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SERVING 88 SOUTH - GEORGIA COUNTIES
The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 53 No. 38
Thursday, November 2,1972
Single Copy Price — 12 Cents
Diocese to Observe Mission Sunday Nov. 5
A MISSIONARY’S LOVE is an experience of joy which goes out to those who share in
this love. Love without frontiers is a joy that echoes the life of God within each of us.
May your generous gift to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith on MISSION
SUNDAY be an expression of your love and joy to be shared with all peoples.
With the theme of “Love Without Frontiers,” the Society for the
Propagation of the Faith will hold the annual Mission Sunday appeal on
November 5 throughout the Savannah diocese. The Society is the
Church’s worldwide organization for soliciting spiritual and financial
support for the most needy missionaries.
The Most Reverend Edward T.
O’Meara, National Director, said that the
goal this year for the general fund of the
Society is $20,000,000 to meet “the
growing and overwhelming needs of the
mission lands throughout the world.”
He expressed the hope that the goal
will not only be met but surpassed as a
special birthday gift from the People of
God to the poor of the world as the
society marks the 150th anniversary of its
founding in 1822.
“Over 135,000 missionaries in 833
mission dioceses depend on this major
appeal each year for the necessary means
to continue their work,” Bishop O’Meara
said. “Mission Sunday is truly a day of
celebration — a celebration of our
Christian love for all men, a ‘love without
frontiers.’ ”
Bishop O’Meara emphasized that
missionaries are serving the poor of
America, Africa, Latin America, Asia and
Oceania, and that World Mission Sunday
is a time when Catholics everywhere are
asked “to turn their thoughts, prayers
and goodwill to the urgent needs and
services of our Church’s missionaries.”
“Very few Catholics think of
themselves as missioners as they come to
Mass on Sunday,” Bishop O’Mera
continued: “Many would be inclined to
think of the far-off missions as the work
of others. But Mission Sunday each year
reminds us that there is no diocese, no
parish, no work of the Church which can
be unconcerned with the building up of
that Body of Christ which is the Church.
“In fact, there can be no follower of
Christ who is not also committed to be a
missioner. Mission Sunday is our special
opportunity to share more intimately in
the providential growth of the Church.
Our dedication to the missions is
necessary for their survival and
expansion.”
His Holiness Pope Paul VI has pointed
out that in 1922 there were 361
missionary jurisdictions under the
direction of the Sacred Congregation for
the Propagation of the Faith while today
there are close to 900.
However, Pope Paul sees assistance in
mission lands as “becoming steadily less
in proportion to the enormous needs that
cry out for our help.” This is largely
explained by the great growth of
population and the number of urgent
problems in many mission lands.
“This help which we now once again
beg of your beloved people cannot be
constant and effective if it is not
supported by a growing authentic
missionary consciousness and by the
deepest Christian love, which alone can
give to material gift the true dimensions
of the theological virtue of charity,” His
Holiness stated.
“All Christians are obliged to work for
the missions in accordance with their
means.” Pope Paul said. “Some can do it
by preaching or teaching, others by
writing, others by manual work, some by
contributing money, others by
contributing their time. And all are able
to offer up for the missions their prayers,
their tribulations their joys and sorrows.”
“Love without Frontiers”
Mission Sunday is a day to take a look
at our world and its peoples and to see
them in the perspective of Christ’s love
for all men . . .a love that draws no
boundaries, stops at no limits, makes no
distinctions among people, and neither
counts the cost nor expects a return . . .a
love without frontiers.
It sees the world as beautiful -- 3 1/2
billion people, alive with the pulse of
different cultures, customs, heritages,
religions, and life-styles; it sees people as
beautiful because they are children of
God, because they have a dignity and a
destiny. It is not the “beautiful world” of
travel brochures and exotic movies, but
the beautiful people of God who live and
die die in the backyards of the poor
world, where 2 1/2 billion people are
found. It is the beautiful world of the
Catholic missions of the 1970’s.
