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PAGE 2 — The Southern Cross, October 12,1972
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St. Francis to Resign
ROME (NC) -- According to the Italian Association of the World Wildlife
Fund, St. Francis of Assisi sent a letter to Pope Paul VI asking to be allowed to
resign as patron saint of Italy because the only aim of Italians is “to destroy
nature and animals.”
In the letter, St. Francis announced his “firm and precise intention” to resign
as patron saint of Italy, an honor he shares with St. Catherine of Siena. The
letter suggested that the Pope name St. Humbert, patron of hunters, St. George,
slayers of dragons, and St. Paul, recently named patron of scuba fishing, as new
patrons for Italy.
According to the letter, St. Francis found that the Italians’ “only aim is to
destroy nature and animals.” Italy, the letter said, has “the highest
concentration of hunters in the world” and that they kill 150 million birds
annually.
The gentle saint of Assisi, who is reputed to have preached to birds and fish,
ended the letter by asking:
“How can a people who have no regulations covering the slaughter of fish at
sea, who indulge in a sport such as scuba fishing using a respirator which is
prohibited in every Mediterranean port and fish with explosives and poisons,
who practice vivisection with intensity .. .How can such a people have my
protection?”
Southeastern
itegional Conference
October 20 - 22, 1972
Aquinas High School
Augusta, Georgia
Day-long workshops and hour-long semi
nars will be conducted on living the full Chris
tian life.
Teaching will be offered by members of
Catholic prayer communities from New Orleans,
Notre Dame, and Orlando, Florida.
Seminars will include teacMng^bn fruits
of the Spirit, healing, community, spiritual gifts,
the Christian family, Scripture and the Sacra
ments.
Accomodations available through Holiday Inns, Howard
Johnson's, Ramada Inns, Hornes Motor Lodges.
Mail to:
Charismatic Renewal Conference
P.O. Box 3987, Augusta, Ga. 30904
Phone: (404) 736-3421
Name
Address
City State
Choose ONE Workshop:
New in the Spirit
Growth in the Spirit
Introduction to the Charismatic Renewal
Registration $10 per person / Food $5.50
HOMEOWNERS — SAVE ON
Hardwood paneling • Floor, ceiling tile • Paint
Ornamental Iron
All building supplies
THE REV. JOHN McLAUGHLIN, S.J., (2nd from left) Deputy Special Assistant to
President Richard Nixon was the featured speaker at the annual Columbus Day
Banquet of Savannah Council No. 631, Knights of Columbus last Saturday (Oct. 7).
He is shown here (1. to r.) with Daniel J. Keane, Master of the Immaculate Conception
Assembly, 4th degree Knights of Columbus; Frank Rossiter, May or-pro-tern of
Savannah; and Joseph Dyer, Grand Knight of Council No. 631. Father McLaughlin is a
speechwriter for Mr. Nixon and is actively campaigning for the President’s re-election.
Jesuit Aide to Nixon Sees
Peace ‘Closer than Ever’
In a statement distributed to newsmen
before a scheduled speech at a Columbus
Day banquet in Savannah, a deputy special
assistant to President Nixon declared that
“we are closer to a settlement of the war
(in Southeast Asia) now than ever
before.”
The presidential assistant, Jesuit
Father John McLaughlin who serves as a
speechwriter for the President, based his
assessment of peace prospects on
information gathered from a visit to
Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand in May
and June of this year.
“This settlement,” he declared, “will
be a moral settlement, one that would
not deliver the South Vietnamese to a
night of the long knives and to a
condition that Catholic, Protestant and
Buddhist clergy of South Vietnam
describe as ‘enslavement by the North.’”
A policy “that would deliver the
South Vietnamese to such a fate would
be objectively immoral,” he said.
In an interview with newsmen, Father
McLaughlin stated that according to the
“best scholarship,” including the opinion
of all the Jesuits now serving in South
Vietnam, “there would be at least one
million civilian casualties if there were a
decisive communist victory there.”
South Vietnam’s 16 bishops and 2
archbishops, together with the vast
majority of the Catholic, Protestant and
Buddhist clergy there support continued
American military participation in the
war, the priest said.
