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SERVING 88 SOUTH GEORGIA COUNTIES
The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 53 No. 44
Thursday, December 14,1972
Single Copy Price — 12 Cents
12 STORY HIGH-RISE for the elderly, sponsored by Cathedral group in Savannah.
‘Rose of Sharon 9 a Community
When you drive past the “Rose of
Sharon Apartments” in historic
downtown Savannah you’re likely to
think it’s just another high-priced
apartment building or condominium,
full of well-to-do people. But it isn’t.
Oh, it’s big and it’s beautiful. But if
you didn’t inquire about it you’d never
guess that it is a church sponsored high
rise for lower middle-income elderly. Its
sponsor is the Cathedral of St. John the
Baptist, which formed a corporation
called Serviam, Inc. and applied for a
U.S. government-guaranteed loan to
build a high rise apartment to provide
dignified living quarters for persons
sixty-two years of age and over, whose
income does not exceed $4,860 per year
if they are single persons, or $5,940 if
they are married couples.
The twelve-story complex contains
217 units consisting of seventy-seven
“efficiencies” and one hundred forty
one-bedroom units. It is situated in a
prestige location at 322 E. Taylor Street
on Whitfield Square, near parks and
shopping and within easy walking
distance of the Cathedral and many
other down-town churches.
INSIDE STORY
"Catholic Watcher”
Pg. 2
TV Police Image
Pg. 2
A Helping Hand
Pg. 4
Readers Reply
Pg. 7
But perhaps the most important thing
about “Rose of Sharon” is that it is a
lot more than a conglomeration of
dwelling units. It is a community,
providing not only living space but
programs and activities in which all its
residents can participate.
For instance, there is a library and
lounge with plenty of comfortable
chairs, tables and good lighting for
reading. (The Chatham County
Bookmobile comes by often.) This
lounge also provides a pleasant
atmosphere for conversation or card
games, too.
There is a spacious T.V. Room where
groups may watch their favorite
programs together.
There’s a multi-purpose Assembly
Room, too, with a complete kitchen, a
piano and folding chairs, making it
possible to have church programs,
musical entertainment, games and
lectures for residents. There is room for
civic or church groups which need a
place to meet.
St. Michael’s
Father John Schroder of the Jesuit
Mission Band, a native of Atlanta, and a
well known speaker throughout the
southeastern states, will conduct the
Parish Mission December 18-22 at St.
Michael’s, .Savannah Beach. Services
each evening will be at 7:30.
Father Schroder was born in 1919,
attended Georgetown Prep in
Washington, D. C. and graduated from
the University of Notre Dame, Indiana
in 1940. He has been in Mission work
since Ordination in 1953.
Teenagers are extended a special
invitation to attend with the adults.
Elementary students will have their own
Mission during school hours.
A complete Vending Room makes it
possible for residents to buy hot and
cold drinks and other refreshments at
any time, and a Laundry Room with six
washers and four dryers means that
tenants can do their laundry and meet
friends who live in the building with
them. For the ladies, there is a Beauty
Shop with two Operators on duty.
Mass is celebrated in the complex on
the first Friday of every month. Last
week, Ken Palmer’s Orchestra
entertained tenants and on December
18, when the building’s great Christmas
Tree is lighted, a band will play
Christmas carols, accompanied by the
Glee Club of St. Vincent’s Academy.
All in all, you could say that the
tenants of “Rose of Sharon” live “the
good life” in the best sense of the term.
If you qualify and if you are interested
in living with people your own age and
with similar interests, the basic rental is
$85.00 per month for an efficiency and
$113.50 per month for a one-bedroom
apartment. Inquiries may be made at:
Rose of Sharon Apartments, 322 E.
Taylor Street, Savannah, Ga. 31401.
Parish Mission
Fr. Schroder
Peace With Justice?
BY FATHER PATRICK
O’CONNOR, S.S.C.
(NC News Service)
A cease-fire in Vietnam will mean the
end of fighting for the United States,
but will it bring peace with justice for
all in South Vietnam?
