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PAGE 3—February 22,1973
NCC
Pooling Resources
For Greater Impact
Almighty God, the Creator of the
world, has imprinted in the heart of
man a law which calls him to do good
and avoid evil. To obey this law is the
dignity of man, according to it he will
be judged (cf. CONSTITUTION ON
THE CHURCH IN THE MODERN
WORLD, No. 16). In the encyclical
letter, PEACE ON EARTH, Pope John
XXIII spoke of how nations can achieve
justice and order by adhering to God’s
law:
Any human society, if it is to
be well-ordered and productive,
must lay down as a foundation
this principle, namely, that every
human being is a person, that is,
his nature is endowed with
intelligence and free will. By
virtue of this, he has rights and
duties of his own, flowing directly
and simultaneously from his very
nature. These rights are therefore
universal, inviolable and
inalienable (PEACE ON EARTH,
No. 9).
. . .Every man has the right to
life, to bodily integrity, and to the
means which are necessary and
suitable for * the proper
development of life (PEACE ON
EARTH, No. 11).
The Supreme Court, in its recent
decision striking down the laws of Texas
and Georgia regulating abortion, has
stated that the unborn child is not a
person in the terms of the Fourteenth
Amendment. Moreover, the Court held
that the right of privacy encompasses a
woman’s decision to terminate a
pregnancy, although the right of privacy
is not an absolute right, and is not
explicitly mentioned in the
Constitution. In effect, the Court is
BY KAY LESLIE
(NC News Service)
The National Council of Churches
exists to help its member churches more
fully to manifest their unity in Christ,
and it provides the nation and the
world. The council also exists to serve
the churches themselves.
“The main work of the NCC is the
carrying out of regular services to
member communions in their basic
tasks of evangelism, education, mission
and social welfare,” says the report of
the joint Catholic-NCC committee that
studied possible Catholic membership in
the council.
The list of services that the council
provides for its member churches is
long, but a few can be used to illustrate
the type of activities carried out by the
council.
One function of the council is to
develop new projects in specialized
areas. For example, when the churches
became aware of the need for Christian
education materials dealing specifically
with drug abuse, the council’s Division
of Christian Education set up a project
committee to produce curriculum aids
in this field.
The council also maintains a research
department which prepares the annual
“Yearbook of American Churches,” an
up-to-date compilation of statistics and
other factual information about
American churches.
Church officials always want to share
ideas with their counterparts in other
churches, and the council renders a
major service by facilitating this
exchange of ideas. It initiates study
committees and organizes conferences
on all areas of church life.
Another example is the China office.
While churches have not been able to
send missionaries to China, they still
wanted to know what was going on
there. The China office, headed by a
former missionary to China, is located
in New York; an associate is in Hong
Kong.
The Broadcasting and Film
Commission represents a service to the
churches in a field where considerable
expertise is needed. It helps the
churches exert a stronger influence by
coordinating and in some cases
combining thier efforts.
Individual churches, by pooling
resources, have in the BFC an agency
that produces a wide range of radio and
television programs beyond what any
one church could do. The commission
als serves as a point of contact
between the churches and the
broadcasting and film industries,
keeping the churches aware of
opportunities and expressing the
churches’ viewpoint to the industry.
The council has some 70 different
programs in all. The basic ideal of each
is the same-by working together the
churches, through the council, provide
services beyond what any one church
body could do by itself.
The budget of the council has two
main parts. First, there is the general
administrative budget, which amounts
to about $450,000 this year. That takes
care of the office of the general
secretary in New York, the Washington,
D.C. office and other central
administrative requirements. Each
church that is a member of the council
is asked to pay a proportionate part of
this budget based on the church’s size
and resources.
However, the joint Catholic—NCC
committee recommended that the
contribution of the Catholic Church-if
it decided to join the NCC-should be no
higher than one-fourth of the total,
though with 48 million members it
outnumbers the combined 42 million
members of the present 33 churches in
the council.
The second part of the council’s
budget which covers some 70
inter-church programs such as religious
education, world relief and aid to the
needy and many more-amounts this
year to $15 million. Member churches
contribute support for this work
according to their desires-and their
ability to pay. Other support for
programs comes from such sources as
individuals, foundations and
corporations and other donors.
Generally the program units of the
council are supported by their
corresponding agencies in the churches.
Overseas mission agencies of member
churches make grants to the Division of
Overseas Ministries, national or home
mission agencies help support
corresponding programs of the council’s
division of Church and Society, and so
on.
This ensures that the work of the
council reflects the will of the churches.
Where they feel that council programs
are of special importance, they
contribute extra funds. Where they
conclude programs are of lesser
importance, they reduce their funding
and a smaller amount of the council’s
staff effort is then used in those areas.
The council’s programs, of course, do
not supplant the work of the churches.
