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SERVING 88 SOUTH GEORGIA COUNTIES
The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 54 No. 1
Thursday, January 4,1973
Single Copy Price — 12 Cents
Students Help Ministry in Macon
By Grace T. Crawford
Macon News Staff Writer
A slender young priest who strums a
guitar, a red haired Sister from
Limerick, Ireland, and 25 local college
students have joined forces in Macon.
They are making some notable
contributions in areas of need in the
community.
Father Thomas H°*iy, leader of the
group, is a dark haired Irish priest who
is co-pastor of St. Joseph Catholic
Church. He is no stranger to Maconites.
In the past five years, he has been
widely interviewed and photographed,
mostly for his work with the youth of
the community and his ministry in the
Bibb County Jail. Oh yes - ahd for his
Irish ballads..
A few weeks ago, another bit of
Ireland entered the picture with the
assignment of Sister Elizabeth Lynan as
parish coordinator of social services.
Since her arrival, Sister Elizabeth and
Father Healy have worked together with
students from Mercer University,
Wesleyan College and Macon Junior
College on several projects.
As St. Joseph’s minister of youth,
Father Healy spends most of his busy
days with college students. This year,
for the first time, he has his young
friends involved in an organized effort.
One of the first bits of action taken
by the students was offering their ;
services as volunteers for the Office ol
Economic Opportunity, an organization
that fills untold needs for families in
distress. “One of the big problems is
that so many children need help with
their homework,” Father Healy said.
“Currently, 12 college students are
participating.” The sessions are
conducted weekly, and one of the most
enthusiastic tutors is Mary Lee Vitale,
a pretty young woman who soon will
enter a religious order.
MACON STUDENT VOLUNTEER. Kenneth Cornelius and his tutor,
Mary Lee Vitale. Father Tom Healy watches a young volunteer at work.
Still another project in which the
young volunteers are participating is a
self-help program in the Unionville area
AN INVITATION TO SISTERS:
66
Come to Holy Trinity
99
BY SISTER SUZANNE GOLDEN
With a keen appreciation of the desire
of all religious women to continually
renew and revivify their love of and
fidelity to our Lord Jesus Christ, we at
Blessed Trinity Shrine Retreat invite all
the sisters in the surrounding area to
join in a Scripture workshop here on the
weekend of January 19, 20 and 21st,
1973.
to reflect on God’s love for them and
their response in love through the daily
fulfillment of their apostolic calling.
The workshop will begin on Friday
evening with an optional session at 8 PM
(EST) for those arriving early enough.
Regular sessions will begin on Saturday
morning and continue until Sunday
afternoon.
to: Sister Maureen Therese, M.S.B.T.;
Blessed Trinity Shrine Retreat, Holy
Trinity, Alabama 36859. The $15.00
balance may be paid in advance or at
the workshop.
Given by Father Sidney Griffith, S.T.
of the Washington Theological Coalition
in Silver Spring, Maryland, the
workshop is aimed at deepening each
participant’s personal understanding of
God’s Holy Word as it is living and
active for us here-and-now.
The cost of the weekend is $5.00
registration-workshop fee plus $15.00
for room and board. Reservations may
be sent along with the registration fee
In case you’re saying like most people
we meet, “Where is Holy Trinity?”
here’s a general idea: Blessed Trinity
Shrine Retreat is located just 20 miles
south of Phenix City, Alabama and
Columbus, Georgia, just off Alabama
Highwasy 165. A detailed route will be
sent upon request to those registering
for the workshop.
We firmly believe that as your sisters
we should provide opportunities for the
other religious women to take time out
INSIDE STORY
Polish-Americans
Pg. 2
Editorials
Pg. 4
Know Your Faith
Pg. 5
Bombing Halt
....Pg. 7
CHRISTMAS IN PRISON. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen gives Communion
to an inmate of Green Haven Prison in Stormville, N.Y., the only
maximum security institution in New York State to have a Christmas
Midnight Mass. (RNS Photo)
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of Macon. According to Father Healy, it
is a part of an OEO-sponsored effort to
accomplish a number of things.
Inspiring young leadership in the
community is one of them.
“It’s the idea of building up the
community,” Father Healy explained.
“One of the big hopes is to get a
recreation center of some sort in the
area.” The student volunteers now are
working with young people in
Unionville on fund-raising projects for
their prospective center, with four
permanently assigned to this area.
they’ve done wrong and they want to
change. They want to do their part.”
The college students assist mainly by
contacting the families of prisoners,
according to Father Healy. “They make
hundreds of telephone calls weekly,” he
said, “delivering messages.”
The young Irishman says his jail
ministry is “the happiest thing in my
life as a priest. It has given me a new
dimension, made me look at people in a
much broader way, made me see the
goodness of these people.”
And there’s another program that
spreads happiness around - the visits to
prisoners in the Bibb County jail.
Sister Elizabeth and Father Healy are
on hand each Thursday, according to
the Sister, “ to let them know we’re
there if they need us.”
The jail service is a simple one: a bit
of scripture, a short talk, then Father
Healy strums on his guitar and the folk
hymns begin. “And they sing,” he said,
“my, how they sing out.”
“You can always tell when Father
Healy has been around,” Bibb Sheriff
Jimmy Bloodworth said, “the morale is
better.”
Then in her most beautiful Irish
accent she explained her philosophy a
bit further. “So many are in jail because
they have nothing to live for,” she said.
“And yet, they’re often more sincere
than other people in looking for jobs
when they get out. They want
something to live for. They know
But as contributions go, Sister
Elizabeth has made her share. She is
starting a simple service to the women
prisoners -- the first such effort that is
bringing smiles around.
She is teaching them to crochet.
