March 7, 2014

What was in the news on March 6, 1964?

Opposition to apartheid, and a clarification on liturgical changes by a Vatican commission

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 March 6, 1964, issue of The Criterion:

  • African hierarchy reaffirms its opposition to apartheid
    • “PRETORIA, South Africa—South Africa’s bishops have reaffirmed their opposition to this country’s policy of apartheid—strict racial segregation. They said in a joint statement they are concerned that justice should be done to all groups and persons, and that charity should animate all relationships. The statement also said that declarations regarding apartheid by individual bishops are made on their own responsibility.”
  • New liturgy rulings clarified by Vatican
    • “VATICAN CITY—The secretary of the Vatican’s new Liturgy Commission said that Pope Paul VI’s ‘motu proprio,’ which initiates the changes in the liturgy voted by the ecumenical council, aims at ‘gradual and natural evolution.’ Father [Annibale] Bugnini pointed out that for the past 400 years ‘all power in liturgical matters has been reserved to the Holy See,’ and that the task of bishops has been simply to ‘insure that liturgical laws be observed and to oversee pious practices.’ But by the terms of the Constitution on the Liturgy, this centuries-old barrier has been broken, Father Bugnini said. ‘The Church now entrusts to competent territorial authority—a deliberately elastic term—many problems of a liturgical nature, including those concerning the introduction, the use and the limits of the vernacular in certain rites.’ ”
  • Cincinnati to eliminate first grade
    • “CINCINNATI—Parish elementary schools of the Cincinnati archdiocese will drop the first grade beginning next September in an effort to solve the problems of rising cost and enrollment. The Cincinnati archdiocese is the first U.S. See to drop the first grade on an across-the-board basis, though grades have been dropped in individual Catholic schools in scattered areas throughout the country.”
  • Columbus concert set for St. Meinrad choir
  • Eleven ‘fouls’ on a single call! What’s happened to basketball?
  • Annual Passion Play set in Bloomington
  • $29,000 bequest made to parish
  • Laymen and the council: The submerging layman
  • Extent of vernacular is in bishops’ hands
  • On New York stage: Mild critical reaction greets ‘Deputy’ opening
  • Parish adopts program to curb school dropouts
  • Cardinal Suenens to speak in East
  • ‘War’ being waged over church steps
  • Obituary was premature
  • Shared time being tried in 150 U.S. communities
  • Slight dip noted in Catholic books
  • 12 parish schools represented in Children’s Theatre production
  • Belgian priest’s stand on ‘pill’ draws fire
  • Laity is included on 26 school boards
  • Canadians plan to use vernacular

(Read all of these stories from our March 6, 1964, issue by logging on to our special archives.) †

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