Newspaper Page Text
IN BRAZIL
Confirms Friars’
Guerilla Activity
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INTO THE FUTURE - What awaits us as we head into the new decade? (NC Photo)
■THE 1970s
A Time For Choosing
PAGE 3 — January 8. 1970
ENGLISH SPEAKING
Curia Official
Praises Sisters
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil
(NC)— An investigator sent
by the master general of the
Dominican order in Rome has
confirmed that several
Dominican friars in Brazil
were involved in pro-guerrilla
activities, but he stressed that
they were motivated by a
desire to achieve social
justice.
He denied, however, that
the Dominicans charged by
military police with aiding
slain Communist leader
Carlos Marighela were
instrumental in arranging the
ambush in which Marighela
was killed.
Father Vincent de
Douesnongle, O.P., assistnat
to the master general in
Rome, who came to Brazil in
mid- November, has returned
to Rome to report his
findings at the Dominican
convents in Rio de Janeiro
and Sao Paulo. He also
conferred with government
authorities.
A preview of what is in
that report was given here by
Father Raimundo Soares,
OJ*., who helped in the
investigation.
The report says that
several Dominican students
and two priests did help
Marghela and his men by
providing refuge and escape
routes, but that they never
took part in actual
kidnappings or bank
robberies of the terrorist
bands.
In December a military
tribunal in Sao Paulo
sentenced to indefinite prison
terms 21 persons--ll of them
clergymen-on charges of
aiding Marighela’s groups.
VATICAN CITY (NC) -
Sixty European scholars and
ecclesiastics- Catholics, Jews
and Protestants among
them-have sent a dossier on
police tortures and murders
in Brazil to Pope Paul VI and
to Maurice Cardinal Roy,
president of the Pontifical
Commission for Justice and
Peace.
The dossier, which was
published in the December
issue of a Catholic-sponsored
magazine in France,
Croissance Des Jeune
Nations, was brought by an
anonymous person to the
headquarters of the Justice
and Peace Commission Dec.
24. A letter signed by 60
Belgians, Frenchmen and
Italians asked the commission
to send a copy of the dossier
to Pope Paul and on to
Cardinal Roy.
The dossier was sent to the
Pope and the cardinal on
Christmas.
An official of the
commission said that so far
then had been no outward
Among them are Fathers
Fernando de Brito and
Francisco A. Catao, and
Brother Yves do Amaral
Lespaupin of the Dominican
convent at Las Perdices.
Later the director of the
Sao Paulo state secret police,
Benedito Nunes, told the
Catholic weekly, 0 Sao
Paulo, that Father de Brito
and Brother Amaral
Lespaupin did not know of
the ambush, contrary to
earlier police reports.
Father Soares said that
those Dominicans involved
with Marighela’s bands were
acting according to their
conscience. After forming a
new political philosophy
regarding violence and social
justice, he said they felt that
there was no other way to
help the Brazilians at large to
attain their human rights.
Opposition to the
government and the existing
power structure is not legally
permitted under the military
regime in Brazil, he added.
In a letter sent
clandestinely to his family at
Christmas, one of the
dominicnas arrested for
aiding the guerillas said that
his imprisonment “must not
be a reason for shame for you
but a reason for pride,
because I feel that I am at
peace and my conscience is
justified because what I did
was in a sense to look for a
more just and freer world
when there exists so much
injustice.”
The Dominican, Brother
Carlos Alberto Christo-also
known as Brother
Beto-added: “It is not so
strange that I am here in jail.
What does it serve to gain the
whole world if we have to
lose our souls?”
indication of any action by
the Pope. However, he
pointed out that it is
common knowledge that the
Holy See has been closely
following the tension-ridden
situation in Brazil, whose
right-wing regime has been in
open conflict with many
priests, Religious and bishops
including Archbishop Helder
Camara of Recife.
Archbishop Camara is
author or co-author of three
of the eleven documents of
witnesses comprising the
dossier. Some of these
documents had been
previously published. Most of
them are anonymous.
