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PAGE 4 — The Southern Cross, July 1, 1971
The Southern Cross
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Jcp a
Bishop
On June 14, Bishop Bernard J, Kelley
of Providence, Rhode Island, announced
his resignation from the priesthood. He
thus became the second auxiliary bishop
to quit both his office and his vocation
in the past two years.
Bishop Kelly resigned because of what
he termed “an abiding sense of
frustration, resulting from inability to
comprehend or conform to the
prevailing Tridentine attitude and
policies of the U.S. Hierarchy.”
In announcing his decision to leave
the priesthood, he accused the bishops
of ignoring “serious recommendations”
from various sources, including their
own scientific report “calling for serious
changes in the priestly ministry and life
style,” and of being “more concerned
about communion in the hand than they
are about the war in Vietnam.”
Declaring that he could see no hope
for any future change in the attitude of
the National Conference of Catholic
Bishops, he charged that discussion is
impossible and pleaded that the only
way he could protest was by his
resignation.
At first, we were inclined to sympathy
with the bishop. As we have said in the
past, we believe that the questions
concerning the priestly life and ministry
Kelly
examined by the bishops’ 3-year study
should be thoroughly aired at the
upcoming Synod in Rome. We also feel
that the April meeting of the bishops
could have produced significant moral
guidance to our national leaders,
wrestling with the questions of justice
and right involved with our continued
military presence in Southeast Asia.
However, if charges leveled against
Bishop Kelly by the editor of
Philadelphia’s Catholic Standard and
Times are accurate, then we feel Bishop
Kelly’s stated reasons for his resignation
are simply a “cop out.”
The editor, Father John P. Foley, has
served as news secretary for the last four
meetings of the U.S. bishops.
According to Father Foley, in those
four years, “Bishop Kelly has spoken
only once at the meeting --and then for
only about 30 seconds - and not about
either of the issues on which he claims
that ‘discussion is impossible.’ On the
floor of the general meetings, Bishop
Kelly has not -- as he was free to do - even
proposed the questions which he claims
his fellow bishops would not discuss.”
This is a powerful indictment and
Bishop Kelly should either effectively
refute it or withdraw the accusations
made in his statement of resignation.
Tracts For The Times
^ j
BY REV. MARVIN R. O'CONNELL
Last week in this space I began a catalogue of
guidelines which, if I had the right (and to the
great relief of many I don’t), I would insist that
teachers of religion follow. I mentioned then
some principles regarding parental rights and
academic freedom that strike me as significant.
Before I go on with my enumeration, perhaps I
should observe that although I have Catholic
schools particularly in mind I do not intend to
leave the religious instruction of public school
children out of account. Indeed, as
Catholic schools continue to close --
largely in my opinion, because of
widespread failure to observe the
kind of principles listed here - the
crucial testing ground of the
Church’s teaching mission in
America will be the CCD or REY
programs developed, I hope, along
intellectually respectable lines.
To conintue my list:
5. DISTINGUISH SHARPLY BETWEEN
REVEALED TRUTHS AND THEOLOGICAL
SCIENCE. Just as “religion” as a virtue must be
kept separate from “religion” as a teachable
subject, so the revealed facts found in scripture
and tradition must be distinguished from the
human elaboration of those facts, which we call
theology. Students must be brought to see that
the level of assent a Catholic has toward, say,
the Nicene Creed, is different from that he gives
to even the most distinguished theologian. This
is particularly important because the notion of
“tradition” as a principle of faith is often
confused with “traditional,” taken to mean
theologically conservative. Because something
has been said frequently does not make it
automatically true. But the Church, the living
Body of Christ, has a tradition which amounts
to an understanding of herself, which, with the
written word of God, provides a sure guide,
beyond any theological opinion, to the
understanding of God’s revelation. (I am
thinking, for instance, of the solemn teachings
of general councils.)
6. REMEMBER THAT THE REVEALED
TRUTH OF GOD IS OF UNIVERSAL
APPLICATION. The Church is very large, with
lots of room for varieties of opinion and
expression. Its very catholicity guarantees
multiple cultural modes at different times and
in different places, as well as different
theological systems. But beneath the diversity is
an essential intellectual unity, a basic agreement
about principles - doctrinal and moral -
because these principles have been revealed by
* *
God. Their applications may differ widely, and
theologians may emphasize one or another of
their aspects. But the teacher of Catholicism
who cannot admit as always and everywhere
true the supernatural end of man, the divinity
of Christ, the primacy of conscience (to cite
only a few examples) should, in all honesty,
seek another line of work.
