Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 4 —' February 12,1970
Published at Waynesboro, Ga.
Most Rev. Geraid L. Frey, D.D. President
Rev. Francis J. Donohue, Editor John E. Markwalter, Managing Editor
Second Class Postaqe Paid at Waynesboro, Ga. 30830
Send Change of Address to P. O. Box 10027, Savannah, Ga. 31402
Published weekly except the second and last weeks
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Subscription price $5.00 per year-
House Bill 1180
House Bill 1180 of the Georgia House
or Representatives, a bill designed to
further liberalize the abortion laws of
the State of Georgia was ‘tabled’ for
further study after a hearing conducted
by the House Hygiene and Sanitation
Committee on Tuesday of last week.
Ostensibly, the bill was ‘dead’ so far as
the present session of the General
Assembly is concerned.
However, on Tuesday, February 10,
the Hygiene and Sanitation committee
held an unannounced meeting to
consider amendments proposed by
sponsors of the bill. Another meeting
was scheduled for February 11. It would
appear, then, that House Bill 1180 is far
from ‘dead.’
The lack of advance publicity
concerning the hearing of last week and
what was apparently to be a ‘secret’
meeting to consider amendments this
week, it seems to us, seriously
compromises any intention of the
sponsors of the bill to invite public
security of a proposal which vitally
affects the welfare of unborn children
and of a society already wracked with
concern over what appears to be a
serious breakdown in public morality
and family life.
Without drastic and fundamental
amendments, House Bill 1180 would
permit physicians to perform abortions
within the first twelve weeks of
pregnancy upon the simple request of
any pregnant woman. It would, in effect,
be an ‘abortion-on-demand’ bill, and
could contribute greatly to escalating
sexual promiscuity by removing the
necessity of anyone’s having to face the
prospect of child-birth if they indulge in
pre-marital or extra-marital intercourse,
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In addition, unless far reaching
amendments are introduced, the bill
would legalize the killing of an unborn
child at any time before birth if it were
done by a doctor who believed it
necessary for the physical or mental
health of the mother or to prevent the
birth of a deformed or mentally
impaired child.
It does not, of course, refer to such
taking of infant life as the “killing of an
unborn child,” but simply as the
abortion of a foetus.
The Catholic Church believes and
teaches that a foetus is a human being
from the first moment of its conception
and that direct and willful abortion at
any time constitutes a direct, unjust
attack on innocent human life.
But, apart from Cathoic belief, the
medical profession, itself, holds that
when a foetus becomes “quick” -- that
is, when the mother first feels the
stirrings of life in her womb -- it is no
longer a foetus, but an individual human
being. This “quickening,” doctors say,
takes place at about four months after
conception, five months at the outside.
This means, then, that House Bill
1180, which, as it presently stands,
places no limit during which doctors
may perform abortions, would authorize
the deliberate destruction of the lives of
individual human beings. Up to now,
anyway, that has always been considered
murder.
Proponents of the bill deny that it
lays the groundwork for legalized
“mercy killing” or other eugenic
measures. But, if the State empowers a
doctor to take human life up to the very
moment of birth, what is to prevent it
from authorizing destruction of a baby a
day, or week, or month, or year later.
Members of Georgia’s House of
[ Representatives are YOUR
representatives. It is up to you to speak
out and urge them to defeat House Bill
1180 and any other measure which
would further liberalize Georgia’s
abortion laws.
Catholic Press Month
The month of February is Catholic
Press Month. Here, in the diocese of
Savannah, that means it is THE
SOUTHERN CROSS month, too.
The theme for this year’s campaign
for new and renewal subscriptions is
“Today’s News for Today’s Catholics.”
Our Church is constantly changing -
updating and revitalizing, and our
modern Catholic press is keeping pace by
telling it to a dynamically involved
world.
To keep abreast of those changes and
forces in more than a passing way,
Catholics need the news, views and
guidance which can be found in today’s
modem and informative Catholic press.
We feel that the THE SOUTHERN
CROSS is a vital part of the Catholic
press for the people of this diocese. We
ask for your continued support of our
efforts to bring you an improving and
growing diocesan newspaper which can
keep you ‘on top’ of “Today’s News for
Today’s Catholics.”
AIR POUJITION
The Backdrop...
By John J. Daly, Jr.
Gov. Ronald Reagan of California has given
Americans a sample of what may become
commonplace if the concern over
environmental pollution sparked by President
Nixon continues to spread with the speed it has
shown since the President’s State of the Union
message.
