Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

sixteen THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA _ AUGUSI— GJljp HJuUpIui Official Organ of the Catholic Laymen's Association of Georgia, Incorporated. , HUGH KINCHLEY, Editor ~ 216-2J7 Southern Finance Building, Augusta, Ga. ASSOCIATION OFFICERS FOR 1944-1945 BERNARD S. FAHV, Rome vr^PwSl MARTIN J. CALLAGHAN, Macon J. B. McCALLUM, Atlanta freasurM HUGH GRADY, Savannah treasurer HUGH KINCHLEY, Augusta Executive Secretary MISS CECILE FERRY, Augusta Financial Secietary A. M McAULIFFE, Augusta Auaitor Vol. XXVI. August 25, 1945 No. 8 in P Sc < ction Sent i, 1921 —- ■ ”■ « ». in . p News Service, Relielous News Association — ' p".,Wished monthly by the p 11 "’! 1 ' MoTrw- mont. . A Century of Catholic History T HE year 1945 brings the one hundredth anni versarv of the first celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in Albany, Georgia. and members of St. Theresa s P^b^VeAanie! under the leadership of their pastor. F ?[hfr Darnel l Rourke are now preparing for a fitting com memoration of that blessed beginning of a century of missionary effort which has yielded abundant U One hundred years ago, Albany was Just a small village, scarcely ten years old. No raI ^° ad “ ad yet been extended to the community and its com merce was carried on by boats on the Throrateeska [liver, now known as the Hint, or y wagon trails. Colonel Nelson Tift, the founder of the village, had come to Georgia from Mystic, Connecticut and “selecting the site of the settlement named il Albany since its location at the head of naviga lion of the Throrateeska, reminded him of Alba y. New York, on the Hudson. ssjsjsrj: ssav-fireiK! the Atlantic seaboard, from Virginia to the Gulf ot M There were a number of Catholics among the pioneer settlers of Albany, and remembered oi ihrm are Dennis Brosnan, Cornelius^Coffey, Hu belt O'Kelly, James Curley, Stephen Eagen, Ji *^ Neldon Peter McDonough, P. L. Dunleavy John B Neundorfer, James Hanlon Dr Barbour, Walker, General and Mrs. A. H. Brisban Also among their number was John Valentine Mock and it was at his plantation home that Mass was offered for the first time in Dougherty County. In their devotion to their Catholic Faith, °- early settlers of Albany can easily be imagined as welcoming with great joy the ^^‘L^er CunL miosis like Father Birmingham and ratner v-um f,"n and Bishop Barry, who would visit among them at infrequent intervals to minister to their spiritual needs, to offer Mass for them, give them oDDortunity to go to Confession and to receive Holy Communion, baptize their infants, instruct^ir children, and preach the Word of God to them. After some years, during which Mass had been offered in-home of the Mock family Colone Tift who was not a Catholic, gave a plot of land to his Catholic friends as the site of the eburcli which they liad long desired to bmld, and :in 1859 work was begun on the erection of the bttle brick church within whose hallowed, ivy-clad walls Catliolics in Albany still gather to worship before the Altar of God. In 1861. war between the North and the South came to cause a delay in the completion of the edifice, but when the Conquered Banner of the Confederacy had been furled, the grey-clad war riors had trod the weary miles back home, and as with unconquered courage they began to rebuild their lives, the task of completing the interior of the church was taken up again. During the Reconstruction era, priests like Father O’Neill, Father Bazin, Father O’Reilly, bather Semmes and Father Quinlan came to Albany un til the fall of 1875, when Father Stephen J. Beytaugh was appointed as the first resident pastor of St. Theresa's Church. Father Beytaugh had been in Albany just about a year when he died from yellow fever, contracted while administering the> Last Sacraments to a member of his mission parish in Americus Father John Murphy, who succeeded bather Byetaugh, died in lest than a year after going to St. Theresa’s as pastor. In 1879 Father P. H. McMahon, oi blessed memory, went to Albany as p..slor, but the rigorous hardships on the many missions attached to tne parish impaired his health, and he was succeeded bv Father Charles Clement Prendergast, who was pastor in 1882 when St. Theresa’s Church was formally dedicated by Bishop Gross. After the death of Father Predergast, in 1896, Albany and its missions were served by the Jesuit Fathers from Macon, until 1901, when Father John J Powers, a Diocesan priest, was appointed as pastor. Since that time Albany and its missions have been served by many zealous priests, pastors and assistants, among whom were Father Sehadewell, Father Reich, Father Jeremiah O’Hara, Father Mc Mahon, Father Schonhardt. Father Dan McCarthy, Father Clark, Father Hamilton, Father Keenan, Father Van der Zon, Father Bessemer, Father