COUNTS THE STITCHES. Sister
Elizabeth Lynan shows an inmate
in the Bibb County jail the finer
points of crocheting.
Pope Insists Peace Is Possible
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope Paul
VI, in his World Day of Peace message
for 1973, insisted that peace is possible.
Human passions do not die.’
He criticized both those who say
peace “now has come to civilization”
although there are “unfortunate
situations here and there,” and those
who would make violence “a way of
life.”
This consideration, he said, raises “a
doubt that could be fatal” about the
possibility of peace.
especially of the young. It must be
possible, they say, to live without hating
and without killing. A new and universal
pedagogy is gaining ascendancy - that
of peace.
“Here on the contrary is our message,
your message too, men of goodwill, the
message of all mankind: peace is
possible. It must be possible!
To the first group he said: “Alas, it is
not a question of wars buried in the
sands of history but of wars here and
now. It is not a question of transitory
episodes, but of wars which have been
going on for years. Nor is it a matter of
superficial disturbances, for these wars
weigh heavily upon the ranks of heavily
armed men and upon the unarmed
masses of the civilian population.”
“Yes, because this is the message that
rises from the battlefields of two world
wars and the other recent armed
conflicts by which the earth has been
stained with blood. It is the mysterious
and frightening voice of the fallen and
of the victims of past conflicts. It is the
pitiable groan of unnumbered graves in
the military cemeteries and of the
monuments dedicated to the unknown
soldiers: Peace. Peace, not war.”
“Yes, because the maturity of
civilized wisdom has expressed this
obvious fact: instead of seeking the
solution to human rivalries in the
irrational and barbarous test of blind
and murderous strength in arms, we
shall build up new institutions, in which
discussion, justice and right may be
expressed and become a strict and
peaceful law governing international
relations.”
Here Pope Paul cited the foundation
of the United Nations and other
international institutions.
In a passage prepared long before
U.S. presidential adviser Henry Kissinger
revealed that his Vietnam peace
negotiations in Paris had run into heavy
weather, the Pope said:
Peace is and must be possible for two
other reasons, the Pope continued.
“Nor are these wars easy to solve.
They have exhausted and rendered
impotent all the skills of negotiation
and mediation.”
“Yes, because peace has conquered
the ideologies that oppose it. Peace is
above all a state of mind. Peace has at
last penetrated as a logical human need
into the minds of many people, and
“A new humanism supports them and
holds them in honor. A solemn
obligation unites their members. A
positive and worldwide hope recognizes
them as instruments of international
order, of solidarity and of brotherhood
among the peoples.
“In these institutions peace finds its
own home and its own workshops.”
To those who want violence to
become fashionable again by clothing
itself “in the breastplate of Justice,” the
Pope painted a picture of a world in
which violence rules:
“Collective selfishness comes to life
again in the family, society, tribe,
nation and race; crime no longer
horrifies. Cruelty becomes fatal, like the
surgery of hate declared legal. Genocide
is seen as the possible monster of a
radical solution.
HEADLINE
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HOPSCOTCH
1973 Census
“And behind all these horrible visions
there grows, through cold-blooded and
unerring calculations, the huge economy
of arms, with its hunger-producing
markets.”
WASHINGTON (NC) -- The U.S. Census Bureau said the U.S. population at the start
of 1973 was 210,194,312. The gain in population during 1972 was 1.6 million
persons, the federal agency said, adding that the advance was lower than the gains of
1971 and 1970. The population estimate includes the 50 states, the District of
Columbia, the armed forces, federal employes living abroad and their dependents.
Still declaring peace to be possible,
the Pope rejected the idea of peace as a
lull in warfare or a quiet corner “amid
the ruins of all normal order.” He
rejected the notion of peace as a bleak
order imposed by a ruthless conqueror,
and cited the bitter words the Roman
historian Tacitus put into the mouth of
a Caledonian (Scottish) chieftan
exhorting his warriors against the
Romans: “They create a desert and call
it peace.” He rejected also the notion of
peace as “a truce, a mere laying down of
arms.”
Mass in Red China
VATICAN CITY (NC) -- The Vatican daily newspaper published an Italian news
agency’s report that a Christian midnight Mass was celebrated in the communist
Chinese capital of Peking “for the first time since 1966.” “Three hundred persons,
among them many ambassadors and about 30 Chinese Catholics, assisted at this first
midnight Mass celebrated in six years in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, or
‘Nantang’ (Church of the South),” said the ANSA news agency dispatch in
L’Osservatore Romano. “The celebrant, a Chinese priest, Father Shi Yukuan, was
assisted by four adults. He sang the Mass entirely in Latin, according to the
pre-conciliar rite.
He continued: “We admit that a
perfect and stable tranquility of order,
that is an absolute and definite peace
among men . . .can only be a dream, not
vain, but unfulfilled, an ideal, not unreal
but still to be realized.
Pope Appeals to Reds
“This is so because everything in the
course of history is subject to change,
and because the perfection of man does
not have a single meaning nor is it fixed.
VATICAN CITY (NC) - The Vatican’s weekly magazine, in reporting Pope Paul’s
appeals for peace in Vietnam, said it is “worth emphasizing” that the Pope also
appealed for religious freedom in the communist world. Speaking to the cardinals in
Rome Dec. 22, the Pope said: “We cannot be silent about that portion of Christ’s
Church which seems today to be given the peace of the tomb, and not just the peace
of silent suffering.” Pope Paul referred expressly to Albania, saying he could not see
“what human hope remains for the Church” in that communist country. The Vatican
magazine, L’Osservatore Della Domenica, commented that Catholics need a minimum
of freedom if “they are to give their unique contribution to the peace desired by all.”
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