“Accentuate the positive!” has become a vital part of the updating of the Catholic Church. The love of God will enliven man’s spirit more effectively than the fear of hell. Virtues are better vehicles of religion than their opposite voices. It is a sturdier motive to live the joy and glory and salvation of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass than to be present because there is a precept forbidding us to neglect it.

This is no new departure for the vital Christian, whatever his age or his temperament. But a type of resistance is gradually emerging from the woodwork. Besides its disapproval of the revision, reform and reunion, it casually dismisses the new Constitutions on the Church and her Liturgy, the decree on Ecumenism.

One complaint from the resistance is that sin is disappearing. It isn’t denounced, they say, in sermons; the Act of Contrition has been replaced by the Act of Love; and the Sacrament of Penance is more concerned with reconciliation than with confession and penance.

Is this multiple complaint the “new theology?” Not at all -- in fact as long as we trace our natural lineage back to Adam and Eve, it is not likely that we will forget sin since they were the first humans who discovered it.

Back To The Bible

The Council has refocused our attention on the Word of God. The Scriptures are more important in our updating than the vernacular and the position of the altar. And the Bible is the history of Man’s Sin redeemed by Christ, and men’s sins forgiven by Christ and those to whom He gave the power.

The Psalms of the Old Testament are ideal for meditation. Here the theme is largely that of the tension between God’s law and man’s disobedience.

The prophets and apostles denounced sin -- not as sickness nor a harmless aberration -- but as blasphemy to God, a distortion of our bond with our fellowmen, and a treason to self.

One Lord said to Mary Magdalene: “Your sins are forgiven; go now and sin no more,” It has never been put more forcefully: Sin is wrong. It must not be repeated. It needs to be forgiven.

Our sermons must not ignore sin. Out of the liturgy of the Mass must be drawn homilies that point the finger of accusation at us -- when we are greedy, when we are unjust to others because of their race, when we lose our way in the jungle of lust and indulgence.

If we come to grasp better what it means to be “a member of Christ’s Mystical Body,” “a part of God’s Holy People” -- in a word, we are the Church. Then the Sacrament of Penance will be acknowledged as vitally, even desperately needed. Examination of conscience, accusation of sin, counsel, forgiveness and reparation are necessary. But why? Lest we remain outside the living community of the Church, unattached, unidentified, un-reconciled.

This is a time of transition, and in such periods, the mediocre mind is pressed to extremes. The resisters say, “As little change as possible!” The innovators say, “As much change as possible!” Gradually, in God’s good time, both will come to realize how unchristian each extreme really is. Every able Catholic owes himself and his Church a diet that is well balanced enough to deepen his virtue, and strengthen his rise above sin and bad habits to a life of grace.

The Church is not a Rock. It is built upon one. But it is a vine that grows and develops and moves with the historical ages. These are Jesus’ own metaphors. Only the extremist will see the Rock as the total symbol of the Church’s immobilism. Only the extremist will see the vine as the total symbol of undisciplined, unformed growth.

Image Of The South (Pro & Con)

A nearby representative who did his best to soil his state’s reputation by coarse and slanderous charges against civil rights demonstrators in the United States Congress now wants to hire a press agent to give the South a better name! His scheme will probably fall flat with the same thud that accompanied a Southern governor’s invitation to northern newspaper editors to “come and see for yourselves.”

The South does not need this sort of press agency. It needs what more and more of real Southern leaders are providing: honest answers, just solutions, progressive steps and an open door to education, opportunity, and decency.

To this majority of us who love the South, study its past, and pray and plan for its future, there is more than just irritation at this thunder on the right (e.g. the Klu Klux Klan) and a thunder on the left (sneers and jeers from visiting northerners whose blind spots are as large as their banners.) Late-blooming Catholic visitors are among the lot.

The demonstration at Selma was extraordinary and effective, justified by the brutal atmosphere and the repeated refusal of the white community to provide justice to the Negroes. The priests from the archdiocese represented us well, and upon return, spoke effectively to our people of the Selma significance. The GEORGIA BULLETIN covered the historic event very well.

This is more than can be said of the rash of “I was at Selma” articles now appearing in Catholic magazines. Two caught my attention recently. As witnesses, this Catholic laywoman and this priest presumably did a service to the Negro community and the Church. As adequate reporters, they were something less than adequate. In fact, most high school reporters, on their first assignment would have done better.

Item: The lady-writer was shocked to find the Confederate flag still flying at the Atlanta Airport. Even a cub reporter would have checked before assuming that the flag of a lost war expressed the Spirit of Atlanta. As a matter-of-fact, the airport displays the United States flag and that of the City of Atlanta, not the Confederacy. The only Confederate flags I have seen at the Airport were the tawdry cloths bought up by Northern Yankees, along with the miniature cotton-bales and pralines, to show their friends how widely they have traveled.

Item: A priest wrote “Three Days in Selma,” and I quote:

“I had trouble getting a seat on a plane to Atlanta (from Birmingham). I turned away from the airline counter and was walking away when a big man, he seems bigger every time I think of him, asked me in a very friendly, Southern drawl if he could give me a lift to Atlanta... I don’t know why I declined his offer, because I was very anxious to leave; but we both had a good idea why I said no: I couldn’t trust him!”

Fear can twist judgment, but was this a Christian response? Was it apostolic? Was it priestly? Was it even human? It is hardly the role of one member of the Mystical Body of Christ to say to another: “I have no need of thee!”

Paul J. Hallinan

Archbishop of Atlanta