Religion grows as social force in 1965
Until recently, the secular and not the religious institutions have been in the vanguard of the struggle to vindicate in the practical realm the rights of the Negro. The NAACP now has found a new and stalwart ally in the church. This was a 1965 movement in religion.
Thousands of clerics appeared in Selma for civil rights demonstrations, as well as in Brooklyn, Milwaukee, Jackson, Mississippi and Chicago where the largest rights demonstration in Chicago's history was led by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference on July 24-26.
Civil rights protests gained in intensity during the Selma campaign, after the Rev. James J. Reeb, a white Unitarian minister from Boston was beaten to death by an anti-civil rights group.
THE SCOPE OF CHURCH programs in the anti-poverty war has been augmented through use of grants by the Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington. Programs for day care centers for underprivileged children and job
training centers have been implemented throughout the U.S.
The need for unified Christian action has displaced irrelevant dogmatic divisions — at least among more liberal congregations.
Reverberations of the transition have been felt throughout the world. The World Council of Churches, representing 214 Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox and Old Catholic Churches in more than 80 countries, met at Geneva May 24 for the first of a series of ecumenical talks with the Roman Catholic Church on questions of interfaith unity.
The fourth and final session of the 21st Vatican Council ended Dec. 8. Of 16 decrees issued during the session, the Modern World Schema, which attempts to define the role of the church in the world of today, holds the greatest implications for a new era in the Catholic Church. The actualization of this document will move the church out of its century-long isolation into the mainstream of contemporary history.
WITH THE RELIGIOUS liberty document, the dogmatic
foundation has been laid for spiritual brotherhood between Christians and Jews.
A decree on bishop's powers which decentralizes church administration by providing juridical status to national groups of bishops and urges broader international representation on the Vatican Curia also was approved.
Another historic achievement marked the mutual lifting of centuries-old Roman Catholic and Orthodox excommunications. The Vatican has annulled the mutual excommunications of St. Pope Leo IX and patriarch Micael Caerularius of Constantinople, which led to the great schism between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches in 1054.
POPE PAUL VI has resurrected France's postwar experiment in dealing with the "de-Christianized" working class. The French worker-priests, beginning on a trial basis for three years, will try to convert working classes which have been seduced by Marxian ideology.
Ambassador Goldberg urged an investigation by a UN Commission of religious discrimination
tion in various parts of the world, and in particular of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union.
Other lay and religious leaders followed with a series of anti-discrimination petitions directed to the Soviet Union. On June 3, President Johnson called on the Soviet government publicly to lift all "restrictions" which it had imposed on Jewish residents of the U.S.S.R.
In Spain, a law granting wide rights to religious minorities or non-Catholics, supported by Generalissimo Francisco Franco, is virtually certain of promulgation in 1966.
Poland's Cardinal Wyszinski charged the Polish government with violating the 1900 Paris Convention (which prohibited discrimination in education) by repressing religious activities and teaching.
Pax, Poland's left wing Roman Catholic organization, celebrated its 20th anniversary.
Signs of an emerging skepticism towards Communist ideology among Polish, Hungarian and other Communist-dominated youth indicate a fertile opportunity for a reconsideration of Christianity among these people.
In the spotlight of political action in Viet Nam, Buddhists demonstrated against the Huong government, causing street riots, attacks on the U.S. Consulate and U.S.I.S. Demonstrations culminated in hunger strikes in which one 17-year-old Buddhist girl burned herself to death in protest against the Huong regime. Several other Buddhist burnings occurred.
Interdenominational groups in the United States joined to protest the Viet Nam war. The National Council of Churches issued the first formal pronouncement to be made by a major U.S. religious body, when they proposed that the U.S. stop bombing North Viet Nam to create a more favorable climate for peace negotiations.
Pope Paul VI's unprecedented Atlantic flight to New York to address the General Assembly of the UN entered a plea for world peace. He evoked a pledge of co-operation from Protestant, Orthodox and Jewish leaders in seeking an end to dissension and war.
Colleen Hayes
Business soars in 1965
1965 started off with a boom, kept on running and never stopped. The average worker was able to take home more pay, and he spent more of it than he had spent before. A new type of coin hit the American scene with a thud with the threat of a silver depletion. The confidence in the dollar took a dip in Europe but not U.S. spending abroad. Prices of aluminum and copper soared—enter LBJ.
Business entered the 1965 scene with a bang. Business activity took off at a substantially higher level than a year ago. Euthused by such beginnings, foreseers were predicting new highs for '65. Such hopes were ligitimate. Steel, railroads, electrical power output, automobiles — all were traveling at a record speed toward the top, including federal spending. Business failures were down 9 per cent. The workman was sporting a higher pay check and quickly saw that it got spent.
