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PAGE 7—The Southern Cross, April 26,1973
Scholar Urges Theological Change
DEDICATION - A Knights of Columbus honor
guard renders a saber salute to the flag during
ceremonies dedicating a Freedom Shrine for Warner
Robins Sacred Heart School on Friday, April 13th.
The Freedom Shrine, which was donated by the
Warner Robins Exchange Club and sponsored by the
Callahan Family will remain on permanent display at
the school. This shrine contains authentic
reproductions of many historical documents such as
the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Father Walter
DiFrancesco, pastor, gave the invocation. Marvin
Marrow delivered the Freedom Shrine address for the
Club. Maj. Gen. Robert E. Hails, WRAMA
Commander, addressed the school on the meaning of
freedom. Sister M. Ignatius, Principal of Sacred Heart
School, accepted the dedicatory plaque from Guy
Fussell, President of the Exchange Club. Pictured along
with the Knights of Columbus and the Girl Scout color
bearers (1-r) are Dr. Dan Callahan, Gen. Hails, Fr.
DiFrancesco, Mr. Morrow, Sr. M. Ignatius, and Frank
Dauby, President of the Home and School Association.
Catholic School Cluster Dispute Solved
BALTIMORE (NC) -- A dispute over
a newly approved cluster plan for
Catholic schools in the city which had
brought charges of racism from black
leaders has been resolved by a change in
grouping for one of the schools.
Black parish leaders and parents had
complained that under the plan three of
the four elementary schools to be closed
were located in predominantly black
neighborhoods and that most of the
parishes granted a year’s postponement
in implementing the plan are in white
areas.
At a meeting in the Catholic Center
here, representatives of seven parishes
with sphools in the northwest urban area
voted unanimously to accept a
compromise that invovles the transfer of
St. Cecilia’s from northwest cluster 5 to
northwest cluster 4. Children will attend
St. Cecilia’s from kindergarten through
Diocese Sends ‘Spots’
Another series of the widely
acclaimed MICROTHOUGHTS has been
sent to radio stations in the Diocese of
Savannah as a part of its
communications apostolate. The sports
are short,one-line sayings that talk
about human values rather than about
the Church itself. They concentrate on
areas such as personal involvement,
poverty, and God’s love.
You might hear MICROTHOUGHTS
between records, after news stories- in
fact, just about any ,time ,dring the
broadcast day. They tell us, for
example, “To hear the cries of the poor
we have to listen.” And, “In youthful
love absence makes the heart grow
fonder. But in old age-it just hurts.”
The spots are produced and
distributed for the diocese by Paulist
Communications Services (PCS).
MICROTHOUGHTS are but one of
sixteen types of programming made
available to radio stations in the diocese
through PCS.
Rev. Frank Donohue, Diocesan
Director of Communications, urges all
who hear the spots to contact the radio
station and thank them for broadcasting
them. Involvement of this type, on the
local level, will insure a wider use of the
mass media to spread the Church’s
message.
grade 5 and All Saints from the sixth to
the eighth grades.
Parents had been concerned about
transportation under the original plan, a
spokesman for the archdiocese said, and
now they won’t have the same problem.
The same schools are closing as were
originally scheduled to close, and the
schedule for implementing the plan is
the same.
A statement by Auxiliary Bishop F.
Joseph Gossman of Baltimore, urban
vicar to Cardinal Lawrence Shehan, said
that those at the meeting argued that “if
any racism was implied in the
reorganization plan, it was
unintentional.”
“Apparently irreconcilable views
have been resolved in a fruitful way
through mediation and conciliation,”
Bishop Gossman said. “That quality
Catholic schools be preserved for all the
children in the area was the conviction
and the concern of all and transcended
any disagreements about how it was to
be accomplished.”
He hailed the agreement as an
example of collegiality, “the shared
responsibility and accountability of all
the People of God in the mission of the
Church.”
NEW ORLEANS (NC) - The
teaching of Catholic doctrine must take
changing theological views into account,
Sulpician Father Raymond Brown told
delegates at the annual convention of
the National Catholic Educational
Association (NCEA) here.
In his keynote address on
“Catechetics in an Age of Theological
Change,” the Scripture scholar blasted
“the arch-convervative section of the
Catholic press,” which he said “has
usurped the authority of the Church’s
magisterium to judge what is orthodox
in theology.”
Father Brown praised the U.S.
bishops’ recent document, “Basic
Teachings for Catholic Religious
Education,” as an important and
much-needed statement. But, he said,
“arch-conservatives” are trying to
misuse the document to destroy
contemporary theological investigation.
He accused them of trying “to turn
the clock back on genuine theological
progress” and said that if they succeed
in manipulating catechetics to conform
to their views, they will create “a future
generation of youth that will be even
less at home in the Catholic movements
of this century than their parents are.”
Although Father Brown’s attack on
arch-conservatives are almost certain to
capture the most attention in the media,
it was a relatively small part of his
20-page speech.
Father Brown compared the present
“crisis in theology” with the great
upheavals in thought from the fourth to
the sixth centuries and during the late
Middle Ages.
“And in every period of major
theological change there has been
resistance to the new ideas and the new
knowledge that were being put to *fche
service of Christianity,” he said.
“Only those unaware of the great
theological changes in the past will be
astounded by theological changes in the
present.”
Father Brown, who is the only
American member of the Pontifical
Biblical Commission and who will be
visiting professor at the Pontifical
Biblical Institute in Rome next year,
cited the example of recent biblical
scholarship to show that the Church
favors using contemporary knowledge
and tools in theological investigation.
“Between 1905 and 1915 the
Pontifical Biblical Commission in Rome
issued a series of conservative decisions
on the composition and authorship of
the Bible,” he said.
