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SERVING 88 SOUTH - GEORGIA COUNTIES
The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 53 No. 7 Thursday, February 17, 1972
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Single Copy Price — 12 Cents
Love Sacramental Style
(Lenten Program-1972)
In Baptism
Where does he belong. The vagrant on the stairway seems to have no place to go,
nothing definite to do. Deep inside human beings is a fear of being totally alone, and a
need for companionship, for belonging. In the Sacrament of Baptism, God assures us
that He cares about us and that we belong to Him.
This picture appears on the cover of leaflets to be distributed in all parishes on
February 20th, the first Sunday of Lent, as part of the Diocesan Lenten Program,
entitled “Love - Sacramental Style.” The program involves a study of five of the seven
sacraments. Each week the people of each parish will reflect upon those basic human
needs to which God responds in the sacraments, assuring us of His presence. Each
sacrament is seen as a reaching out by God to form a warm and personal relationship
with us here and now. Baptism - studied during the first week - is seen as God’s
assurance that we belong to Him, and that He accepts us as part of His family.
(Photo by J. Houzel, Vie Catholique. From the Photolanguage collection,
Pflaum/Standard).
ABORTION ALTERNAIHE
‘Birthright’ Forms
Savannah Chapter
Another Chapter of Birthright, Inc. in
the state of Georgia is in the process of
being formed in Savannah. At a meeting
of interested persons on Thursday
evening, February 10th, the organizing
chairman, Mrs. Robert E. Sullivan,
explained that Birthright believes that
human life begins at the moment of
conception and therefore must be
protected. Birthright’s purpose then is to
give young girls and women with
unwanted pregnancies a positive
alternative to abortion. This is done by
offering multiple supports through
appropriate agencies in the form of
counseling, medical care and financial aid
and especially understanding and
friendship before the baby is born.
Afterwards, when the mother requests
adoption for her baby, referrals are made.
If she decides to keep her baby, she is
given help in finding employment and
day care facilities and her progress
followed with interest.
Stating that Birthright is
interdenominational, Mrs. Sullivan said
that the organization is open to all who
are concerned about the preservation of
human life within the womb as well as
outside of it. Usually women volunteers
are mostly housewives and mothers,
nurses, teachers, nuns, office workers and
social workers, but there is also need for
male volunteers to appear before groups
in educating the public as to the services
(Continued on Page 2)
IN INTEGRA TION
Educators Of Diocese
Lauded F or Leadership
Meeting in Savannah last Monday and Tuesday for a series of lectures,
seminars and informal discussions centering on the theme “Fostering
Pluralism in the School Community,” the educators were told by Sister
Margaret Ellen Traxler, executive Director of the National Catholic
Council for Interracial Justice (NCCIJ), “What you are doing in struggling
through to arrive at bringing about a oneness of the human family is going
to teach your students more than any textbook or any other kind of
teacher.
“We racist North people,” Sister
Traxler continued, “are like the man in
the Gospel who answers the Lord, ‘I
come,’ but then we do not come. You are
like the servants in the Gospel who may
be saying, ‘We don’t know, but we’re
coming, Lord.’. . .1 can hardly give you
practical ideas that would be comparable
to the kind of witness to which you are
called and to which you are responding
with such magnanimity.”
The NCCIJ Director cited HEW
(Health, Education and Welfare) statistics
for which, she said, “eleven Southern
states are to be congratulated.”
They show, she declared, “that you are
seriously trying to integrate institutions
of school and church. You are really
striving for this oneness in the human
family.
The HEW figures show, she said, that
in 1968 the eleven Southern states were
68 percent segrated. In December, 1970,
the figure was down to 14 percent.
“That’s a miracle,” she exclaimed,
adding that “we can’t say that about New
York or Chicago or San Francisco.”
“In Georgia, in the last year,” Sister
Traxler told the teachers, “you have
tripled your integration ratio. This is
telling your students something that
perhaps you or their parents could never
really teach them. And if you ask you
kids what, in their hearts of hearts, they
really think about it, that’s where you get
what the Spirit is saying because the kids
don’t think its all that bad, unless, of
course, they might be articulating what
they’re hearing from some adult world
that they’re looking at.”
She warned that “our children will not
forgive us that which we forgave in our
day. The children of this diocese will not
have to forgive you that which we and
our parents forgave in our day.
Leadership here is living out what Good
Pope John said, “It’s not enough to
preach the Good News. It must be acted
out now, and decisively.”
most important development of the 20th
century.
Sister Mary Mangan, chairman of the
History Department at Webster College in
St. Louis outlined the history of slavery
in America. She acknowledged parallels
between the servitude exacted of
indentured Blacks and indentured
non-Blacks, but charged that for the
Blacks alone was a type of slavery
deliberately designed to destroy both
family life and cultural ties with their
past reserved.
“In the decade after 1660,” said Sister
Mangan, “there were significant
differentiations with regard to the Black,
regarding to term of service, relationship
to Christianity and disposal of children.
“As to term of service,” she continued,
“by mid-century, the servitude of blacks
seems generally to have been lenghthier
than that of Whites, and soon it became
evident that the Blacks would serve for
the whole of their lives, in contrast with
those whose labor was limited by some
kind of law.
