Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 3 — November 30,1972
Disabled Priest Works for Disabled
BY FATHER IVAR McGRATH
TAIPEI, Taiwan (NC) -- Visitors to
the veterans’ hospital here think at first
that the man in the wheel chair is a
patient.
But after introduction they find he is
a psycho-social rehabilitation specialist
working as senior technical consultant,
and that he is a Jesuit priest.
Father Robert J. Ronald of Martinez,
Calif., cannot walk and has little power
in his shoulder muscles. Yet he puts in a
six-day week at the Veterans’ General
Hospital, and on Sundays says two
parish Masses, preaches and distributes
Communion.
Watching the 40-year-old priest
typing and dictating in his office, or
skillfully moving through the wards in
his electric-driven wheel chair, always
busy and cheerful, it is easy to forget
how much determination has been
needed.
“I came to Taiwan as a seminarian in
1957 and entered language school,”
Father Ronald recalled. “In September,
1958, before the second year of
language study started, I went to the
east coast for a break. When I returned
the symptoms developed. At that time
there was an outbreak of polio on the
east coast.”
He spent a month in the Seventh Day
Adventist Hospital in Taipei and then
returned to the United States by
military transport, the only available
transportation in his case. “I was totally
helpless when I went back.”
He was in San Francisco’s St. Mary’s
Hospital for four months.
“The only excitement there was
when just as they were about to prepare
me for the operating table for some
muscle or tendon transplant I had a
cardiac arrest. They had to open the
chest and massage the heart. The doctor
had just walked in the door, hadn’t
washed his hands or anything, and for
that reason I had a staph infection.
Considering everything, I didn’t mind
it.”
In July, 1959, Father Ronald went to
Warm Springs, Ga., and was there for
nine months. He then returned to
California and taught, from his wheel
chair, at the Jesuit high school in
San Jose.
He returned to Taiwan, in 1961, and
spent another year in language study.
“Physically I was the same as now, but I
didn’t have the electric motor.”
He went to the Phillippines for
theological studies in 1962 and was
ordained a priest in 1965. Returning to
Taiwan he was put in charge of a youth
center in Hsinchu City until 1967 when
he went again to the Philippines.
“While in Manila I helped out as
chaplain at an orthopedic hospital
where I had also been for a month after
ordination. The sedond time confirmed
for me the great gap that exists between
what the disabled need and what they
get. Some of the Sisters at the hospital
urged me to work directly with the
disabled.
“I wanted to do it but felt that if you
are going to do something you have to
have some sort of foundation
particularly some kind of professional
training, otherwise you just muddle
along.”
Father Ronald heard about the
program for a master’s degree in
rehabilitation counselling at several U.S.
universities. He returned to America and
applied for the program at the
University of Arizona, receiving a
government traineeship grant.
In 1970 he obtained his mster’s
degree in rehabilitation counselling He
was then engaged as staff counsellor
with the Phoenix Good Samaritan
Hospital spinal injury service for one
year.
In the summer of 1971, during the
vacation, he returned to Taiwan to see if
there were any openings here. “That, of
course, was my number one aim. It was
the only reason I’d gone through the
whole thing. I wanted to get back here
with experience, to come back and do
something rehabilitationwise.”
He visited hospitals and medical
centers here. “I stumbled into the
rehabilitation department here just as
they wanted to expand and needed
someone for psycho-social rehab. I was
asked to come as psycho-social
rehabilitation consultant for the
department of rehabilitation medicine.”
Father Ronald has organized the
service. Most of the work consists in
interviewing patients referred to the
department. About half of the patients
are ex-servicemen. Unlike U.S. veterans’
hospitals the over 1,000 bed hospital is
open to anyone who can pay the fees or
has insurance.
Fioiii fciit pauents point oi view there
is a big advantage in having someone
disabled as consultant. Many of those
who come for physical or occupational
therapy just need encouragement.
Father Ronald said.
He gives lectures to the hospital staff
in near-perfect Chinese on the
psychological aspects of disability, on
the needs or concepts of total
rehabilitation and psycho-social
rehabilitation. He also does research on
the psycho-social variables that affect
patients seen at the hospital.
Last summer Father Ronald was
invited to read a paper at the 12th
World Congress of Rehabilitation held
in Sydney, Australia. He also read a
statement as a representative of the
disabled at the closing ceremony.
He took advantage of the trip to visit
other places -- Singapore, Malaysia,
Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, the
Philippines, Indonesia - investigating
rehabilitation programs everywhere.
“It was a good trip. I made it alone
and was on 16 airplanes. When people
ask me do I have trouble getting on and
off planes, I say that I don’t, but the
people who have to help me on and off
do.”
When Father Ronald glides into the
rehabilitation center at the veterans’
hospital in his wheel chair, smiling and
chatting in fluent Chinese, the disabled
patients cheer us visibly and continue
their therapy exercises with fresh
courage and determination.
Doctors and nurses at the hospital say
he’s a morale booster for the staff, too.
EDUCATION COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN:
“Stress
on Cooperation Is
Important”
BY JOHN MAHER
WASHINGTON (NC) - Emphasis on
participation of the whole Church
community in making decisions
concerning Catholic education is the
most important point of the recently
issued pastoral message of the U.S.
bishops, said the bishop under whose
direction the pastoral was prepared.
In an interview here, Auxiliary
Bishop William E. McManus of Chicago,
who as chairman of the U.S. Catholic
Conference Committee on Education
directed preparation of the pastoral,
said: “For the first time to my
knowledge the bishops have issued a
clear and ringing call for the
participation of the whole ecclesial
community in making high-level
decisions about the future of Catholic
education.”
