April - May is Migrant Season for many bishops. The home nest is wrestling with Easter and ordinations and graduations, but we have duties beyond our borders and the developing concept of collegiality has doubled the travel - time.

Washington, D.C. - attended the annual meeting of the Trustees of Catholic University of America. This Board is composed of metropolitan archbishops and other bishops, laymen and officers of the University. This is our university -- all the Catholic people of the United States, and yet much more must be known about it. It specializes in graduate study with certain excellent departments and schools. It is not just a “boot-camp” for Church administrators. Year by year it attracts more lay scholars, for example in architecture, law, engineering, the sciences. It is not a sprawling multitude of credit-conscious amateurs in learning. It has only about 5,000 students. The Catholics of the nation are concerned not with quantity, but quality. The freedom of inquiry and pursuit of truth must flourish here above all places.

Detroit, Michigan - met with Archbishop Dearden, and the four bishops of the Liturgy Commission. Despite brickbats from the right and left, despite charges of “innovation” and foot-dragging, we reviewed the forward steps of the past year, and moved forward on an integral pattern of the vernacular, provisions for participation in the “Common Market”, preparation for a Common Liturgical Text for ten English-speaking nations.

Then we launched a new Music Advisory Board, of a dozen specialists in the composition, selection and criticism of the new Church music. This is a battleground of criticism - in fact much of the fiery fault - finding of our present renewal is directed at the many of the “new Hymns”. The high caliber of the Board and the insistence on the Council that the essence of Sacred music is the people’s part, gives promise of gradual improvement.

Meanwhile when you find yourself muttering a “new hymn” in the poor melody and vague words, pitched in a key that would strain a soprano, while all around others mutter too -- Think of the opportunity for penance! And like a headache, it can’t last forever. Pray for the new Advisory Board.

Dixie - Datelines

Bishops of the six dioceses comprising the Province of Atlanta held their annual meeting in Atlanta not long ago. The church in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas has many common issues as well as distinctly local ones.

We discussed a provincial liturgical conference, sharing of burdens of the Tribunal (Marriage Courts), a Provincial Council in the future, and the many interactions with governments (education and anti-poverty) and other churches (ecumenical programs). Committees will soon be working in all of these areas.

The bishops concelebrated at Mass in our Cathedral, and I explained to the many students present that I was their spiritual father, and all bishops are brothers, “These are your uncles.” The bishops were guests at a luncheon given by our clergy.

Especially In Georgia

My visit to Macon to attend the convention of the diocesan Council of Catholic Women was surely enjoyable. With excellent guidance from Bishop Thomas McDonough, and Monsignor John Toomey, the lay leaders conducted a fascinating series of talks and panels on ecumenism and cooperation.

In a talk, I referred to the “agony of the Ku Klux Klan today” and the reason for its desperate measures: they have lost their three targets of hate; - the minority groups. Now the Jewish religions contribution and suffering are recognized, the Catholics are the focus of the world’s interested attention, and the Negro refuses to accept a way of life based on “no voice, no vote, no veto.” They are no longer minority groups. Hatred has lost its target, and the Klan is frustrated.

A Klansmen wrote me this week, but inadvertently forgot to sign his name. He assured me that they still hate all three just as much as ever, and invited me to a cross-burning to prove it.

I should survive 280 days in a hospital to go to a cross-burning!

Two Gems From Sea Island

When priests of both dioceses met for a “picnic” (golf, swimming, fine dinner and lots of conversation at Sea Island this month, an old clerical theory was blasted.

You’ve heard it: “If a priest shoots more than an 80 at golf, he’s neglecting his golf. If he shoots less than 80, he’s neglecting his work.”

Certainly one of the hardest working priests in Georgia is our own Father Govern of Griffin. Head of a fine vigorous parish with an excellent school, he has served on many other tasks, including our all important Vocation Commission. In the recent expansion campaign, he was the dynamo of that region, first to go over its goal.

When the golf scores were totaled up at Sea Island, guess whose name led all the rest with a neat 81? The quiet, effective pastor, of Griffin, Father Govern!

One of our big motel chains uses a marquee in front to announce its guest “celebrities”. We were scheduled to stay there but changed plans at the last moment. Sea Islanders were edified to read on the marquee:

WELCOME ARCHBISHOP

WELCOME CHANCELLOR!

But it seems that the previous celebrity was a vice - president of a large brewing company, and the management failed to remove the whole message. Under my name was the dubious identification:

FULL OF GUSTO

WITH A GREAT BIG GLASS!

Paul J. Hallinan

Archbishop of Atlanta