘Credo’.
The spirit in action
The efficiency of a life of holiness
Before we consider the efficacy of a life of
holiness, it is important that we stress the
nature of the sign of holiness itself, and place
it in relation to grace. It would be rather
senseless to think just for one moment of a
loving God, who is love itself, that after
establishing an economy of revelation and
faith, both of which are aimed at a super-
natural goal, and then depriving man of the
necessary help to read the signs in a solid and
efficacious way. Besides, being the sign of
holiness the radiation of the fulfillment of
grace, how would it be conceivable that this
spine grace should not be at work to help man
understand and appreciate the new area into
which the sign of holiness introduces him? It
is like what happened in the dialogue
narrated in Acts 8:30-31, about the official of
the queen of the Ethiopians on his way back
home, when he said to the Apostle Philip,
"How can I understand (what I am reading)
unless someone guides me?" Really, it would
be lessening God’s infinite wisdom if we
considered Him so eagerly willing to orien-
tate men toward a supernatural end, then
refusing them the very assistance in order to
lead them there The signs of revelation are
closely connected with salvation, and
therefore with freedom and grace. And
holiness is the sign of salvation fulfilled in the
present and bound up, more than any other
sign, with the charism of grace. Its discerning
is one with grace which illumines the mind,
insures, the intellectual honesty of mental
processes, and prods the will to face the
question positively posed by the grasping of
such a sign: that is, the question of a super-
natural salvation intimately connected with
God’s presence in history.
Thereupon the action of grace maintaining
itself as such does not, in relation to holiness,
act ex opere operator, that is out of the action
itself, but through the interpretation of the
sign provided man be capable to interpret it.
A sign, after all, is perceived only by him who
can discover its meaning, thus leading him to
the truth. In this context, however, signs are
given by God, but as far as their un-
derstanding is concerned they are connected
with a divine action only under certain cir-
cumstances or conditions. In this way, they
exist objectively and as such are able to put
us in touch with God, thereby obtaining their
fr. Ignatius p. chetcuti
end only if they meet certain human
dispositions and attitudes. For, a man, under
the influence of his prejudices, or in the hold
of his passions may refuse not only the
evidence of external signs, but also the
consciousness which God infuses within him.
Now, the attitudes and dispositions required
to discern the sign of holiness are more
numerous than in the case of miracle.
ATTITUDES AND DISPOSITIONS
In the first place, we have to admit that
certain intellectual attitudes are necessary,
above all an openness to the hypothetical
divine action in man, capable of transforming
him, thus raising him above his own poers.
We have, moreover, to presuppose on the part
of the human being in his subjective attitude,
a certain experience and awareness of the
limited, fickle and deceptive character of
man, incapable of keeping promises and
ready at the first change of wind to give up his
commission. But, however the above at-
titudes may be necessary, certain moral
dispositions are likewise a must. For the
gospel teaches us that there are those who are
voluntarily deaf and blind. Those who shut
themselves up in a world of wealth, or
pleasure or power, will not be able to grasp
the simple and poignant truths of the Good
News.
Walled-up alive in their own paranoiac and
maniacal fantasies, they will be impervious
to light from beyond. Christ came among us
casting out these devils, the fantasies, and yet
he was accused of not casting them through
God, but through Beelzebub. Holiness indeed
attracts some and gives scandal to others. It
attracts the well-disposed and provokes the
exalted, the eccentric.
The chief and greatest obstacle to the action
of the signs, then, and particularly to the sign
of holiness is, in fact, the glorification and
exaltation of the ego, the claim to impunity
even when jusitce is hurt. Such egotistic
dispositions, whether they concern religion,
philosophy, culture, economics, politics and
what have you, give birth to contempt,
disdain and ignorance thereby being per-
nicious to holiness. This whole mess boils
down to the Pharisaical hypocrisy con-
demned so vehemently by Jesus.
In sum, we may strongly affirm that man,
in order to attain holiness in’an efficacious
way, has to give up his assumed self-
government and give himself to God.
Cheers to the junior high principal who
opened up cheerleading to the whole student
body. Instead of encouragir.g a trauma known
as annual tryouts, which bring on everything
irom hypertension to deep depression, he
invited all students who wanted to be
cheerleaders to sign up.
A committee then divided the number of
hopefuls into the number of sports events
throughout the year and assigend each
cheerleader to a game or two The school
bought sets of cheerleading uniforms in
smaL, medium, and large and passed them
from one group to another.
ResiTs of the innovation? Each hopeful
cheerleader has his or her chance to be queen
for a game, she practices her cheers for
weeks, even months in advance, trying to
outshine the cnes who went before. She meets
a whole new group of friends and they work
out together. But most important, she
becomes a part of the cheerleader cult and a
powerful clt it is.
