7-6-1964CorrespodenceFROMGriffin; index.cpd

              ->Prediction true (Hank)                                                                                                                                                                                                                             -> Stop for rest                                                                                                                                                                                                                              -> movie l -> 5 or 6 weeks in D.M.                                                                                                                                                                                              2 -> 2 wks here -- traffic jam.                                                                                                                                                                                                      -> mixed reactions                                                                                                                                                                                                                  John H. Griffin
Mansfield, Texas  76063
July 6,  1964
Dear Father Mottet,
     In great haste but I did want to answer your two splendid
letters before leaving next Sunday for Europe.  I have just
returned from a most amazing trip to L.A. and San Francisco,
and have a whole dossier of affidavits from priests and religious
that make Father H's sound mild indeed,  The crackdown continues;
the most gifted men being quietly purged.  The situation is near
revolution in many areas.  I calmed it for the moment with the
good prospect of a really legitimate papal investigation.  Pray
that we succeed in this. A sad pattern is developing in many
areas.  I'm sure you know it.  The "greater autonomy" of the
bishops has been interpreted by some as a most grotesque power
to select what portions of dogma and doctrine they will allow
to be deseminated in their diocese. Archbishop Cody has become
equally suppressive as I discovered when I went into New Orleans
to get some messages into Mississippi over the week-end. He says
he will do all the thinking. He wants no sermons on social justice.
The Cardinal in Los Angeles is not about to soften.  He says the
statements of the other California Bishops are a plot to embarrass
him and he told a group of Mothers Superior that they had not begun
to see what discipline was.
     No, the situation is so touchy, the Cardinal's chancery spies
so effective, that I would not dare release the information in
Father H's letter to Commonweal, though I should IMMENSELY wish
to.  Perhaps after I return from Europe we can begin to leak
some of this confidential material.  Thirty-five priests are
willing to testify in an investigation that will guarantee them
some personal protection.  The chancery's Msgr. Hawkes is threatening
excommunication right and left.
     I feel very shaky about all of this.  My temptation is
to encourage them to pour out of their convents, to withdraw from
the archdiocese completely under the legitimate claim that one
cannot function as teachers under such suppressive and fear-ridden
conditions.  But I have opted for the investigation and am not at
all certain I am right in this.  Father Twomey agrees wholly with
me, however, and most of those whom I have consulted (in cars, in
dark places, like in Nazi Germany) seem to think this would be best.
     So please keep this confidential for the moment. I am going
to take a full dossier to Jacques at Kolbsheim in the hopes that
we can place it squarely in the Holy Father's lap.
     Yes, a general sourness has set in. Rabbi Heschel does not
even think there will be a Vatican III - at least nothing more than
a token one.  Negroes are still being refused at the altar rails
of the South; Negro priests absolutely forbidden to say scheduled
Masses (outside of their own churches) even in the dioceses where
the Bishops have spoken the best (I mean refused rudely, too.).
I am hoping we can have a thorough airing through proper investigative
channels of these travesties in the South and in the West.  Otherwise,