Luckie, Father Parker, Father Brennan, Father Sheehan, Father King, Father Finn, Father Quin lan, Father Frizelle, Father Malloy, Father Honeck, Father Olalia, Monsignor Cassidy, and others, in cluding the present Bishop of Charleston, the Most Reverend Emmet M, Walsh. , Two religious vocations have blessed St. Theresa s God Hath Given Us the Victory ■vyriTH Japan’s abject admission of defeat, the YY most devastating and terrible war the world T has ever known comes to its end, and the Star Spangled Banner of our beloved country waves in triumph with the banners of the nations which were our allies. In humble gratitude let us offer thanks to the God of battles who gave us the victory. Well may we say “thanks be to God, who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, for the intervention of the Providence of God is the only explanation of our victory. There might have been small cause for us to re joice today if the Germans '’ad followed up the bat tle of Dunkirk with an invasion of the, then far from impregnable, British Isles. Much of the de struction visited on Poland and England and France couid have been inflicted upon our own country if the Japanese had kept on coming across the Pacific after crippling our fleet at Hawaii on the “date that will live ir. infamy.’’ There was nothing human to stop them. We owe our most profound thanks to Almighty Gqd that the secret of the atomic bomb was reveal ed to American and British scientists before the Germans couid make that discovery. It must be significant that the news of the sur render of Japan coincided with the Feast of the As sumption «f the Mother of God, whose intercession for peace had been sought throughout the war. His Holiness Pope Pius XII, since the start of the war, had set aside the month of May as a period of special devotion to thd Blessed Mother, and had urged that her intercession be asked for an early end of the conflict, a plea which the Holy Father stressed most strongly this year. It was during May that Germany surrendered. A fecent decree of the Sacred Congregation ol Rites designated the octave of the Feast of the As sumption as the date for the universal Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, recalling that Our Lady of Fatima had asked for the consecration of the world to her Immaculate Heart and for Com munion in reparation on the first Saturday of each month, promising that if her requests be heard, her Immaculate Heart would triumph, Russia would he converted, and an era of peace would be conceded to humanity. Difficult are the days which are ahead when so lutions will be sought for post-war problems. With our prayers for peace, let us fervently implore that God will strengthen Us to make that victory one which will be a blessing, not for our nation alone, but for all the world. An Army bulldozer in far-off Manila made its final sweep in ieveling off a track of ground. When it chugged to a stop, the internationally famous Manila Ob servatory, which the Jesuits had operated for the past eighty years, has been reduced to a memory—but a glorious memory. The Observatory was adjacent to the Ateneo de Manila, college and preparatory school for boys which the Jesuits had conducted since 1859. During the Battle of Manila last February the Japan ese had put the buildings to the torch and when the battle had lift ed little more than four walls were left standing. Father William C. Uepetti, S. J., of Washington, D. C., who has been in the Philippines since 1928, is presently at Georgetown Uni versity, was on the staff of the Manila Observatory during the final stages of its existence. He said that the loss of the Atenoe and the Observatory constituted some of the greatest property damage sustained by the Jesuits in the Philippines. Well over $200,000 damage was suffered by the Observatory, Fa ther Repetti said. A library of some 8,000 books was destroyed, and there was some equipment which cannot be replaced. In 1879, one of the priests at tached to the Observatory made the first successful prediction of a typhoon. Since then the services of the Observatory have constant ly increased, with the addition of pilot balloon ascents, radio broad casts of weather reports, typhoon warnings and time signals, car ried with the cooperation of the U. S. Naval Radio Station at Ca vite Navy Yard. The Catholic Church stands as a 1 champion of democracy, and de- 1 mocracy stands, politically for the ! Christian faith, its precepts and teachings, The Evening World- Herald, a secular newspaper pub lished in Omaha, declares in an editorial which aims at countering charges brought over the Moscow radio that the Vatican is a “re actionary” force striving “to save fascism.” “Totalitarianism, in any of its forms, including communism as well as fascism, is the enemy alike of Christianity and democracy,” the