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PAGE 2 — The Southern Cross. January 16. 1969
20 CLERGYMEN INVOLVED
NJ Priests Issue Demands;
Archbishop Boland Replies
NEWARK (NC) -
Declaring their “total
commitment to the beautiful
people” of the ghettos and
their independence from the
“racist” and “apathetic”
attitude of the Newark
archdiocese and its
archbishop, a group of 20
priests gave Archbishop
Thomas A. Boland a wide
ranging list of demands for
reform of the Church’s
efforts in inner-city areas
here.
The priests from Newark,
Jersey City and Plainfield are
members of the newly
formed Inner-City Priests
United for Christian Action,
they held a press conference
to publicize their demands
and release a letter to the
archbishop attacking what
they charged was the lack of
official Church leadership in
solving racial problems. All
but one of the priests
involved are white and all
work in the inner city.
Later, Archbishop Boland
issued a response to the
priests’ statements detailing
archdiocesan-backed projects
to assist the disadvantaged in
everything from housing
projects to community
leadership programs.
In a “Declaration of
Brotherhood to Our People,”
the priests charged “the
official church of the
archdiocese of Newark . . .
has made no significant
contribution to relieving the
deplorable agony of the
500,000 black people in the
inner cities . . . the official
Church is apathetic. It is
racist. It is contributing
actively and passively to the
delinquency of justice in New
Jersey.”
“Our choice is clear,” the
priests said. “We cannot serve
Christ without serving, with
pride and honor, our brothers
in the inner cities' We
herewith declare a total
commitment to the beautiful
people we have come to
know. To accomplish this, it
is necessary for us to be
independent of the present
attitude of the archdiocese,
since this attitude is
paternalistic tokenism, and at
times even total indifference,
and has become stumbling
blocks to our people.”
The priests emphasized
they have no intention of
leaving their ministry or of
operating in defiance of
archdiocesan authorities. “We
will operate laterally as
Catholic priests-independent
of, but not in defiance of the
chancery office,” their
statement said.
A 13-page letter to
Archbishop Boland made
public at the press conference
said: “Your vacuous
abandonment of
the ... black souls in your
diocese will do more
worldwide historical harm to
Christ’s Church than the
anti-Christs that have
populated history.” They
then listed a series of
demands that included the
following:
--That the archbishop
name a committee of
inner-city priests to act as his
advisors, that black lay
leaders be chosen to work
with these priests as an
“action council,” and that
the archbishop meet with his
inner-city advisors one hour
each week.
-That the committee has
the right to screen all priests
assigned to work in the inner
city.
-Instant transfer of all
pastors in black areas who are
deemed to be insensitive to
community needs.
--Co-equal parish
management in ghetto areas
and more priest teams to
work in experimental
ministries.
--That pastors make
church facilities available for
use by the community.
--Dissolution of the
recently formed archdiocesan
Human Relations Office-“A
cheap, deceptive Madison
Avenue public relations trick
to explain why we do nothing
in the inner city.” v
The priests told the
archbishop that “unless there
can be forthcbmirig quickly
some sincere evidence that
you share our concern and
share, too, our feeling of
urgency, it is our intent to
re lease-via another press
conference-a detailed record
of diocesan indolence.”
Archbishop Boland said in
a six-page response that the
priests” charges must not be
allowed to “undermine the
confidence already
demonstrated in our many
programs by the black and
white communities in the
areas of our archdiocese.”
“We can hardly afford to
have our energies diverted to
answering uncalled for
attacks upon our policy when
all our efforts, including
those of the 20 priests, can
best be used in a united
attempt to reach our goals in
a common cause,” he said.
“With the exception of the
government, there is hardly
another single agency in our
country which is attempting
to solve the problems of all
the people--black and
w h i t e , C a t h o lie and
non-Catholics--as is the
Church,” the archbishop
stated.
Archbishop Boland noted
that the archdiocese assists
the disadvantaged not only
through Catholic Charities,
which is common to all
dioceses, but through the
Mount Carmel Guild, a
community service agency
which employs the talents of
over 200 professional and
non-professional staff people
and thousands of volunteers
in a variety of programs.
“We have not been
satisfied with . . . carrying on
the routine of the past,” he
said. “We have attempted, by
initiating new programs, to
meet the needs that have
developed in our areas by
reason of the unusual influx
of new people into our big
cities.”
Archbishop Boland cited
the following recent
archdiocesan efforts:
--Subsidizing a $1
million-a-year program of
services to the disadvantaged
and handicapped, “the
majority of whom are
members of the black and
Spanish communities.”
--A Mount Carmel
Guild-operated Neighborhood
Youth .Corps,, program
“considered to be one of the
most successful of our
country.” The archdiocese
also provides the non-federal
share (10% of the total
budget) in programs of the
Field Orientation Center for
Underprivileged
Spanish-speaking People.
-Cooperation with other
New Jersey bishops and
religious leaders in Project
Equality, a program to insure
equal employment
opportunity.
