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TEACHERS* INSTITUTE — The Reverend Curtis E. Derrick, Jr., pastor of
Savaimah’s Ascension Lutheran Church’, is shown as he addressed session of
Catholic teachers gathered in Savannah, last Saturday, for annual Teach
ers* Institute.
(Turn to Page 6 for complete coverage)
NUN SA YS
Bias Keeps Women From
Proper Place In Church
DAYTON, Ohio (NC>-Tfcff
modern woman, who has
widened her sphere of com
petence, must exercise more
influence in the modern
Church, Sister Mary Luke of
the Sisters of Loretto told
nearly 1,500 women of all
faiths at a meeting here.
The first American woman
to serve as auditor at the Se
cond Vatican Council and
chairman of the National Con
ference of Major Superiors
of Women Religious, Sister
Mary Luke championed the
rights of women from the pul
pit of St. Albert’s church here.
There is a parallel between
the civil rights movement and
the movement for the exercise
of woman’s rights, she said.
In civil rights there has de
veloped for some “an aware
ness of our prejudices which
a few years ago we didn’t
even know existed.”
NEW YORK (NC)—Pope
Paul VI pleaded with the more
than 5 million yongsters in
U. S. Catholic schools “to
help your less fortunate bro
thers and sisters, living in
areas of need throughout the
world” by making sacrifices
during Lent.
The Pope reminded U. S.
youngsters that “in other
parts of the world, there are
children with lined and
sorrowful faces, looking old
before their time, their little
bodies racked by disease and
wasted by hunger, with no
medicine to relieve their pain,
no food to satisfy their hun
ger.”
The appeal was made in the
traditional Ash Wednesday
(Feb. 23) radio broadcast by
the Pope, which inaugurated
the school children’s phase
of the 19th annual Bishops’
Overseas Relief Fund AppeaL
In recent years, the U. S.
school children have raised
There are “many times
when we aren’t even conscious
of the prejudices against wo
men,” she said. “We need to
become aware. When we do,
we can go forward in the
Church.”
Catholics are going to have
to “absorb” the documents of
the Vatican council before wo
men gain their rightful stature
in the Church, Sister Mary
Luke said.
She singled out specifically
a statement in the Constitu
tion on the Church in the Mo
dern World, declaring that
“every type of discrimination,
whether social or cultural,
whether based on sex, race,
social condition, language or
religion, is to be overcome and
eradicated as contrary to
God’s intent.”
Current sociological and
psychological changes require
that the status of women in
more than $1 million annually
for the fund through Lenten
contributions.
The general fund appeal for
adult U. S. Catholics is
scheduled from March 13 to
20. It will culminate with the
customary Laetare Sunday,
March 20, collection in
parishes throughout the na
tion. The campaign goal is
$5 million. The fund is the
chief means of support of
Catholic Relief Services—Na
tional catholic Welfare Con
ference, overseas relief
agency of U. S. Catholics and
the largest private agency of
its kind in the world.
The Pope’s radio appeal
to the school children was
carried into classrooms and
homes by the country’s major
radio networks. The Pontiff
assured the youngsters they
could succeed in helping the
world’s needy children “by
self-denial, by prayer and by
giving.”
society be properly respected,
she said. “We can move for
ward, not stridently or ag
gressively but openly” to
share in the richness of things
to come, to which both men and
women will contribute , she
said.
Sister Mary Luke said she
had discussed with both Pro
testant and catholic women a
suggestion that the Church
enlist women “in the third
stage of life.”
“When the children are
grown, the responsibilities of
women are less. In the
Western world, at least, wo
men at this point have from
25 to 30 years of productive
life ahead of them,” she de
clared.
Taking care of altar linens
and flowers should not be the
extent of a woman’s active
service in the Church at that
stage, Sister Mary Luke said.
“In our day, I think our
service must be much deeper
and broader that this. There
should be opportunities for
our bringing to bear on the
whole life of the Church all
that we have learned.”
She described her presence
as one of 15 women seated
with 2,500 bishops at the
Vatican council as “a heart
warming experience.”
Some of the bishops told
the women “it’s about time”
that women, “who compose
half of the human race,” be
admitted to the top level meet
ings of the Church.
“I agreed that it was about
time,” she said. “The very
fact that we were asked into
this highest governing body
of the Catholic Church, to be
present at all the sessions, to
be handed the secret docu
ments with great abandon and
confidence that women could
keep secrets, had some mean
ing,” according to Sister Mary
Luke.