Any attempt to guess the answer
must take account of the following
facts:
-- 1. U.S. presidential adviser Henry
Kissinger has been negotiating not with
the Viet Cong (otherwise called the
National Liberation Front and the
Provisional Revolutionary Government
of South Vietnam) but with Le Due
Tho, high-ranking member of Hanoi’s
communist politburo. Therefore the
Viet Cong are obviously subordinate to
Hanoi, and the war on the communist
side is directed and masterminded by
Hanoi.
- 2. The ultimate goal of the
communist leaders in Hanoi is certainly
the reunification of North and South
under their own control. In Geneva in
1954 Pham Van Dong, now premier in
Hanoi, declared: “We shall achieve
unity. No force in the world, internal or
external, can make us deviate from our
path.” Throughout the years Hanoi has
reiterated its aim to reunify the
country. The enormous expenditure of
North Vietnamese resources in the war
can lead to only one conclusion: the
reunification sought by the Hanoi
regime is one that would put the whole
country under the communist party
now ruling the North.
-- 3. This desire springs not only from
communist doctrine and world policy.
North Vietnam cannot feed its
population. Before the country was
divided, the North always imported rice
from the more fertile, less densely
populated South. During the war its
communist allies have supplied it with
rice as well as with arms. They cannot
do this indefinitely.
- 4. Russian military aid culminated
in the heavy tanks and artillery
furnished for North Vietnam’s massive
invasion of the South last Spring. China
has furnished arms, technical aid and
rice. Obviously each has helped North
Vietnam because it wanted North
Vietnam to retain its objectives. Now
these two communist powers, jealous of
each other and seeing advantages in at
least short-term accommodation with
the United States, apparently expect no
profit from continuance of the war.
Neither, however, seems likely to desist
from supporting North Vietnam in
seeking its ultimate goal, since each of
them is anxious to extend its influence
in Southeast Asia.
-- 5. In an early session of the Paris
talks (May, 1968) the North Vietnam
delegation called it a “perfidious
calumny” to say that there were North
Vietnamese troops in the South. At that
time there were already thousands of
North Vietnamese soldiers in prisoner of
war camps in South Vietnam.
- 6. It is widely believed in Vietnam
that the North has reached a point of
near exhaustion. Its offensive begun last
Spring has cost it dearly. It involved
taking at least 12 - some say 14 army
divisions out of the North for the
invasion. No communist state feels
secure when it depletes its home
garrison to such an extent. The troops
sent into the South, equipped with
armor and artillery, suffered - and
inflicted - heavy losses but failed in
their main purpose of overthrowing the
South Vietnam government.
-- 7. While calling for “free and
democratic elections,” neither Hanoi
nor the Viet Cong would agree to accept
the majority verdict of the voters. To
direct questions on this point, put by
this correspondent in Paris, the
communist spokesman replied only by
insisting on a coalition government,
even after elections. The voting would
be for an assembly to draft a new
constitution for South Vietnam, in their
view.
(Father O’Connor, now living in
retirement in Ireland, was an NC News
correspondent in Vietnam from
1954-56 and 1962-68.)
Unpublished Encyclical Found
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (NC) - The
draft of a papal encyclical, “had it been
published, would have broken the much
criticized Vatican silence on the
persecution of Jews in Europe before
and during the Second World War,”
according to the Dec. 16 issue of the
National Catholic Reporter (NCR), the
independent Catholic newspaper
published here.
In a copyrighted story, NCR associate
editor Jim Castelli reported that Pope
Pius XI “commissioned the American
Jesuit John LaFarge to write an
encyclical attacking racism and
anti-Semitism in June of 1938, eight
months before the death of the ailing
Pope and 15 months before the
outbreak of World War II.”
Father LaFarge, former editor of the
Jesuit weekly America and noted author
and crusader for social justice, died in
1963 at the age of 83. His personal
papers are stored in archives at
Woodstock College in New York.
In a memo dated July 3, Father
LaFarge said, “The Pope put me under
secrecy and enjoined me to write the
text of an encyclical for the universal
Church on the topic which he
considered is most burning at the
present time.”
Father LaFarge said the Pope told
him: “Say simply what you would say if
you yourself were Pope.”
