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CARDINAL CONWA Y SA YS
PAGE 3 — December 14,1972
Most Northern Irish Want Violence End
LONDON (NC) -- The overwhelming
majority of the ordinary people of
Northern Ireland “passionately want an
end to this violence,” Cardinal William
Conway of Armagh, Northern Ireland,
said in an interview in the Universe, a
Catholic weekly published here.
MILWAUKEE (NC) - A kind of mea
culpa for some of the polarization in
religious education was expressed here
by author, lecturer and religious
educator Mary Perkins Ryan.
She was speaking for herself and
other “progressive” educators who had
hoped for change to come too fast and
as a result attempted to impose their
ideas on others.
“A lot of harm has been done,” Mrs.
Ryan said, “by the tactlessness of
progressive people, myself included.
They’ve been just as authoritarian as the
others -- taking down vigil lights,
downgrading novenas. What has
happened to confession is a tragedy
because people still feel guilty and yet
don’t feel it is ‘in’ to go anymore.”
In an interview with the Catholic
Herald Citizen here, she listed what she
called some “tactless mistakes.”
“People (religious educators) took
one or two courses in the summer and,
without digesting them properly
themselves, tried to give them to people
unprepared for them,” she said.
“But it is much more difficult for
them to influence events than appears
to people outside the situation,” said
the cardinal, who is president of the
Irish Bishops’ Conference.
“I think the dominant attitude of
people outside Ireland towards this
“They started new methodology they
didn’t know how to use. They didn’t
really understand the media they were
using.”
Also, some “went off the deep end”
in sensitivity training, she said. She did
not discount all value of the technique
but criticized those who claimed it to be
“the total answer.” She added she did
think a useful help is participation
training, a series of exercises in how to
reach consensus.
Including herself in her criticism, Mrs.
Ryan said when she wrote her
controversial book, “Are Parochial
Schools the Answer?” (1954), “I didn’t
know enough about it. Hopefully, we all
grow up.”
She said where religious education is
flourishing now are parishes where
parents are involved and where priests
have made a point of making various
adult groups feel they had goals that
were vital to the parish.
“Where the parish is alive, where
there are parish meetings, where youth
see there is a live community, religious
education does well,” she said.
terrible situation should be one of
compassion -- compassion for the
hundreds of thousands of ordinary
honest folk who are suffering greatly in
mind and body, caught up in a
hurricane of history that is not of their
own making.”
The important thing is for parents to
get involved in the kind of religious
education they themselves want for
their children instead of having it
imposed on them, she said.
She added:
“If they have been given the pitch by
the priests on what the new religious
education is, and the parents still want a
more conservative approach, they
should be encouraged to do it their own
way. You can’t force new ideas. But
hopefully, with patience and kindness
we can eventually win them over.”
Mrs. Ryan said there is a real need for
religious education of the young,
especially the adolescents, because
surveys show they “are passionately
interested in religion.”
But the real hope for religious
education, Mrs. Ryan emphasized, is
adult education.
“We have to help adults realize
they’re all in on the deal, they’re part of
the Church. We have to help them
wherever they are to broaden their
views and values and determine what
they want to live by,” she said.
“There are only a small proportion
that come to discussion groups and
classes but they’re at least a leavening
group - as were the Christian Family
Movement who over the years were
successful in getting people to discuss
religion.”
Cardinal Conway described as
“absurd” the charge sometimes made
that the Catholic Church has not spoken
out clearly enough about the terrorist
campaign of the Irish Republican Army
(IRA).
“The Catholic bishops have clearly
and unambiguously condemned the IRA
campaign from the very beginning,” he
said. “Even before it got off the ground
in 1970 they condemned it.
“Individual bombings and shootings
have been denounced in the most
forthright and unqualified terms . . .The
record on this matter is perfectly clear.
Cardinal Conway also said he is on
the friendliest terms with Protestant
church leaders in Northern Ireland.
They meet frequently in each other’s
houses, keep in close touch and have
appeared together many times on local
television discussing the situation and
praying together, the cardinal disclosed.
“Unfortunately many of these
occasions have not been screened on
national networks and so inevitably
people elsewhere assume that they have
not happened,” he said.
The poor people of Northern Ireland,
Catholics and Protestant, he said, “are
caught up as unwilling victims in a
whirlpool of violence and
counterviolence provoked by
extremists, fanatics, on both sides.”
Cardinal Conway also expressed
concern about what he called “the
second campaign” -- the unchecked
individual and deliberate murders of
innocent, uninvolved Catholics.