Reagan’s state already has the toughest
antismog laws in the country. But pollution
continues to be a
menace. The
Governor, as did
Mr. Nixon in his
message, puts the
blame for poison in
the atmosphere on
the automobile.
The Governor
wants to take California beyond its many
present pollution control measures. It was the
first state to demand exhaust control
mechanisms on new cars, a step imitated by the
Federal government which required them on all
cars beginning in 1968.
Reagan has proposed recently that the state
test and certify every antismog device on all
new cars, providing criminal penalties for
misleading devices; that state authorities be
empowered to force oil companies to change
the chemical makeup of their gasoline and that
the Highway Patrol be authorized to make spot
checks of automobile anti-pollution
mechanisms.
It is unlikely that we will see similar
proposals on the Federal or state levels in the
immediate future. At present, for example,
> *
Congress is toying with a bill to offer
automobile manufacturers Federal “incentives”
for research and production of automobile
engines that eliminate noxious emissions.
But it is not impossible that California-like
toughness will someday be reflected in Federal
law. One looks with surprise, for example, at
the veritable army that has appeared ready to
march against pollution. Its members range
from tens of thousands of collegians, who will
demonstrate against the “environmental crisis”
nationwide on April 22, to officials of an
agency of the United States Catholic bishops,
the Department of International Affairs of the
United States Catholic Conference. The
Catholic agency’s director has warned that
earth may become “the cesspool of the
universe.”
Is the automobile the right target?
Yes indeed. Scientists say the nation’s 87
million cars puff more than 90 million tons of
pollutants into the air every year. This accounts
for more than 60% of the poison in the
atmosphere over the United States.
The ideal solution would be an engine that
does not emit exhaust. But in the meantime,
steps are going to have to be taken to cut fumes
by readjustments in engine design and
improvement in pollution control devices. On
the latter point, critics allege that present
devices work only at freeway speeds--50 miles
per hour or more-and are useless in city traffic.
Even when they are functioning, emissions are
said to be cut only between 40 and 60%.
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AMERICANS . . . TOO MANY?
It Seems To Me
Joseph Breig
“Population” is the
fashionable scare-word
nowadays. In the press, on
TV and radio, and from
lecture platforms we are
flooded with horror stories
alleging that unless we curb
birth rates drastically - by
force if necessary - we will
soon have nothing to eat and
nowhere to
live.
Meanwhile,
experts are
telling us
(though
nobody seems
to hear them)
that in a few
years the world will be
over-supplied with food.
Australia is offering to pay
transportation for families
willing to move there. Canada
is seeking immigrants to
populate its vast empty
spaces. Ireland is pleading
with its young people not to
move to other countries.
West Germany and France
are importing hundreds of
thousands of workers from
neighboring nations because
there are not enough
Germans and Frenchmen.
Immense areas of Latin
America and Africa are
uninhabited, even
unexplored. And the
communist world maintains
its huge, ugly, inhuman Iron
Curtain, not to keep people
out but to keep people from
leaving.
Dr. Utto Ernst Fischnich,
assistant general director of
the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization, reports that
within 10 years, thanks to
new cereals which triple
normal grain harvests, we can
“wipe out-under-nutrition
and even hunger.”
British economist Dr.
Colin Clark, director of the
Institute of Economic
Progress at Monash University
in Australia, says that very
soon the world will be facing
the happy “problem” of
having too much food with
too few people to eat it.
“India and Pakistan are
.cheerfully looking forward to
becoming food exporting
countries within a few years.”
Dr. Clark truly says that
“the problem is not that
there are too many people in
the world but that they are
too concentrated. Our
principal duty is to
decentralize populations and
build new cities.”
In face of all this Dr.
Roger O. Egeberg, with the
approval of President Nixon
and Robert Finch, secretary
of health, education and
welfare, makes a speech
advocating compulsory birth
control so that no American
family will have more than
two children.
Dr. Egeberg speaks of
what he considers the
horrendous prospect that by
the year 2000, there will be
300 million Americans. My
comment is that there better
be that many of us, and
maybe lots more, if we
expect to be able to defend
our way of life.
Nothing tempts an
agressor like the absence of
people who, if present, would
stand up to him.
Dr. Lee A. DuBridge,
science advisor to President
Nixon, says population
growth absolutely must be
stopped.
This sort of thing is not
really new. The signs of it
have been plain enough for
decades. More than 30 years
ago I published a short story
(it was republished last year)
about a World Dictatorship in
which death was the penalty
for a couple having a baby
without a license-and the
quotas were filled far into the
future. At last a young couple
brought forth a little one in
defiance of the dictators-and
thereon hung the tale.
