News Scrapbook 1970-1972

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AN DI GO UNION

... n (cp.~ Jz_ rie t upholds right in moral deci • ons D "freedom of con- series of lectures at Our Lady science" mean you can make of G1ace Catholic Church. He says that both St. Paul a moral decision tbat runs and the Second Vatican Coun- contrary tp church authority cil uphold the right of the i~- and still claim lo be in good dividual to make moral dec1- faith? ~ions that contradict church The Rev. Francis Wieser, authori y. professor of moral the~logy He ays. St. Paul did so at the Uni\lersity of San Diego, when he told members of the thinks it does. church at Cormth they could If it doesn't, Father Wieser eat meat sacrificed to pagan argues, people become "mor- idols - contrary to a church al neuters" who need some- council decree - as long as one else, someone in "author- they were "among friends," ity," to tell them wha.t to do. but not when !hey might He also thlnks the claims of scandalize others. personal conscience versus Father Wieser tak!!S this to those of church authority ~re mean you can in good faith respon ible for producmg make moral decisions con- "large areas of ten.sion" with- trary to church authority, m the Roman Catholic but that you can't appeal to Church today over such que.s- vour conscience to justify tions as birth control, con- doing anything that would srit>ntious objection, "di- harm other people - as by vorced" Catholics who re- scandalizing them marry and civil disobedience. And he interprets Vatican As a rule, the individual's Il's Declaration on Religious conscience must assume the Freedom, which said all men responsibility 'or reaching de- should be free from oppres- cisions m these and other s11·e authority, to mean essen- moral matters. Father Wie- tially the same thing. ser believes. He says this is He says, however, that the because law 1s "general" In problem is that people not nature and can".t be e ·peeled only must operate on the basis to have the answers for all of an "informrd conscience," particular . tituations in• but they must make sure they valving a moral decmon. _ Nevertheless, this doesn't I are really appealing to con- science and not merely ration- alizing. I People, he says, have shown themselves capable of findmg "reasons" to justify doing almost anything To help make sure we aren't rationalizing, Father Wieser offers three principles set forth by the 13th Century philosopher, Thomas Aquin~s: First - ;\,lake sure you are properly informed by seeki~g out the principles and Chris- tian tradition involved. Con- :;cience is not just "listening to yourself," and since most of our moral values come from oth{'r people our own moral decisions have to be seen in the light of theirs as well. Second - Be prudent, which Aquinas says means we should learn from actual life experiences. General philosophlral principles exist, but their application must be tempered by pr d nee. Third - Ma ·e you have lhc: "rigbt n ot1vatlon" by cultivating a sense of re- sponsibility and just , not just selfishness. Even when you are reason- ably sure you have made a responsible decision, though, you still can't be sure you have made the right one, Fa- ther Wieser says. "St. Thomas says we can gain no more than m.oral cer- titude that we have acted responsibly, not certitude that we did nol make a mistake," he says. And he warns that freedom of conscience should not be thought of as a simple way out of often complex moral situations and he says not ev• eryone is capable of handling such freedom. "Freedom of conscience in the hands of immature people can be a cau~e of real self• deception," he say "Nev rthelcss, it's a hu• man characteristic to be free. 1f God had wanted us not to be free, he would have given us more instincts." -ROB- ERT DI VEROU

Spe . r t on Clianging Catholicism to Sp a

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'I'he Rev. Eugene Burke, C.S.P., a specialist on the changing roman Catholic Church since the Vatican II Ecumenical Council, will speak in the South- land next week. Now a teacher at Catho- lic UniversJty of Washing- ton, D.C., Father Burke was f o u n d e r and first president of both the Cath- olic theological Society of American and the Society of CQlege of acred Doc- trine. He is a member of the rorth American Ecumeni-

cal Society and o Bishops' Ecumenica mission for Conve

tions

with Presbyterians. He will discuss Christian theology for the future on forums sponsored by the Paulist Eathers. Father Burke will speak at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Beverly Hills High School auditor- ium. 241 S.• Ioreno Drive Beverly Hills. and at. 4:30 p.m. Friday at St. Paul the A p o st le Church, 10750 Ohio Ave., West Los An- geles.

