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SERVING 88 SOUTH - GEORGIA COUNTIES
The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 53 No. 28
Thursday, August 17,1972
Single Copy Price — 12 Cents
Mr. and Mrs. Henry G. Browning with Nero
IN WARNER ROBINS
Everybody Here Knows Nero
By Grace T. Crawford
Macon News Staff Writer
WARNER ROBINS - When Nero
appears in public, there are stares, then
smiles.
“That’s Father’s dog,” some child will
shout, stopping to pet the shiny, black
dachshund, who prances about in great
excitement at the slightest show of
attention.
His owners just smile and nod their
heads at the inevitable question - “Is that
Father Brennen’s little Nero?”
Nero is something of a “town
character” in Warner Robins. People
associate the little dog with the tall
Catholic priest who owned him and who
befriended hundreds of people of all
faiths during his 10 years as pastor of
Sacred Heart Church. When the Rev.
Robert Brennan died in 1970, he left his
miniature daschshund to his Baptist
friends, Mr. and Mrs. Henry G. Browning
of 125 Northview Ave.
Henry and Sara Browning have lived in
the white house just across the way from
Sacred Heart rectory since the mid 1940s.
Every priest assigned to church, they have
practically “adopted”.
When Father Brennan came in 1960, it
wasn’t long before he was enjoying
cook-outs with his neighbors, their son,
Ray, and their daughter, Vanona. “He
surely did like my hamburgers,”
Browning remembers, “especially when
we had some Vidalia onions to go along
with them. I don’t believe I ever saw
anyone who enjoyed Vidalia onions any
more than Father Brennan.
“He used to come over at night and
we’d sit around and talk,” he said, “about
everything under the sun - politics,
baseball, and sometimes about when he
was growing up in Savannah.
“Father had a real good sense of
humor,” he added, “and he was witty.
Boy, was he witty.”
“We used to laugh a lot,” Sara
Browning remembers. “He was one of the
kindest men I ever knew. You know, he
once told us we were as good friends as
he ever had.”
Mrs. Browning remembers the day
ck
HEADLINE
HOPSCOTCH
Shriver, McGovern Differ
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (NC) - Sargent Shriver has begun his vice presidential campaign
/ stating that he and Sen. George McGovern may have friendly but irreconcilable
fferences over abortion issues. Shriver, a Catholic, was asked his position on abortion
i the first day of his campaign which he opened in his home state of Maryland. “I’m
3t in favor of what is called abortion on demand,” he said. “Sen. McGovern says that
is not necessary for us to be in total agreement on every issue - and this may be one
: the issues where Sen. McGovern and I do differ.” Sen. McGovern, early in his
residential campaign, indicated that he was for liberalization of abortion laws. Later,
hen his position stirred up some controversy, McGovern said that abortion is not an
sue that the federal government or a presidential candidate should be concerned
ith.
Dutch Delay Council
AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands (NC) - The first meeting of the new Dutch
National Pastoral Council, scheduled for Oct. 6-8, will be postponed because of
Vatican objections, according to an announcement by the secretariat of the Dutch
Bishops’ Conference. The secretariat said that the Roman Curia, the Church’s central
administrative offices, is preparing a document on pastoral councils that will be sent to
the world’s bishops shortly. The new Dutch pastoral council organization -- a successor
to the council that held six sessions between January 1968 and April 1970 -- was to
begin operations in September. The Dutch bishops’ secretariat said that the Roman
Curia “thinks that the authority of the bishops and their position within the Church is
not sufficiently guaranteed by the regulations of the Dutch National Pastoral
Council.”
Nero entered the picture in October,
1967. It was shortly after the family had
purchased Peppi, a miniature French
poodle.
Father Brennan returned from a trip
with a gift from a friend.
“He came over with Nero in his arms”,
she said. “He wasn’t as big as a minute.
‘Look,” he said, ‘I’ve got myself a little
pal.’ ”
During the next three years, the dog
and the priest were practically
inseparable. “You seldom saw one
without the other,” Mrs. Browning said.
“Nero would sit in the back window of
Father Brennan’s car and ride around
everywhere with him. In the afternoons,
the two of them would go for a walk
around the block.” Nero was a great
favorite with the school children. So was
the priest.
Henry Browning remembers the
afternoons when Father Brennan would
step across the street for a chat with the
children returning from nearby schools.
“We have a corner lot, so naturally the
kids cut across our yard,” Browning said.
“Father and Nero were always there. The
children haven’t forgotten,” he said.
“They still stop and pet Nero through the
fence.”
The Sacred Heart pastor had his pet
well disciplined. “He just used a
newspaper,” Mrs. Browning remembers.
“His theory was, ‘bop him on the nose.’
When he’d leave Nero with us, he’d say,
‘if he gives you any trouble, just bop him
on the nose.’ ”
During one of his evenings with the
Browning family several months before
his final illness, Father Brennan casually
remarked that he’d willed his dog to his
friends.
Then, a few weeks before he died, he
came over one afternoon with the little
daschhund on a leash. “I’ve brought Nero
home,” he told them. “I can’t tell you
how we felt,” Browning said. “What do
you say to a man when he gives you his
most prized possession?”
Today, Father Brennan’s little Nero is
happily adjusted to his new owners and
to his “brother”, Peppi, whom Father
Brennan labeled as “that Baptist poodle.”
“They guard our back yard like the gold
in Ft. Knox,” Browning said. “And you’d
be surprised at how they work together.”