Inasmuch as this happened
on the highest level of the
Church, there is reason to
expect that it will “happen
on many other levels”—in na
tional, diocesan and parish
councils, she said.
PAPAL APPEAL
Children Asked
To Help Needy
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OBSTACLES LISTED
WCC Leader Says
True Unity Path
Not An Easy One
GENEVA (RNS)—Though
the movement toward Chris
tian unity has advanced to an
unprecedented point, a leading
Faith and Order official of the
World Council of Churches
said here, any historical re
cording of the “glorious
years” of ecumenism would
be premature.
The Rev. Patrick C. Rod
ger, director of the WCC’s
Faith and Order Department,
called to the attention of the
international organization’s
Central Committee several
“less palatable” facts of the
ecumenical movement which
he said must be considered.
In his report, the Scottish
Episcopal clergyman stressed
that while a “wide door” to
ecumenical accomplishment
is open, the “path to a true
and worthwhile union is not an
easy one.”
Mr. Rodger, leaving his post
next July to become vice
provost and canon of St.
Mary’s cathedral at Edin
burgh, Scotland, last year was
the candidate for the general
secretaryship of the WCC.
The Central Committee de
clined action on his nomina
tion, however, and this year
named Dr. Eugene Carson
Blake, United Presbyterian
Church in the U.S.A. chief
administrator, to the post.
In his review of the Chris
tian unity movement, Mr. Rod
ger pointed out that since 1947
“only three acts of Church
union have crossed the lines
of church policy. . .”
“This lack of achieve
ment,” he said, “may be no
more than symbolic, but we
are all aware that the path
to a true and worthwhile union
is not an easy one.
“There is the familiar in
ertia of institutions; there is
sometimes surprising apathy
in local congregations (it is
a romantic error in high
places to suppose that all
parishes are impatient for
unity); there is the laziness,
or ecclesiastical nihilism,
which refuses to treat visible
union with much seriousness;
there is, finally a persistent
voicing of the conviction that
somehow—it is often not clear
how—‘organic union’ implies
indifference to fundamentals
of faith and standards of holi
ness.”
At the present stage in the
ecumenical movement, Mr.
Rodger said, there is a need
to examine in depth several
issues “only touched on” in
the past. Among these, he
listed:
“A more rigorous exami
nation of the notion of ca
tholicity”. . . further atten
tion to the grounds for his
torical interruptions in the
unity of the Church and “the
relatism of the discontinuity
and schism in the Church to
the effects of sin”. . .exami
nation of the concept of “the
unity of all the bapitzed” in
order not to “put more weight
on (it). . .than it is really
able to bear.”
Principal “adversaries” in
the path of unity, the clergy
man said, include an igno
rance of what the ecumenical
movement has already shown
us.” In addition to long-term
scholarship, which he noted
at the moment is being spear
headed by Roman Catholic stu
dents, he suggested that new
effort to communicate ecu
menism “in the vernacular”
is in order.
Mr. Rodger also cited a
“common, but surely false,
contrast between a care for
unity and a care for the needs
and questionings of mankind
as a whole.”
He said he wanted to record
his conviction that “the words,
‘and the unity of the church’
are not there for decoration
only (in a document from the
Montreal Faith and Order
Conference).
“If the unity of the church
has nothing to do with the
purpose of God for crea
tion and the service of Chris
tians to humanity, then some
of us have not read our New
Testament right.”
,jk
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HUIjlij
HEADLINE
HOPSCOTCH
NATION
Review Asked
WASHINGTON (NC)—Faculty puzzlement over a major acade-
nic change at the Catholic University of America has led to an
.ppeal to the institution’s academic senate. The faculty of the
;raduate school of arts and sciences voted (Feb. 21) to ask the
enate to review its Jan. 27 approval of the transfer of the de-
iartment of religious education from the graduate school to the
chool of sacred theology.