The official of the Justice
and Peace Commission
pointed out that the
testimony in various of the
documents is mutually
supporting. A description by
a Belgian priest of tortures in
Brazil includes a brief
account of the torture of a
university professor which
tallies with an account by an
anonymous professor of his
own tortures
BY JOHN R. SULLIVAN
(NC NEWS SERVICE)
A decade can seem like a
long time to some, not so
long to others. How do we
measure the passage of time?
By the pages ripped from a
calendar, by gray hairs and
swelling paunches, by births
and deaths?
These are certainly some,
ways. The Polaroid
photographs reveal the gray,
they record the christenings,
they remind us of people who
are no longer here .
But do they tell us where
we are going? Do we measure
our time, instead, by our
“progress.” But as Michael
Novak has said, time’s mere
passage often has nothing to
do with progress.
The 1960s bore out his
thesis. The nation seemed to
slip its moorings; all those
things we had come to
accept-education, religion,
death and taxes, automobiles,
credit cards and plastic
every thing-were called to
account.
The accounting has barely
begun. It will be undertaken
in earnest in the 1970s and
will determine whether this
nation, having cast loose from
the pier, will return, or drift
in the tide, or set a new
course.
The time of the 1960s
yielded little evidence of
“progress” in the way we
would like to define that
word. We have more cards,
but private bankruptcies have
increased, too. We have more
automobiles, but we also have
more smog and more traffic
problems.
We have learned how to
transplant hearts and other
vital organs, but we have
learned, too, how to kill each
other more efficiently; we
have made political
assassination a familiar
phenomenon.
There are more students
than ever in our universities;
they are in a constant state of
barely-suppressed rebellion.
There are more churches than
ever; there are fewer people
in them, and many are asking
not, “Is God Dead?” but
“Was He ever alive?”
We seem to have passed
the last terrestrial frontier
and struck out for the moon.
But the ’60s closed with
frontier-style shootouts in
Chicago and Los Angeles. The
cavalry and the marshall
made the old west frontier
safe for the wagon trains.
And we have called out the
Army and the police to make
our cities safe.
Perhaps there is no such
thing as a “last frontier” -
just new ones we haven’t
come against before.
Perhaps the American
frontier of the 1970s is the
city-where most of us live,
where the automobile and
bus have gracelessly replaced
the deer and the antelope,
where seldom is heard an
encouraging word.
The nation’s cities have
distilled the problems-and
hopes-of America in the
1970s. With few exceptions
they are becomming more
and more crowded, dirty,
ugly, and hard to deal with.
There is not enough
housing. The air is foul.
Transportation is frustrating,
expensive and inefficient.
City-dwellers aren’t nice to
each other-try to get good
service in big city restuarants,
hotels or business
establishments.
The rivers and lakes on
which our cities lie are more
often than not foul,
unglorified cesspools.
The country towns and
farms from which many city
dwellers came are in no better
shape; they are often grimly
poor. And if they are not
poor, the industries they have
attracted to rescue them from
poverty have returned the
favor by bringing along
pollution of water and air.
A recent photograph of
Arizona’s Superstition
Mountains showed in the
foreground an unbroken
blanket of smog; there is,
apparently, no haven left for
even asthmatics.
Pollution, in fact, has
already become a major issue,
and on college campuses
appears ready to eclipse the
Vietnam war.
But is that progress? Water
pollution was an issue in
1960, when Congress voted
funds to attack it; President
Eisenhower vetoed the
measure.
The nation’s depressed
rural areas were an issue in
1960 also; funds were voted,
and the measure vetoed. The
problems weren’t big enough
then.
Now they are, but the
question remains: what will
we do about them? And what
will we do about the other
problems that have since
arisen?
Those country towns are
most often linked to the
cities by a vast network of
highways built, in the
language of their promoters,
to “meet the needs of the
’70s.”
They didn’t even meet the
needs of the 1960s, for they
are filled with automobiles
and trucks-so many that
transportation near our cities
is as slow as ever.
(During a recent bus strike
in Washington, one person
found it quicker to walk
three miles from the outskirts
to his downtown office than
to drive and park.)
Our airports are crowded,
and at the busiest ones little
is being done to
accommodate the jumbo jets
going into service this year.
