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PAGE 3 - October 12,1972*
ACCORDING IQ SCHOOL OFFICIALS
Court’s Delay of Ruling
On Credits Encouraging
NC NEWS ANALYSIS
MEETING ADOPTED SONS - Mr. and Mrs. Leo Stark of Union, Mo., greet their
adopted Vietnamese sons, Lee, 4, and Dave 13. The Starks had been unable to bring
the boys home until they received help from readers of the St. Louis Review, the
archdiocesan newspaper. (NC Photo)
Vietnamese Boys Come Home
exemption from local property taxes and
the like, and income tax exemptions for
contributions to religious institutions.”
While allowing the tax credit provisions
to stand, the court invited lawyers for
opposing parties in the case -- the State of
New York and PEARL (the Committee
for Public Education and Relgious
Liberty) -- to present new arguments on
tax credits.
Contacted by NC News Service, Msgr.
Joseph T. O’Keefe, education secretary
for the New York Archdiocese, said he
had a “mixed reaction” to the court’s
ruling on the three statutes, incorporated
into one bill by the state legislature last
spring.
“Number one, we’re very encouraged
by the upholding of the tax benefits
portion of the bill, which will be a great
help to parents,” he said.
“It’s the first time we’ve had a
favorable decision for direct aid to
parents from such an important court,
but we’re disappointed by the failure of
the court to see its way clear on sections
of the bill which aided low income
parents. Hopefully, that will be appealed.
The health and welfare grants (for
maintenance of schools) would have
helped inner city schools.”
“All in all, educators will look at this
(the court ruling) as what we’ve been
working for,” Msgr. O’Keefe said. “This is
certainly a breakthrough.”
Conclave
confirmed about a year ago for NC News
that a “study document” on revising rules
for the conclaves at which a new Pope is
elected is in the works.
On Oct. 4 of this year Federico
Alessandrini, head of the Vatican press
office, said that “it has been known for
some time that the present rules
governing the election of a Pope have
been the object of study.” But, he added,
“as far as I know both the contents of the
document and the possibility of it being
VISITS PRISONERS - Sister Mary Irma of the Parish Visitors Detention for Men where she works with prisoners and their
of Mary Immaculate, leaves the Brooklyn (N.Y.) House of families. (NC Photo)
Middle-Aged Nun Most
Popular Person in Jail
NEW YORK (NC) - Catholic school
officials are encouraged that a federal
court here has postponed a decision on
tax credits for nonpublic school students
while indicating it is favorably disposed
to such assistance.
The same officials, however, expressed
disappointment that the three-judge panel
declared unconstitutional two other
measures that would have given direct
tuition assistance to poor parents and
provided funds for the maintenance and
repair of nonpublic schools.
The court, in a ruling Oct. 2,
unanimously struck down portions of a
new three-part state law that would have
allocated up to $25 million in direct; aid
to parents with annual incomes below
$5,000 and granted up to $4 million for
maintenance of private schools.
The third part, providing up to $15
million in tax benefits to parents earning
more than $5,000 and less than $25,000,
was permitted to stand by a 2-1 vote of
the judges. In denying an injunction
against the statute, the court’s majority
asserted:
“There has always been a sharp
distinction in the history of the United
States between direct grants of public
funds to religious institutions, generally
prohibited, and tax exemption for
religious institutions generally permitted.
“This indirect aid to religious
institutions has largely taken two forms,
Change
BY JAMES C. O’NEILL
VATICAN CITY (NC) - There is no
doubt that Pope Paul VI is planning to
change the rules governing the election of
a new Pope.
But there is great confusion as to what
the proposed changes are and when he
will order them to be published.
A number of Vatican officials
UNION, Mo. (NC) -- After a long wait,
Mrs. Louise Stark’s boys are home from
Vietnam.
Although there have been thousands of
homecomings in the long years of the
Vietnam war, the arrival of Dave and Lee
Stark was a rare, if not unique, event.
Dave, 13, and Lee, 4, had never seen
their parents. Mrs. Stark and her husband,
Leo, adopted the Vietnamese boys at
long distance. They had never met until
the boys’ recent arrival.
The Starks’ son, Carl, had befriended
the boys while serving in Vietnam and
arranged for the adoption.
With the help of donations, mostly
from readers of the St. Louis Review, the
local Catholic newspaper, the Starks were
able to bring the boys to their farm here.
“I threw the milkpail in the air when I
saw the boys but Leo caught it without
spilling a drop,” Mrs. Stark told the
Review.
“The dogs were barking and I was
hugging the boys and crying all at the
same time.”
Dave, the 13-year-old, has been around
Army bases for the last six years and the
various modes of transportation are not
anew to him. The airplane they flew
home on was “a big one,” Dave says.
