Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 7—The Southern Cross, May 10,1973
Late Prelate Good Friend of Press
SOMETHING S FISHEYE AT WATERGATE ~ A
fisheye lens view of the Watergate complex in
Washington, D.C., symbolizes the distorted political
activity which has come to light recently. One religious
leader called the Watergate affair “one of the deepest
moral crises in our history.” Other commented on the
scandal involving bugging of former Democratic
National Committee headquarters and an attempt to
cover up involvement after President Richard Nixon
made a national television address on Watergate and
announced resignations and firings of White House
aides. (NC Photo)
Watergate Called Moral Crisis
VATICAN CITY (NC) - The death
of U.S. Archbishop Edward Heston
removes from the Vatican scene one of
the best friends the international press
had on their side.
The 65-year-old archbishop had been
president of the Pontifical Commission
for Social Communications for only 20
months when he dropped dead of a
heart attack in Denver May 2.
The Archbishop was in Savannah,
April 27, to participate in the
ordination and installation of Bishop
Raymond W. Lessard.
But for almost a full decade before
COACHELLA, Calif. (NC) - The
bishop went on the picket line.
He went in support of
Mexican-American farm workers
belonging to Cesar Chavez’ United Farm
Workers Union (UFW).
The union has been on strike against
Coachella Valley grape growers who
have signed contracts with the
Teamsters union after rejecting renewal
of contracts which they had held for the
past two years with the Chavez group.
Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Donnelly of
Hartford, Conn., chairman of the U.S.
bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Farm
Labor, arrived here May 4 accompanied
by Msgr. George Higgins, committee
consultant and director of research of
the United States Catholic Conference.
They wanted a first hand look at the
situation which has developed since the
growers turned to the Teamsters.
They first held a news conference at
UFW headquarters here and then visited
four main ranches where UFW pickets
are stationed. In the evening they
attended a rally in the local park at
which some 400 workers and their
families were present.
The temperature was in the high
nineties and the pickets had been there
since four in the morning. They greeted
Bishop Donnelly with a traditional
“Viva la obispo” -- Long live the bishop
- but continued to line up and face their
teamster opponents who carried on a
loud speaker exchange of propaganda
from mobile and hand-carried public
address systems.
At each ranch Bishop Donnelly gave
a short address to the pickets, stood
with them, prayed with them, blessed
them and was taunted by Teamsters
guarding the ranch properties. At one
ranch the Teamsters were playing music
on their mobile speakers while the
bishop was praying with the strikers. A
local police officer ordered them to shut
it off until the prayers were over. At
his appointment to head the
commission, the Holy Cross priest from
South Bend, Ind., was a familiar and
trusted go-between for news and
television men assigned to cover the
Vatican.
In the constricted and specialized
world of Church affairs the question of
mutual trust among newsmen and
officials of the Vatican has always been
delicate and sometimes non-existent.
For the last 10 years of his life,
Archbishop Heston was a one-man
bridge between the two.
The archbishop, always loyal and
deeply devoted to the Pope and the
Vatican, by the force of his personality
and his commanding honesty created
another ranch a Teamster guard urged
the prelates to “stick to religion” and
“not to interfere in political matters.”
“Go back to your churches,” The
Teamster said, “and stop sticking your
nose into business which you know
nothing about. Stop supporting the
Communist line and get out of here.”
Bishop Donnelly had been in this
valley many times since early 1970 and
played a major role as a meditator in the
first contracts ever signed here between
the growers and the Chavez group.
In contrast., the Teamsters taunting
the bishops were imported by the union
from various parts of the Southwest.
They are paid about $50 per day to
stand guard at the ranches and to
protect the few Mexican-American
workers whom they claim as members.
There is little activity at any of the
ranches at this time, for grape harvesting
here does not start for several weeks.
The tensions in the strike are very
obvious. At two of the ranches visited
by the committee members police were
in the process of arresting a UFW
worker on the complaint of a Teamster
who was himself also cited in a
cross-complaint. But all sides agree the
local police are handling the situation in
a most objective and impartial manner.
At the evening rally Bishop Donnelly
told the strikers he was glad he came in
their hour of need.
“I am proud to have been with you
at your picket lines,” he said, “and to
have seen the situation for myself. I
pray that you will succeed in your
struggle against the Teamsters because
your cause is a just one.”