The pastoral message, entitled “To
Teach as Jesus Did,’ J ’ was approved by
the bishops at their recent fall general
meeting here by a vote of 197 to 29, a
vote which Bishop McManus called “the
most rewarding experience” of his term
as education committee chairman. His
term expired at the meeting.
The next most important point of the
pastoral, Bishop McManus said, is that it
“envisions change, new structures and
new forms of Catholic education.”
“The bishops did not, however,
specify what these new forms should or
would be. That fact confirms the
SISTER TO THE RESCUE - Sister Guadalupe comes to the rescue of a little girl who
can’t open a stubborn milk carton at San Antonio de Padua School in Los Angeles.
The milk was served as part of a new federal and state hot lunch program at the
school. Eighteen inner city parish schools serve hot lunches to pupils from low
income families. (NC Photo)
sincerity of their appeal for total
education planning with wide
participation by all who have a stake in
the future of Catholic education.”
Also important, the bishop said, was
that the pastoral stated “sound
doctrinal foundations for the Church’s
involvement in the presently structured
forms of Catholic education.”
The pastoral justifies such
involvement, he said, by its references
to “new insights as to what the Creed
means, applications to contemporary
life and the need for structures of
education to expand, apply and enrich
it by relating it to life as it is now.”
Bishop McManus explained that the
pastoral’s statement about the duty of
Catholic parents “to entrust their
children to Catholic schools, when and
where this is possible must be ready not
only in the context of the pastoral, but
also in the context of Vatican II’s
Declaration on Christian Education.
That document made it clear that the
overriding duty of parents is to give
their children a Christian education.
There are no exceptions to that duty.
Because of the seriousness of the duty,
Vatican II said that when and where
possible, which is to say normally,
parents would find the Catholic school
the best available means to fulfill this
duty of religious education.”
But the bishop added that the
pastoral was not urging parents to send
their children to Catholic schools in
order to protect them from the dangers
of public schools. The pastoral’s
attitude was not defensive, he said.
“The kind of Catholic school to
which the pastoral refers,” Bishop
McManus said, “is one in which the
dynamic of Christian commitment on
the part of the administration, teachers,
parents and students is fully operative.
“By that I mean that the whole
school community is engaged in an
ongoing quest for a deeper
understanding of the meanig of
Revelation and of its relevance to all
that is being taught and learned. A total
commitment to truth and to social
justice, which might also be found in
some public schools, takes on a new
dimension in a Catholic school because
of the Christian motivation behind it.
“Blending religion and education is
not simply a matter of synthesizing the
two, but of injecting a Christian spirit
into the whole administration and
program. What makes a school Catholic
is a community of belief, a community
of commitment and a community of
practice.”
Discussing the pastoral’s reference to
the divisions that religious education has
at times caused in recent years, Bishop
McManus said that “Catholics United
for the Faith and other less organized
groups have expressed grave concern
about what is being taught or alleged to
be taught in Catholic schools and CCD
programs. The pastoral acknowledges
that in some cases the parents may have
a point. Mistakes may have been made.
“The pastoral also notes that parents
may be disturbed because methodology
doesn’t resemble the way they were
taught.”
Referring to a parent’s complaint that
a child couldn’t recite the Ten
Commandments and was not being
taught the difference between right and
wrong, Bishop McManus said, “Children
are being taught what is right and wrong
but not within a strict context of the
Ten Commandments. A modern
catechist will not try to teach a child
that he should not covet his neighbor’s
wife. It’s irrelevant to the child at that
period of his religious formation.
“A child may be very effectively
taught his responsibility for protecting
other people’s property and still not be
required to recite the seventh
commandment by heart.
“Parents get upset when children tell
them that some of the Old Testament
narratives are only stories and not facts.
Yet all the teachers are doing is teaching
the Scriptures according to fully
approved standards of scholarship.”
In a comment on government aid to
education, Bishop McManus said, “I’m
optimistic. I’m confident that the next
Congress will pass legislation for federal
income tax credits and that this
legislation will encourage parents to
continue their large investment of
private money in Catholic schools.”
Bishops Panel to Gather
Information on Abortion
WASHINGTON (NC) - The U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Populartion
and Pro-Life Affairs plans to gather information on increased activity to relax
stringent abortion laws, on expected efforts to establish a national policy of
population control and on United Nations Population Year Activities in 1974.
The panel, chaired by Cardinal John Cody of Chicago, made that report after
holding its first meeting during the U.S. bishops’ fall meeting here.
The committee, besides gathering information, was formed to make policy
recommendations to the bishops on abortion and related issues. The panel is
expected to conduct its next meeting in January.
Besides Cardinal Cody, committee members include Bishops George Ahr of
Trenton, Walter Curtis of Bridgeport and Andrew McDonald of Little Rock.
Other members are Auxiliary Bishops Juan Arzube of Los Angeles, Harold Perry
of New Orleans, Timothy Harrington of Worcester and Francis Dunn of
Dubuque.
Father Roland Helps Disabled
FILM MAKERS AT GEORGETOWN -- Filming of “The Exorcist” at Georgetown
University is scheduled to wind up this week. The movie is based on a book set in
Georgetown, written by William Peter Blatty, an alumnus of the school. He said the
novel was prompted by an actual case he heard about while in college. The clock tower
of the Healy Building is in the background as a camera crew closes in for the rehearsal
of a scene in which Detective Kinderman (Lee J. Cobb) and Father Karras (Jason
Miller) confer in the campus quadrangle. Closeups show Cobb (left) and Director
William Friedkin during a break. (NC Photos by Thomas N. Lorsung)