He was speaking of the strategy against
Peppi’s worst enemy -- the man from the
poodle parlor. When the intruder comes
around to collect Peppi for his grooming,
the dogs go into action.
Nero charges him and Peppi runs out
the gate.
PROMPTED BY SAVANNAH FUROR
K Of C Chief Calls For
New Admissions Policy
TORONTO, Ont. (NC) -- The chief executive of the Knights of Columbus called for a change in the
admissions procedures of the 1.2 million-member society of Catholic men to prevent discrimination against
blacks by some members.
Supreme Knight John W. McDevitt made his proposal at the 90th annual meeting of the Knight’s Supreme
Council, held at the Royal York Hotel here Aug. 15-17.
(Under present rules a negative vote by one-third of the members present is sufficient to deny membership to
a candidate. The failure of a Negro candidate to gain membership on a close vote touched off a furor in
Savannah last spring. Bishop Gerard Frey and the council’s chaplain both resigned charging that the candidate
had been rejected “solely because his skin is black.”)
“The measure of Christian charity
today is the acceptance of all men in true
human brotherhood without
discrimination because of race, color,
religion or condition of life,” declared
McDevitt. He recalled “isolated
developments” in a few councils in which
members of minority groups have been
refused admission into the fraternal
society “by the negative ballots of a
minority whose motives and criteria
necessarily become suspect.”
“We say their motives and criteria are
suspect,” added McDevitt, “because no
challenge was raised to the practical
Catholicity of the candidate under
consideration. Under these circumstances
it appears that those who cast negative
ballots violated Christian charity so
flagrantly that they hardly can be called
practical Catholics themselves, the very
yardstick by which they allegedly judged
the candidate.”
McDevitt noted that the only
requirements for membership in the K of
C are that an individual be male, 18 years
of age, and a practical Catholic in union
with the Holy See.
There are no other prerequisites, he
emphasized. The rules of the society say
“nothing about the candidate’s
profession, his education, his ethnic
background, his cultural level, his
financial status or the color of his skin.”
He insisted that “the sole test for
entrance into our great order is the
practical Catholicity of the applicant.”
“Acting entirely within the guidelines
of the lodge system,” he declared, “this
body can and must adopt provisions
which will prevent the un-Christian
attitude of a minority in a council from
frustrating the will of the majority in the
matter of admitting a new member.”
To achieve this goal the board of
directors has instructed the committee on
laws and resolutions to bring an
amendment before the Supreme Council,
so that “if the number of negative ballots
does not exceed one-half of the members
present, the applicant shall be declared
elected; otherwise rejected.”
McDevitt said this action must be
taken “in the name of Christian charity,
in defense of human dignity, in support
of Christian conscience.”
THE FUTURE ROLE OF MARY in the church is discussed on page 5 by writers
Donald Thorman and Christopher Derrick. Will it come, as Thorman believes, “from
the new energy flowing from the women’s liberation movement,” or will it continue to
be, according to Derrick, one of “obedience and submission . . .of deep suffering
humbly accepted?” (NC Photos)
GOP Hears School Prayer Plea
MIAMI BEACH (NC) - Speaking “in
the name of literally millions of
Americans,” Father Robert G. Howes
asked the Republican Resolutions
Committee here to heed “the
overwhelming will of the American
people” in allowing each state to decide
the school prayer question through its
own “constitutional processes.”
Father Howes, national coordinator
for the Citizens for Public Prayer, an
organization based in Washington,
explained that “the American people
believe that the civil right of free prayer
in our public schools was guaranteed in
the First Amendment.” This right, he
said, has been denied by the Supreme
Court’s 1962 and 1963 decisions.
The priest cited a long series of public
opinion polls and referendums in which
school prayer was favored by large
majorities.
These ranged from a 1962 Gallup poll
in which 80 percent of those interviewed
approved of “religious observances in
public schools” to the 1972 Florida
primary in which 79 percent favored a
constitutional amendment allowing
school prayer.
“As long as the prayer-ban decisions
stand,” he continued, “no practice of
public reverence among us is safe.”
“The only proper remedy,” Father
Howes said, “is a clarification of the First
Amendment through another amendment
which will restore its original meaning.”
Admitting the difficulty in wording
and implementing this type of “civil
rights legislation,” Father Howes
suggested that the text of the
Congressman Chalmers P. Wylie’s
amendment proposal of 1971 be used as a
guide. The Ohio Republican’s amendment
was worded: “Nothing contained in this
constitution shall abridge the right of
persons lawfully assembled in any public
building which is supported in whole or
in part through the expenditure of public
funds to participate in
non-denominational prayer.”
“Teaching about religion . . .is not the
answer,” the priest told the Republican
committeee. “What is required is a
reaffirmation of the civil right of public
prayer itself.”
The right of free public prayer “is not
a matter of forcing anyone to do
anything,” he said. “It is a matter of
permitting, in that place where most of
our children lean the arts and sciences of
life, . . .public expression of confidence in
the Deity,” Father Howes explained.
Father Howes reminded the
Republicans that they have, in the past,
been active in efforts to reinstate a free
public prayer amendment.
Father Howes, a priest of the
Worcester, Mass., diocese, is a member of
the staff at the Center for Applied
Research in the Apostolate (CARA) in
Washington.
INSIDE STORY
Features
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Dialogue In Print
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History Of Church
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Readers Reply
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