editorial observes. “That is why Christians are called upon, by their very creed, to resist it. “And that is why Moscow, de voted to its own form of totalita- riarism, resists and fears the in fluence not only of the Vatican, but of Christianity in all its forms wherever it exists.” The editorial, entitled “Incom patible,” begins by comparing Moscow attacks on the “reaction ary” Vatican with almost si multaneous remarks of the Holy Father in which he warns against Ihe “fatal consequences” of as signing unlimited powers to the State, thus poisoning “the natural channels of the people’s national life,” and leaving the stability of international relations “at the mercy of the same capricious des potism.” parish, Miss Estelle Elizabeth Brosnan and Miss Catherine Theresa Brosnan, daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Brosnan, who entered the Sisters of Mercy in Macon, as Sister Mary Joseph, who was librarian at Mount de Sales in Macon at the time of her death, and as Sister Mary de Sales, who is still teaching in this Diocese. In the years when Bishop Walsh was pastor of St. Theresa’s, the far-flung mission territory of Albany embraced an area 15,000 square miles m extent, covering about one-third of the whole State of Georgia, and including forty-one counties. There were churches at Albany, Alapaha, Ameri cus, Bainbridge, Fitzgerald, Moultrie, Thomasville and Willacooclice, and in other places Mass was offered in private homes. In visiting their mission stations, the piiests traveled by rail, on trains, good, bad and indif- ferent, by mule-drawn vehicles, and by T-Modei Ford, which last method of transportation made possible the celebration of two masses at two dif- , ferent places on a Sunday. Mission stations were Adel, Andersonville, j Arlington, Cordele, Cuthbert, Cecil, Dosia, Dupont, Dawson, Douglas, Golden, Haliira, Iron City, Mill- town, Naylor, Nashville, Ocilla, Quitman, Rhine, Ray City, Sylvester, Sycamore, Stockton, Tifton, Valdosta and West Green, The churcnes in Americus and Thomasville now have resident pastors who also serve a part of the mission territory once served from Albany. Other churches have been erected in Valdosta, Cordele and Douglas, and a new church has re placed the ancient structure in Alapaha. rhere is a resident pastor in Valdosta, and the Oblate Fathers served the surrounding territory from their Mission Center at St. Paul’s Church in Douglas. From Fitzgerald, once a part of .ne Albany mis sion area, came Father Herman Deimel, now pastor of Holy Family Church, Columbus, first Georgian ordained from a city in which there was no resident '^Trulv the Faith has flourished in Albany and throughout the Southwest Georgia mission area, and it is with grateful hearts that the members of St Theresa’s parish will gather to assist at tne Solemn Mass of Thanksgiving which will crown the celebration of the centennial of the Holy Sacri fice offered a hundred years ago. The Catliolics of Albany, proud of the record of the past, are mindful of the future, and are marking their centennial year with the inauguration of a building program, according to which they are proceeding in a practical way toward the erec tion of a new and more spacious church, a rectory, a convent and a school, for this fall the opening of a parochial school will bring the fullness ot Catholic Life to St. Theresa’s parish. Through the years, the priests and people of St. Theresa’s parish have shared in the many progres- sive activities of the religious, cultural, social and commercial life of Albany. Parishioners have served as heads of departments in city and county governments, in the public school system as founders of business organizations, as superintend- ents and nurses in the hospital, and as leaders in social and civic groups. Albany is a city of good neighbors, of tolerance. Its people are people of vision, with faith and a capacity of service above self. Such has been its spirit from the founding of the little village in 18J6 to the thriving, progressive city of today. Such has been the spirit of St. Theresa’s in Al bany as generations have lived and worshiped anil passed on. Trough a century has passed since Mass was first offered in Albany, it may be said, with the Poet Laureate of Georgia: “Stili glows the candle flame; Still stands the altar stone.” Ralph T. Jones, associate editor of The Atlanta Constitution, re cently devoted his column, which is a daily feature of that news paper’s editorial page, to a dis cussion entitled “Photographs Can Be Not What They Seem.” In concluding, Mr. Jones wrote: “I remember when one of the greatest news photographers who ever worked in Atlanta received an order from a news picture syndicate to get a picture of a Ku Klux Klan ceremonial. That was back in the early ’twenties, when the KKK was news, even though a