7. REMEMBER THAT THE REVEALED
TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY COME FROM
OUTSIDE THE COMMUNITY OF
BELIEVERS. Faith, St. Paul says, comes from
hearing, because the gospel is a proclamation,
not a welling-up from within. The apostles did
not invent the “Good News” of the gospel;
they heard it from Jesus and passed it along to
others. Therefore the formal statements of the
teaching Church -- the pope with the bishops -
have special impact, because they continue the
proclamation the apostles began.
8. REMEMBER THAT ALL OPINIONS
ARE NOT OF EQUAL WORTH. Those who
teach theology - as distinguished from those
who proclaim revealed universal truths (see no.
7) -- must have a decent regard for the laws of
evidence. There is no reason for a theologian or
a teacher of religion dealing with theology to be
less rigorous in his science than his colleagues in
other sciences. Authority, which is the
strongest and indeed the only voice in matters
of faith, is the weakest when it comes to
science, theological or any other kind. To
invoke the name of Thomas Aquinas or Hans
Kung does not in itself settle anything. What
matters is the worth of a theologian’s
arguments, the clarity of his explanations, the
integrity of his research.
9. REMEMBER THAT YOUR STUDENTS
ARE CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS. They
must be led in a disciplined and studious way
through subjects of immense difficulty in a
mode appropriate to their level of development
and experience. This is especially hard, because
account must be given both to revealed truths
and the theology which builds upon those
truths, as geometry builds on theorems. The
distinction is a difficult one, but it is essential
for the well-being of your students, who need
to deepen their knowledge so that when they
face the crises of adult Christian life they will
be intellectually prepart'd. They want you to be
exciting and stimulating and innovative in your
methods, but they art' not interested in cliches
or in your hang-ups. They want above all the
beginning of wisdom which is the freedom
whore with Christ has made them free.
I
A Nations Destiny
( It Seems To Me
Joseph Breifc
It appears that some of the
apologists for the North
Vietnam government are
beginning to take Americans
- and in particular American
Catholics -- for a pack of
fools who can be conned into
believing that the communist
rulers are a cluster of saints.
What else
can we make
of a statement
that the North
Viet dictators
“highly value
human digni
ty, respect
liberty of
religion,
encourage the religious
virtues and morals, and care
for the material and spiritual
life of everybody”?
We should live so long as to
see communists doing any of
those things. But such was
the preposterous allegation
brought back to the U.S. by
10 priests and 35 lay
Catholics who set themselves
up as a “Catholic Commission
for a Just Solution to the War
in Indochina,” and travelled
to Paris to attend an
“International Assembly of
Christians in Solidarity With
the Vietnamese, Laotian and
Cambodian Peoples.”
(When you are sixteenth of
an inch tall and are trying to
look like 10 feet, the thing to
do is to give yourself a long,
resounding, imposing title.
There are 50 million
American Catholics; the
self-appointed “Catholic
Commission” consisted of 45.
There are 580 million
Catholics on earth; the
so-called “International
Assembly” numbered 250.)
Among the 10 priests in
the “commission” were
Father Francis Bonnike,
president of the National
Federation of Priest Councils;
Father Richard Griffin, a
chaplain at Harvard; Father
James Leehan, a chaplain at
Case Western Reserve
University in Cleveland, and
Father Edward Kohler,
assistant national chaplain of
the Catholic Family
Movement. Along with the 35
lay people, they apparently
swallowed without gagging
the canonizing of the North
Vietnam communist rulers.
Certainly I have waited in
vain for any public statement
by any of the 45 that as
much as a grain of salt was
applied.
The person who did the
sainting of the communist
bosses was introduced to the
“International Assembly” as
“Father” Ho Than Bien of
Hanoi. Maybe he is a priest,
and maybe he isn’t.
Another alleged priest,
“Father” Nguyen Din ThL
told the open-mouthed
Americans that U.S. bombing
has destroyed “thousands of
Catholic parishes” in North
Vietnam. How very odd, in
view of the fact that even in
South Vietnam there are only
about a million and a half
Catholics - and 800,000 of
them are people who fled
from North Vietnam, while
the fleeing was possible,
rather than live under
communism. Have the North
Viet Reds been baptizing
people with fire hoses,
thousands at a crack?
The crowning touch of
Mad Hatterness in this Alice
in Wonderland fantasy came
when “Father” Ho Than Bien
alleged that during U.S.
bombings, Masses are offered
in underground shelters.
Apparently nobody on the
“Catholic Commission”
thought to remind him that
there hasn’t been any U.S.
bombing in North Vietnam in
several years.