He then cited a series of events,
starting with Pope Pius XII’s 1943
encyclical on the study of the
Scriptures, which he said showed that
the Church has made “an undeniable
about-face in attitude toward biblical
criticism.”
“This dramatic change of position
was tacitly acknowledged in 1955 by
the secretary of the Pontifical Biblican
Commission who stated that now
Catholic scholars had “complete
Church Leaders Hit Nixon Cuts
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (NC) - Sixteen
Protestant, Jewish and Catholic church
leaders here have criticized Nixon
Administration budget cuts involving
social programs and asked for a united
effort to offset the effects of the
cutbacks.
The clergymen said “recent
restrictive regulations, impoundments
and cutbacks in government
spending . .. endanger our country’s
ability to provide for its children, the
urban and rural poor, the retarded and
handicapped and the aged.”
At a press conference, Catholic
Bishop Andrew McDonald of Little
Rock said that while the statement was
critical of the Administration, “We’re
looking for something very positive,
though.”
“We feel there is a way out of the
dilemma if people understand
that human rights should have top'
priority,” Bishop McDonald said. The
statement, he said, was not a political
document but an expression of “deep
concern for human needs.”
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freedom’ with regard to those decrees of
1905-1915 except where they touched
on faith or morals (and very few of
them did),” Father Brown said.
But because theological thought in
Scripture and other Fields is changing,
the Scripture professor said, there is a
serious problem .in the formulation of
Catholic doctrine. He quoted from Pope
John XXni’s opening speech at the
Second Vatican Council:
“The substance of the ancient
doctrine of the deposit of faith is one
thing, and the way in which it is
presented is another.”
Father Brown said biblical scholars in
recent decades have recognized that the
words of the Scriptures - although they
are the revealed word of God - are
limited by their historical context.
Particular doctrinal statements by the
Church, he said, are “under a similar
historical limitation.”
The idea that a past formulation of
doctrine can be modified does not mean
that it was wrong, Father Brown said.
Rather, it is a matter of theologians
“bringing the Church to distinguish
between those elements of previous
formulations which are permanently
helpful and those elements which are so
time-conditioned that they can best be
dispensed with.”
But when this sort of theological
questioning is going on, he said, it
makes it very difficult for the religious
educator to teach doctrines.
“Because theologians are rethinking
aspects of past doctrines, are teachers of
doctrine to become tongue-tied as if
there were nothing certain that they
could pass on? — as if everything
doctrinal were ‘up-for-grabs?’ Personally
I can think of no greater disaster for
Catholicism,” Father Brown said.
He said catechists cannot ignore the
theological discussions that are going
on, but at the same time there is a baisc
validity to past formulations.
“Precisely because past formulation
reflect a valid if limited grasp of divine
truth, we can use those formulations,
provided that we are aware of both
their validity and their limitations,” he
said.
Father Brown praised the U.S.
bishops’ recent document “Baisc
Teachings for Catholic Religious
Education.”
“First of all, the bishops have taken
an admirable step in insuring that our
catechetics should communicate
content as well as attitude,” he said.
“Second, the bishops have expressed
their basic teachings in a way that shows
a sensitivity about both the validity and
limitations of past conceptions of
doctrine. They cover the necessary span
of Christian teaching . . .Yet, as far as I
can see, the bishops have taken care not
to include in the formulations of these
ancient doctrines phrasings that would
hinder the legitimate discussions of
modern theology.”
Father Brown scored the
arch-conservatives who claim that the
basic teachings represent “a
condemnation of modern theology.”
“An effective way for teachers of
Catholic doctrine to combat this divisive
tendence is to follow the lead the
bishops have given us,” the theologian
said. “Teachers should present in
catechetics the fundamentals the
bishops have underscored in their
document, and yet at the same time
pedagogically prepare the students for a
future encounter with theological
discussions about aspects of doctrine
that the bishops have left open.”
“To neglect either the heritage of the
past or the contribution of the present
is a failure in religious education,”
Father Brown concluded.
Ecumenism and the Passion
BY MARY RAUSCH
Friday the 13th was a unique evening
for parishioners of St. Teresa of Avila.
Invited guests were members of Our
Savior Episcopal Church. This was a
return-exchange visit by the
Episcopalians, who has hosted Catholics
at their Lenten Program followed by
discussion concerning the Eucharist and
Holy Communion two weeks ago.
The first event of the evening was a
presentation by 6th and 7th grades of
St. Teresa’s CCD beginning with the
Last Supper and ending as Christ was
led to crucifixion. Dr. David Mainz and
his assistant Janet Kellow, seventh grade
teachers, and Mrs. Joan Fish, sixth-grade
teacher, directed the thesbians.
Narrators Pat Regan and Mike Kellom
began with an introduction about one
of Christianity’s greatest gifts to the
world - Ash Wednesday, the feast of
humility. Suffering, sin and death - the
message of Lent - leads into the
message of Easter - joy and
resurrection.
The role of Jesus was played by
David Latif. Disciples included Rafael
Delgado, Pinck Lovelace and James
Haitt. Haitt also played the part of the
High Priest. Gary Dobos was Pontius
Pilate and Judas was played by Ginny
Lovelace. Soldiers JqhQ,,Huggins and
John Delgado were accompanied by the
“crowd”: Grace Sewell, Claudine
Baldwin, George Conrad, Penny
Huggins, Lori Ross and Sandra
Ledbetter.
After the performance Monsignor
Felix Donnelly and Father Thompson
of Our Savior Church led the Way of the
Cross. This was followed by an Adult
Education Program.
Plans are being made for monthly
meetings with the Episcopalians.
REGISTRATION -1973
DCCW CONVENTION
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