“To be very specific, in 1663 Maryland
passed a law, ‘All Negroes and other
slaves shall serve durante vita (for life).’
That was the first legal step by which a
black skin would ultimately be equated
with slavery. Then, in Virginia, an act of
1661 assumed in imposing penalties on
runaways, that some Negroes served for
life. Then there was the law in 1670 in
Virginia which stated, ‘all servants not
AUGUSTA ‘LIVE IN’ BEGINS — Bishop Gerard L. Frey (2nd from left) is pictured at
St. Teresa of Avila, Mardi Gras (Feb. 12). This was the first activity attended by the
bishop as he beg^n a two-week ‘live in’ in the Augusta Deanery. Others in picture from
left: Fr. Thomas Payne, pastor of St. Teresa’s. Ron Bonitatibus and Col. Charles Scott.
(Photo By Nelson Harris)
being Christians and brought in by sea’
were declared slaves for life.”
Slavery she said, could still be avoided
so long as the slave could extricate
himself by Baptism. “But as labor rose in
value,” she declared, “somehow the zeal
for proselytizing somehow disipated.”
Subsequent laws, she continued, made it
quite plain that conversion, alone, was
not sufficient to win freedom, and since
Blacks were not protected by the
indenture laws which were extended to
Whites, lifetime slavery became their lot.
(Continued on Page 7)
HEADLINE /#'
HOPSCOTCH \ t
Priests’ Senate
Brownsville
Uses Savannah
Lent Program
Remember the Alamo*; Alamo, Tex., is
far from the historic mission in San
Antonio where the Mexican army
massacred an entire garrision of
Americans in 1836, and this Lenten
season will see it engaged in a more
peaceful encounter - with “Love,
Sacramental Style.”
The Lenten Program “Love,
Sacramental Style” developed for
Savannah Diocese by the Department of
Christian Formation will also be used
during the Lenten season in the Diocese
of Brownsville, Tex. Father Harry
Schuckenbrock, O.M.I., of Alamo, was so
pleased with his copy of the program that
he decided to order it for use in his
Diocese.
More than 270 teachers in Catholic elementary and high schools from
throughout the Savannah diocese received words of high praise for their
achievements in trying to provide quality education on a racially and
economically integrated level.
Keynote address for the two-day
gathering was delivered by Dr. Prince A.
Jackson, President of Savannah State
College and a member of the Education
Committee of the United States Catholic
Conference (USCC).
Dr. Jackson called for curriculum
changes, where necessary, to enable white
as well as black students to learn about
black history, black leadership, and black
heroes. Such integrated learning, Dr.
Jackson said, is necessary for a greater
degree of “black and white togetherness”
in Catholic schools.
“Together as Catholics, as creatures in
the image and likeness of God, we must
try and make a start if for no other
reason than to carry out the
commandment, ‘Love God with all our
hearts and minds and love our neighbor as
ourselves," he delcared.
Dr. Jackson noted that black and evil
are often associated in non-Black minds
and cited the association of black with
death, witch’s rituals, and bad or
“black-hearted” men in literature and
even in the church.
Referring to Black Separitist
movements, the Savannah educator
admitted that some Blacks have become
“racists in reverse.” However, he said, in
spite of the negative aspects of black
racism, the “Black is beautiful”
movement may go down in history as the
The Priests’ Senate of the Savannah Diocese will meet March 2nd at 10 a.m. in
Immaculate Conception parish hall, Dublin. Proposals for inclusion on the agenda
should be signed by three priests and be submitted to a senator before February 25.
Bishops Ask Prisoners’ Rights
NEW YORK (NC) — Seventy-seven U.S. Catholic bishops are among the 450 civic
and religious leaders who have signed a statement calling for the recognition of
prisoners’ human rights. Sponsored by the National Alliance on shaping Safer Cities,
the statement calls attention to “the abysmal conditions that make life intolerable for
both guards and prisoners at institutions throughout the nation.” It commends the
“Bill of Rights for Prisoners” put into effect by Attorney General J. Shane Creamer of
Pennsylvania and calls on attorneys general of the United States and the other 49
states “to follow this example.” Copies of the statement, with a covering letter, were
sent to all the Catholic bishops of the United States by Bishop Raymond Gallagher of
Lafayette, Ind., Chairman of the Social Development Committee, U.S. Catholic
Conference. The 77 bishops’ signatures were obtained within the first two weeks after
the mailing and more signatures are expected in the near future. Others who have
signed the statement include Protestant and Jewish religious leaders, labor leaders, civil
rights advocates and spokesmen for ethnic groups.
Attention Parents!
The SOUTHERN CROSS is cooperating with the Department of Christian
Formation in publishing photographs from the Lenten Program leaflets each
week during Lent. Children taking part in the “Love, Sacramental Style”
program may take their copy of the paper to class for picture-study and
discussion.
The ammunition in this non-military
campaign will consist of 75 Program
handbooks, over 1,500 sets of leaflets,
1,100 Confession books and 275 Stations
of the Cross booklets.