July 29, 2016

What was in the news on July 29, 1966?

The Dutch Church takes risks, and a priest gets punished for birth control comments

Criterion logo from the 1960sBy Brandon A. Evans

This week, we continue to examine what was going on in the Church and the world 50 years ago as seen through the pages of The Criterion.

Here are some of the items found in the July 29, 1966, issue of The Criterion:
 

  • Study projects with Lutherans are advocated
  • Nuns ‘invade’ IU for summer session
  • Points later modified: Papal discourse on evolution prompts reaction of scholars
  • Methodists world leader supports Catholic views
  • Vietnam action termed ‘unjustified’ at Geneva
  • Italians dispensed from abstinence
  • Better than inaction, they say: Dutch aware of risks in new thinking
    • “UTRECHT, The Netherlands—There is no one in Holland who does not recognize that there are many risks involved in the present wave of new thinking. … The need to change, even if there are risks involved, seems universally accepted. But not every Dutch intellectual sees the risks in the same way. The real division in Holland is not between ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive,’ but between two main schools of progressive thought. One believes the present Church structure must be scrapped. … The other…wants to go forward in constant dialogue with the mass of the people even if this means going much more slowly. … The moderates quote the Dutch proverb: ‘Don’t throw away one pair of shoes until you have found another.’ The progressives answer that the old pair may only hinder the search, and that you would be quicker in bare feet. … [Father J. van Kilsdonk] believes that the world in the last 50 years has entered a new phase in its evolution, and a similar evolution has to follow in the Church. This would cause many crises, among them a widespread decline in religious practice. But Father van Kilsdonk is not particularly worried about this. He agrees that many people who do not attend Sunday Mass or obey the other Church disciplines still regard themselves as members of the Church. ‘There are,’ he says, ‘other ways of belonging to the Church than by going to Mass on Sunday.’ … The real test of our Christianity, he says, is not whether we go to Church, but whether we listen to three voices of inspiration—the Gospel and the original tradition of the Church; the world and the exigencies of humanity; and our own conscience.”
  • Intercommunion service ‘memorable,’ writer says
  • Farm workers need a minimum wage
  • England moves to raise aid for private schools
  • Jesuit disputes reasons given for state university ‘firing’
  • Brazilian Church drafts six points for aggiornamento
  • Scecina sponsors Avondale nite
  • Michigan votes tuition aid for private colleges
  • Prayer for Pope John’s cause
  • Primate’s visit to U.S. cancelled
  • Pope comments on indulgences
  • Top religion spokesmen ask Civil Rights action
  • Tri-faith project seeks 7,000 jobs
  • Bishops in Colombia seek moral reforms
  • ‘Catholic Hour’ topic announced
  • Non-Catholics included: Neighborhood children study art in Latin School project
  • ‘Sorry about that, Father’
    • “LIVERPOOL—Father Arnold McMahon, the young Catholic priest who aroused controversy last year by publicly advocating the right of Catholics to practice birth control, is en route to West Africa for a five-year assignment which he feels is partly ‘corrective training.’ He will serve in the Accra diocese, which embraces the Ghana capital. Before his liner sailed, he was quoted as saying: “… We expect to go where we are sent, but this came as a surprise. I could think of better places.’ ”
  • Bishop Sheen due back on TV in fall

(Read all of these stories from our July 29, 1966, issue by logging on to our special archives.) †

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