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SERVING 88 SOUTH - GEORGIA COUNTIES
The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 53 No. 18
Thursday, May 4, 1972
Single Copy Price — 12 Cents
IN VATICAN
Manifesto
Hit Again
VATICAN CITY (NC) - The Vatican
daily made another attack April 26
against a manifesto by 34 theologians
calling all Catholics to work for reform
whatever the bishops or the Pope may
say.
“Ecclesiastical guerrilla warfare!” Msgr.
Philippe Delhaye said in the Vatican
paper, L’Osservatore Romano.
Msgr. Delhaye is secretary of the
Vatican’s International Theological
Commission and an adviser to Belgian
Cardinal Leo Suenens of Malines-Brussels.
The Belgian theologian opened his
article peacefully enough, declaring that
his examination of the manifesto, called
“Against Discouragement in the Church,”
was not polemical.
“Today’s Church has given too big an
example of squabbling to a world that
expects from her a witness of peace and
concord,” he observed.
But as he proceeded with his scrutiny
of the manifesto he waxed indignant, at
one point asking: “Is this theology?”
Msgr. Delhaye noted that seven of the
manifesto’s signers were from Tuebingen
in Germany and five from Nijmegen in
the Netherlands. He also observed that 34
“is a tiny number” out of the world’s
approximately 6,000 theology professors.
Msgr. Delhaye represented the signers
of the manifesto as disappointed men.
They had been disappointed, he asserted,
in expectations of “triumphing” at the
Brussels Theology Congress of 1970, and
were bitter over the refusal of the 1971
Synod of Bishops to go their way.
“The progressist movement did
everything it could to cast discredit on
the synod. The fact is well enough known
to make insistence upon it unnecessary.
The progressist movement lost a good
part of its sympathizers for that reason,
once they understood the illusions into
which they had been dragged.
“To defend themselves personally and
to regroup the scattered troops, the
partisans of a ‘great beyond of the
(Second Vatican) Council’ were
constrained to cast themselves onto a new
road: That of contestation. They fear
above all to see the discontented
abandon the struggle. The
manifesto . . .only says more harshly and
more crisply what was insinuated during
six months.
“It represents a tactic that can be
defined as ecclesiastical guerrilla warfare.
You’ve got to train your sights on the
authorities, with attacks by little groups,
and put forward apparently bland
reforms to prepare for the bigger ones.”
The Vatican daily has not yet
published the mid-March manifesto of the
34 theologians. It has, however, replied to
it in a front-page article by Cardinal
Gabriel Garrone, prefect of the
Congregation for Catholic Education, and
has printed adverse comments by the
German bishops, by Cardinal Franziskus
Koenig of Vienna, and by various
newspapers.
INSIDE STORY
Fleet Blessing
Pg. 2
Columnists
Pg. 4
'Know Your Faith’
Pg. 5
Prayer Life
Pg. 7
DCCW Notes
Pg. 8
“I WAS IN PRISON AND YOU VISITED ME.” In keeping with these words of Jesus
Christ, Father Eamonn O’Riordan, of St. Joseph’s Church, Jessup, and Catholic
Chaplain at the Georgia State Prison at Reidsville conducts regular weekly services and
religious instruction classes for prisoners. At special services held in the prison chapel
on April 25, Bishop Gerard L. Frey celebrated Mass and baptized one inmate, Jesse
James, Jr. Since the day was the Feast of St. Mark, James took Mark as a Baptismal
name. James is shown in the sanctuary (second from left) seated next to his mother
who came from New York to witness the baptism, and Father O’Riordan. He has been
in prison since 1943. The congregation is made up totally of prison inmates.
•tit llii
HEADLINE
HOPSCOTCH
(
Nfi t
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Louis Budenz Dies
NEWPORT, R.I. (NC) — Louis F. Budenz, a former top American Communist who
reconverted to Catholicism and became a feature writer for NC News Service, died
here after a long illness. He was 80. A former editor of the Communist newspaper, The
Daily Worker, he rejected communism in 1945 and returned to Catholicism, “the faith
of my fathers,” he explained in his book, “This Is My Story.” The onetime national
committeeman for the Communist Party rose to public prominence in 1950 when he
served as a witness for the investigations of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. He singled out
many persons as being Communists, but none of them were ever indicted.
Orthodox Patriarch
VATICAN CITY (NC) — Pope Paul VI sent his condolences to the Russian
Orthodox community of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic learning of the death
April 7 of their religious leader, Patriarch Ephrem II. In a telegram in English sent to
the patriarch’s substitute, Metropolitan David, the Pope expressed his sincere
condolences with the assurance of prayers for the eternal repose of your pastor and for
the strengthening blessings of the Risen Lord on you and all your faithful.
PROUD FAMILY. Doctor Dan Callahan, prominent physician in Warner Robins and a
member of Sacred Heart parish there, is shown with the pleased members of his family
after accepting the United States Air Force Exceptional Service Award recently. The
award is comparable to the military Distinguished Service Medal, and one of the
highest the Air Force can bestow for civilian service. Dr. Callahan was cited for
“distinguished service as a personal advisor to senior commanders at Robins AFB and
in the promotion of aerospace power and progress in America. Members of his family
are (1. to r.) Mrs. Jeanette Callahan, and sons Dan, age 13 and Chris, 11.
PROTESTANT-CATHOLIC STUDY
Joint Statement Urges
Ordination For Women
WASHINGTON (NC) — The ordination of women and a “voice in places of power” for women has been
recommended in a study sponsored by the U.S. Catholic bishops and a Presbyterian-Reformed group of
churches.
