‘If I Sign You’…

Last week, I escaped from Atlanta, and fled north. Armed with sacred oil, miter, crozier and chancellor. I saw the smiling faces of three confirmation groups—at Fort Oglethorpe, Dalton and Cartersville. The boys, girls and I compared notes on how you could tell a bishop from a priest (consensus: he’s older!). I called each by his new name (only two took the name “Paul”) and with my hand on the well-brushed head, I made this sign of the cross with the sacred oil saying”

“I sign you with the sign of the cross—

And I confirm you with the chrism of salvation,

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

The “slap on the cheek” was explained as a friendly tap of welcome to these new men and women of God, not as a stern warning with military overtones. It occurred to me that it was King Arthur and his Knights, not our Lord, who had initiate the “sword on the shoulder” technique. The young men and women will suffer enough of the world’s harshness. Should they not remember their early church years as evidence of the love of Christ?

Sunlight and Mountains

Everywhere the weather that Atlantans call delightful was deplored through the countryside. No rain. This is “bedspread” country, of course, Dalton making its boast that it covers the beds of most of America. But in small cities and the rural lands, the absence of rain is a frightening fact of nature. It means a drying up of the land, a certain bleakness even on the green mountainsides of Appalachians. But it means less crops, blighted orchards and farms, a shortage of home-grown vegetables.

It is also “Redemptorist country.” For years, these dedicated missioners of this great order have served the parishes and missions of upper Georgia as well as the area around Griffin. Father Bob McCrief who succeeded Father Tom Kelley when the latter died at his post two years ago, is the pastor of St. Gerard’s, with the athletic Father Jack Cavanaugh and the old master of parlor tricks, Father Anthony Kalb on his staff. At Dalton, Father Simon Glasl is pastor of St. Joseph’s—one of Georgia’s most attractive churches, and Father Jim Hlavac takes care of St. Francis, Cartersville. There are also missions at Calhoun and Jasper.

Where Two or Three…

But then priests belong to the Redemptorist order, and their normal life is in a community. When the superiors asked us a year ago if an arrangement could be effected so that their priests could not be spread so thin, we were able to work it out.

Father Dennis Dullea, one of our diocesan priests, will become pastor of St. Joseph’s parish, Dalton on June 3, and Father Dan McCormick, pastor of St. Bernadette’s parish, Cedartown, will care for Cartersville as a mission.

To laymen the specialization of priests is a little unfamiliar. Why can’t Trappists teach in our schools? Why don’t Jesuits have parishes? Why do diocesan priests, so few in numbers, work for themselves?

Because each has his own ministry. Trappists must offer public prayer to God, study and work for us all. Jesuits are assigned to special spiritual care as they watch the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius with the needs of contemporary society. Each to his own. And all are Christ’s.

Three Sisters

St. Gerard’s school at Fort Oglethorpe is on the soil where Army troops drilled from World War I down to recent years. A young lieutenant once barked commands there—his name was Eisenhower. The property was put up for sale when the cavalry left. The officers’ club became the school; the Army band once practiced in what is now the rectory; and stiff colonels lived in what is now the convent!

It was easy for me to become reminiscent in the church, an exact restoration of the World War II army chapel. I have offered Mass in these chapels on Cape Cod, Fort Ord, Calif., Australia, New Guinea and the Philippines—although more often in make-shift hatched places where the action was.

But St. Gerard’s has a pastoral look today. The three School Sisters of Notre Dame live lives modeled on Mary and the holy women rather than routines of rigid conformity. The children love them—and school, blackboards, posters, even the bell seem to vitalize the scene, not to deaden it.

The sisters umpire ball-games in a disadvantaged part of town, they visit the hospital, prepare their classes, converse with the people of the parish. Surely their presence here is a cause of both the high Protestant enrollment in the school, and the Catholic attendance too.

The same is true at Dalton and Cartersville. At St. Joseph’s a group of Baptist and Methodist ministers, attending the Confirmation, came back to the sacristy to offer their best wishes. In Cartersville, the parish reception was held at a bank building whose owner thoughtfully turns over his hall for community affairs. I was invited to a performance in May of “Arsenic and Old Lace” where two prominent Catholics will play the roles of Theodore Roosevelt and the young nephew. (Commercial!)

It was all thoroughly enjoyable. The oil of confirmation seemed to lubricate the good feelings of these fine parishes and their Protestant neighbors to our north.

Paul J. Hallinan

Archbishop of Atlanta