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» A PAGE 2—The Southern Cross, March 23, 1963 >> ■: ......... MARK FEAST OF ST. JOSEPH—Pictured above addres sing members of the Savannah Italian Club and their fam ilies and friends is Fr. Andrew Doris, O.S.B., faculty member of Benedictine Military School. The occasion was a celebration and dinner held on Sunday, March 17, in honor of St. Joseph, patronal saint of Italy. In the left of the photo is Fr. Lawrence A. Lucree, assistant, Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. Compliments Of Major League Lanes 2005 E. Victory Savannah COMPLIMENTS OF KEN-BLOCK COMPANY SAVANNAH r THE PRINTCRAFT PRESS Quafifa PRINTING Commercial And Job Printing Letter Press & Lithography 345 Abercorn Savannah Compliments Of MOCK CO. BILL MOCK- Plumbing-Heating Air Conditioning Industrial Piping Utilities & Equipment Rental Day or Night Phone AD 2-1104 925 E. 37th St. Savannah Recalls Early History Of Cathedral Parish (By Very Rev. Joseph D. Mitchell, V.G.) Savannah and Augusta are the two oldest Catholic settlements in our State which remain to the present day. The colony at Lo cust Grove, a few miles from Sharon, is usually styled the "cradle of Catholicity” in Georgia. This claim is true so far as its being the first or ganized parish is concerned. But the first individual Cathol ics who came to Georgia set tled in Savannah and Augusta; and Savannah, being the seaport town, may rightly claim that from the beginning, as now, the Catholic religion radiated from this place as its center throughout the other parts of the State. Locust Grove was settled shortly after the Revolutionary War by a few Catholic families from Maryland. The oldest rec ords we have from this place go back to 1794. The records of the parish of St. John the Baptist in Savannah begin with the year 1796; but there is evi dence that a little Catholic col ony existed in this city for sev eral years before, and its people were attended from time to time by a priest from Baltimore or Freed Prelate Attends Rites For Mother Seton VATICAN CITY, March 18 (Radio, NC)—Archbishop Josyf Slipyi of Lviv attended the af ternoon ceremonies (March 17) for the beatification of Mother Seton—his first public appear ance since he was released from confinement by the Soviet Union. The 70-year-old Primate of the Ukraine reached Rome Feb ruary 9 after 18 years of im prisonment and house arrest in the Soviet Union. Augusta Drive For $200,000 (Continued from Page 1) eighty-four were enrolled in St. Mary’s Elementary School, tlhirty one. in Sacred Heart School and one hundred and fifty-nine in public schools. This gives the parish 774 chil dren of grammar school age. Msgr. Bourke estimated that 50 per-cent of those who attend ed public schools would enroll at St. Mary’s if space were available. This means that, in effect, 695 sought admission to Eugene M. Howerdd, Jr. General Chairman St. Mary’s school this past fall. But because of the limitation imposed by space, only 594 were admitted. The proposed addition of five classrooms will give the school a capacity of 680 students—as suming 40 per room or a ca pacity of 765—assuming 45 per room. The expansion will permit two classrooms for each of the grades one through eight, bring ing the size of the school up to a recommended maximum. Albert von Kamp Gary Special Gifts Although the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist is not yet one hundred years old, the parish which it serves is one of the oldest in the State, being or ganized shortly after the close of the revolutionary war. The following is the first of a two- part historical sketch of Savannah’s Ca thedral parish, written by Monsignor Joseph Mitchell in 1920. Monsignor Mit chell is a former rector of the Ca thedral and is presently living in re tirement at the Alexian Brothers Hos pital Signal Mountain, Tennessee. Charleston. It is quite true that Georgia was the last of the thirteen English colonies, and that its charter prohibited Catholics as citizens. Yet in spite of this there are evidences that Catho lics were here from the begin- WINDOW in Cathedral transept depicts Murillo’s paint ing of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. Shown di rectly below it is the coat of arms of Savannah’s Bi shop. If U. S. Excludes Private Education Historian Warns Of High Social Price 44 55 POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y.,(NC) —A Vassar College history professor says the nation would be short-sighted to deny Federal education aid to church-related and other pri vate schools. Carl N. Degler says that private schools are permanent ly a part of American educa tion, and denial of Federal help will force them to give a second -class education to millions of citizens. This result, he says, would be a "high social price” to pay for "adamant refusal to grant some government support to denominational schools.” Degler, who expresses his views in the Vassar Alumnae magazine, is the author of "Out of Our Past,” a book which studied the forces that shaped modern America, and is co author of a forthcoming col lege-level American history textbook. He identifies himself as a non-Catholic in his article. The professor says that inclusion of church-related schools in Federal aid propo sals appears to him as "con stitutionally possible” because the assistance would "only in cidentally aid religion while pursuing a large social pur pose.” Noting the sacrifices that Ca tholics have made to establish and maintain their school sys tems, Degler writes that "a sympathetic understanding of the burdens which a Catholic’s conscience imposes upon him is a far better way to insure social amity than the continued asser tion by non-Catholics that the Catholic sacrifice is beyond social mitigation.” Degler writes that because children in Catholic schools are not educated at public expense, this amounts to a 4 ‘definite and material” benefit to non-Catho lic citizens.” Yet, he adds, Catholics also contribute to the support of a school system they do not use. "In view of such solid advan tages,” he writes, "the Catholic of average income cannot be too harshly criticized if he sometimes doubts the disinter estedness of his non-Catholic neighbor’s commitment to sep aration of Church and State.” "Moreover,” he writes, "many Catholics know that the tradition of separation of Church and State as it has been worked