“But it made me sick, we were on it so
long. There was only one stop before
landing in California and that was in
Japan.”
Four-year-old Lee has led a sheltered
life in Sacred Heart Orphanage at DaNang
and everything about his homecoming
was a new adventure. The first night
home Lee played and watched television
long past his normal bedtime.
The Stark boys are making a smooth
transition to their new life. Dave went
fishing at the Bourbeuse River and tells
the sad story of all fishermen - “not even
a bite” and little Lee spends most of his
time astride the bright tricycle that Leo
Sr. repaired and painted for him.
Father Franklin G. Fitzpatrick, school
superintendent for the Diocese of
Brooklyn, said:
“Of course, we’re rather distressed by
it in many ways. What it (the court
ruling) says essentially is that freedom of
religious practice is restricted to those
who can pay for it. The two parts of the
law related to the poor were felt to be
unconstitutional and that part helping
middle income parents was retained.”
The priest acknowledged that the
principle of tax credits now appears to be
the best way to obtain financial assistance
for parents of nonpublic school children.
“It looks that way,” he said. “Of
course, the basic theory of it - the New
York legislation - was that it was
deliberately designed to test various
avenues to get aid. The lawyers on the
staff of State Senator Earl W. Brydges
tried various approaches to see what the
courts might uphold.”
Father Fitzpatrick said “the lawyers on
Brydges’ staff couldn’t believe the federal
court could strike down provisions
explicitly aimed at helping the poor, but
it did.”
A spokesman for Senator Brydges, a
Republican from Niagara Falls, has
disclosed that the state decided to accept
the court’s invitation to present
additional arguments on tax credits and
would ask for summary judgment
dismissing arguments against tax credits.
Rules?
published shortly is strictly a matter of
guessing.”
Referring to recent news reports that a
change in the conclave rules seems
imminent, Alessandrini said: “Anyone is
free to advance conjectures about these
matters, even if they do not know
anything.”
The National Catholic Reporter,
published at Kansas City, Mo., reported
that a “palace revolt” is shaping up
among some top Vatican officials, who
are reportedly opposed to papal plans to
change the election rules. Among the
three cardinals the weekly said have
threatened to resign if the changes are
made is Cardinal Carlo Confalonieri, head
of the Congregation for Bishops.
A close associate of Cardinal
Confalonieri, however, said that report is
“absurd.” He said that “it would be
totally out of character” for the cardinal
to threaten to resign.
Moreover, the associate said, “Cardinal
Confalonieri is 79 now and will be 80 in
July of next year. He will then be no
longer permitted to vote for the next
Pope, so why should he be in such a state
as is claimed?”
The two other cardinals allegedly
involved in the “palace revolt,” according
to the American weekly, are Cardinal
Franjo Seper, prefect of the Doctrinal
Congregation, and Cardinal Giuseppe Siri
of Genoa.
A highly placed Vatican official told
NC News that he seriously doubts that
“any major changes will be included in
the new rules,” such as making all the
heads of national bishops’ conferences
electors of the new Pope. That change has
been reported as one of the new rules.
The fact that the “study document” is
under pontifical secrecy makes it all but
impossible to be certain of what it
contains. However, there seems to be a
general consensus among Vatican officials
consulted that the old rule of keeping the
electors under lock and key inside the
Vatican to protect their freedom of
choice may be on its way out.
It seems very likely that the new synod
hall, which is part of the Vatican
audience hall complex, could be chosen
for the daily conclave meetings and the
casting of votes.
In 1963, the Sistine Chapel, the
traditional site of the conclave, almost
burst its ancient and venerable walls to
contain the 80 electors who met to
choose Cardinal Giovanni Battista
Montini as the successor to Pope John
XXIII. As of the end of this year there
will be 86 cardinals eligible to participate
in a papal election, with the possibility of
more if Pope Paul creates a new group of
cardinals.
Despite speculation in Rome and
reports appearing in various newspapers,
the fact is that until Pope Paul chooses to
make public an alterations he may be
considering, rumors about specifics
remain unconfirmed and, as far as the
Vatican is concerned, unconfirmable.
BY JO-ANN PRICE
BROOKLYN, N.Y. (NC) - One of the
busiest and most popular people behind
the bars of the jam-packed Brooklyn
House of Detention for Men is a
middle-aged nun.
Her name is Sister Mary Irma, and her
solo apostolate of visiting both inmates
and their families is credited by the
warden with “lessening tension” in a
tinderbox atmosphere whereabout 1,500
inmates are housed for weeks and months
on end in a building constructed for 850.
The 53-year-old Sister, who stands
four-feet-eleven, bustles about the
11-story structure with an armload of
little black notebooks and messages,
names, phone numbers - and sometimes
even a Polaroid photo of a prisoner’s
baby she may have taken that morning at
his home on the outside.