On June 27, after discussing the
meeting with Father Ledochowski, his
superior general, Father LaFarge began
working on the encyclical with the
collaboration of German Jesuit Father
Gustave Gundlach and French Jesuit
Father Gustave Desbuquois.
For two months in the summer of
1938, Father LaFarge worked on the
encyclical in Paris, mainly with Father
Gundlach, according to the NCR
account.
“Information from three sources -
Fathers Graham, Stanton, and Bacht -
indicates that LaFarge had the major
responsibility for the racism and
anti-Semitism sections, while Gundlach
wrote most of the balance of the draft,”
said NCR.
Father Robert Graham, an American
Jesuit living in Rome, has spent over 10
years studying the history of the
Vatican in World War II. Father Edward
S. Stanton, a Jesuit at Boston College,
has just completed a doctoral
dissertation on Father LaFarge. German
Jesuit Father Heinrich Bacht, currently
a teacher at the University of Frankfort,
translated part of the encyclical draft
into Latin.
Jesuit Father Thurston N. Davis,
former editor of America and longtime
associate of Father LaFarge, told NC
News that “Father LaFarge never talked
about” the unpublished encyclical,
because “apparently he still felt sworn
to secrecy.”
NCR credited Thomas Breslin, a
former Jesuit scholastic who left the
order before he was ordained, for
providing the lead and important
background for the story. Breslin, said
NCR, “worked with the LaFarge papers
for more than a year while a Jesuit
seminarian at Loyola (College in
Westchester County, New York) three
years ago.” Before the LaFarge papers
were moved to Woodstock, they had
been stored at Loyola.
Quoting extensively from
microfilmed copies of the encyclical
draft and related documents, NCR
commented that the encyclical was
never published for two reasons:
-A delay “for political reasons” by
Jesuit superior general, Father Wlodimir
Ledochowski, in passing on the
completed draft to Pope Pius XI.
-The serious illness and sudden death
of Pope Pius XI shortly after he finally
received the draft - if he ever received
it.
In the same issue of NCR, sociologist
Gordon Zahn, author of “German
Catholics and Hitler’s Wars,” said that
the encyclical might have had significant
long-term effects if it had been
published.
“Nazi anti-Semitism practices would
not have stopped,” said Zahn, “but they
may not have escalated to the stage of
planned extermination; more important,
Catholics in countries soon to be
occupied might have been less ready to
cooperate when the time came.”
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HEADLINE
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HOPSCOTCH
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Pre-Launch Mass
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. (NC) - Mrs. Eugene A. Ceman, wife of the
commander of the Apollo 17 lunar landing mission, and the Cernans’ nine-year-old
daughter, Teresa Dawn, attended a private Mass here before launching to pray for the
success of the mission. The celebrant was Father Eugene Cargill of the
Galveston-Houston diocese who was with Mrs. Ceman and her daughter during the
tense moments while the launching was delayed. The Cernans attend St. Paul Catholic
Church in Nassau Bay, Tex. The 38-year-old Ceman serves as a lector at Mass when his
schedule permits. He and his wife, a convert, have participated in discussion groups at
the Air force base chapel. Their daughter sings in the choir at the base chapel.
CHD on Television
NEW YORK (NC) - A one-hour special program on the Church’s drive to alleviate
poverty in the U.S., the bishops’ Campaign for Human Development, will be telecast at
4 p.m. (EST), Sunday, Dec. 17. The NBC program will be entitled “Human
Development: Sharing the American Dream.” It will explore the campaign’s
philosophy of helping the poor help themselves by taking a look at campaign-funded
projects in Illinois, North Dakota, Virginia, and New York. Since its inception in 1970,
the campaign has funded over 420 projects nationally, allocating more than $16
million.
Christmas Ban Lifted
UPPER MALBORO, Md. (NC) - A public senool board m tne Washington suburbs
decided to revise guidelines which had apparently banned the use of Christian carols
during the Christmas season. The guidelines on the whole were similar to those issued
annually since the Supreme Court decision, but this paragraph made them more
specific. News reports of the more restrictive language brought a rash of protest calls
from parents, music teachers and students.