Let’s begin with our closest neighbor,
Latin America. In Bogota, Lima,
Santiago, Quito, or Brazilia we may feel
at home among towering skyscrapers and
traffic jams, comfortable hotels and fancy
restaurants. But beyond the paved streets
and neon signs of downtown, we find the
even greater metropolis of filthy slums.
South America’s backyards are
broken-down shacks congested with
families of ten sharing one room. No
toilets or electricity - open sewers - rats
- insects - naked children - pigs running
free -- open prostitution - a drug trade -
a queue at the single pump - and over all
Schools and Minorities
Pg. 2
Mary Carson
Movie Ratings
Jbany C.C.D.
Pg. 4
Pg. 6
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its own noise and smell. These are the
barrios which stretch across the horizon
for miles - “HOME” for most of Latin
America’s 200 MILLION poor.
We learn that 25% of the babies born
in Venezuela never live past four weeks.
Malnutrition kills. We see abandoned
children wandering the streets (Bogota
alone has 5,000 homeless children, while
in Quito and Lima some 300,000 each are
prisoners of the slum.) We meet families
of six in Guatemala earning 36 dollars a
month - a hospital in Brazil with 34 beds
for every 10,000 people - and illiteracy -
in Haiti, 9 out of 10 people are unable to
read or write. (In all of Latin America, 19
million children go to school; 40 million
do not!)
Speaking with an American missionary,
we learn that statistically there is one
priest for every 5,000 Catholics, but in
actuality millions are without priests or
religious. Historically, yes, Latin America
is rooted in Catholicism, yet today
Central and South America remains one
of the Church’s greatest missionary
challenges.
Leaving Latin America with the smell,
noise, and filth of its slums lingering in
our minds, we reach India and come face
to face with actual starvation. Men and
women wrapped in rags huddle together
unconscious of their sunken faces and
skeletal frames. The beggars -- the
homeless -- the diseased - the refugees -
the old - we meet them everywhere
filtering through the streets. . .being
chased away from the open market
places, begging near the entrances of the
Hindu temples and photographed,
gawked at, or ignored by Western
tourists.
Going west through Asia we witness
the aftermath of war and famine: whole
villages destroyed - forsaken refugees
encamped or lost -- convents and mission
orphanages sheltering five times their
capacity-prefabricated medical stations
attending to thousands of patients with
leprosy, rickets, and malaria.
Crossing the war-torn holy lands which
nurtured Judaism and Christianity, we
pass the ancient pyramids of Egypt into
Africa, the home of diverse cultures,
religions, and topography. Believed by
many to be the Church’s most promising
and blossoming mission, Africa too is still
steeped in the direst degrees of poverty -
the backyard of Mediterranean wealth
and coastal affluence.
(Continued on Page 2)
“One Mother’s View”
Author, speaker, housewife, and
mother of eight, Mary Carson has
joined the columnists who appear
each week in THE SOUTHERN
CROSS. Her weekly feature, “ONE
MOTHER’S VIEW” will focus on
both light and serious matters with
warmth and wit.
She tries to bring a smile into the
lives of her readers, especially those
who, like yourself, are mothers
raising a family. Mary says that
today’s mothers need a lift more
than ever before because they face
the grim economics of feeding and
educating their children, while they
are bombarded with news about
pollution and overpopulation.
An occasional laugh, she says, is
necessary to keep some stability in
the Catholic home, bring up
children during these days of
upheaval in the Church following
the Second Vatican Council, the
widespread acceptance of the Pill,
the publication of HUMANAE
VITAE and the rise of the Women’s
Liberation Movement.
IN IRISH CONSTITUTION
PRIESTLY ORDINATIONS are increasing in mission countries where the faith has
been planted and is flourishing. The problem is not a lack of vocations, but a lack of
finances to meet the increasing need of seminary applications. 51,107 mission
seminarians this year look to your help through the Society for the Propagation of the
Faith on MISSION SUNDAY to help continue their education and soon to serve their
own people as priests.