“For a little woman, she rates big
around here,” says Bruce Longley, a
correction officer in the prison’s
methadone detoxification unit, where
hard drug addicts are treated.
“She’s the best thing about the
building” was the observation of Mrs.
Tina Ruth, a matron who heads the
“Prospects for Prisons” volunteer library
program which has been set up on each
floor of the facility.
Sister Mary Irma acts as “briefing
officer” for some 30 priests, ministers
and rabbis who visit each cell block
weekly under the Clergy Volunteer
Program of the New York City Board of
Correction.
The impact of Sister Mary Irma’s work
has been such that last summer she was
awarded a Citation of Merit by Mayor
John V. Lindsay as a citizen who had
made an outstanding contribution “to the
improvement of our city.” No other
professional religious name was on the
list.
“This work opened a whole world of
reality to me,” Sister Mary Irma said in
an interview. “I could never go back into
my convent again and complain about
anything, after seeing the burdens these
men carry.
“I am so convinced this is where the
Lord wants me, that if anyone takes me
out of it, I’ll never be convinced that it’s
the Lord.”
Both the smiling, round-faced sister
and her ecumenical colleagues, ranging
from the Black Muslims to the American
Bible Society, have introduced a
humanizing aspect to life for the men
doubled up in the six-by-eight cells.
Three-quarters come from Brooklyn’s
black ghettoes.
They are there for the most part
because they can not raise bail and the
court calendars are so crowded that it
takes as long as a year and a half for their
cases to be heard.
“We all agree,” said Warden James
Monroe, an active churchman who
teaches Sunday school, “that this is
nothing but warehousing. But we haven’t
found a substitute for incarceration for
people who have committed multiple and
heinous crimes.”
' The warden has encouraged the clergy
Volunteers, Sister Mary Irma, and a
handful of other groups to introduce
programs, such as self-help education to
the birdcage, semi-military life of
inmates.
“They bring a certain amount of
humanity, lessen tension and give a little
more dignity to life here,” he continued.
“The solutions are not within the
institution, but on the outside - housing,
education, the court system. Correction
has become the catchall for all the
failures of society,” the warden
commented.
MILWAUKEE (NC) - The decline in
vocations will be halted if Catholics
“stand up for the Church” and “defend
the Pope and bishops,” Cardinal John
Cody told a Serra International meeting
here.
The Chicago archbishop urged
members of Serra International, who
promote vocations to the priesthood, to
refuse “to be party to corrosive
conflicts.”
“I am convinced,” Cardinal Cody told
participants in the state Serra
Convention, “that there are thousands of
young men and women willing to enter
the vocations of the priesthood and
Religious orders. But their call is being
drowned out by the cacophony of
criticism and confrontation.”
“I call on all Serrans, wives and
families to stand up for the Church, to
defend the Pope and bishops and transmit
Sister Mary Irma’s introduction to jail
life came by way of a March, 1971,
bulletin board announcement at
Marymount Manhattan College. The
announcement told of a plan to have
clergy volunteers visit cell blocks two
hours a week. There was one catch: no
clergy women or nuns were to be
included, except for visits to the Women’s
House of Detention.
The nun, former secretary of theParish
Visitors of Mary Immaculate, went to see
Father Laurence Gibney, former chaplain
at the Manhattan House of Detention,
and followed his leads to Brooklyn,
where she met the warden and Father
Vincent Fullam, the chaplain. In a
no-nonsense way, she asked: Could she
visit families of inmates and coordinate
her work with the clergy? The answer was
yes.
Each day she tries to visit two families
- usually by showing up, by subway,
unannounced. Family visits are the work
of her order. The same day, she goes to
the House of Detention to see the men
themselves in the quiet atmosphere of a
first-floor counseling room, with news of
the children, family health, finances. She
may then go back to the families, with
direct news of the inmates. So far she has
seen about 200 families this way.
The fact that she wears a veil and “I
look like a nun” opens doors and wins
respect, she says, because it symbolizes
that “the Church cares.”
this to youth,” he declared. “Then we
will find solutions to the decline in
vocations.”
“We’re living in an era of much
criticism and confrontation in the Church
of Christ,” Cardinal Cody said. “But such
criticism and confrontation are «not
necessarily damaging in themselves.”
Criticism can be good and mature
Christians must deal with it by studying
all sides of the issues, he said, while
confrontation may force action against
unsatisfactory conditions.
“A resurgence of vocations will depend
on us to deal creatively with
confrontations that occur in the Church,”
Cardinal Cody noted.
The best way to deal with criticism and
confrontation, he said is through dialog
and arbitration.
“Conflicts Hurt Vocations”