“Since the beginning of this year the
bodies of 69 Catholics have been found
murdered in the streets,” he said.
Because of the IRA’s terrorist
campaign, he said, many outside of
Ireland are not aware of the “second
campaign.”
“As one who had denounced the IRA
campaign so often, I felt bound in
conscience to call attention in similar
terms to this second campaign .. .It is
terribly important that world opinion
should see all sides of the terrible
picture because campaigns like these
grow bigger in darkness.”
Nation’s Birth Growth
Is Now at Zero Level
EXPRESSES “MEA CULPA”
Mrs. Ryan Urges Cooperation
Of Conservatives, Progressives
RELICS OF ST. NICHOLAS are presented by Bishop Francis Mugavero of
Brooklyn, N.Y., to Archbishop Iakovos, Greek Orthodox Primate of
North and South America at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in
Flushing, N.Y. Bishop Mugavero said that the gift was intended as
“another indication of the new openness between the Eastern and Latin
churches.” (NC Photo by EPA News Photo)
The statistics center has reported that
for the first nine months of 1972, the
birth rate was at 2.08. For the first nine
months of 1971 the rate was 2.39.
According to the latest statistics, for
19 consecutive months the birth rate
each months has been lower than for
the same month a year before.
There is a difference between birth
rates and fertility rates. Birth rates are
the average number of births per 1,000
population. Fertility rates are the
number of births per 1,000 women
between 15 and 44 years of age.
The number of births for the
12-month period ending September
1972 was about 8 percent lower than
for the same period ending in 1971. The
birth rate was 10 percent lower and the
fertility was 11 percent lower.
Rosenthal points out that a series of
reasons have been given for such
declines. One is the growing proportion
of young women who stay single.
Another is that even married women are
having children later. A third is that
women of all social, racial and economic
levels wish to have fewer children.
Other factors pointed out by
Rosenthal are the growing number of
working wives, the state of the
economy, the increasing use and
effectiveness of contraception and the
broadening liberalization of abortion
laws.
The decline of births, however, does
not mean an immediate decline in the
total population. For example, during
September the population increased by
131,000 persons. This is known as the
“natural increase,” that is, excess of
births over deaths.
WASHINGTON (NC) ~ Federal
government statistics show that for the
first time fertility in the United States
has dropped below the level needed to
achieve zero population growth.
The latest figures that indicated this
were contained in the Monthly Vital
Statistics Report published by the
National Center for Health Statistics,
Rockville, Md.
The larger significance of the latest
statistics, according to the New York
Times, is that the country has, for the
first time cracked what analysts called
the “2.1 barrier.” The 2.1 level is the
average number of children that each
family must have in order to eventually
maintain a national zero population
growth.
Rosenthal estimated that if the 2.08
fertility rate would persist to the year
2000 - instead of the 2.39 rate of 1971
- it would mean a difference of 17
million fewer Americans.
“Were the nation to sustain a
2.1-child fertility rate for 70 years,”
wrote Rosenthal, “the population
would stop growing having reached 320
million. It is now about 209.3 million.”
Mrs. Ryan said she has been asked to
edit a new publication for the National
Center for Religious Education, Focus
on Adults - A Digest. The 32-page
monthly will contain condensed articles
about adult education of interest to
educators, pastors, parishes and
diocesan personnel, parish councils and
coordinators.
She was in Milwaukee to lecture at a
parish education meeting.
Jack Rosenthal of the New York
Times pointed out in an article that the
fertility rate also decreased during these
19 months despite an increase in women
of child-bearing age of between 15 and
44 years old.
“MICKEY MOUSE EARS” protect the hearing of Nguyen Van Due, one
of the nine Vietnamese orphans being taken to the United States by
Bonnie Birkel. Phil Conroy, of Notre Dame, arranged their adoption. The
child was wearing the “ears” during a noisy helicopter flight. (NC Photo)
Agencies Planning For a Peacetime Vietnam
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Worldwide
Catholics welfare agencies are studying a
battle plan on the fronts of hunger,
housing and health for a peacetime
Vietnam.
The plan, as well as current needs of
two million refugees in Southeast Asia,
was presented to the executive
committee of Caritas Internationalis,
worldwide federation of Catholic relief
agencies, which met in the Vatican at
the end of November.
An informed source said the plan was
modeled on the United Nations
peace-keeping teams, in that individual
agencies would volunteer their relief
experts, money and materials and
coordinate all aid under direction of a
central command.
