Renaissance & Incense

Sir:

The "Liturgical Renaissance" [Dec. 22] is without question an active current factor in most Protestant denominations, including some which originated in quest of spontaneous encounter in worship and in revolt against tradition and formality. However, it might be inferred erroneously, we believe, that the "renaissance" is more prevalent than is really the case.

If our observation has been at all representative, the cases cited are not generally descriptive of the mainstream of the Communions mentioned. Many of us who welcome the corrective values of this renaissance are, nevertheless, persuaded that liturgy and the traditional should not overshadow or suppress the duly ordered spontaneous, the prophetic, encounter in worship. Liturgy must never become an end in itself.

OTIS L. COLLIER Methodist District Superintendent Crown Point, Ind.

Sir:

Four-fifths of my senses readily accept the liturgical renewal in the church today.

However, my nose just will not accept incense as a worshipful experience.

(THE REV.) DONALD R. HOGER Holy Cross Lutheran Church Crawfordsville, Ind.

Sir:

As your observations on the liturgical renaissance made public what I had already observed in many of my fellow clergymen, I couldn't help recalling the thought of a classmate. While in seminary, he noted that "some men dress like mother and want to be called father." That's about as springy a diving board as any psychoanalyst would need would he care to dive into the meaning that this renaissance has to the individual's emotional needs.

(THE REV.) CLARENCE F. SCHNEIDER The First Lutheran Church Jeffersonville, N.Y.

Sir:

Bravo to TIME and to my brethren in the Lutheran, Presbyterian and other evangelical churches! Liturgical reformation involves 2Oth century participation in both the church's Eucharist and the world's need for service and social action by contemporary disciples of Jesus.

The most powerful discovery for all of us can and will be that Catholics and Protestants are vitally experiencing each other's life and worship because of this liturgical movement. While Protestants are rediscovering the centrality of Holy Communion, Episcopalians and Roman Catholics are rediscovering preaching and the fuller participation of the congregation in the liturgy celebrated from free-standing altars and communion tables. Both Catholics and Protestants are being led to a deeper concern for the church's primary mission to the secular world as a result of awakening to each other's worship. The liturgical movement is one of the brightest stars in a very dark world.

(THE REV.) CARL SAYERS St. Stephen's Episcopal Church Birmingham, Mich.

First the Mosquito

Sir:

I believe that Nehru has done most to demonstrate practically that politics is "the art of the possible." We now see the three most populous nations all actively committed to aggression when it serves their own interest.

GERALD C. HARMON Glendale, Calif.

Sir: What's this new Nehru policy called--selective neutrality

WILLIAM R. LINDLEY Tacoma, Wash.

Sir:

Even TIME will agree that when a man (be it even Nehru) is being trampled by an elephant and needled by a mosquito, the easier enemy to avoid is the elephant. The wiser thing to do would be to first destroy the mosquito and then to go for the elephant. Nehru has done well in driving away the Portuguese mosquito from Goa. By Indian troops taking over Goa, the Chinese dragon (or elephant) has taken notice of Indian strength. Even if Nehru is doing his best to ignore Communist China's incursion into Northern India, the Indian nation isn't.

IVAN SASSOON

Calcutta

Sir:

Why should the American press criticize our action in Goa? Did the Americans win their independence by nonviolence? We did.

M. N. CHOWDHURY Bombay

Sir:

Nehru "liberates" while the rest of the world calls the action "armed aggression." Who shall this "pacifist" next "save" . . . Pakistan ?

ANDRE RONAY Sao Paulo, Brazil

Battle for Katanga

Sir:

I feel that your article [Dec. 22] concerning the Congo is biased a bit too much in favor of the U.N.

Katanga has every right to be an independent nation. If the U.S. were not supplying the money, the U.N. would not be fighting. The only real mercenaries are the soldiers fighting under the U.N. flag.

ROBERT S. KENNEDY JR. Pasadena, Calif.

Sir: Neither the U.S. nor the U.N. had any right whatsoever--legal, moral or logical--to subjugate one faction in favor of another in a purely internal struggle. Tshombe may be no prize package, but he has been the one African leader on whose dedicated anti-Communism we might have been able to rely.

At the very moment when we were crushing Tshombe's resistance in Katanga, we were shoring up Nkrumah, Africa's Castro, with a $133 million loan to Ghana.