Finally, he told our
American innocents abroad
that “there is complete
identification of North
Vietnamese Catholics with
the Hanoi government.” If so,
you can put your shirt on the
proposition that the
“idenfication” is identical
with that of a wolf with the
prey he has just eaten.
The
Y ardstick
l J
Msgr. George G. Higgins
Director, Division of Urban Life. U.S.C.C.
Peonage In America?
The word “peon,” which comes to us
unchanged in spelling from the Spanish
language, has taken on different meanings in
different parts of the world. (1) In India,
according to Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, it
means a foot soldier, or a native policeman, or
an attendant of one kind or another. (2) In
Latin America, it means a landless member of
the working class who is forced to serve
virtually in bondage or servitude to his
creditors. (3) In certain Southwestern States in
our own country-States which were formerly a
part of Mexico--it refers to a person bound to
service for owing a debt or a prison convict
leased to a labor contractor.
The second of these definitions is probably the
most common of the three. Strictly speaking,
there are no peons in the United States in that
particular sense of the word. In other words,
there are no members of the working class in
this country, whether in agriculture or any
other industry, who are held in a state of
compulsory servitude to a master.
On the other hand, it would not be an
exaggeration to say that, even at this late date,
the farm labor system in some parts of the
United States closely resembles peonage, at
least in certain major respects.
Within recent weeks, for example, it came to
light that social workers and other public
service representatives were systematically
being denied access to a number of farm labor
camps in the otherwise enlightened State of
New Jersey. The migrant farm workers living in
these camps are not peons in the dictionary
sense of the word. That is to say, they are not
being held in bondage to their employers and
are legally (though not economically) free to
quit their jobs and pull up stakes on a
moment’s notice.
On the other hand, they are virtual peons in
the sense that their employers claim the right to
decide unilaterally who may or may not have
access to the miserable labor camps in which
the migrants are housed. Fortunately the State
of New Jersey has recently taken steps aimed at
correcting this intolerable situation.
In the Yakima Valley in the State of
Washington, clear across the country from New
Jersey, the plight of migratory farm workers is
even metre intolerable in some of the labor
camps owned and operated by the Del Monte
Corporation, one of the largest agricultural
combines in the United States. Del Monte
officials in Toppenish, Yakima County, have
barred two local priests and two seminarians
from giving religious instruction to
Mexican-American children in six of the
Corporation’s 19 migrant camps.
When Bishop Cornelius Powers of Yakima
wrote to Del Monte to ask why religious
instruction was being denied these
disadvantaged children, a top official of the
Corporation laid it right on the line. He said, in
effect, that the company was afraid that the
priests and seminarians in question might be
working on behalf of the United Farm Workers
Organizing Committee. He informed the Bishop
that Del Monte’s local camp manager got the
impression that the two priests and two
seminarians who sought entry to the camps for
the purpose of giving religious instruction “also
wished to enter our employee housing in the
interests of the labor union.”
This same local farm manager stated the
company’s policy even more bluntly in a
conversation with Fr. Francis Duffy, one of the
priests who had been denied access to the
camps. When asked by Fr. Duffy if the farm
workers themselves had no say in the matter,
the farm manager replied: “No say at all.”
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that
priests are not the only non-political or public
service representatives who have been
repeatedly denied access to Del Monte labor
camp residents. Nutrition aides from the State
Department of Agriculture Extension Service
have also been denied entry, according to Mary
Patrick, Director of the Extension Service in
Yakima.
“We tried to explain,” Miss Patrick informed
the Seattle PI, “that we are just offering a
public service, but they are. . .afraid we were
connected with the union. We are not tied in
with the union. Even one of our agents who
used to work for Del Monte couldn’t get us in.”
Community health aides were also barred
from Del Monte’s camps until very recently. At
the present time the doctors and health aides
from the federally funded Migrant Family
Health Center in Toppenish may go into the
camps, but only if they make special
arrangements with Del Monte officials in
advance. A spokesman for the Migrant Family
Health Center has met several times with many
of the larger growers of the Yakima Valley to
seek access to the camps for his bilingual
medical workers. He reports that rumors of
national boycotts and strikes against Del Monte
triggered no trespassing signs and official
hostility on the part of Del Monte officials.
This may or may not be peonage in the strict
sense of the word, but, call it what you will, it’s
dirty business. Or, in the words of the health
official quoted in the previous paragraph: “It’s
a hell of a thing.”
The irony of the whole thing is that while
Del Monte officials rationalize their policy on
the specious grounds that their workers don’t
want Cesar Chavez’ union to represent them
(Continued on Page 6)
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