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PAGE 4 — The Southern Cross, November 16,1972
The Southern Cross
Business Office 22S Abercorn St. Savannah, Ga. 31401
Most Rev. Gerard L. Frey, D.D. President
Rev. Francis J. Donohue, Editor • John E. Markwalter, Managing Editor
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Human Development
Next Sunday, November 19, can
provide the year’s ‘Finest Hour’ for
Catholics throughout the U.S. and for
the thirty-five million Americans who,
even by the most restrictive definition,
are poor,
November 19 is the day when a
special collection will be taken up in
Catholic churches throughout the nation
to raise funds to help these poor people
help themselves to a more abundant life.
It is the culmination of this year’s effort
to educate Americans about the poor
and their problems and aspirations.
During the past two years, American
Catholics have contributed nearly 16
million dollars to this program, the
CAMPAIGN FOR HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT.
poor people who are capable of working
actually do work and only 40 percent of
the 35 million receive any kind of public
assistance.
60 percent of the poor are children
under 18 years of age or elderly persons
over 65.
Contrary to the popular stereotype,
more than two-thirds of the poor are
white, not black. Blacks, however, bear a
disproportionate burden of poverty since
one-third of all black Americans are
poor.
One quarter of all Spanish-speaking
Americans are poor. So are twenty-five
percent of the residents of the
Appalachian region stretching from
North Georgia through Tennessee,
Kentucky and into southern Ohio.
This tremendous sum represents not
only the generosity of hundreds of
thousands of people, but reflects a
growing awareness of the true facts
about poor people and an increasing
rejection of myths traditionally
associated with the poor.
For all too many years, too many
people have entertained only one image
of poor people -- lazy, shiftless,
irresponsible. Thanks to the CAMPAIGN
FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT and its
widespread educational program carried
on through radio and television, that
image is being changed by the
presentation of solid facts and figures
which paint an entirely different picture.
Facts, figures and percentages make
for tedious reading, but we present some
here as part of our contribution to the
educational efforts of CHD.
95 percent of America’s 35 million
Of the first Americans, the Indians, a
full ninety percent of those living on
Reservations are poor.
The CAMPAIGN FOR HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT is aimed at helping
these 35 million poor Americans to
“break the hellish circle of poverty” by
funding educational, vocational training,
and employment programs which will
enable them to become self-supporting
human beings living in the dignity that
befits children of God.
Be generous in the collection next
Sunday. More importantly raise your
voice and your vote to support
legislation which will help to make
poverty in America a thing of the past,
and the “pursuit of happiness” an
attainable goal, and not a hopeless
vision, for all Americans.
Do both in the name of, and for the
love of God.
You Home Already?
Mary Carson
Several times a year my husband and I make
short business trips, and the kids love it. They
feel they are on vacation when we’re gone. My
ninteen-year-old niece is our “babysitter” and
“she’s fun.”
She’s either a saint. . .or slightly unbalanced,
because she actually volunteers for the job. All
the enthusiasm, both hers and the kids, makes
me wonder just what goes on while we’re away.
Whenever we travel, we faithfully call home
every evening. . .to check if the house is still
standing.
On one trip we arrived at our destination on
a Friday. The twelve-year-old got on the phone.
“When are you coming home, Daddy?”
“Tuesday.”
“Operator, that’s my own home. There’s
supposed to be NINE people in that house!
Would you try placing the call again?”
Twenty more rings . . .still no answer!
Anything I could imagine wasn’t good. I
called my parents.
My father told me he had stopped to see the
kids less than an hour before, but he’d walk
over again.
He called us back. “Everything’s normal. The
TV is going, the record player is louder than the
TV .. .and the radio is blasting over that. They
all insist that the phone never rang.”
On another night, my husband placed the
call and one of our older daughters answered.
“Hi, it’s Daddy. How’s everything going?”
“Good! Are you sure you won’t be home till
Tuesday?”
“I’m sure . . .but why’s it so important?”
“If I tell you, Daddy, you’ll kill me.”
“How can I kill you when you’re there, and
I’m here.”
“Okay .. .I’ll tell you . . .but don’t tell
Mommy . . .‘cause she’ll kill me. I brought the
guinea pig home from school for the
week-end.”
(She knows the school guinea pig is NOT my
favorite week-end guest.. .especially when it
gets out of its box, and disappears for several
hours, but we didn’t learn that part of the story
till weeks later.)
The second night we had a dinner meeting,
and didn’t call home till ten o’clock.
The phone rang, and rang .. .twenty times.
The operator cut in, “There’s no answer ...”
“Fine.”