He charged that reports of widespread
ecological destruction in South Vietnam
are greatly exaggerated and declared that
his air travels around the country showed
that only a small part of it reveals the
ravages of war.
With regard to civilian casualties,
Father McLaughlin said, these have been
highly over-estimated.
civilians treated in hospitals are war
casualties. He denied that civilian
casualties are being killed or are not
getting to hospitals. “There are more than
4,000 medical stations throughout South
Vietnam and 66 provincial hospitals,” he
said.
Father McLaughlin quoted the
archbishop of Saigon as telling him, that
if the Communist should be successful in
their drive to take over South Vietnam,
“the bloodbath will be terrible, but the
stripping of our liberties will be worse.”
This is one of the reasons, the Jesuit
priest said, why the abandonment of
South Vietnam would be “morally
unacceptable.”
He termed continued American
participation in the war “a moral and
enlightened” course of action.
Asked about an apparent
contradiction between his own
assessment of the morality of continuing
the war and that of the American bishops
who declared in a resolution last Fall,
that “its speedy ending is a moral
imperative of the highest priority,”
Father McLaughlin said the bishops had
not had “the best information” on which
to base their judgement and that “if they
had visited Vietnam, they never would
have issued their statement.”
The American bishops’ statement was
adopted at their semi-annual meeting last
November after what a spokesman for the
bishops termed “the longest debate on
the Vietnam war in the history of the
National Conference of Catholic
Bishops.” He said the resolution carried
with only a few dissenting voices.
The bishops’ resolution said, in part,
“The available evidence at this point in
history seems clearly to indicate that
whatever good we hoped to achieve
through involvement in this war is now
far out-weighed by the wholesale
destruction of human life and moral
values which it continues to wreck.
“It* is our firm conviction, therefore,
that its speedy ending is a moral
imperative of the highest priority.”
Prayer in the Life
Of 6 Pentecostals 9
Following is the last in a series of three
articles by James Byrne, a leader of the
Catholic Charismatic Renewal, who will give
the opening address at the Southeastern
Regional Conference of the Catholic
Charismatic Renewal to be held at Aquinas
High School in Augusta, October 20-22, 1972.
Some 1500 priests, religious and laity from a 12
state area are expected to attend. Bishop Frey
will open the conference at 8:00 PM on Friday,
October 20.
III PRAYER MEETINGS
By James Byrne
The prayer meeting is the weekly
gathering of a community trying to live
an intense Christian life in the modern
world. It is at the prayer meeting that this
community assembles to share
experience, to give encouragement and to
join in worship.
The prayer meeting has several
features which distinguish it from most
gatherings of Christians:
1) The prayer meeting is different
from the Mass, the principal act of
worship which Jesus left us, though it has
many features (scripture reading, public
prayer, songs, thanksgiving) in common
with it. It is also dufferent from the
divine office, the prayer of the Church
which sanctifies the whole day. The
prayer meeting supplements these great
forms of worship by offering a chance for
informal group prayer and for a broad
exercise of the various gifts and ministries
which were given to build up the body of
Christ.
2) It is not a discussion group, a
scripture discussion, or a sensitivity
session. Although there may be some
things in common with these meetings,
the primary purpose of the prayer
meeting is worship. The difference is that
the prayer meetings operate upon Our
Lord’s promise that “where two or three
are gathered in my name, there an I in the
midst of them” (Mt 18:20). Jesus is the
one who is the center of attention of the
prayer meeting. Everything that is said
and done is said and done in faith in Jesus
as Lord and in deep awareness of his
presence. This does not mean that
everything is cloaked in a veil of piety.
There is considerable freedom in a prayer
meeting, and sharing, singing, gestures,
teaching, praise, spontaneous prayer,
petition, etc., all play a part. People speak
in plain language and there is usually a
common sense of humor which prevents
one from taking oneself too seriously.
But God is taken very seriously as he is
revealed in Jesus and all things are done
for his glory.