HEADLINE
HOPSCOTCH
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Greater Lay Voice Sought
OMAHA, Neb. (NC) -- The laity will lose its enthusiasm for the Catholic educational
system unless it is given more decision-making power in it, an educator said. This
power should include involvement by Catholic school board members in the “hiring
and firing” of the chief administrator of education in a diocese. Dr. Mary-Angela
Harper of Washington, D.C., told the meeting here of the Chief Administrators of
Catholic Education.
Nat’l Vote Proposed
On Church Reference
DUBLIN (NC) - The Irish government
has introduced legislation in the Dail
(parliament) to permit a national
referendum on a proposal to delete the
reference in the country’s constitution to
the “special position” of the Catholic
Church.
The move came after prolonged
agitation from many sources for a
constitutional amendment to help allay
Protestant fears of Church domination in
the Irish Republic.
All the opposition political parties here
agreed to facilitate the rapid passage of
the legislation.
The Taoiseach (Irish prime minister)
Jack Lynch, hinted that there will be no
objections by the Catholic bishops to the
legislation.
Stating that the government favors
removing the constitutional clause
concerning the Church (Article 44), he
added: “I understand that there would be
little opposition coming from any other
quarter.”
Advocates of the change hope that, if
agreed on it will go some way toward
softening Northern Irish Protestant
allegations that the Irish Republic is a
Church-dominated - and even
Rome-dominated - society.
If it achieves this, it may lessen the
increasing sectarian tension in the North.
However, Protestants, north and south,
also comment frequently on the ban on
contraception and divorce in the south.
They see these matters as “civil rights”
denied to Protestants in the Irish
Republic, and there are no immediate
moves to legalize either here.
Although the government’s action is
seen here as a major step and is given
headline treatment in the press, first
indications are that Protestant reaction is
a little skeptical.
Said one Protestant spokesman in
Northern Ireland: “If they proposed to
change the constitution against the
objections of the Catholic hierarchy, that
would prove something.”
Nevertheless, the move is certain to
lower, at least partially, the psychological
barriers put up by northern Protestants
whenever they look south.
Council Sues Bishop
VIENNA, Va. (NC) -- The parish council of St. Mark’s church here filed a civil suit
here to prevent Richmond Bishop John J. Russell from removing Father Robert J.
Walsh, the parish’s pastor for the past seven years. Bishop Russell and Father Walsh have
clashed over distribution of communion in the hand, and in a mid-October letter
notifying of his transfer, the bishop cited repeated failures to stop the practice of
self-communication in his suburban-Washington parish. Bishop Russell subsequently
issued an official “clarification” in the Catholic Virginian, the diocesan weekly,
reiterating the ban on communion in the hand.
New Editor Named
WASHINGTON (NC) - Father Berard Marthaler, a religious educator from the
Catholic University of America, has been named executive director of The Living
Light, a quarterly journal of religious education. The appointment was announced here
by Father Charles McDonald, director of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s Division of
Religious Education -- CCD.
Bishop Memorialized
CINCINNATI (NC) — Father Clarence J. Rivers, a noted liturgical composer has
written a hymn in memory of the late Archbishop Paul F. Leibold of Cincinnati. The
words are taken from the sermon the archbishop preached at his 1969 installation
ceremony: “I am come to fill my office as a witness of Christ before all men. And the
Christ I know from the gospels is a meek and humble Christ who came to serve, not to
be served. And who taught by word and example of his life a very simple yet most
profound lesson of life.”
Increase in Missioners
ROME (NC) — The number of priests, Brothers and nuns working in African and
Asian missions has grown significantly in the past 20 years but still falls short of the
needs, said Cardinal Paul Leger, in a report to a worldwide mission meeting. Between
1950 and 1970 the number of priests in Africa jumped from 7,500 to 15,000 and the
number of Sisters from 14,078 to 27,555. In Asia priests increased from 6,868 to
15,257 and Sisters from 25,691 to 47,246.