--A contract with the
Office of Human Affairs of
the State of New Jersey to
help relocate and provide
rehabilitative services for
black families dislocated in
the city of Newark.
Forty housing projects in
various stages of planning in
the archdiocesan housing
office, with one already
under construction and
others nearing completion of
details.
“But we are not nearly
satisfied with construction
and building housing
projects,” Archbishop Boland
said. “Our objective is a
complete family
rehabilitation program in
health, vocational, social,
education and cultural needs
for better community and
family-responsible living.”
In response directed at the
priests’ declaration of
“independence’’, the
archbishop said: “I should
like to remind these priests
that they cannot operate
legitimately within the
Church independently of the
authority of the Ordinary to
whom they have promised
reverence and obedience at
their ordination.”
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THOMAS NICOSIA, 13, explains the workings of his homemade seismograph, which correctly
recorded a recent minor earthquake in the Philadelphia area. Sister Ann Geraldine of the Sisters of
St. Joseph is Tom’s teacher at Stella Maris school, Philadelphia. (NC Photos)
Bishops’ Synod
Continued from Page 1)
among the bishops’
conferences have been
“rather scarce, fragmentary
and of a prevalently
administrative character.”
He said: “Obviously, the
[Second Vatican] Council
itself and the Supreme
Pontiff in the post conciliar
period have established some
means of contact between the
bishops’ conferences and the
Holy See. However, when
you reflect on the conditions
in which the Church pursues
its mission and the work of
renewal, and when you take
into account not merely the
difficulties but the crises that
it encounters on its way, then
it seems opportune to study
(Continued from Page 1)
concerned with man’s most
fundamental and decisive
self-disposition in relation to
God, that is, to ultimate
reality. But his most
fundamental and decisive
self-disposition depends upon
his understanding himself.
And his understanding of
himself depends upon his
understanding of his relation
to immediate reality, that is,
the environment of his
everyday experience and
life.”
In the recent advance of
space technology, he said that
technology is not a cause, but
rather the reflection of the
profound changes that take
place in man as he develops
historically.
“As man learns that the
very nature given to him by
God makes him creative and
responsible, he realizes that
his relationship to God must
be based, not upon his
submissiveness to God, but
his acceptance of
responsibility and his exercise
of creativity in the presence
of God,” Dewart said.
Emerging in the 19th and
20th centuries was the view
that human experience is
better understood as
consciousness than as the
operation of cognitive and
appetitive spiritual powers,
Dr. Dewart said.
“The fact that the
principal philo so phical
concrete ways to weld the
reciprocal relations between
the Holy See and the bishops’
conferences, and among the
conferences themselves.”
There was speculation in
Rome that one of the crises
Pope Paul hopes to meet
through highly organized
cooperation with national
hierarchies is the outspoken
resistance to his encyclical
Humanae Vitae condemning
contraception. It was also
speculated that the Pope
might be hoping, through
smoother and more direct
contacts with national
hierarchies, to avoid apparent
conflicts between his
teachings and the
interpretations of those
premises underlying the
thought of almost every
progressive theologian who
contributed to the teaching
of Vatican II were deemed by
all to be fittingly called
‘transcendental Thomism’ is
of considerable importance.
It seems to me that the
a m b i g u i t ies of the
philosophical background of
the theology of Vatican II,
did, however unintentionally,
create a certain disservice to
the Church. For these
ambiguities served to hide as
a whole, from all those who
were not theologically
sophisticated, the extent to
which Catholic theology had
developed in the 20th
century,” he said.
“More important perhaps,
they also served to hide from
the hierarchy and from
Vatican II the extent to
which Catholic doctrine
would have further to
develop if it should adopt the
orientation suggested by a
theology which had, in effect,
departed in certain
respects-though to be sure
not in all--from the
traditional ways of conceiving
the foundations of Christian
belief,” he continued.
“Thus, the post-conciliar
problems of the Church are in
a very large measure due to
the fact that th ese
implications have now begun
to be drawn out, both by
those who would resist them
and by those who welcome,”
he said.
teachings by national
h ierarchies; such apparent
conflicts have arisen over the
same encyclical.
In answer to a question,
Bishop Rubin said that other
subjects in addition to such
relations might be discussed
in the synod, but that all
must be relevant to these
relations.
He recalled that the
circular letter his secretariat
had sent to all with the right
to participate in an
extraordinary session of the
synod had asked them to
send in their suggestions for
the agenda by Feb. 1. He said
that the agenda committee
will begin to draft a detailed
agenda about the beginning
of March and will send it to
each bishops’ conference and
assembly of Eastern-rite
bishops six months before the
synod meets, as the synod’s
regulations specify.
The agenda commission is
composed of Carlo Cardinal
Confalonieri prefect of the
Congregation for Bishops and
chairman of the commission;
Jean Cardinal Villot, prefect
of the Congregation for the
Clergy; Julius Cardinal
Doepfner of Munich,
president of the German
Bishops’ Conference; Valerian
Cardinal Gracias of Bombay;
Paul Cardinal Zoungrana of
Ouagadougou, Upper Volta;
Archbishop Dearden; and
Archbishop Avelar Brandao
Vilela of Teresina, Brazil,
president of the Latin
American Bishops’ Council
(CELAM). Bishop Rubin is
secretary of this commission.
Bishop Rubin is actually a
member of the procedural
committee, whose chairman
is Pericle Cardinal Felici,
president of the Pontifical
Commission for the Revision
of Canon Law. Other
members of theprocedural
committee are Cardinal
Villot, William Cardinal
Conway of Armagh, Northern
Ireland; Archbishop
Ambrogio Marchioni,
apostolic nuncio to
Switzerland, and Father
William Pertrams, S.J., a
member of the Doctrinal
Congregation.
If, as Bishop Rubin said,
the definition of an
extraordinary session of the
synod will be changed to
emphasize the importance of
the topic treated rather than
the speed required in
handling it, that might well
call forth changes in the
membership of the
extraordinary session. Under
present regulations,
participants in an
extraordinary session are in
the main determined by
virtue of their office. This
means that there are no
unwieldly and slow elections
to hinder the swift
assemblage of the
extraordinary synod. Under
present regulations, the only
elected members of the
extraordinary synod are three
religious who are elected by
the Roman Union of
Superiors General, most of
whose members live in the
city of Rome. The Pope also
may name further members
to a maximum of 15% of the
other members.
EPIPHANY GIFT - GIVING - Nearly 200 infant garments
were presented in the offertory procession at the Epiphany Mass
at Sacred Heart Church, Augusta, by the school children.
Pictured with the pastor, Father Wellmeier, are Kristen Carter,
Robby Craig and Kathy and Norman Stafford.
World Turmoil
IF GIVEN PERMISSION
Bishop To Take
Teaching Post
BY BILL RING
WASHINGTON (NC) -
Auxiliary Bishop James P.
Shannon of St. Paul and
Minneapolis expressed hope
here he will be able to take
on a teaching position at a
non denominational college
founded six years ago in
Santa Fe, N.M.
The 47-year-old prelate
underscored that he will not
accept the position unless he
is given ecclesiastical
authority to do so.
“It is an interesting
challenge and I sincerely hope
I will be able to accept it,”
Bishop Shannon said. “The
final decision rests with my
superiors. I am a man subject
to authority and I will abide
by their decision.”
The bishop came here
(Jan. 10) for a meeting at the
Catholic University of
America.
“I discussed the offer with
Archbishop (Leo) Binz (of St.
Paul and Minneapolis) and
told him of my desires in the
matter. That was shortly
before Christmas. Archbishop
Binz went to Rome, is now ill
and hospitalized there,”
Bishop Shannon said.
The bishop said he also
had discussed the offer with
Coadjutor Archbishop Leo C.
Byrne of St. Paul and
Minneapolis.
Bishop Shannon said he
regretted the publicity which
broke concerning the offer of
the teaching post, especially
because of the positions of
Archbishop Binz and Byrne
in the situation.
The offer was made to
Bishop Shannon early in
December by Dr. Richard D.
Weigel, president of St.
John’s College, Annapolis,
Md. Dr. Weigel and Bishop
Shannon are longtime friends.
The position involves a
visiting lectureship at St.
John’s College, Santa Fe,
N.M., which St. John’s at
Annapolis founded six years
ago.
Dr. Weigel, who is
president of both colleges,
said the bishop, under the
proposed arrangement, would
lecture and conduct a number
of seminars in history, the
sciences and religion. He said
the bishop would be
permitted to select the
subjects of the lectures and
seminars.
Dr. Weigel said the
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position would leave the
bishop free to continue his
writings and other affairs, but
expressed hope that if the
bishop was able to take on
the assignment, it could be
made into a permanent
arrangement.
“The next semester at the
college begins on Feb. 1,”
Bishop Shannon said, “and I
hope I will be advised
whether I can take the
position before that time so I
might be able to begin work
in the second semester.”
Bishop Shannon said he
had advised Archbishop Binz
of the time element involved.
St. John’s College in
Annapolis is among the oldest
in the nation. It was founded
originally in 1696 as King
William’s College but the
name of the institution was
changed to St. John’s in
1784. It has been
nondenominational since its
founding and its sister college
in Santa Fe operates along
similar lines.
Bishop Shannon indicated
that if given permission to
accept the offer, he would do
so initially on an
experimental basis “from
February until June.”
The bishop, a native of St.
Paul, is recognized as one of
this country’s leading
Catholic educators. He
attended the College of St.
Thomas and St. Paul
Seminary in St. Paul and was
ordained to the priesthood on
June 8, 1946. After
ordination, he earned his
master’s degree from the
University of Minnesota and
his doctorate from Yale
University, where he and Dr.
Weigel became close friends.
He taught at various
institutions in the St. Paul
and Minneapolis archdiocese
and in 1956 became president
of the College of St. Thomas.
He was* consecrated to serve
as auxiliary bishop of the
archdiocese on March 31,
1965.
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