Newspaper Page Text
Polish Government Aims
At Spiritual Starvation
PAGE 7 — The Southern Cross, November 9,1972
PARISH SOLICITORS. A group of more than 170 men of St. the Laity October 29. They are shown here with Monsignor
Mary’s-on-the-Hill parish, Augusta, convassed the parish, Marvin LeFrois, pastor, after Benediction of the Most Blessed
door-to-door, to raise funds for the Bishop’s Confraternity of Sacrament just before they began their solicitation.
Our Readers Reply
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BY PATRICK RILEY
WARSAW, Poland (NC) - “To
understand the difficulties of the Church
in Poland, you need only consider that
the country’s whole economic and
cultural life is atheistic,” a bishop outside
of Warsaw said.
“Everybody must depend upon the
government’s atheistic institutions,” he
said. The Church has only two
institutions: the parish and the family.”
It can hardly be a coincidence that
both institutions parish and family, have
come under heavy fire from the
Communists at some point or other in
their quarter-century reign in Poland.
The parish in fact was for decades
under intermittent seige, which only now
is showing some slight signs that it may,
just possibly, be lifting. The government’s
principal weapon in this seige has been
the building permit, or rather the denial
of it. Virtually no new churches were
built throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
This communist policy created what
one bishop told me was the Church’s No.
1 problem in Poland: lack of churches.
New cities growing up around the
country’s rapidly growing network of
industrial complexes are without
churches. Whole neighborhoods are
churchless, or must stuff themselves into
tiny chapels Sunday mornings.
The idea is spiritual starvation. The
strategic aim is to cut off Catholics from
priest and parish, so that their faith and
fervor will languish and eventually just
“Trick or
BY M.M. de SALES
At Our Lady of Lourdes parish,
Columbus, last week CCD students
experienced the growth from “mustard
seed” to “mustard tree”. The seed was an
idea thrown out by Sister Kathleen, of
the Social Service Bureau, that an appeal
to be made to the students at Halloween
to “trick” themselves, and “treat” others
by giving half their candy to poor
children.
Teachers told their classes, “some poor
child will go without candy, if you do not
help. And remember what Jesus said,
‘Whatsoever you do to the least —
Sunday, November 5, grades
Kindergarten through eighth had a special
Mass in the school auditorium. At the
Offertory, the children witnessed the
“mustard tree” in the long line
approaching the altar, with the candy
saved, at a cost known only to the Lord,
for Whom they sacrificed it. On the
At the November 2nd meeting of the
Pacelli Home and School Association
President William S. Odom officially
announced that the Pacelli Home and
School Association of Columbus had
purchased a new public address system
for Deimel Field, home of the Pacelli
Vikings football team. The equipment
was installed by Leonard Wieczorik,
Charles Watson, and Emmett Tice.
Mrs. Mary O’Brian announced that a
spaghetti supper will be hosted by the
Home and School Association Friday,
November 10th prior to the Pacelli
Homecoming. The Brookstone Cougars
will challenge the Vikings in the final
game of the season for Pacelli.
Candidates for Homecoming Queen are
Nancy Attaway, Donna Berard, and
Maureen Brown. In the court of the
Homecoming Queen will be: Magali
Salvan, Junior Class; Cecelia Ramos,
Sophomore Class; and Bernadette
Bowick, representing the Freshman Qass.
Mary Ellen (Cobis) Taylor, last year’s
Homecoming Queen, will be present to
crown the new 1972-73 Homecoming
Queen.
Principal, Father Robert Mattingly,
announced that Pastors from the local
parishes would give out report cards
Wednesday November 8th. Father
Mattingly also mentioned that Pacelli
Students attended the movie, “The
Greatest Story Ever Told”, on All Saints
Day.
Program Chairman Emmett Tice
introduced Coach Bruse Swisshelm, who
disappear, without fuss.
The strategy seems to be working, but
how well is not yet clear. Church
attendance is down somewhat in Poland,
but it is still high in comparison with
many other countries.
Motives behind the Polish regime’s
assault on the family are harder to
disentangle.
From the mid-1950s to the late 1960s
the country’s mass media - wholly
controlled by the regime - churned out
propaganda against the traditional big
family among Polish Catholics. Nobody
really knows why.