All member churches maintain their
own agencies for carrying out programs
in their various fields of concern.
If the Catholic Church should decide
to join the council, the programs being
carried out by the U.S. Catholic
Conference from its headquarters in
Washington, D.C., would continue.
What the council would provide is a
means for establishing closer
cooperation with other
churches-building on the national level
a new and closer understanding and
common spirit of endeavor between two
great traditions of Christianity in this
country.
(Next: Catholic participation in the
NCC’s activities.)
CARDIML-DESIGNA TE MEDEIROS
The Faithful Steward
BY FATHER A. PAUL WHITE
BOSTON (NC) - Cardinal-designate
Humberto Medeiros has been the
spiritual leader of the archdiocese of
Boston a little more than two years. In
expressing his spiritual authority, he has
cherished each member of his flock as a
person for whom he is responsible to
God. He has considered each human
relationship as an eternal responsibility.
His authority has not been textured
with the harshness of an unbending or
callous discipline. He has tried to
recognize the uniqueness of each human
being. As he once told participants in a
White House religious service: “It is
impossible to be Christian without being
concerned for every man . . .As a man
and a Christian, I believe that my first
need is for God and that my second
need is for my brother.”
The annual archdiocesan fund-raising
drive he entitled “The Stewardship
Appeal” indicates Cardinal-elect
Medeiros’ opinion that all the gifts that
God gives us are things about which we
must care - and yet not care - because
we are stewards. We should be
open-handed and open-hearted with our
talents in the service of one another so
that we do not mind if what God has
given, He should take away, because we
are stewards.
" From the inception of his tenure as
archbishop of Boston, Cardinal-elect
Medeiros has urged its Catholics to act
heroically as “we hand on the message
(of Christ) to our materialistic and
bewildered world,” and he has spoken
of the need for a bishop to be available
“to all our brothers.”
The cardinal-elect has encouraged
innovation in a variety of ways. He has
restructured the archdiocese into three
regions, each headed by an auxiliary
bishop; Bishop Jeremiah Minihan directs
the northern sector, Bishop Lawrence
Riley the central, and Bishop Joseph
Maguire the southern.
Bishops Riley and Maguire were
secretaries to the late Cardinal Richard
Cushing, while Bishop Minihan was
secretary to Cardinal William O’Connell,
Cushing’s predecessor.
Each region is divided into four
vicariates, with a priest from each
vicariate elected by his peers and
appointed by the archbishop to serve as
episcopal vicar.
Archbishop Medeiros has espoused
new ministerial approaches: the Life
Resources Apostolate to coordinate
efforts to deal with the drug problem;
the Urban-Surburban Ministry to work
in behalf of indigenous alcoholics in the
city of Boston; the Permanent
Diaconate program has been instituted;
and Urban Apostolate priest
coordinators have been appointed to
bring together the ministries in each of
the sizeable cities in the archdiocese.
He also has revamped the
archdiocesan educational structure in an
effort to face the grave situation
confronting Boston’s schools and in
order to re-emphasize the inspiration of
Gospel values which are the basis of all
religious education.
He has established limited tenure for
pastors and, with the priests senate,
determined criteria for the appointment
of pastors.
Recently he announced a major
inter-faith anti-crime program for
Boston. This program will be
implemented in cooperation with the
Boston Ministerial Association’s
Ecumenical Committee on Crime
Prevention.
This program seeks to alleviate the
burden of poverty on Boston’s poor and
the threat of crimes against the elderly.
It is a reflection of the cardinal-elect’s
pastoral letter, “Man’s Cities and God’s
Poor,” in which he says “Crime is the
stark manifestation of disorder in our
society, a disorder which indicates the
serious inbalance of the material over
the spiritual values of our traditions.
“However, if we call for a return to
order or perhaps to the creation of a
new order wherein we recognize and
respect the dignity of every man, then
we are about our Father’s business.”
In his brief time in Boston,
Cardinal-elect Medeiros has tried to use
his gifts to the best of his ability. There
must have been moments when peace
seemed to be shattered and serenity
remote, but he has persevered.
ADMINISTRATIVE COMMITTEE OF NCCB - Cardinal John Krol
(right) gestures for Cardinal John Cody to bring up a report on abortion
which was endorsed by the administrative committee of the National
Conference of Catholic Bishops. The cardinals talked as the committee was
reconvening after a break Tuesday. Seated beside Cardinal Cody is
Cardinal John Dearden of Detroit. The 37-member committee rejected the
recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on abortion. (NC Photo by Thomas N.