out in education is not simply a result of abstract principle. "They know that the principle historically grew up in a context of fear of Catholic immigration in the 19th century. They also know that today many of the m6st vociferous defenders of the principle are also flagrant ly anti-Catholic in a basic sense—people like Paul Blans- hard and organizations like Protestants and Other Ameri cans United for Separation of Church and State.” Degler also states that "al though Protestants tend to for get, Catholics have not forgot ten” that the history of Catho licism in the United States is "one of the most unsavory as pects of our national past.” 4 ‘No other religion, with the exception of Mormonism, has been persecuted at such length and with such organization and determination. "The story begins with the burning of convents in the 1830’s, goes down through the American Protective Associa tion of the 1890’s to the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920’s” he writes. ning, and there is history at tached to the first Savannah par ish as interesting and as full of romance as that of any part of the country. It is my purpose to gather together what facts there are and put them in such form that they may be preserved by future generations. Many of the characters who helped in the founding of the Church in Sa vannah are not only deserving of remembrance, but their lives will be an inspiration for others to emulate and follow. THE EARLY SPANISH MISSIONS The first Catholics in Geor gia, so far as any records show, were the Spaniards. Our or dinary school histories, gener ally written from a New Eng land Puritan standpoint, either gloss over their exploits, or else paint them in colors of cruelty and avarice. It may be that many of these early settlers and explorers were guided by ambition and desire for riches and worldly fame, but they were often accompanied by holy men of God, whose only purpose and desire in braving the dangers of the forest was the bringing of the Light of Faith to the savage Indian tribes. The early story of the Floridas and Carolinas and along the Gulf is one of intre pid zeal for the faith, strong religious fervor, and heroic martyrdom. Georgia was the scene of the first Christian bap tism on record in the New World, when, in the ill-fated expedition of De Soto, two In dian neophytes were baptized and received into the Church at a point about the center of this State, near where the city of Ma con is now located. Along the eastern coast, from St. Augustine to the Carolinas, military posts were estab lished, and from these as head quarters, Spanish Dominican and Franciscan Friars labored among the Indian tribes and brought many to the knowledge of the Christ. Between the years 1650 and 1705, as nearly as we can guess from the meagre records preserved, Franciscan mis sions extended from St. Augus tine in Florida to the mouth of the Savannah River. These were for a time in a flourishing con dition, until the enroachments of the English from Virginia and the Carolinas, and their repeat ed attacks upon the Spanish towns and villages, caused them to be broken up and abandoned, Under Governor James Moore of South Carolina, a cruel big oted and ambitious man, the pa gan Indian tribes were aroused to attack and put to the sword or tomahawk all who offered any resistance. The Indian missions were ruined, the converts scat tered, and the early mission aries either killed or taken prisioners or left to wander in the forests and find their way back to the Florida settlements as best they could. This was from 1701 to 1706. So far as Savannah is con cerned, the city at that time had no existence. The territory of Georgia, lying as it did between the Carolinas and Florida, was claimed by both Spanish and English. After many years of dispute and conflict, it was fi nally ceded to the English in the early period of the eighteenth century, and in 1732, General Oglethorpe obtained from King George II a charter for the foundation of a new English colony, ostensibly as a refuge for oppressed debtors, but al so, in the minds of the Brit ish councillors, to form a “buf fer state” in order to protect the Carolinas from any dan ger of attack on the part of the Spaniards. We know something definite of the missions on the lower Geor gia coast; but little has come down to us concerning those around Savannah. On Tybee Is land there stood up to recent years the old Martello tower, built by the Spaniards as a fortress to guard the entrance to the Savannah River. It re mained up to about six or sev en years ago the oldest histor ic relic in this section; but fin ally, in spite of protests from those interested in preserving monuments of the past, was torn down by order of the United States military authorities be cause it was in the way of th6 range. Its foundations still stand level with the sand at Fort Scre ven, near the Tybee lighthouse, a mute testimonial of the Span ish occupation of Eastern Geor gia. At Wassaw Island, just be low Tybee, within the memory of the older people of Savannah, there used to be remnants of one of the old Spanish "mission- stations” called "the monas tery.” It has long since dis appeared, and even its memory has almost faded away. There is little else that can be said concerning the Span ish missions near Savannah, except that when John Wesley tried to convert the Yamacraws to the Christian faith, he was told that the "black kings” had been among them; and these were supposed to be French. As no French priests were in this part of the country at that early date, the "black kings” were no doubt the early Spanish mis sionaries of St. Francis, who labored in the wilderness long before the English had set foot on Georgia soil. In the eyes of the modern world their work would be considered a failure, although they accomplished much for a time; but the souls brought to the knowledge of the faith are of greater value than any "success” as measured by the standards of the world. C. F. POWERS INSURANCE 120 E. BAY AD 3-2184 SAVANNAH, GA. COMPLIMENTS OF Savannah Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Congratulations FROM BELK-GRIFFETH Two Stores To Serve You 217 W. Broughton Crossroads Shopping Center OPEN TIL 9 P.M. THIS IS BELK’S ‘DIAMOND JUBILEE’ Windy Herrin’s Record Shop “Decorate Your Home With Music” Suburban Store FREE PARKING BOTH STORES BELK-GRIFFETH u Known For Values