“Does anyone there want to talk to me?”
There was a long pause, while she covered
the phone, and called to the other kids. Then
she came back on the line, “Nope. No one
wants to talk to you, Daddy,” and she hung up!
He stood there with the dead phone in his
hand, completely put down, wondering what
was going on that they wanted to get rid of him
so quickly.
In spite of the peace and quiet for a few
days, I do miss them when we’re away. It’s
always good to get home.
The last trip had to be extended to a full
week . . .the longest we ever left them.
As we walked in the door, one of the boys
looked up from the sports pages, “Oh . . .hi.
You home already? I thought you were going
to stay a LONG time this trip?”
It’s great to feel needed.
TH4NK
From Thy Bounty
Marie Mulvenna
In just a few days, a tradition with great
depth and warmth will once again be observed
throughout our land as families happily gather
to enjoy the bounties of Thanksgiving and to
offer their gratitude to God who has provided
them countless blessings.
We do indeed have a multitude of blessings
and gifts in our great land and our Thanksgiving
should be one of profound and meaningful
acknowledgement of the worth of these myriad
gifts. The list is long for each and every one of
us.
We are free men - enjoying the full meaning
of freedom in our nation in many ways and at
many times. Many of us are rich men - rich in
the off-sought gifts of health, home, happiness,
prosperity, friendship and love. Many of us are
informed men-enjoying the benefits of
unexcelled education, uninhibited
communications providing for the expression of
all opinions and ideologies and the constant
exchange of ideas. Many of us are fortunate
men-enjoying the fruits of technologic progress
that perhaps defies description.
There are other men in our nation, and in
our world, who have never known, and perhaps
never will, the countless bounties we may
unknowingly take for granted. It takes merely a
glance at a newspaper, a turn of a radio or TV
dial, a conversation with another, to bring us
the stark reality that not all men have been as
richly blessed as we.
We see the starving of our land and of the
world, those dying in hovels of poverty, those
lacking the most basic needs of mankind, those
facing the bleakness of ignorance, insecurity
and want. We see bloodshed - in Vietnam, in
other lands, in parts of our own - a seething
unrest invading peace and tranquility
everywhere. We see men denied every tenet of
freedom, every hope of progress and
opportunity.
We do owe a deep thanks and praise for our
many benefits, a harvest of exceptional good
fortune. And, as we offer our thanks to God
this Thanksgiving Day, perhaps we could
remember with a humble petition, those many
who are not as fortunate as we.
Happy Thanksgiving.
The Right of Election
In the Church
Rev. Andrew M. Greeley
The current issue (No. 77, ELECTION AND
CONSENSUS IN THE CHURCH) is one of the
best in the eight-year history of CONCILIUM.
The two laymen who edited this issue,
Giuseppe Albrigo and Antoin Weiler, produced
a collection of articles that simply cannot be
missed by anyone who is seriously concerned
about the future of the Church.
It would be quite impossible to summarize in
a brief column the fourteen important articles
in ELECTION AND CONSENSUS IN THE
CHURCH. It is sufficient to say that after one
has read carefully the thorough and precise
scholarship in these fourteen articles, one
cannot escape the conclusion that the present
method of selection of bishops is unhistorial
and untheological and totally illegitimate
usurpation of power by the Roman Curiate.
As Herve-Marie-Legrand points out, the idea
that Rome “freely appoints” bishops as
contained in Canon 329 did not become part of
written ecclesiastical law until 1917. Until then,
the election was the official and unquestioned
method of the selection of Church leadership.
Legrand piles up quotes that should leave us
in no doubt. In 230 Hippolytus said “let him be
ordained as bishop who has been chosen by all
the people.” In the fifth century St. Celestine
said, “Let a bishop not be imposed upon the
people whom they do not want.” And St. Leo
added, “Let a person not be ordained (the
bishop) against the wish of the Christians and
whom they have not explicitly asked for.”
The articles make clear that the
concentration of power in Rome was in part a
reclaiming of authority to select bishops for the
Church from temple monarchs to whom the
Church had conceded this perogative for
financial reasons in the fourteenth century.
Civil leaders had taken the power away from
the people and priests of the diocese and now
Rome would take the power away from civil
authorities - though by no means give it back
to those to whom it properly belongs.
Furthermore, as Anthony Black makes clear
in his article, “The Influence of the Conception
of Absolute Monarchy upon the Understanding
and Practice of Papal Authority,” centralization
of power in Rome is in part the result of the
papacy’s modeling its style of governance on
the style of the absolutist Renaissance
monarchs who filled the sixteenth century
world in which the contemporary papacy took
its shape and form.