Father John McVeigh, Southeast Asia
director of Catholic Relief Services
(CRS), the overseas aid agency of U.S.
Catholics, told the Caritas committee
that refugees will need daily aid long
after a ceasefire has been declared.
Although Asians generally have a
strong desire to return to the home of
their ancestors, Father McVeigh told the
committee “it is anticipated that many
will remain in their camps until their
home village is both free and
protected.”
Father McVeigh said there was
general dissatisfaction with any ceasefire
which would allow the respective armed
forces to hold whatever territory they
possessed at the time of the ceasefire.
“The victims of the war will continue
to be in much need of basic health and
comfort items endemic to a way of life
which can best be described as minimal,
and this need will continue for a long
time to come,” the priest from the
Reno diocese told the committee.
Any plan to aid the refugees in
peacetime Vietnam must include among
urgent priorities the reconstruction of
ravaged villages so that people can
return to something, Father McVeigh
stated, adding:
“Many refugees will have to be
relocated, that is, given a new start in a
new place, for many villages,
particularly in the northern Quang Tri
province, have been reduced to rubble.”
Another factor to be considered in
any peacetime plan is the need to
provide for the large number of soldiers
who will be demobilized.
The government of South Vietnam
announced Nov. 16 they will grant land
to the soldiers and about one million
unemployed.
Father McVeigh said private agencies
would be called on to help these people
get a start in their new locales by
providing housing, food and cash grants.
Nutritionists and medical teams must
also be maintained and supported, he
said.
Still another problem that must be
soon faced is the fact that the majority
of refugees in Vietnam and Cambodia
are living in former military bases which
are badly in need of repairs.
Auxiliary Bishop Edward E.
Swanstrom of New York, executive
director of CRS, asked Caritas
Internationalis to formulate a plan for
aid in peacetime Vietnam two and one
half years ago.
TAMPA, Fla. (NC) -- Members of the
executive board of the National
Federation of Priests’ Councils have
announced the resignation of Father
Frank Bonnike as president.
The board in accepting the
resignation expressed “profound
regret,” and endorsed as new president
Father Reid C. Mayo, vice-president of
the NFPC since March. He is a priest of
the diocese of Burlington, Vt.
Father Bonnike, ending nearly six
years of service with the priests’
organization, said he “felt it was time
for my own mental, physical and
spiritual health to form new
perspectives and to extend my ministry
to a broader segment of God’s people.”
Father Bonnike said he wanted to
broaden the scope of his ministry. “I
felt it was time for me to stop working
just with priests,” he said. “I am 50
years old and I thought the time was
right for a younger man to take my
place,” he added.
Father Bonnike will step down as
president when the NFPC holds its
national convention in Detroit next
March. The convention theme will be:
“Priests U.S.A. -- Tensions in
Accountability.”
At that time, the bishop said CRS
would willingly set up a relief program
in North Vietnam after the hostilities if
the agency were permitted to go there.
CRS was expelled in 1954 and all its
supplies confiscated.
In the past, some Catholic private aid
agencies have sent hospital and other
equipment to North Vietnam. At the
urging of the Vatican, Caritas
Internationalis sent aid to the North
Vietnamese Red Cross in 1968.
CRS, a member of Caritas
Internationalis, said it would not
participate or contribute to such a
project since United States government
regulations would forbid CRS to do so.
CRS often acts as a distributor of
United States surplus materials in its
relief around the world and must render
a strict accounting of where everything
goes.
During his time as presidnet of NFPC,
Father Bonnike led the federation
through several controversies:
-- A hearing for the 19 Washington,
D.C. priests suspended for having
publicly questioned Pope Paul’s birth
control encyclical.
-- A request for open meetings of the
National Conference of Catholic
Bishops and inclusions of religious and
lay auditors. This objective was attained
last spring.
- The development of a monthly
publication, Priests: USA.
-- Opposition to a Vatican decree
which made it more difficult for priests
who wished to marry to be relieved of
obligations as priests.
The board voted here to place on the
agenda of the Detroit meeting
consideration of approval for the Parish
Evaluation Project, a method of
assessing the needs and attitudes of
parishioners drawn up by Father
Thomas P. Sweetser, S.J. In a report
presented to the board of NFPC, the
Parish Evaluation Project was said to
“provide Cahtolic parishes with the
means for finding out what are the
attitudes, values and levels of parish
participation among the parishioners.”
Fr. Bonnike Resigns
As NFPC President