Being chosen cheerleader sets a girl on the
path of popo'arity and social prestige as
surely as making the honor roll sets a student
on the path to scholarships. The deference is
that everyone has a fair chance at the honor
roll while only four or five girls make it to the
top of the cheerleading heap.
And the others suffer. They are social
second-rates, the also-rans whose self image
plummets for life — or at least, until
graduation, which is a lifetime sentence for
many girls.
Am I making too much out or a simple high
school rite? I don’t think so. Being a
cheerleader has taken on such gloss and
reverence that many girls view it as the only
route to fulfillment. When they aren't chosen,
either by teachers or peers, they are per-
sonally rejected and it can affect their whole
school life. As a teacher I knew girls who
drop;ed out of school when they didn't make
cheerleader. One of my colleagues knew a
girl who committed suicide for the same
reason.
Granted, these are extremes but the whole
cult ;s exireme. Once a girl is chosen
cheerleader, it opens up to eligibility in the
royalty game. Few prom queens of Junior
Miss Americas aren’t cheerleaders first.
Being selected means social approval of the
highest sort and conversely, being rejected
means social failure.
The greatest cost isn’t even to the also-rans.
It s tl the cheerleaders who graduate and
have to rely on something other than their
status as cheerleaders the rest of their lives.
Some never can. The high point in their lives
is over The admiring crowds and envious
peers are gone.
They are forced to remind their fellow
secretaries and fellow college students that
they were once high schoo' cheerleaders. The
become pathetic has-beens at 22, much like
the forty-year-old basketball players in Jason
Miller s Championship Season.
In this powerful drama, the old high school
team that won the state championship holds
an annual reunion during which players
relive Iheir moment of glory. These obsolete
children, perpetual high school athletes,
search for worthwhile lives which will never
produce that moment of glory that the
championship game produced. One seeks it in
alcohol, another in politics, another in wife-
stealing, and another in amassing a fortune.
But they are men to be pitied, not envied.
Yet, under the guise of education, we
perpetuate the system that procuces such
infantilized men and women. That’s why I
salute the innovative and courageous prin-
cipal who makes every girl a cheerleader,
therby putting it into its proper pers^ccttce.
(Dolores Curran welcomes mail from
readers. Send letters to: Dolores Curran
Talks With Parents, 300 Dauphin Street,
Green Bay, Wis. 54301.)
(4) wfifld
by Rian Clancy, C.P.
Recently a magazine with a circulation of
over 5 million published an article on "The
World's Most Dangerous Book:- The Bible."
Admittedly the Bible has been exploited by
certain groups. Many Christians in the South
used the Bible for a century to justify slavery.
Men like the fundamentalist Carl McIntyre used
it to justify *he war in Viet Nam
Last year "The Catholics" was the title of a TV
program and recently it had a rerun. The drama
by Brian Moore has the church in the year 2000
headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Lourdes
with its famous shrine is closed; the Eucharist is
only a symbol.
When you have the Bible and the Eucharist
going down the drain there isn't much left of
traditional or even progressive Catholicism. And
many persons today have accepted this rejection
as their view of the faith. What is left except
maybe to read the Bible nostalgically or feel like
the Last Catholic in America?
But there is a lot left. We can reject the
Scriptures and the Eucharist but we can't argue
against persons who have lived their lives in a
rich creative manner because of the Bible and
the Eucharist.
Tess Hart of Eagle Grove, Iowa was buried
the wedding. Tess said if the Church says it is all
right that is good enough for me and besides he is
my grandson. She went and the parents, taken
aback, showed up also.
Tess, raised a traditional Catholic in the best
Irish style, welcomed the changes in the Church.
She had a daughter, a nun, who of course for
years lived the traditional life style that held
sway for generations. She taught school, lived in
the convent and wore the habit. But her Order
changed and Tess found her daughter in lay
dre'oS, driving a car, head of the CCD of a
diocese. This did not bother her at all, and if her
daughter round in this new life style a more ef-
fective mode for the apostolate, that was good
enough for Tess. She was a nun, with or without
the veil.
Five years ago one son at 42 was stricken with
bone cancer. The family, very close to each
other, gathered the night before Thanksgiving
They were very despondent. The doctors said
that they were taking a bone sample to see if the
leg would respond to treatment. They would
have an answer the following Monday. Af they
sat around that night Tess said: "God has given
us four days to pray. Let's get down on our
knees." They knelt down and said the Rosary,
they went to Mass the following four days. On
Monday the doctors said the leg might respond to
Tess Hart showed Christianity to an unbelieving world
Truths called to
IF in any age the saints evoke little popular
admiration, it is a sure sign of the prevalence
of secularism and misunderstanding. And if
the worldly are puzzled and perhaps repelled
by the degree of concern in saintly lives with
sin and penitence, this is at least due to failure
to recognize that the sense of sinfulness in-
creases with the knowledge of God and of the
Self in the light of that sin, but the grace which
condemns the sin also carries both the
promise of victory and the strength to gain it.