Anti-child propaganda may simply
have seeped in from the West, and Poles
have always been more susceptible to
Western ideas than any other Slavic
people except perhaps the Slovenes. On
the other hand, the small-family model
touted by the regime and accepted by the
majority of Poles - willingly or not - did
have the effect of alienating some
Catholics from the Church.
Given the regime’s proven willingness
to undertake an anti-parish strategy that
would require decades to pay off, it is not
entirely unlikely that the regime saw the
small family as the edge of the wedge
between Church and people.
Whatever the regime’s reasons, it made
big families not only socially
unacceptable in Poland but physically
impossible. A chronic and acute lack of
housing forbade most young couples to
even dream of having what in the West
Treat”-
whole the students rose over their
sacrifice with smiling faces.
But that it was, in fact, a costly effort
was evidenced in the not-to-be — hidden
remarks of a second and a fifth grader.
Said the second grader, clutching his bag
of candy, plus his 50% donation of a
dollar, “Half is a lot to give!”
The fifth grader re-echoed the cry of
all of us, from St. Paul to the least among
us. On his way to Mass, he held up a bag,
bulging with candy. “Look!”, he said, “I
saved it all”! On his way out, equally
factual, he confided to a Sister, “It nearly
killed me to give it all. Look! I kept these
for myself” — two candies.
The Lord must say of him, as of the
widow of old, -- “He gave more than they
all”.
Sister Kathleen now carries her
seed-become-tree to the Social Service
Bureau. And close on 200 children have
felt the thrill of Christian love in practice.
in turn presented the members of the
Varsity Viking football team which
currently sports a 7-1-1 record.
Mr. Tice announced that Fr. Keohane’s
Art Class would present the program for
December.
would be a medium-sized family. On the
plea that all available materials must go
into the construction of factories for
Poland’s postwar industrialization, the
government kept the people cooped up in
minuscule apartments.
It was to this same social necessity that
the government appealed in refusing to
allow the construction of churches in
Poland’s new towns and expanding cities.
The almost desperate housing situation
drove many couples to desperate lengths
and to traumas of conscience. Abortion, it
is said, became a common way out, but
no one really knows how common.
The Polish bishops responded by
creating a widespread marriage guidance
network. Guidance centers are housed in
church buildings, including rectories
(Church-sponsored activity anywhere else
is outlawed). The centers are thickly
dispersed throughout every major city
and town (in one diocese, every third
parish houses a marriage guidance center),
and are open day and evening. Not only
priests staff these centers, but
psychologists and physicians as well.
As a result, the temperature method of
birth regulation is used more widely in
Poland than in any other European
country, according to one diocesan
official.
While the Church was organizing its
marriage guidance centers, government
policy was changing. In the late 1960s the
national leaders grew alarmed at the drop
in Poland’s birthrate, Whereas 7.2 babies
was born in 1960 for every thousand
Poles, by 1967 the figure had dropped to
one baby per thousand. In 1969 the
birthrate was at a low of 0.6 per
thousand. Polish economists began
warning of empty factories and idle
production lines, the very bogies of the
Communist dream.
Probably the most effective step taken
by the government to reverse Poland’s
population implosion was to build more
houses. According to present plans,
Poland’s housing space will double within
the next two decades or less. In the past
year alone, the government built eight
“house factories,” which turn out
components for prefabricated houses and
apartment buildings.
At present, an average of 1.3 persons
occupies one room in Poland. By 1990,
the average is expected to decline to less
than one person per room, even with an
expanding population.
Further, the Polish government has
tried to enable working wives to have
babies without fear of losing their work.
Factories are obliged to rehire every
woman who has a baby provided she
reports back for work within a year of
the birth.
Legislation drafted by the government
but not yet debated in the legislature
would stretch the compulsory rehiring
period to three years.
The low level of wages throughout
Poland sends many mothers and wives
into the factories to keep the cupboard
full. The average monthly wage is $130
for factory workers, while teachers earn
very little more. Yet to feed and clothe
one child cost about $21 per month. A
couple with three or four children is hard
pressed unless the mother works.
Some couples who avoid children at
first because they cannot afford them,
avoid them later because they have
become accustomed to a higher material
level of life. Materialism becomes a
threat.
The problem in its many ramifications
weighs upon Church and state alike.
Perhaps they will make common cause in
their current conversations.