FRANK X. O'DONNELL JR. Larchmont, N.Y.

Sir:

You hardly realize what we feel on this side.

M. Tshombe's secessionism may be a political mistake. It is not a crime. Anyway, it is not your business, or ours, or the U.N.'s. Some here say that your Government is moved by mean financial interests, others that you are going toward Communism, others that you lost your sense. Everybody loses faith in the U.S. as a reliable ally.

Stop it, stop it, stop it.

WILLIAM REY Verviers, Belgium

Sir:

As a Swede. I feel terribly ashamed of our troops' part in the U.N.'s stupid, brutal and unnecessary action against Katanga. Let me tell you that an increasing number of Swedes are protesting against this.

OLOF LAGERLOF

Stockholm, Sweden

Sir:

May I be allowed to congratulate the U.S. Government for its firm backing of the U.N. Congo policy despite the political pressure exerted by two powerful colonialist countries.

MAURICE KING

Cork, Ireland

Competition for Misery

Sir:

Your concern with the Cuban people in Miami touched me [Dec. 22]. Do you feel concern for the Americans who are being displaced by the Cubans? How would you like to be a dishwasher barely making ends meet and be replaced by a Cuban willing to work for half the money? Competition of this type is competition for economic misery. Your article states that the Cubans are here to fight to go back; if this is true, they should have stayed in Castroland and helped overthrow him.

ANNE STEWART Chicago

Sir:

Your otherwise good report on Cuban refugees contains one error.

It is not true that "efforts to resettle refugees in other sections of the United States have been unsuccessful."

As of Dec. 22, over 16,000 refugees had been resettled in 49 states. Cubans are resettling away from Miami at better than 500 a week. This weekly rate tops the rate achieved in resettling Hungarian refugees from Camp Kilmer in 1956.

More sponsorships and more offers of jobs are needed, however, and should be sent to the Cuban Refugee Emergency Center, 501 N. E. First Avenue, Miami, Fla.

W. L. MITCHELL Commissioner Social Security Administration Department of Health, Education and Welfare Washington

More & Earlier

Sir: As a high school teacher, I have read with a feeling of increasing uneasiness your article, "The New High School Kids," [Dec. 22].

All the clever, pat phrases and the "my aren't they amazing!" attitude displayed fail to hide the pathetic situation that is becoming increasingly prevalent among high school students--namely, their inability, nay, their refusal, to THINK! They are obsessed with the storing away of facts and more facts. Rarely is there genuine questioning of what is being "fed" to them. Tell them a lie, and they'll swallow it.

However, the true tragedy in American education lies not in the complacent, nonthinking student but in his teachers, who fear to climb out of their individual ruts and try something new and challenging to their own thinking.

CHARLES A. WHITE

Barrington, Ill.

Sir:

It occurred to me that the article should be carried a little farther and be applied to the colleges and universities (especially state supported) of the country. Your article impressed me as being accurate as far as it went, it being true that high school students are vigorous and enthusiastic about learning and have little trouble with the present high school curriculum. The only problem lies in the fact that these subjects aren't started soon enough!

When a student gets to college, his background is insufficient to enable him to start right in studying in his selected field. First he must spend two years taking university-required courses in English language, humanities, social science, foreign language, biological science and so on. These are courses that should have been learned in high school! And weren't!

JAMES W. MULHOLLAND

Denver

Sir:

The phrase, "They can do much more than we thought," sort of struck me.

They can do even more.

Let me tell you that in my home country (Holland), ordinary high school students carry an average of 15 subjects, and I am quite sure that Dutch children are not cleverer than American kids.

W. S. VAN KETEL

Durban, South Africa

Sensitivity

Sir:

One of the saddest stories I have read lately, and one of the most depressing pictures I have seen this year, appeared in your columns under the heading, "The Bloodbath Cure" [Dec. 22].

Just to think that these pitiful men and women paid $200 each to be made fools of, by men who are neither afraid of the devil nor have any respect for God or man, but would exploit man and force him into actions of cruelty he never dreamed of.

GERALD B. STRATTON

Boston

Sir:

Why Sensitivity Training for executives? I thought that was a compulsory course that you get free right along with marriage and child rearing.

MARY CLAMPITT Chevy Chase, Md.

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