This article by Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan appears in the Spring (1964) issue of SPIRITUAL LIFE, a quarterly published by the Washington Province of the Discalced Carmelite Fathers. It is reprinted with permission of Fr. Sebastian, O.C.D., editor of SPIRITUAL LIFE and a Georgia native from this archdiocese.

By Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan

When Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council, his magnificent address almost suffered the same fate as Lincoln’s at Gettysburg. In all the pageantry, it was almost overlooked. Then, as the Council progressed, his striking words were recalled, re-read, studied, and quoted. It became quite clear that in these vibrant paragraphs, the voice of Pope John was speaking the same, sure directives that Peter had spoken long ago, and before Him, Christ Himself.

Pope John said, in regard to the errors that dog the pathway of truth: “The Church has always opposed these errors. Frequently she has condemned them with the greatest severity. Nowadays, however, the spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity.” It is time we re-examined this “medicine of mercy” in our day. Because this virtue is rooted in the single heart, it has been neglected in our easy reliance on the collective. Because it is a strange bedfellow for national and racial pride, it has often found itself out on the floor. And because it works best in the quiet shade of humble spirits, it has not received equal billing with the more aggressive virtues. A modern crowd would listen to Our Lord’s beatitude, “Blessed are the merciful!” and ask in wonder, “Blessed are the -what?” The brave, yes, or the temperate, even the just - but the merciful?”

This is not a homily on mercy. There are plenty of occasions for that as the post-Pentecost liturgy takes us down the long gallery of the Good Shepherd, Our Lord feeding the hungry, having compassion on the multitude, weeping over Jerusalem; the discredited publican in the temple, the good Samaritan, and the ten lepers who were cured. As we walk along this gallery of mercy each summer, is it not remarkable how little these images do to us? Yet this insensitivity to mercy is not new. Our Lord met with it too. The most persistent accusation made against Him was that He ate with the lower classes, associated with them, almost preferred their company. Magdalene sensed it, so did the patient thief, but the average citizen, then as now, was shocked by His unseemly concern for those in need. His compassion for the have-nots, His mercy. He had to remind them, “I say to you, there will be joy among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Needless to say, this joy was not shared by His respectable critics.

There are not many Catholics, proportionately, in the 71 counties that make up the new Archdiocese of Atlanta - about 3%. In some counties, there are not more than a dozen. When the recent census was underway, a priest was explaining, in one remote area, that we would need census takers to the number of 2/3 of the Catholic families in a given area. One man rose to ask, as he put it, not a theological question, but a mathematical one. “How do you find 2/3 of four?” How then explain the spiritual prestige of the Catholic Church here? The Church has a good name, “Catholic” is a good word, not in any surface sense of an artificial image, but in the hearts of men.

The impact of the Catholic Church in many areas of the new South has come from several things: the great influx of northern Catholics, the return of lapsed Catholics when a chapel is built nearby, a small but steady stream of converts, particularly among the Negroes. One factor, often overlooked, is the strong climate of religious belief in the Protestant South. The average man here simply takes his faith more seriously than in the more cosmopolitan, secularized parts of the United States. Perhaps it is a simpler faith. The Scriptures are closer to him. There are, indeed, some ugly blind spots, but it is far more likely here that the church is the center of his life. Doctrine is not strange to him, and his moral code is limited to what he believes.

In such a climate, the influences of Catholicism is an apparent paradox. A Church known for its liturgy, its organization, its strong grasp of authority is an alien thing. But although this may be the Catholicism the fearful Protestant reads and hears about, it is not the Church he sees. He sees, in Atlanta, several hundreds of incurable cancer patients, most of them Protestants, cared for lovingly and freely by Catholic sisters, and he recalls Christ’s concern for the lepers and the blind and the crippled. He is well acquainted with Georgians, some well-to-do Catholics and some with much less, who have been caring for the needs of families during decades that a St. Vincent de Paul Society has been a vital part of the Catholic parish. He thinks how appropriate it is that these Samaritans live in Georgia too. In a small town hospital, a handful of Catholics struggling to build their own church, have contributed a room. Each time a Protestant enters that room, he sees this little Catholic plaque, “Prayer is Strength” on the door, and he agrees with that. Whenever he sees a sister, in Atlanta or in the rural counties, she is on some mission of mercy, either to the mind or the body. He finds priests who as a master of course are following the footsteps of the One Who went about doing good. They are visiting the sick, teaching the young, encouraging the aged, helping those jailed in our federal penitentiary and getting jobs and housing for recent refugees from Cubs.

That exclusiveness which is rooted in legalism rather than in pastoral love has been mercifully absent in much of Georgia’s Catholic action. When Father Thomas O’Reilly went out in 1864 to implore General William T. Sherman to spare the heart of Atlanta from military destruction, he spoke not only for Atlanta’s one Catholic Church, Immaculate Conception, but for all the churches. Because his own sense of mercy embraced them all, the citizens put a monument to his memory right in front of the city hall. This priest’s thoroughly Catholic spirit has not been diminished. Ralph McGill, eminent publisher of the Atlanta Constitution, recently devoted a column to the work of the Trappist monks at Conyers, Ga. When three Negro Baptist churches were burned by segregationists, the monks offered to make stain glass windows for the new churches being built by popular contributions. McGill called it “one of the stories that warm and cheer the human heart” and noted that the famous order of Trappists were “vowed to silence and prayer for all mankind.” The Church in Georgia has been blessed with devoted laymen, as well as clergy and religious. Under good leaders like Archbishop Gerald O’Hara and Bishop Francis E. Hyland, parishes, churches, schools, missions, hospitals and other institutions have multiplied. But the well spring of it all could be a remarkable grasp of what mercy can do. The Catholic man or woman going about doing good is the most eloquent apostle of Christianity. The Church grows, not by argument nor by a display of power. It grows in men’s hearts by her charity and her display of compassion.

The virtues can sometimes collide, and sometimes diminish each other. This is, of course, a disorder in the intended harmony of man. An unmeasured prudence can enervate fortitude. An excessive temperance can weaken justice. Mercy, too, can lose its way. But in the missionary Church - which is in truth the Church everywhere - the quality of mercy is not likely to be strained. In the new American society so painfully emerging in our times, the exercise of mercy by Catholic and Protestant and Jew alike, can be a test of the ecumenical urge, indeed, its most vigorous instrument.