Editor:
My attention has been drawn to the
Andrew Greeley column of November 1,
which makes reference to me on several
matters.
I am surprised that an associate
director of a research organization should
show an appalling lack of training - in
accepting statements without first
checking out sources.
(1) I did not say that “Father Greeley
had written himself out of the Church”. I
did say “Father Greeley has written
himself out”. I then added an explanation
of what I meant, giving his attack on the
bishops as an example of a “tired writer,
merely filling up space because of an
inability to find more worthwhile
subjects.”
(2) When I took over the San Francisco
Monitor, I dropped three columnists. One
was a humorist (Ray Orrock) who would
repudiate any label. The other was an
admitted liberal (Joe Noonan). The third
was Andrew Greeley. It would come as a
complete surprise to his readers that he
seemingly claims to be a liberal.
I did not say that I would give the
“liberal” opinion in the Monitor. I simply
stated that my views, editorially and in
my personal column, would offset the
views of the SOLE conservative columnist
(Val King).
(3) It is consoling to note that Father
Greeley has jumped on the bandwagon of
concern for ethnics. At least it is one
issue with which, at last, he can be really
identified. However, it should be noted
that Father Greeley has no monopoly on
this subject, nor is it something new.
Long before he started participating his
ministry at the altar of statistics, I had
already written about and committed
myself BY INVOLVEMENT with the
problems of ethnics in the inner-city and
suburban areas in a couple of major
metropolitan areas in this country. I am
an ethnic myself, but don’t see the need
for self-flagellation.
Come off it, Andy, old boy! If you are
going to write, at least check sources for
truth and accuracy - this is a principle
taught even in elementary courses of
sociology.
Editor:
We at Xavier Society for the Blind are
calling upon you and your many readers
to help us in our search for the
Deaf-Blind of the United States. We want
to extend to these most underadvantaged
people our various free services in Braille
for their comfort and encouragement.
Especially, we should like to send the
Deaf-Hind our Brailled weekly newsletter
containing current religious topics of an
inspirational and informative nature. This
weekly also affords the Deaf-Hind an
opportunity to write to the Editor for
further information on matters of special
interest.
If they enjoy our publication, we will
be only too happy to include them in our
regular weekly mailing, free of charge,
and will acquaint them with all our other
free Braille services.
May we ask your readers to please send
us the name of any Deaf-Blind person
they know. Or even the name of any
blind person who may be interested in
our other free services.
Betty J. Dodt
Promotion Director
Xavier Society for the Blind
154 E. 23rd Street
New York, N.Y. 10010
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THANKSGIVING
THE HOLY FATHER'S MISSION AID TO THE ORIENTAL CHURCH
You’ll be happier this Thanksgiving if you give
something of yourself to someone who has
nobody.
Giving belongs in Thanksgiving.
Attend Mass that morning in your parish church.
SOMEONE Take fifteen minutes to visit someone in the
WHO hospital.
HAS - . X
NOBODY Have someone who eats alone join your family
for turkey and all the trimmings.
Better yet, feed someone who needs food.
There are millions of people in the world who
have hoi low eyes and swollen stomachs because
they have no food.
We don’t see them because they’re overseas.
We know they're there, however.
Can we ignore them, let them starve?
Your $10 by itself will feed a family of refugees
for a month.
$100 Will feed ter families.
$975 will give a two-acre model farm to a parish
in southern India, so that the priest can raise
his own food and teach his people better crop-
production.
$10,000 will enable Archbishop Mar Gregorios
to give a churchless village a church, school,
rectory and convent. Name the parish for your
favorite saint, in memory of your loved ones.
The Archbishop will write to you.
Giving belongs to Thanksgiving, it’s part of life.
How much will you give back to God?
© AX
Dear enclosed please find $.
Monsignor Nolan:
FOR_
Please name
return coupon
with your street.
offering
city
.STATE.
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THE CATHOLIC NEAR EAST WELFARE ASSOCIATION
NEAR EAST
MISSIONS
TERENCE CARDINAL COOKE, President
MSGR. JOHN G. NOLAN, National Secretary
Write: Catholic Near East Welfare Assoc.
330 Madison Avenue*New York, N.Y. 10017
Telephone: 212/ 986-5840
A Different View
Pacelli High School
HSA November Meet
BY AL EVERSMAY