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mean the new emphasIS on conscience does away with law or authonty because Chri~t himself said he came to fulfill and not. abolish the law the priest said. Father Wi ser's the new emphas!S srience is d ign d to "interior attitud s'' in an strict cm of "external" rules. The Pries.t made hL~ obser- val!ons in the four:th in a rather

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Pay T.ribute ishop Maher

REPORT C

School and Youth Notes

HF:t\RY GAROll'iER - The direC"tor of the Fme rts (;alley talks on "Aspect of Kinetics in Sculpture" at 8 p.m. Wedne:• day in Sherwood Hall, La Jolla rm:Rr-:. .\ II.\.· \t'Jr-i-!\1YR!liA .\'0811.E, draw,ng and scuJp. lure by ar11 ls ludents. t:niver ity of San Diego Knigh of Columbu Library. Tuesday through April 30. •:-,,ow A O THE.\'.' photographic hi fory and full-size replica of Sa Diego Public Librar:, reading room; Downfown L1- brar1 Torno through Apnl 30 TF~~Ol.11 l'~:TERSO:>,. .J\ n;s ..\\\, painting and culp Jew1 b Commun ly Center Tue ·da) through :'I.fa) 7.

. Larrv L Steele and Jerry D. Thoma of San .Jl~~:,•n graduated from the California Hi hway Pa• been assigned to the trot Ac.ademy in ISahcraCmHe~toSte:1: t:sthe West· Los Angeles Riverside area o t e , area and Thomas to the Baldwin Park area. Michael Weaver to edit USD Law Review . an :vi:1chael J weaver, a law student at the t;mvers1ty of S . Diego, has been name

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D School of Law publishes the quarter y re\1ew.

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San Diego uruon Staff Ol5Patc:h . SACRA\1K:\'TO - The state Coordinating_ Cou c1l for H1gh~i Education yesterday removed the last aior hurdle. between San Diego State College and official statu as_ a umvers,t~. The council voted unanimously to adopt cntena that will State and 10 ot hoots in the 19-campus state colleg stem thenght to calf selves universities. , Those criteria !ready have been adopte~ by the system s board of trust<' as required in the state law that. changed its name to the California State Umversity a Colleges March 4. .

All that re.mains before State 1 and the other campuses that qualify become univ.ersities is routine act,cm by the trustees and the co:.mcil on each.,mclivid- ual case. / And Chan~l Glenn S. Dumke wants that to be done in time.ior the new universities to µr.;e the title on their diplomas for June graduates. P. N. Hyndman, a member of the coordinating council an

MARIO PE[ "You know, man, it's like cold to- rlay'." Kot the best sentence in the world, though you hear it, or some- thing like it, often enough. •1t•s cold today" would be enough lo bring out the full meaning. "You know," "man," and "like" are gram- maticallv described as intercala- t,ons. An intercalation is something thrown in for good measure when you rlon't really need it. What causes people to use interca- la'1om;? There are many theorie~. OnP 1s that the speaker want~ to ex- erci .,. hh voice; another, that he wants to be more emphatic; a third. that he is nervous, and u~es "you know" as a substitute for "er . . . : a fourth. that he is trying to enlist his hearer's sympathy for his point of view by implying that the hearer already knows what he is being told him, and is already in sympathy. This is the most psychological of the four explanations. A slight expan- sion of "you know" into "you know that" makes it altogether defin- ite: "You know that he was here yesterday." * This may account for the ongin of •you know" as an intercalation, but hardly for 1t~ widespread u~e. A wit- ness from the lower educational strata, te~tifying before a grand