At the earlier press conference both
Bishop Donnelly and Msgr. Higgins
expressed the hjope that a settlement
could be reached without resort to
another grape boycott. Both were
highly critical of Teamster president,
Frank Fitzsimmons.
among newsmen here - even among
some who were avowedly hostile - a
sense of trust and confidence.
Not trained as a communications
specialist, Father Heston in 1963, was
literally drafted into the news world. He
was called on by the Vatican to act as
English-language press officer for the
second session of Vatican Council II. He
did his job so well that he filled that
office until the council finally
adjourned in 1965.
The job, which was only incidental
to his other post as Rome representative
of his congregation with the top
administrative offices of the Roman
Curia, kept him for long hours chained
daily to council sessions, lengthy
translations and time consuming press
briefings. His nights were filled with
frantic phone calls from harried
newsmen checking out rumors and even
rumors of rumors. Through it all, he
kept his usual unflappable good humor.
A solidly built man with shoulders
which reminded most people who met
him of Notre Dame football players,
Father Heston would stand for hours, if
necessary, filling in newsmen from his
own notes taken from the Latin debates
of the council, fielding questions with
ease and frank admissions of ignorance
when necessary.
His view of the press as formed from
the council briefing session he summed
up in 1963 when he said: “My own
personal reaction with regards to the
press is that we have not had a
moment’s difficulty. The newsmen are
interested, they want to know, they are
ready to report things exactly as they
are.”
Before the council ended in 1965,
the newsmen covering the four-year
event sent a petition to Pope Paul VI
asking that he be placed in charge of the
Vatican’s information activities.
Pope Paul, however, when not using
him as a press official on papal flights to
India and Colombia, had other ideas. He
named him secretary for the
Congregation of Religious and Secular
Institutes. Inadvertantly, he had placed
Father Heston in a job where his
experience in dealing with the press
served him well.
It was not long after Father Heston
had taken over the job of secretary that
the news story reporting widespread
abuses in the transfer of nuns from
India to Italy and other European
countries broke. Charges of scandal,
exploitation, and racist thinking filled
the papers and in the middle of it all
was Father Heston.
With candor and willing hard work,
Father Heston dealt with hudnreds of
phone calls and questions over a period
of several months. The upshot of the
affair was that the Vatican came out
with a report on the situation
recommending a number of steps to
remedy some existing defects but at the
same time dispelling and refuting the
main charges that had been levelled.
In August, 1971, the press got their
wish when Father Heston was appointed
the new president of the
communications commission. For the
20 months he was to head the
commission Father Heston - by then an
archbishop - labored to continue to
improve Vatican press relations and to
convince the higher officials of the
Vatican of the need for greater openness
and candor with the press. He was not
always successful, but even to the day
before he left Rome for what was to be
his last trip home, Archbishop Heston
was conferring with other
communication officials on future plans
for press activities.
Two stories come to mind which sum
up, in a way, the archbishop’s approach
to his job. One time during the council a
newsman sent to him to check out a
report.
Father Heston said he did not know
the answer but immediately added:
“Let’s go see so-in-so ( a Vatican official
who should have known the answer).”
The official denied the report flatly. But
a few hours later, Father Heston called
the newsman back to say: “After you
left, he (the official) told me in fact that
the report was true.”
Years later, an American television
reporter told this writer: “I don’t care
what they say about the Vatican press
set up. But thank God for Heston. I got
a hurry-up call the other night from
New York and I had to get something
with the Pope on film and fast. I was
desperate. So I called Heston. He
cleared all the hurdles in a matter of
hours. Now that’s what I call service.”
Years ago in reviewing two books
Father Heston wrote on press coverage
of the council, the New York Times said
he was “the best man to speak of the
council, at least from the point of view
of the English-language press.”
The review then added two sentences
that can well stand as a prophetic
tribute to the work he accomplished
with the press for the rest of his life:
“His work has earned him the respect
of hundreds of journalists whom he has
assisted. The warmth and goodness of
both the man and the priest have earned
their affection.”
WASHINGTON (NC) - The
Watergate affair, which reached new
proportions with the resignation of key
White House aides and President
Nixon’s admission of final
responsibility, was termed “one of the
deepest moral crises in our history” by
one religious leader.
Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the
American Jewish Committee said the
Nixon Administration’s response “must
be commensurate with the magnitude of
moral evil that’s involved.”
The Rev. Billy Graham praised the
President for “a commendable
humility” in accepting responsibility for
the actions of his aides.
But Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J.