VATICAN
Italian Dioceses
VATICAN CITY (NC)—The Holy See is moving step by step
oward a position where it can carry out a provision of its 37-
fear-old agreement with Italy envisaging a drastic reduction in
he number of Italian dioceses. At present there are more than
500 dioceses and other ecclesiastic circumscriptions in Italy,
rhe Lateran Concordat caHs for the revision of diocesan boun-
iaries “with a view to making them coincide as much as possible
vith the areas known as the provinces of Italy,”
Education Commission
VATICAN CITY (NC)—The post-conciliar Commission on
Christian Education held its first meeting here to discuss the
speedy implementation of the ecumenical council’s declaration
>n the subject. Archbishop John P. Cody of Chicago and Bishop
_,oras T. Lane of Rockford, I1L, were among the 15 bishops and
seven exnerts who attended {Feb. 18-19L
METROPOLITAN ANTONY Bashir, head of the
Syrian Antiochian Orthodox Church of North
America, shown here with Pope Paul VI, died un
expectedly in Boston, Feb. 15, at the age of 67. A
strong advocate of Catholic-Orthodox union, he
was widely respected by many Catholic dignitaries.
(RNS Photo)
A third major “adversary,”
Mr. Rouger added, is the
“spiritual malaise which we
all love to rationalize.”
Citing the WCC Third As
sembly statement on unity
which said that nothing less
than “a death and rebirth of
many forms of church life. . .
can finally suffice,” he com
mented:
“I am not sure what weight
we should give to that little
word, ‘finally’, bur it is cer
tain that the way of Cross
and Resurrection, the way of
Christ Himself, is one which
we see quite clearly and one
from which our human weak
ness shrinks again and again.
“Frantic appeals are still
heard to some invilable na
tional or confessional tradi
tion; wearisome denuncia
tions are directed against
some imagined threat of ‘un
iformity*; and the unspoken
prayer of many is ‘O Lord,
make us one, but not yet.’ ”
HEART AWARD — Mrs. William Hannan, Wash
ington, D.C., a sister-in-law of Archbishop Philip
M. Hannan of New Orleans, received the Distin
guished Volunteer Service Award of the American
Heart Association from Mrs. Lynidon B. Johnson
(Feb. 14). Mrs. Hannan was named to receive the
award because of her years of service as a Heart
Fund volunteer. (NC Photos)
FOR INDIAN AID
TT* TTl 1 I
r ope a Iea»eu
By Response
VATICAN CITY (RNS) —
Pope Paul VI, at his custo
mary midweek general au
dience in St. Peter’s Basili
ca, expressed satisfaction
over the worldwide response
to his recent appeal for aid to
millions in India threatened by
famine.
“The sudden and generous
reaction obliges us,” he said,
“not to forget the immensity
of the catastrophe for which
help is now being asked, and
concerning which we oursel
ves are still seeking to do
whate\er we modestly can.”
The Pope went on to speak
of the “sensibility and so
lidarity on the part of so many
toward people afar, unknown
and wretched.”
“This is a consoling and
edifying aspect,” he said, add
ing he had become accustomed
to contemplating the “evil,
error, disorder and sorrow”
in the world and thus was “al
most taken by surprise and
filled with pleasure and ad
miration by the veritable ex
plosion of goodness of which
the world today has given mar
velous proof.”
Noting that mankind was
rising to an ever greater
height of generosity and good
ness wherever catastrophe
struck, the Pope said:
“Our joy is great and we in
vite you this day to share it.
In thi s sorrowful situation is
revealed how the providence
of God is present in human
events and how even our dis
asters may become sources of
comfort and immense good.
The first good is that of mak
ing us good ourselves, of re
enlivening our hearts, stirring
our consciences to imperative
duties put out of mind or neg
lected. ...
“Do we not now hear of ap
peals to study the causes of
the great disaster that afflicts
whole regions, and plans for
sending not only adequate aid
but also for drawing up plans
to deal with want, famine and
morality?
“This is a new outlook,
bringing with it possibilities
of collaboration, courage,
hope and optimism. Some
such catastrophe as the pre
sent terrible one may ever
have been needed for the over
coming of centuries - old ob
stacles formerly believed in
superable so as to clear the
way for radical remedies open
to modern man.
“And what shall we say
about the friendship born be
tween fellow human beings in
the day of disaster? Does
this not seem proof of the
value of a social conscience,
of the sincerity of human feel
ing aspiring to universality.”
The Pope concluded by re
ferring to the promise of a
future reward for all those
who have opened their hearts
and their purses, “tasting the
joy of having done a good deed
and the blessedness that
comes from giving rather than
receiving.”
INSIDE STORY
fast And Abstinence P&* 2
Vocation Day „ £9- 3
Teachers* Institute 1*9*6
Why A Minor Seminary? 1*9* 7
Jesuits Die f*9* ®