shameful outrage. Now the KKK didn’t permit any pictures of their ceremonials. They kept plenty of husky sentries and guards to pre vent just such an event. But this photographer wasn’t stumped. He, with his wife’s help, trans formed a lot ot old sheets into sufficiently realistic facsimiles of Ihe klan gowns and masks and re galia, hired a bunch of stand-ins, took them to a field with a good outcrop of rocks, made them don (he fake KKK apparel and made his pictures. “And labeled them scenes of a secret KKK ceremonial on Stone Mountain. “You may recall the chief shame of the KKK was that it attracted dupes into membership — with their initiation fees in hand—by pandering to racial hatreds. I “And the joke was the hired ] stand-ins, inside those imitation ‘ robes and masks, were all Negro boys.” The Pontiff’s “unsparing utter ance” (taken from his address at an audience granted to Herbert H. Lehman, Director of UNRRA) “condemns fascism in much the same terms” the editorial states, “and for the Identical reasons, that champions of human liberty and dignity of man have ever condemned and opposed it.” The editorial continues by quoting from the last statement by the Bishops composing the Ad ministrative Board, National Catholic Welfare Conference, in which they declare that “two strong, essentially incompatible ways of life will divide the loyalty of men and of nations in the po litical world of tomorrow,” point ing out that Mexican totalitarian ism is an active enemy against which “genuine dmocracy must constantly be on guard.” “Right here, it appears,” the editorial in The iweninu World- Herald begins, “is the reason for Moscow’s continued denunciation of the Vatican.” The editorial concludes by say ing that “the record needs to be kept straight, in the laudable and honorable effort to find a way by which war between totalitarian ism and democracy my long be averted.” Be lie friend or foe, the Army chaplain is always at the service of mankind. Take, for example, the recent experience of Capt. Joseph J. Vogel, a priest of the Diocese of Buffalo and chaplain of the IBfth Regiment on Oki nawa. Father Vogel was returning from offering Mass for an assault battalion engaged in mop-up op erations on the island when lie no ticed a Japanese soldier in a field near the road. He stopped his jeep and approached the soldier. The Japanese raised liis hands in sur render, gestured for a drink of water. Father Vogel searched him for weapons, gave him a drink and took him in his jeep back to head quarters. The Japanese disclosed that he had had no food or water for five days,, Coast Guardsman Donald Mo- lony, 17-year-old Catholic youth, hospital apprentice from Detroit, emerged as one of the heroes of the Empire State Building tragedy. After witnessing the bomber strike the building he rushed to a drug store, obtained a first-aid kit and gave medical,aid to the victims. Crawling through a hole blasted into an elevator shaft in the sub basement the youth administered first aid to a badly-burned eleva tor operator. Later he climbed the stairs to the seventieth floor where he found three injured persons whom he carried to safety a few floors below. He also climbed to the offices of War Relief Service- N. C. C. W. on the seventy-ninth floor and helped firemen gather up the charred bodies. Father Matrin d'Arcy, S. J., Master of Campion. Hall, Oxford University, has been appointed Provincial of the Jlnglish Province of the Society of Jesus. At the be ginning of the ,.r, Father d’Arcy was Dean of Philosophy at Ford- ham University in New York. A startling coincidence was not ed between the bomber crash trag edy at the Empire State Building, which consumed the lives of eleven staff members of War Relief Scr- vices-N. C. W. C., and the prayers of the Sacred liturgy of the Mass which offered that morning. In the Communion of the Mass taken from the Common of the Martyrs, the priest prayed: “And though in the sight of men they suffered, God hath tried them, As Gold in the furnace he hath proved them, and as a holocaust hath received them.” (Wisflom 1II-4, 5, 6) The ntense heat spell in Rome has forced His Holiness Pope Pius XII to spend part of each day in the Chinese pavilion located in the highest part of the Vatican gar dens. The building was erected by Pope Leo XIII and was mod eled after a similar structure in the Pontiff's birthplace in the small town of Carpineto, near Rome. The Holy Fat.ier works in . le pavilion for two hours in the morn ings and then returns to his apart ments in the Vatican palace. De spite the insistence of his physi- c' s, His Holiness has refused to g~ to his summer residence at Cas- ted Gondolfo, partly because the bomb-damaged town has not suffi cient accommodations for the Pa pal staff, and because he finds the air there even more humid than in Vatican City. —II. K.