In suburban homes and lonely downtown rooms, in hospitals and clinics, there are Catholics quietly suffering. Like most who enjoy good health, we see these folks in pain and think we know what days-in-suffering are. I know I did -- until last year. Although in 1964 I never endured much real pain, I have learned the uncertainties, the hours of waiting, the dashed hopes, the sudden setbacks.

As we all pull together in the Campaign of Expansion, I speak to those who are sick, -- as a brother rather than a bishop. Let us pray together that God’s work will be done; let us offer what each day brings, -- hope, discouragement, confinement agony or death, -- to our Lord.

And if you drop me a note about it, we can make this a unity of great and little cavalries.

(Proudly), Our Own

As a long time reader of columnists, I find some of our Catholic writers lively and perceptive, others routine. What delights me most in our own Georgia Bulletin is the trio of staff men who write each week their own columns.

Take last week, In Reapings At Random, Mr. Sherry uses an incoming letter as a take-off point, and then replies. The “disturbing problem” is the wholesale criticism of the Catholic press, but it reflects a much deeper issue. The column is provocative, and the content (as usual) superbly expressed.

In “Lift Up Your Heads”, Father Mayhew takes up a liturgical difficulty. This phrase is an Advent antiphon, but it is also healthy advice to a whole congregation. Father Mayhew shows why. The archdiocese is fortunate to have this gifted liturgical student with us, to lead us over the rough routes of our future worship of God.

And Georgia Pines last week found Father Kiernan discoursing on the “Snowy, Snowy, South.” Personal and local, full of Georgia color and redolent with incidents, this column reminds me of Addison’s ‘Coffee House’ sketches called ‘The Spectator.’ If “folksy” means “warm and homespun,” then it is.

Mary Perkins Ryan, Gary Wills, Gary MacEion, and Msgr. Conway are all good too. But I’m happy about our own stable of columnists.

“Drunks Don’t Belong In Jail”

This week I met, quite by accident, an Episcopalian who is director of alcoholic rehabilitation for our Municipal Court. Entering the work through his church activities, Henry Jackson is a quiet but mighty effective force for good in our city.

The little booklet, “Drunks Don’t Belong in Jail” which he wrote, contains this passage:

“The alcoholic can be helped. But many of the statements in books, articles, and speeches seem to me to create an unnecessary fog about alcoholism. They say we know too little about all the causes and how to treat it, always stressing the need of more research.”

“But we treat illness, other than alcoholism, with the best know methods of today. We do not confuse other patients because we do not know everything today about their particular disease. We do confuse alcoholics when we constantly harp on knowing so little of this illness and its treatment.”

Good advice to remember as we move at some future date into this urgent area of human need. Let us do what we can, now.

An Ideal Choice

We don’t know how happy other nations are about their new cardinals, but all who know Baltimore agree that Archbishop Sheran’s choice was about perfect. The see of Baltimore, still echoing footsteps of the great Cardinal Gibbons, calls for it. Our mother-province, from which we were cut in 1962, deserved it as America’s oldest ecclesiastical entity.

But the man himself is the reason. Keenness, vision and courage have characterized his work in education, ecumenism, and liturgy. This work has been marked by high leadership, not by routine administrations.

Atlanta will recall his visit and fine message to our new daughter-province, March 29, 1962, when he deplored the word “dismemberment,” and favored a more unitary term. In every way he has been a true friend.

We also recall the visit of another cardinal-elect, the Maronite patriarch, Paul Peter Meouchi in 1963. We congratulate our Maronite parish of St. Joseph and our Melkite parish of St. John, whose patriarch, Maximos IV Saigh was also named a cardinal.

Paul J. Hallinan

Archbishop of Atlanta