Gumbleton of Detroit, a long-time critic
of Nixon Administration policies and
actions, disagreed. The President’s
speech, he told NC News, was “much
too self-serving. There was very little on
the Watergate - it was montly on ‘What
I’ve done before and what I’m going to
do now.’ It was really an attempt to
gloss over the whole thing.”
The religious leaders seemed to be
agreed that the basic moral question
involved now is political corruption and
the right of people to have a
government that they can trust.
Even Mr. Graham, a close personal
friend of President Nixon and a
supporter of many of his policies,
insisted that the whole truth must be
brought out. “We Americans cannot
accept corruption as a way of life,” he
said. “Democracy is based on trust and
confidence.”
down on its knees in repentance before
the Lord,” Mr. Graham said.
Rabbi Tanenbaum called for full
repentance by the President. “I was
impressed by the spirit of modesty -
almost crestfallen modesty - in his
speech,” he said. But he added that “in
terms of content it left much to be
desired.”
He pointed out that repentance
involves not only acknowledgement of
wrongdoing, but also a full
determination to change and subsequent
action “to actually change.”
Rabbi Tanenbaum said he has found
“a tremendous reaction of anger,”
especially among young people, to the
Watergate affair.
He pointed to the“preaching out of
Washington . .. almost of an evangelistic
kind,” and said Administration actions
on the Watergate affair have showed “a
basic discontinuity between preaching
and practice.”
“Underlying the whole democratic
system is a moral value system” that
operates on openness and trust, he said.
If the government is to regain the trust
of the American people, he said, it must
“lower its level of preachment and raise
its level of performance.”
The judgment of the President’s
moral leadership, said Rabbi
Tanenbaum, “will be determined by the
steps he takes in the next few days and
weeks.”
Rabbi Tanenbaum also faulted the
religious leadership in America for
“complicity” in creating a moral crisis
in America. “Religious communities
have been defective in their
responsibilities,” he said. “We have not
served our prophetic role” of
confronting the abuse of governmental
power.
Bishop Gumbleton echoed Rabbi
Tanenbaum’s feeling that Watergate has
created a moral crisis. “It’s destructive
of the whole moral tone of the
government,” he said.
“It’s revealing of the kind of
Administration we’ve had,” he said. He
cited the reported “attempts to destroy
other candidates during the campaign,
the flagrant abuse of campaign funds,
the cover-up of campaign
contributions.”
The crisis in confidence has reached
the point, he said, where “You have to
say, ‘What is true?’ As a citizen you
have no confidence in government.”
Bishop Gumbleton said he wondered
what effect the actions of government
officials involved in the Watergate affair
will have on the country, especially
the young people. He said he is afraid
that many will grow up with the feeling
that “that’s just the way things are
done.”
Commonweal, the lay-edited national
Catholic weekly, called the Watergate
affair “an apt measure of the morality
of the Nixon Administration - an *
Administration concerned above all
with the preservation and enhancement
of its own power, and committed to any
policy, from the bombing of Asian cities
abroad to the subversion of the political
process at home, to achieve that end.”
A MOTHER’S LOVE ~ Mother’s Day, May 13, is an American holiday,
but the love celebrated on that day is a universal experience. In India, Mrs.
Jyoti Kankamala lovingly holds her daughter, Renau, as they await help at
a child care center in the diocese of Nagpur, India. (NC Photo by Steve
Dunwell)
‘What this country needs to do is get
DEORIO S
I| [CARRY PUTS!
i^'TTo’ssVou'^y Plaza 563 5887 U
St. Irancis Shopping tenter
Maxwell
House
Coffee
Hotel &
Restaurant
Blend
Good To The Last Drop
Belford Co.
316 W. Congress AD 3-1171
Philip Batastini
Tailors - Cleaners
407 - 12th St.FA2-5900
Columbus
SOUTHERN CROSS
ADS BRING RESULTS
Georgia Paint & Body Works
24 HOUR WRECKER SERVICE
RADIATOR SERVICE
28 YEARS EXPERIENCE
90-Day Guaranty on all work
722-5346 518 13th Street Augusta, Ga.
A FULL
SERVICE
BANK
Banking service
that helps
you grow.
Every kind of help you need from a financial
service center.. .from a fast loan to sound advice.
Convenient, too, with ten offices. You and Savannah
Bank—think what the two of you can do!
SAVANNAH BANK
& TRUST COMPANY
Bishop Donnelly
Joins Picket Line