The document also charged that the frustration of the aspirations of women in the church and society is
“sinful and immoral.”
The statement on “Women in the Church” was issued by a section of a larger consultation between the U.S.
bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs and the North America Council of the World
Alliance of Reformed Churches, a group comprised of Presbyterians, the United Church of Christ and several
other churches in the Calvinist tradition.
EIGHT MEMBERS OF THE NEWMAN COMMUNITY at Georgia Southern College,
Statesboro, attended a recent spiritual retreat conducted by Father Francis X. Cleary
at Magnolia Springs, near Millen, Georgia. Father Cleary is a bible scholar and
professor of Sacred Scripture.
ATTACK MOUNTS
Religious Broadcasts
Makes Moscow Neverous
The group’s worship and mission
section recommended that:
-“qualified women be given full and
equal participation in policy and decision
making and voice in places of power” at
all levels of the churches.
-seminaries be opened to “qualified
women.”
-“qualified women be admitted to
ordination.”
-church committees make theological
studies of the possibility of ordaining
women.
-The Catholic and Reformed churches
“establish and fund an Ecumenical
Commission on Women” and invite other
churches to join it.
Bishop Ernest Unterkoefler of
Charleston, S.C., Catholic co-chairman of
the consultation, said that the statement
is a study report and has been sent to the
bishops’ Committee on Women in Society
and the Church, headed by Archbishop
Leo Byrne of St. Paul-Minneapolis.
“We intend this document to receive
serious study and reflection from the
decision-making bodies of our churches,”
said Bishop Unterkoefler.
The statement was signed by nine men
and one women, Sister Anne Dunn of
Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles.
The group said the recommendations
were not based on its own theological
investigation but it said that “an ever
growing number of theological
investigations” by various churches “have
repeatedly come to the conclusion that
there are no conclusive biblical, doctrinal,
or theological reasons why women cannot
excercise decision-making positions in the
Church and receive ordination.”
The statement listed three other
“facts” that led it to make the
recommendations: “the injustice imposed
upon women,” the “women’s liberation
movement which is gaining momentum,”
and “ecumenical reasons.”
The group said that churches have
either denied ordination to women or
granted it “with reluctance.” Even some
churches which ordain women place
restrictions on their ministry and “very
few ordained women” become pastors,
they said.
Injustice to women was described in
the statment as “one of the most massive
(injustices) for it affects one half of the
human race.” In the churches this means
women have been given a “secondary and
often demeaning role” and “excluded
from making decisions.”
The signers said that “penetrating
through the excesses that sometimes
accompany the women’s liberation
movement, we discern a sign of God’s
presence.”
By “working together for justice for
women,” the statement said the churches
can advance the cause of Christian unity.
“The world will attach little credibility
to the call of the People of God for
justice for every human being,” the
statement said, “if the People of God
within their own fellowship continue to
regard and treat women as inferior human
beings . . .”
The statement said women should be
allowed to make decisions because
decisions made by churches often affect
them. The churches also need to include
the voice of women “for the sake of the
total life of the Church.”
MOSCOW (NC) — Radio Moscow has
accused foreign radio stations, including
Vatican Radio and The Voice of America,
of “ideological brainwashing” to incite
believers in the Soviet Union against
communism and the socialist system.
In a broadcast for domestic
consumption, Boris Maksimovich
Maryanov, executive secretary of the
magazine Mauka i Religiya (Science and
Religion), a monthly popularization of
atheism, commented on broadcasts of
church services by The Voice of America,
the British Broadcasting Corporation,
Vatican Radio, Munich’s Radio Liberty,
Radio Monte Carlo, the Ecuadorian Voice
of the Andes and other stations.
Maryanov said that “the ideologists of
imperalism” are “always seeking new
means for their psychological warfare,
which they are waging against our
country and against the world of
socialism.”
He went on to say that “one of these
techniques of anti-Communist
propaganda now is to deal with religious
problems.”
The foreign broadcasters have decided
to deal with religion, Maryanov said,
because it “is now the only ideology in
our country which can in any way be
considered to have mass appeal that is
alien to Marxism-Leninism and a
Communist world outlook.”
He said the foreign broadcasters are
trying to achieve an understanding and
identity of views with religious believers
living in the Soviet Union and then “to
instill in their minds the views and
convictions desirable from the point of
view of Western propagandists.”
The foreign broadcasters aim at
religious persons, Maryanov maintained,
because the broadcasters think that a
“person with a divided consciousness in
which the elements of a scientific world
outlook coexist with religious notions
and sentiments . . .is more receptive to an
alien ideology.
“Religious broadcasts tell, for instance,
that belief in God can be the only source
of high morality; that without religion
man is deprived of spiritual existence;
that only with the help of religion is it
possible to eliminate all evil in the world,
to do away with social injustice. Thus, an
attempt is being made to devalue the
teaching of Marxism-Leninism, the
program of Communist-construction, in
the eyes of believers; to discredit
Communist morality, to denigrate the
efforts of fighters for peace, and so on.”
Maryanov went on to say that foreign
broadcasters are trying “to prove that in
the Soviet Union religious freedom does
not exist, that the Church has been driven
underground, that priests and believers
are persecuted and imprisoned, and that
churches are destroyed. The biased and
slanderous portrayal of the status of
religious organizations and the position of
believers in the U.S.S.R. and in other
socialist countries is accompanied by
frenzied exaltation of religious freedoms
in the Western world.”
Maryanov spoke critically of persons in
the Soviet Union - “extremely small in
number” - who “conceal beneath their
religiousness their anti-social views and
their hostility to the Soviet system and to
communism.”