Railroads want to transport
only cargo like automobiles
and pig iron, because they
can’t make money carrying
people.
Rapid transit mileage in
the U.S. has remained static
for a generation; few cities
however seem able to find the
will or the money to change
that-although all agree it is
necessary.
The list of urban ills could
go on and on; those ills are
inextricably linked with our
rural ills. Race: we have not
made any significant progress
in enabling people of
different races to live
together amicably. In our
cities the problem is
compounded by the fact that
very few people-regardless of
race-find them enjoyable
places to live.
We are all frustrated and
some of us are apathetic-
Kitty Genovese was killed in
the 1960s, while 38 persons
watched, unwilling to get
involved.
Frustration and apathy
breed violence; poverty only
contributes to it. So we
preach law and order, install
burglar alarms and hire guard
dogs. But we are only
meeting frustration with
frustration, apathy with
apathy and violence with
more violence.
Will we break that cycle in
the 1970s?
In 1960 the United States
Congress authorized $4.6
billion in economic and
military aid to our foreign
friends. In 1970 it will
authorize less than half that
amount.
Congress and the people
have found in the intervening
10 years that the aid didn’t
necessarliy make friends, or
keep them. So there is less aid
this year--but there is
proportionally more military
aid than there was in 1960.
Much more.
In the 1960s Pope Paul
said “development is the new
name of peace.” Yet
development comes slowly
and on its own terms. Have
we and other great nations
given up in frustration and
instead reacted with violence?
We have fought in
Vietnam for seven years.
Britian supplies arms to
Nigeria; France gives to
Biafra. Russia supplies the
Arabs, somebody else
supplies the Israelis. Yet all
profess an interest in helping
poor nations achieve
economic growth-in the
interest of world peace.
“We have to decide,” said
James Jennings, assistant
director of the U.S. Catholic
Conference’s Division of
World Justice and Peace,
“whether we really want to
assist development, or be
policemen.”
Will we attack that
frontier in the 1970s?
The 1970s will bring us
sharply up against the world
around us-the cities, the
wars, the poverty and
affluence. The “global
village,” in which we all
participate in each other’s
life, was identified in the
1960s. We will learn what
that really means and how to
live with it-especially in our
cities-during the 70s.
Already we are groping tor
the ways to live in that
environment. While the
paradoxical theology of “God
Is Dead” was being discussed
in the 1960s, many
Americans began a new
«
search for a god who was
alive, and with whom they
could live.
Mysticism and church
renewal, cultism and the
“back to the earth”
movement of the hippies have
this in common: a search for
an absolute that is
comprehensible in Marshall
McLuhan’s electric age.
Some psychiatrists have
identified the search by the
young as a product of
permissiveness-raised as
children without clear limits,
they seek them as adults.
And sometimes the search
for an agreement with our
environment has carried us
within ourselves. Marriage is
no longer static, but a state in
which two persons seek to
deepen their relationship.
Sensitivity sessions,
dialogues, encounters: they
are all attempts to learn
about ourselves-and about
those close to us. These forms
will probably become
historical curios; new forms
will replace them until we
find a mode of living
together-whether by choice
or by chance-that makes us
feel whole and effective
human beings.
The 1960s proved that
intensive urbanization doesn’t
just happen-the question,
“can people live together in
peace and harmony” was a
false one.
• For the 1970s we will be
working on the real one: how
will we learn to live in peace
and harmony? And: will it be
soon enough, while there is
still life?
The past decade brought
sharply into focus the things
that we need for simple
survival in the age of the
hydrogen bomb-interior
peace, harmony with each
other, freedom from
deprivation. The issues and
problems we have found were
not of our choosing.
The coming decade,
perhaps the rest of the
century, will be a time for
choosing: life or death.
VATICAN CITY (NC) -
In highly laudatory terms, a
ranking official of the Roman
Curia (the Church’s central
administrative body) praised
the contribution of the
English-speaking nuns to the
faith in lands around the
world.