Within the Church militant, the communion
of saints is exemplified in a special way by
their participation in a common faith,
reception of common sacraments, and
acknowledgement of a common
supranational authority, and that in-
terdependence whereby every deed of each
member affects for good or ill the whole body
to which Christ "would have us, as members,
be united by the closest bond of faith, hope
and charity, that we might all speak the same
things and that there might be no divisions
among us.”
Hie saints sought the knowledge of God in
Christ and thereby gained an insight into their
failures with the grace to rise above them.
Consciously for the most part, and indirectly
always, their inspiration has been mediated
in and through the visible, institutional,
continuing Christian community. That
community’s Christ-like characters offer the
one argument for Christianity which none can
refute.
The simplest, sincere Christian life differs
from the height cl saintliness only in degree.
At a time when there is so much to make men
conscious of human weakness and failures, it
is good to realize that there i* another side to
the human condition; that if it is human to be
tempted, it is also human to resist Lemp-
tation; that if “toerr is human,” it is equally
so to triumph over sinfulness. Devoutly to
remember those who were not satisfied with
pedestrian virtue is to realize a nobility which
may increase our own.
last November. She was 82. Her funeral, at
tended by hundreds young and old, was a real
faith experience because she was a woman of
tremendous faith.
Tess h ad ten children, two of whom she buried.
The day before she died she had one of her sons,
Hugh, take her to the drug store (the only one in
town) to get a sympathy card. Hugh asked her
who it was for. She said for a 17 year old who had
just been killed in a car crash. She said : " i lost a
17 year old in 1932 that way and I know how his
parents feel." She bought another card that day,
a congratulatory card for a young girl who had
just had a baby cut of wedlock. Tess said that she
did not want to judge her and above all she
wanted to congratulate her on not having an
abortion,
Tess had a grandson who was to be married in
the Lutheran Church in an ecumenical wedding
shared by a priest and minister. Both sets of
parents were very upset and both refused to go to
radiation. In eleven weeks the cancer had been
arrested and her son Joe lived for another four
years.
Many have lost faith in the Bible and many
parents can't even get their grown children (who
are no longer children) to go to Mass on Sunday.
Arguing isn't going to accomplish anything. But
as long as we have, through the power of God,
persons like Tess Hart—warm, human, loving—
rooting their lives in a God who comes to them
through the Scriptures and the Eucharist, we
will have a church that will appeal to the world.
This may not be in a direct manner; but persons
living like Tess Hart, and there are many of
them, will show to an unbelieving world that
Christianity is a powerful creative force for
good.
terras gctlf coast
CATHOLIC
Published weekly, excepr the last week of December and the last week of July
Official Newspaper of the Diocese of Corpus CThristi
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Editor and Business Manager .
Circulation Manager........
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Address all communications to
Most Rev. ThomasJ. Drury, D.D.
............Father Hugh Clarke
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TEXAS GULF COAST CATHOLIC
P () Box H4. Corpus Christi, Texas 78403
Teh'phone H82-6191 Ext 3-4
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Entered as Second Class Matter United States Post Office
Corpus Christi. Texas
. &S’
Father Clancy is a member of the Passionist
Apostolic Team stationed in Detroit, Mich.
passionist ^
Letter to the editor
media
Dear Editor:
The time has come to redress the deaths of
the unborn who are victims of the march to
power of the Federal Courts. The rights of the
unborn child to life must be established; men
of good conscience cannot stand idly by and
permit the continuing murder of the unborn
child by abortion.
In the months ahead a political battle will
be fought across the State for the position of
U S. Senator from Texas. As a candidate I
solemnly pledge that the issue will be raised
in every town in the State ; that I. will force the
other candidates to come to terms with the
issue, and not to leave it lying dead like so
many of the sacred lives nt unborn children.
We cannot permit the continuing overthrow
by the Federal judicial of our State laws, such
as those of 46 States which protected the lives
of the unborn, stricken from the books t. the
Supreme Court. We must unite with others to
halt rule by men appointed for life to position
of Federal judge, in the words of Thomas
Jefferson, "answering to no one.”
The problems of law and order, prayer m
school, the rights of parents to pursue a
religious education for their children, and the
prevention of obscenity and pornography, all
have met disastrous treatment in the Federal
Courts. Therefore, a change must be made in
the method of selecting Federal judges, and
their tsnure in office.
I advocate election of Federal judges by
State Legislatures for six year terms, rather
than appointment for life by the President.
The advantages of this will be presented
during the campaign which has now begun.
Very sincerely your^,
Louis Leman, Candidate
United States Senator. Republican Primary
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Clarke, Hugh. Texas Gulf Coast Catholic (Corpus Christi, Tex.), Vol. 10, No. 26, Ed. 1 Friday, November 21, 1975, newspaper, November 21, 1975; Corpus Christi, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth835553/m1/2/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .