July 13, 2012

What was in the news on July 13, 1962?

Encyclical calls for global novena to prepare for ecumenical council, and editorial warns that council won’t soften methods to save souls

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 13, 1962, issue of The Criterion:

  • Prepare for council by penance, pope urges Encyclical asks global novena
    • “VATICAN CITY—His Holiness Pope John XXIII has issued an encyclical calling for the practice of penance by the world’s Catholics in preparation for the coming ecumenical council. In the seventh encyclical of his reign, titled Paenitentiam Agere (To Do Penance), Pope John also called on the world’s bishops to institute a solemn novena in honor of the Holy Spirit to invoke the blessings of divine grace on the Fathers of the council. … The pope stressed that Christ explicitly taught the need for the practice of penance, and that the Church has always considered it indispensable ‘for the perfection of its sons and its better future.’ ”
  • For Council’s Success: Strive for perfection, Pope John tells Sisters
  • ‘Operation Blitzkrieg’: Many hands to ‘produce’ new CYO athletic field
  • Council expected to work on 35-hour week basis
  • ‘A National Disgrace’: Migrant workers’ plight
  • Braceros vs. Migrants: An employer speaks out
  • New laws could help cause of the migrant
  • Negro woman doctor ministers to migrants
  • Pursue pickle pickers’ plight
  • Stem obscenity flow, prelate asks Congress
  • More agreement on Bible hailed
  • Editorial: No easy road
    • “Anyone who expects the coming Ecumenical Council to discover a new, pleasant and easy method of saving one’s soul had better begin shopping around right now for a new religion. The council is not going to make a new code of morals more acceptable to soft-living, pleasure-seeking modern men. It will offer nothing more comfortable than self-control as a means of planning parenthood. It will not bring marriage laws up-to-date by permitting remarriage to those who are sorry, and repent the mistakes they made in the first. The way to heaven will still be narrow and difficult when the council is over, and the way to perdition wide and easy. If anything, the council will put renewed emphasis on the need of a penance and self-discipline. … Unless Christians begin immediately to take part in the council by reforming their lives with prayer and penance, all the hard hours of work in the Vatican could be in vain.’ ”
  • Let hopeless patients die in dignity, doctors told
  • Religious orders in Chile follow lead of bishops in distrusting land holdings
  • Doctor plans missionary career
  • No freedom for Church in Peiping, weeping refugee tells missionary
  • Non-Catholics also parish members, dedication speaker declares
  • Three Council observers named for Anglicans

(Read all of these stories from our July 13, 1962, issue by logging on to our special archives.) †

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