Addressing the Association
of English-speaking
councillors in Rome (Jan. 4),
Father Edward L. Heston,
C.S.C. secretary of the
Congregation for Religious,
traced the history of the
sisterhoods in Anglo-Saxon
cultures and attributed to
these nuns “relentless
enthusiasm, a profound spirit
of honest, and (referring to
fhodem times) their generous
involvement in the essential
task of renewal and
adaptation.”
Sister Joan Bland of the
Sisters of Notre Dame de
Namur told NC News Service
that the majority of
nuns-councillors who form
the Roman Association are
American or represent
American communities. She
noted that the association has
been in existence for about
two years and one of its
major efforts has been to
keep the Congregation for
Religious informed of
activities and problems in
convents under their
supervision.
Father Heston informed
NC News Service that his
message, geared primarily to
American reception, was not
in any way an inference that
Sisters of other language
groups are not accomplishing
similar aims. He stated:
“Every group has
‘something’ proper to itself, a
‘charism’ which enables it to
operate under the particular
spirit.”
He added that if he
were addressing another
language group he would seek
out the highlights of their
cultural origin and so
demonstrate their
contribution to the
apostolate.
In his address to the
councillors who advise their
respective mothers general,
Father Heston described
English-speaking Sisters as
“ready to build bridges
instead of walls,” in that they
are “largely responsible for
the marked improvement in
the relationship of the
Roman Catholic Church with
other churches and also with
the general public in their
respective countries.”
Summarizing the work of
the English-speaking nun
during the past 150 years,
Father Heston stated that
“they have been responsible
for the organization and the
effective functioning of
whole systems of education,
health, welfare and social
services.” He described their
activities as “largely
responsible for preserving and
developing the faith of
immigrant populations in the
United States, England,
Australia and South Africa.”
Father Heston urged the
English-language Religious
“to demonstrate that our
technological and
humanitarian backgrounds
are not in conflict with the
life of faith demanded by our
baptism, but that such
backgrounds serve the life of
faith by bringing it within the
reach of the men and women
of our present day and age.”
‘‘Our younger
generations,” he went on,
“have been greatly attracted,
not to say completely won
over, by the spirit of sublime
humanism which radiated
into the world during the
brief pontificate of Pope
John XXIII.”
He admitted that “we who
are so terribly absorbed by
the ecclesiastical and religious
elements of our daily life
need to be reminded that
God is not truly served when
man is neglected.”
The opposite is equally
true, he observed, for “man is
not truly served when God is
neglected.” “It is in
incarnating this two—fold
mission of the spiritual and
the humanitarian that the
vocation of our religious
Sisters consists so largely
today,” he added.
Turning to the response of
the nuns to Second Vatican
Council, Father Heston
stated: “We know that even
prior to the council there had
been the first stirrings of the
desire to make of our
religious congregations more
effective instruments in the
divine plan of salvation.
These initial and at times
uncertain stirrings found
themselves all of a sudden, as
it were, canonized by Vatican
II. The task set before our
religious congregations was
immense, one whose possible
repercussions could hardly
even be so much as
imagined.”
Referring to the
international communities
represented in his audience,
Father Heston said:
“In this period of
unprecedented internation
alism, it would be the saddest
of ironies for our religious
congregations to sever, or
even to weaken, their
international ties...“Such
unity for which Christ prayed
on the eve of His passion, can
be served unquestionably by
brotherhoods and sisterhoods
trancending national or
cultural lines and striving to
bring into their thinking and
their doing something of that
universal fatherhood of God
and brotherhood of Christ.”
The address ended on a
note of prophecy:
‘‘Never has the
English-speaking Sister had a
more providential,
opportunity to use these
God-given talents of initiative
and imagination for the
inspirational leadership than
in the year of our Lord
1970-the year which may
eventually prove to have been
the most crucial thus far in
our century.”
^ r
LEARNS WAR YOUNG - A Montagnard tribesman heads for
his guard post with baby strapped to his back. Baby will live to
see peaceful days, we hope! (NC Photo)
TIED UP IN ‘PROGRESS’? - If the Machine merely captures Man in traffic snarls,or litters the
streets with beer cans, or contaminates his air and water, Man will have to contrive new ways to
control his environment. (NC Photo)
(
GIVEN TO POPE
Brazil Dossier
Cites Barbarism
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