March 6, 2015

What was in the news on March 5, 1965?

Pope asks for silence on birth control issue, more changes for the liturgy and a call for updated Church architecture

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 5, 1965, issue of The Criterion:

  • Solemn rites mark creation of cardinals
  • Pope urges ‘official’ birth control silence
    • “LONDON—Pope Paul VI has ‘requested that there should be an end to public discussion of contraception.’ Cardinal John Heenan of Westminster said here. … The cardinal added [Feb. 28]: ‘We were also informed that it was not for us to make further public statements on the subject.’ Cardinal Heenan refused to comment on the cases of two British priests who recently have been in trouble with their superiors for publicly challenging the traditional Church teaching on birth control.”
  • New liturgy moves step forward
    • “WASHINGTON—The celebration of the Mass undergoes a second turn of the kaleidoscope on March 7, the first Sunday of Lent. In line with the spirit of the ecumenical council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the turn is toward more simplicity and clarity and greater freedom of action. The goal: to bring the whole Christian people into full, active and understanding participation in the work of giving praise and thanksgiving to God, in both song and spoken prayer. Except possibly for a more widespread use of the prayer of the faithful—the short prayer in litany form which comes immediately before the offertory anthem—there will be no more English in the Mass in the United States than was introduced three months ago, on Nov. 29.”
  • Take tumor from brain of cardinal
  • Providence choir sets dual Clowes concert
  • Cardinals will elect top prelate
  • Father John Lynch, Aurora pastor, dies
  • Church on trial—objections sustained?
  • Missionary intentions are listed
  • Pontiff lauds faith of U.S. Catholics
  • Pope asks Congo peace
  • Bold departures: New church designs urged by architects
    • “CLEVELAND—Planning the interiors of churches for present-day workship may require bold new departures from traditional design, a number of speakers declared here at a national meeting on Church architecture. Two participants at the three-day conference suggested that correct attitudes toward worship may be impeded by placing the tabernacle on the main altar. … Father Bernard Cooke, S.J., head of the theology department at Marquette University in Milwaukee, said liturgists and architects must find a way to overcome that feeling in many people that Christ is somehow present only in the tabernacle, that he is encountered nowhere else in man’s life. The Church is sacred, said Father Cooke, not only because Christ is in the tabernacle, but because he is present in the people who come there to worship the Father.”
  • Altar boy project is announced by Indiana K of C
  • Notes lack of mission seminaries
  • AUFS man will lecture at Marian

(Read all of these stories from our March 5, 1965, issue by logging on to our special archives.) †

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