CHURCH IS IN FACT a good place for a confrontation. History and geography have made it a meeting point of the Germanic and Latin cultures. It is of course very much the Swjiss-German tourist town with plenty of good SwissGerman money in the bank-one had hoped to surprise a gnome or two taking time off from Zurich-but Italian-speaking Ticino is near, and Italy itself is not alone near but very much present, in the faces and speech of the hotel staffs who come for the season to earn a year's pay.

AFTER THREE YEARS as Supreme Knight of the 6,000 Knights of Saint Columbanus, the term of office of Vincent Grogan, S.c., has come to an end. He says he doesn't intend ever to hold any official rank in any organisation, apart from his existing commitment to the Council for the Laity, of which he is this year's Chairman, because in future he wishes to be free to speak openly and frankly on all matters concerning the Catholic Church. Certainly he spoke frankly to NUSIGHT about the Knights and his three years' of office.

"WE RECOMMEND that the common scale and the new system of allowances should come into force on the 1st September, 1968 and should apply to all teachers who enter the profession on or after that date".

THE NORTHERN IRELAND Civil Rights Movement is in the process of disintegrating and the Civil Rights Association itself seems on the point of collapse. In the face of the government's relative passivity since the announcement of stop gap reforms, the always precariously balanced alliance between the moderates and the left wing, which was the beauty and strength of the movement in the beginning, has begun to teeter.

TOM McDERMOTT visited Rhodesia a few months ago. The following is a transcriptof a T.V. interview he did with Premier Ian Smith, which we publish without comment

" I'VE ONLY BEEN here for the last fortnight," said Gerry Collins disarmingly. Never has a honeymoon been less needed. The new Parliamentary Secretary for Industry, Commerce and the Gaeltacht lost his political virginity years ago. Gerry Collins has' always, so to speak, been on the job.

BRAZIL TODA Y IS, by virtually common consent, the country most likely after Cuba to erupt in some kind of a revolution. It is large and heavily populated, with some 90 million inhabitants-even though there are huge areas where human beings are relatively few and far between. This fact in itself is an indication of the road that Brazilian development is taking-a road which leads the Indians of the countryside inevitably to seek the supposed delights of the cities.

PABLO PICASSO was born in Malaga in 1881. He came of an ancient family and his immediate relatives were priests, doctors, or were employed in business. His father was the only artistic member of the family; he was an artist who taught in the local art school and ran the local museum. Later in Picasso's childhood they spent four years in Corunna and finally settled in Barcelona when he was fourteen. His father was of course his first master and apparently he was a very precocious child, who took no interest in his school work at all and only thought about drawing.

About the only constructive innovation among Mr. Lynch's Cabinet changes was the promise to create a new department for Housing and Physical Development with Mr. Blaney to be in charge. This presumably will mean a higher priority for one of the nation's most pressing social needs as well as greater prominence for a neglected aspect of Irish economic affairs. Apart from that, the numerous promotions, demotions and "transmotions" effected by Mr. Lynch seem only to be aimed at concealing the absence of substantative change by making a multiplicity of minor alterations.

Dr. ll'lario Schoenellberger, the first high ranking Jesuit to speak out 01/ issues of conscience, resigrled voluntarily from the Society of Jesus last April.
His action has callsed one oj the greatest sensations in the order's 435 years of existence, arid has electrified the Chllrch's internal debate on the conscience of the priest.