lified on the ground that you expect your hearer to "say" something (but not always; "Say! I like that!"). Seld- om do you expect your hearer to "look" when you say: "But look! He went there yesterday!" Pure intercalations appear In all languages. From Spanish we bor- rowed, at least in ·western stateR, the exact equivalent of "you know?", SabP?, which came out as "savvy?" Italians often use sai or capisci, of which the fir~t is the exact transla- tion of "you know," the second of "you understand." * .\s far hack as 1:lth century French literature, a jailer runs up to the lord of the manor and starts off with "Ye .~a,:r.:? (''Don't you know?'') The man we put in the dungeon last night is dead!" How could the lord be expected to "know" until the jailer had told him? Italian has di' as the exact equi- Yalent of "Say!" French has dites done! Spanish has an equivalent of "Look!'' that is Just as overused as our "you know" ]Jira! or Mire! Then there is the whole family of "is it not so?", "isn't it true," or even "ain't it?" which English does not 01·eruse, but other languages do (French n'Pst-ce pas?, German nicht 1cahr?, Italian nevvero?, e,·en Rus- sian fie tnk- Ii?). These strengthen the contention that you are really

appealing for sympathy and sup- port. The English "man!", so widely used in some circles of our society, has an exact Spanish parallel, hombre, which is not at all re- stricted to the lower classes (Hom- bre! No me diga!-"Man! Don't tell me!", meaning "You don't say so!" "It can't be!") But "man!" would never be used in that sense by the French or Italians, high or low, and this shows the capricious distribu- tion of these expressions. Our dictionaries of slang claim that •man:• as an exclamation did not really spread until the 19:JOs, starting with "ji\·e, cool groups." and being prohably imported from the British West Indies. "Like." in "it's like c·old," i~ not given a beginning date, but is ~airl to have started among "jazz, cool, beat groups in ~ew York,• probably to avoid making too definite a state- ment; it is also said to have been reinforced by Yiddish speech p;it- terns, but the evidence for this is not clear.

llario Pei, professor emPritus of Romane!' philolo,-y at Columbia l.ini• t·ersity, is nn i1t1Prnationally knou n /mguist and author. jury, was observed to throw in "you know" at the approximate rate of onre for e,·ery five other words he used. Surely he didn't expect the jurors to "know" in advance what he was revealmg to them. Without rejecting theory. ·o. 4, we can't accept it a~ the sole explana- tion for its extensi\'e use today. This seems to lie (1) in imitation, (2) in force of habit. We pick up word~ anrl expressions from people who ha,·e pre tig-e in our eyes, then use them over and o,·er again until they he• come part of our nature, like the nervous running of the hand O\·er the hair lo which some people are addicted, or the stuttering ''uh ... " with which some speakers, even good ones, feel they have to start their utterances. We are a bit shocked by the con- stant repetition of "you know" be- cause its overuse is relatively re- cent; but think of a couple of other intercalations which don't really mean what they say and are sancti- fied by usage: "Say! Did you go there yesterday?" or "Look here! I don't like what he's doing, and neither do you!" 'Say'' might be jus-

How does an intercalation differ from an expletive (a mere filler-in with no meaning of its own: "There is no point to discussing that," or "It is estaplished that he wasn't in the room") and from an interjection (something thrown in; an exrlama- tion unconnected with the rest of Please Turn to P • Col, 1 'YOU l(NOW, MAN, Lll(E ...' Continued from First Page the utterance, like "Oh'", ''Ah!",

estabhshing months of uneven dura- tion, was this practice discontmued. Just as days and months were "thrown into the calendar" so are expressions 'ike "you know," ''man,'' ''like" thrown into the language. \Vil! they stay? It depends on the mood of the speakers. "l\Ian'' and ''like'' are as current today as were "gadzooks'' and" 'sblood" in the days of Shakespeare. Where are they now? · But perhaps "you know" is a horse of a different color. Its roofs seem to lie not only in the dim past, but also in human psychology ("I don't have to explain it to you! You're too intel- ligent! You already know it!"). No matter how much i may be a reflex in the mouths of some, the chances are it will still be around in AD 3000.

"Good grief!'', "Hea,·ens!" or any of the hundreds of obscenities and im- proprieties that betoken disgust, an- ger, etc.)? The intercalation has a precise an- cestry in the old Roman custom of "decreeing that something be stuck in between," specifically, days and even months inserted into the calen- r1ar to make the year come out even. It was the function of the high priest to decree the intercalation whenever necessary to brin~ the solar year in line with the lunar months of 28 days. A few extra days, or an extra month of limited length, would do the trick. Not until Julius Caesar, who worked out the Julian calendar,

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