3) It is not a one-sided affair with men
doing all the sharing. God shares as well
and meetings are open to God speaking
through the gifts that his Spirit inspires.
The ways that God speaks to men are
given great honor and attention:
scripture, teaching, events in daily life,
and the charismatic gifts. It is these gifts,
especially, which mark our prayer
meetings as unique. The gifts are
recognized as tools God has given for
building the Church and as ways in which
God speaks to men and are welcomed and
encouraged. At a prayer meeting, the gifts
of tongues with interpretation and
prophecy are especially encouraged (cf I
Cor. 14). All the gifts are recognized as
having an important place in the Christian
life, cf. I Thes 5:19; Constitution on the
Church, 13 Laity, 3), subordinate, of
course, to love ( I Cor 13:1 ff), and
subject to testing (I Jn 4:1). God speaks
at the prayer meetings and reveals his will
and himself more fully, and he does this
especially through his prophets. The
prayer communities are beginning to
learn how to use and respond to the gift
of prophecy. The gift God has given to
the Church. Through it, he may call the
community to repentance, to greater
faithfulness, to works of mercy, or
remind them of his great love for them.
Of the entire meeting, it must be said
that here God is not dead, nor silent, but
he is present, speaking with power and
calling men more fully to himself. The
prayer meetings are, in a sense, built upon
this fact, that God speaks to men through
his Spirit. They are characterized by a
great faith and a bold expectancy in his
living word as spoken through scripture
and the teaching of the Church in the
assembled community.
4) The prayer meetings are not
intended to produce a warm,
self-righteous glow inside people, nor to
produce temporary emotional or spiritual
uplifts for people who otherwise have no
personal contact with one another. They
are not closed in on themselves. The
prayer meeting is not an end in itself, but
its point is to build a mature community
of Christians. It is the central feature in
the life of a community of active
Christians.
All are living out their Christianity day
by day; all are engaged in private prayer
lives and active apostolates. They come to
the prayer meetings prepared to give as
well as receive. They bring to the prayer
meetings their zeal for God and his
Church and their concern for their
neighbor. The prayer meeting, however
important, is only one moment in their
common life in Christ.
Format
Although the prayer meeting is
informal, there is a loose format. A
member of the community who has been
previously designated opens the prayer
meeting by welcoming all and calling
everyone to prayer. What actually takes
place at a prayer meeting is adequately
described by St. Paul in I Cor. 14:26-33:
When you come together, each one has
a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue,
or an interpretation. Let all things be
done for edification. If any speak in a
tongue, let there be only two or at most
three, and each in turn; and let one
interpret. But if there is no one to
interpret, let each of them keep silence in
church and speak to himself and to God.
Let two or three prophets speak, and let
the others weigh what is said. If a
revelation is made to another sitting by,
let the first be silent. For you can all
prophesy one by one, so that all may
learn and all be encouraged; and the
spirits of prophets are subject to
prophets. For God is not a God of
confusion but of peabe.
At the prayer meetings, someone may
share an event which has happened during
the week, another a text from scripture,
another a prohecy, another a song, and so
on. The only “rule” is that all things
should be done to edify — for the
common good. This means that one
ought not to speak lightly, but should
pray first and try to speak prayerfully.
Frequently the prayer meetings will
include inspired preaching, or a prepared
teaching. Everyone is free to speak but no
one is expected to. The attitude in which
one should approach a prayer meeting is
in readiness to come and see and hear
about the good things that the Lord is
doing and saying among his people today.
Editor’s Note: This concludes a series
of three articles on “An Introduction to
the Catholic Charismatic Renewal” by
James Byrne. All clergy, religious, and
laity in the Savannah Diocese are invited
to attend the Conference to be held in
Augusta on October 20-22. A special
introductory workshop for those who
seek to learn more about the Charismatic
Renewal is scheduled during the
Conference. Registration information
may be found in the advertisement which
appears in this issue or may be obtained
by writing Southeastern Conference, P.O.
Box 3987, Augusta, Georgia, 30904 or by
calling the Conference office at Aquinas
High (404) 736-3421.
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