The only trouble with that, of course, is that
it isn’t the sixteenth century any longer, and
has not been for a considerable number of
years.
Let us be clear about it. If men like
Hippolytus or Leo or Celestine could come
back on the scene today they would roundly
denounce the present method of selecting
bishops as being false to the Catholic tradition,
untheological, and quite possibly, even close to
heretical.
It would appear that those who are
demanding popular participation in the election
of bishops (and not really some vague, shadowy
“consultation”) are not merely asking for a
reform that would notably improve the
functioning of a Church. What they are asking
for, in fact, is the restoration of something the
people of the diocese have by right and which
has been illegitimately usurped from them. We
may well be dealing not so much with a case of
desirable reform as with a case of violation of
justice.
U.S. Church
Not Dead
Joseph A. Breig
I am not competent to judge Father Andrew
M. Greeley’s capability as a sociologist. But as a
journalist, I know sensationalism when I see it;
and too often, Father Greeley resorts to
sensationalism.
Both in his writings for Catholic
publications, and in commentaries
accompanying his sociological surveys, he
sometimes uses extreme exaggerations.
A recent example is a survey report written
by Father Greeley and William McCready, a
colleague of his in the National Opinion
Research Center in Chicago. It was published in
America magazine, the editors of which felt it
their duty to caution readers to take the thing
with considerable salt.
Four hundred U.S. Catholics were polled out
of 45 to 50 million. America’s editors warned
that some of the questions in the survey were
themselves open to question.
Further, the 400 were not asked how they
arrived at their answers. Some or many, the
editors felt, replied on the basis of what they
read, see and hear in the mass communications
media, rather than on religious faith.
Even the title of the Greeley-McCready
report was sensational -- “The End of American
Catholicism.” The two sociologists alleged that
“American Catholicism as it was known before
1960 seems to be finished . . . Catholics are
becoming virtually indistinguishable from a
Protestant denomination.”
Which denomination, one might inquire in
passing.
The two noted that some young Catholics
condone abortions for women “whose health is
endangered, whose baby will probably be
defective, or who may have become pregnant
by rape.” That is not a failure in Catholic faith;
it is ignorance. Informed persons know that
delivering a baby is healthier than aborting it;
that hardly a woman in a million becomes
pregnant due to rape (although some lie about
it), and that killing an unborn baby who
“might” be defective is as immoral and criminal
as killing one after it is born.
Informed Catholics also know that this
nation’s Catholic laity (and I emphasize laity)
have taken the lead in combatting the
monstrous, abominable propaganda for
abortion-for-everybody which has fouled the
mass media in recent years.
In another effort to support their sensational
conclusions, Father Greeley and his colleague
pointed to a decline, in recent years, in
attendance at Mass - from 71% attendance to
55% (if their figures are at all correct). But this
is nothing to go into fits about at a time when
Catholics have come to realize that they are not
obligated to crawl to Mass with two broken
legs, or through blizzards or cloudbursts, or
when ill, or when work or other duty requires
their presence elsewhere.
And if some younger Catholics are lax about
Mass, the fault is not in their faith but in the
example of parents, or the bad teaching of
teachers who have failed to communicate to
them the heartlifting truth about what the Mass
is.
I wish Father Greeley would take some
tranquillizers. He need not screech. We’re not
deaf.
The Really
Grand People
Rev. James Wilmes
A man of large affairs was telling some of his
boyhood experiences: how his mother would
read to him before bed-time; how he and his
father planned fishing trips together; how the
small house was always open to his gang, and
no eyebrows raised when they raided the
icebox. Suddenly his eyes grew misty. “Do you
know,” he said, “my folks gave me a lot of
their time, and I know they did not have as
much of it as we have today with our labor
saving devices. They were grand people!”
Did this man place his finger on one of the
important causes of delinquency in today’s
youth? Did he indirectly explain the many
agencies and movements that have come into
being to take up the slack time of boys and
girls? It could be. Certainly times are different
and conditions in the home are not the same;
but the one timeless and unchanging condition
of character-building in children and youth is:
parents not too busy to make a house a home.
As the poet says, it still “takes a heap of living”
to do that. This means living together as a
family, having good times together, and living
up to standards of excellence not measured by
material norms. This is the kind of living that
leaves an indelible memory even in the busiest,
most successful man.
The measurement of good parenthood is to
make a home a place where the child learns, not
by precept alone, but by example, that his folks
are “grand people”!
PRAYER: God bless our home and all who
dwell herein, and every guest who comes
within. Make this house a home we may all
prize, a place of peace and rest, an earthly
paradise. Amen.
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