Fortunately, there won’t
by any such world
dictatorship. If America
refuses to grow, many other
countries won’t -- and the
time will come when the
people who were born will
occupy the places left by
those who weren’t. If you
don’t believe that, your
knowledge of the world’s
history needs brushing up.
JONATHAN CARTOON - “What I SAID was, ‘If you don’t have a pencil tomorrow, just don’t
bother to come to class’.” (NC Photo)
4
Tracts For The Times
Events In
Netherlands
By Marvin R. O’Connell
Beneath the recent dramatic events in the
Netherlands lies a very old problem with which
the Church has wrestled almost since its
foundation. What is the relationship between,
on the one hand, the mother Church of Rome,
center of unity and wielder of ultimate
authority, vested first in Peter, and, on the
other hand, the local Church with its own
unique cultural inheritance, its particular
problems, its own needs?
Headlines have followed the
@ developing Dutch crisis because
celibacy has been the issue of
confrontation between Holland and
Rome, and because celibacy, like
anything that has to do with sex,
possesses the kind of overtones
which naturally produce headlines.
But there are matters, theoretical
and practical, involved here that are far more
fundamental than whether Dutch priests get
married or not. It may not be extravagant to
say that this problem brings us face to face with
the dilemma to which polarization within the
Church has brought us: must we make the
unpalatable choice between spiritual anarchy
and spiritual dictatorship?
It seems to me that the Dutch challenge to
the pope represents not a theoretical dispute
but a quarrel over the decision-making process,
or, if you prefer a harsher expression, a power
struggle. The question at this juncture is not so
much “who is right” but “who will decide.”
Yet the theory and all its ramifications are in
the long run a great deal more important than
the present fight. And indeed to ask “who will
decide” is itself to embark upon a theoretical
investigation of the deepest significance. The
reasons in themselves advanced by the Dutch
bishops to adopt optional celibacy do not seem
very strong-no stronger indeed than the
negligible contribution of Dutch theology to
the intellectual life of the Church at large. And
if Rome is often accused of sacrificing too
much to expediency in order to maintain the
ecclesiastical system as it is, the Dutch bishops
leave themselves open to a similar charge-that
is, of trying to preserve the institutional Church
in Holland (and their own positions in it) by
surrendering to the demand for a married clergy
without bothering overmuch about the
rightness of such a decision.
In other words, I think there are two
extremely serious questions to be examined: is
celibacy right (not, is it expedient) and who
will decide whether it is right (not, who will
impose his/their will on whom). Logically it
would seem that the second question will have
to be answered first. If the Dutch go their own
way and disavow unilaterally a discipline of the
universal Church tested by 1500 years of
experience, the first, but unhappily not the last,
victims of such presumption will be Dutch
Catholics themselves. If, at the same time, the
pope refuses to discuss this business not only
with the Dutch but with all his comrades in the
episcopate, he may invite serious calamity upon
himself, his office and, of course, upon us all. I
was not surprised to read the other day that he
solemnly reaffirmed celibacy as a practicable
ideal for the clergy of the western Church. But
I was disappointed that he said (presuming he
was quoted accurately) he wanted discussion on
the matter stopped. He may as well demand
that the sun not rise and the wind cease to
blow.
The great irony at work here is that the
Dutch bishops, who are about to bell the papal
cat, are in their august positions because Rome
has put them there. One whole dimension of
the history of the Church during the past
several centuries has been tjie struggle of the
popes to gain control of the appointment of
bishops without interference from civil
governments or indeed from any other local
interest. That struggle has been largely won, but
the victory would seem, at last as far as Holland
is concerned, to have turned into ashes in the
hands of Paul VI.
Episcopal collegiality is not a new concept in
the Church, but it does seem fair to say that it
was lost sight of in recent centuries and that it
was healthy to have it reaffirmed at Vatican II.
The Dutch case is important precisely because
it is the first real test as to whether enough
flexibility exists for collegiality to work.
Whether our leaders have the courage and
candor and humility to make it work is still to
be proved. Whether they are going to get the
time to develop these virtues may depend on
the outcome of the Dutch crisis.
Collegiality involves inherently the tension
between local and universal, between, in this
case, the Dutch Church and the universal
Church. Which reminds me of what Hegel said:
“Tragedy is not the conflict between right and
wrong but the conflict between right and
right.”
CATHOLIC CONGRESS ON WORSHIP
THE ATLANTA CONGRESS
ATLANTA CIVIC CENTER AUDITORIUM
April 16, 17, 18, 1970