Lorsung)
Pastoral Message of NCCB
A dministrative Committee on A bortion
saying that the right of privacy takes
precedence over the right to life. This
opinion of the Court fails to protect the
most basic human right - the right to
life. Therefore, we reject this decision of
the Court because, as John XXIII says,
“if any government does not
acknowledge the rights of man or
violates them . . .its orders completely
lack juridical force.” (PEACE ON
EARTH, No. 61)
The Court has apparently failed to
understand the scientific evidence
clearly showing that the fetus is an
individual human being whose pre-natal
development is but the first phase of the
long and continuous process of human
development that begins at conception
and terminates at death. Thus, the seven
judge majority went on to declare that
the life of the unborn child is not to be
considered of any compelling value
prior to viability, i.e., during the first six
or seven months of pregnancy, and of
only questionable value during the
remaining months. Ultimately this
means that the fetus, that is, the unborn
child, belongs to an inferior class of
human beings whose Godgiven rights
will no longer be protected under the
Constitution of the United States.
We find that this majority opinion of
the Court is wrong and is entirely
contrary to the fundamental principles
of morality. Catholic teaching holds
that, regardless of the circumstances of
its origin, human life is valuable from
conception to death because God is the
Creator of each human being, and
because mankind has been redeemed by
Jesus Christ (cf. PEACE ON EARTH,
Nos. 9 and 10). No court, no legislative
body, no leader of government, can
legitimately assign less value to some
human life. Thus, the laws that conform
to the opinion of the Court are immoral
laws, in opposition to God’s plan of
creation and to the Divine Law which
prohibits the destruction of human life
at any point of its existence. Whenever a
conflict arises between the law of God
and any human law, we are held to
follow God’s law.
Furthermore, we believe, with
millions of our fellow Americans, that
our American law and way of life
comprise an obvious and certain
recognition of the law of God, and that
our legal system is both based in it, and
must conform to it. The Declaration of
Independence holds that all men are
endowed by “their Creator with certain
unalienable rights,” among which are
“life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.” The Preamble to the
Constitution establishes as one goal to
the people of the United States “to
secure the blessing of liberty to
ourselves and to our posterity.” Without
the right to life, no true liberty is
possible.
The basic human rights guaranteed by
our American laws are, therefore,
unalienable because their source is not
man-made legislation but the Creator of
all mankind, Almighty God. No right is
more fundamental than the right to life
itself and no innocent human life
already begun can be deliberately
terminated without offense to the
Author of all life. Thus, there can be no
moral acceptance to the recent United
States Supreme Court decision which
professes to legalize abortion.
In light of these reasons, we reject the
opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court as
erroneous, unjust, and immoral. Because
of our responsibilities as authentic
religious leaders and teachers, we make
the following pastoral applications:
(1) Catholics must oppose
abortion as an immoral act. No
one is obliged to obey any civil
law that may require abortion.
(2) Abortion is and has always
been considered a serious
violation of God’s law. Those who
obtain an abortion, those who
persuade others to have an
abortion, and those who perform
the abortion procedure are guilty
of breaking God’s law. Moreover,
in order to emphasize the special
evil of abortion, under Church
law, those who undergo or
perform an abortion place
themselves in a state of
excommunication.
(3) As tragic and sweeping as
the Supreme Court decision is, it
is still possible to create a pro-life
atmosphere in which all, and
notably physicians and health care
personnel, will influence their
peers to see a value in all human
life, including that of the unborn
child during the entire course of
pregnancy. We hope that doctors
will retain an ethical concern for
the welfare of both the mother
and the unborn child, and will not
succumb to social pressure in
performing abortions.
(4) We urge the legal profession
to articulate and safeguard the
rights of fathers of the unborn
child, rights that have not been
upset by this Supreme Court
opinion.
(5) We praise the efforts of
pro-life groups and many other
concerned Americans and
encourage them to:
(a) Offer positive
alternatives to abortion for
distressed pregnant women;
(b) Pursue protection for
institutions and individuals
to refuse on the basis of
conscience to engage in
abortion procedures;
(c) Combat the general
permissiveness legislation
can engender;
(d) Assure the most
restrictive interpretation of
the Court’s opinion at the
state legislative level;
(e) Set in motion the
machinery needed to assure
legal and constitutional
conformity to the basic
truth that the unborn child
is a “person” in every sense
of the term from the time
of conception.
Bringing about a reversal of the
Supreme Court’s decision and achieving
respect for unborn human life in our
society will require unified and
persistent efforts. But we must begin
now - in our churches, schools and
homes, as well as in the larger civic
community - to instill reverence for life
at all stages. We take as our mandate the
words of the Book of Deuteronomy:
I set before you life or death . . .
Choose life, then, that you and
your descendants may live .. .
February 13,1973
A CLOSEUP LOOK AT A NEW CARDINAL -
Archbishop Humberto Medeiros of Boston shows a
variety of expressions as he talks with reporters after
his appointment to the College of Cardinals was
announced. He has said, “It is impossible to be a
Christian without being concerned for every man.”
(NC Photos by Philip A. Stack)