A third of the way through the new year arose an increase in old-age pensions. New rules made it easier to qualify for the benefits and expanded health care for the aged. Profits of U.S. companies surged upward to the highest level ever recorded, and consumer spending rocketed into a capital-goods boom. Amidst the boom housewives were beginning to notice a gradual rise in food prices, with no sign of abatement. Here and there small fears of inflation were taking seed.
THESE GROWING FEARS probably began in February when President Johnson announced that he aimed to curb U.S. spending abroad, both public and private, and increase U.S. earnings abroad.
By April, there were rumors circulating in Europe that soon the U.S. dollar and the British pound would be forced to devalue. Johnson responded by asking American banks to limit loans abroad and requesting that American industries be watchful by sending fewer dollars overseas.
The U.S. dollar is carrying a tremendous burden. In addition to financing the war in Viet Nam and supporting the bulk of the world trade, it is being used to help everyone from Nasser in Egypt to the nations of Latin America and Africa.
Gold seemed to be spreading in world popularity and spreading from the U.S. Treasury. In January, Johnson recommended that Congress reduce the amount of gold required to back the American dollar. However, by November the gold loss had nearly equaled the total outflow of gold in the past three years. The U.S. reserves were at a 27-year low at less than $14 billion.
TOPPING THE GOLD problem was the silver shortage. To the American people, silver was an every day necessity. Such things as parking meters, vending machines, and laundromats simply wouldn't operate without the silver coins. By April, silver was on its way out as a coin metal. If the present rate of silver use had continued, the supply would have been exhausted in three to four years.
For the first time in 112 years the U.S. government was changing the metal content of the nation's coins. On Nov. 1 the new sandwich coins were issued, having little or no metallic value. Dimes and quarters consisted only of copper and nickel, and half-dollars were composed of less than 50 per cent silver. No more silver dollars were to be issued for at least five more years. This would raise the silver price from the present $1.29 per ounce.
Before silver prices were given their price boost, steel prices already were soaring, giving grounds for one of the biggest settlement demands by the United Steelworkers Union. The union demanded not only a cash pay raise but fringe benefits from the 11 major steel producers.
Steel was not the only corporation with employee demands. Strikes were called against individual companies in aluminum, aerospace, rubber, and shipping. Aluminum agreed to settlements which exceeded the administration's wage expectations, leading to aluminum price increases. Statements flew from Washington and the corporations and on Nov. 10-11 aluminum producers announced that price increases would be rescinded.
Then it was copper's turn During the aluminum battle, copper producers had quietly been raising their prices. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara entered the scene by stating that price increases could seriously impair war efforts in Viet Nam. Several days later, copper manufacturers announced a rescind in prices.
It looks as if 1965 will exit as it entered. Business and spending are still booming and the corporations may call '65 a red-letter year. By Dec. 31 earnings will have amounted to more than $44 billion, making it the boomingest year ever.
— Jane Larson
Comet draws notice in scientific field
The most noticeable scientific development of 1965 had little or nothing to do with scientific research skills — it was just there. It was the Ikeya-Seki comet which was discovered by two amateur astronomers who live in the suburbs of Tokyo.
The comet, which shed a light as bright as that of the full moon a few nights, had a tail that was 20 million miles long. In the sky its tail produced a second Milky Way to be seen by some observers. The orbit of the comet, which goes beyond Pluto, will allow its return in an estimated 500-1,000 years.
Another spectacular discovery was made by a Harvardian, Elso Barghoorn. Barghoorn, a paleontologist, discovered fossils of the oldest living things yet to be found. These were rod-shaped bacteria whose fossils were found in rock unearthed in South Africa. The estimated age of the specimens was set at three billion years—one billion years older than the previously oldest specimens. The discovery increases the possible age of life on the earth by one-third.
IN A GOLD MINE IN the
same country, an American physicist, Frederick Rines of Case Institute, finally showed proof of the natural existence of one of the most illusive of all atomic particles, the neutrino.
The neutrino has a mass of zero, a charge of zero, and a velocity of the speed of light. Rines had to set up his experiment in the bottom of a 10.482-foot gold mine. This thickness of rock and earth prevented almost all of the other naturally produced atomic particles from piercing to that depth. The neutrino, which is capable of penetrating 100 million miles of lead, had no difficulty penetrating to that depth and colliding with the stone walls of the mine.
THE IMPORTANCE of the actual existence of a natural neutrino is in doubt because exactly what the neutrino does is in doubt. One theory is that the neutrino might be connected with waste formed in the destruction of matter.
— Terry Joslin
2 Daily Kansan Wednesday, December 15, 1965
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