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PAGE 2—The Southern Cross, August 16,1973
A SHORT HISTORY
St. Joseph’s Parish 9 Bainhridge
(In October of this year,
Decatur County, in which
Bainbridge is situated, will
celebrate the one hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of its
founding. Each church was asked
to send in to the sesquicentennial
committee a short article on its
history. The following historical
notes were compelled by Rev.
Conall O’Leary, O.F.M.)
The modem history of Catholicity in
Decatur County goes back to the year
1881, when Father Charles Clement
Prendergast was appointed Pastor of St.
Theresa’s Church in Albany, Georgia.
Father Prendergast was a native of
Chatham County, Georgia, born there
on September 3, 1832. He made his
ecclesiastical studies in Paris and was
ordained priest there by Archbishop
Maria Augustus Dominus Sibour on
Dec. 23, 1854. As a priest* Father
Prendergast became known for his
tireless energy, deep spirituality and
self-sacrificing life. He had a friendly,
outgoing nature and became well-known
throughout southwest Georgia.
It was Father Prendergast who said
the first Mass in Bainbridge about the
year 1881. At that time, there were
only two Catholic families living in
Bainbridge; but several times each year,
Father Prendergast made trips to the
town and offered up Mass on an
improvised altar in one of the homes.
An old chronicle says: “Due to the large
territory over which the good priest
ministered, to the rough roads and the
poor traveling facilities, his visits were
necessarily infrequent.
“In 1882, the Most Rev. William H.
Gross, Bishop of Savannah, came to
Bainbridge to administer the Sacrament
of Confirmation. On that occasion, he
also lectured to a large crowd in the
Court House.”
In 1887, Father Prendergast
purchased a corner lot on Water and
Independent Streets. On this lot was a
small one-room building which had
served as a schoolhouse during the week
and as the Episcopal Church on
Sundays. Those who helped especially
in the acquisition of this lot were the
Messers Ned and Jack Swindell and their
two sisters, the Misses May and Maggie.
Miss May Swindell later became Mrs. T.
D. Deegan of Quebec, Canada. The old
chronicle states that: “The exterior
soon took on the appearance of a neat
little chapel, while the finish of the
interior with its altar, confessional and
sacristy, of selected curly pine from the
Swindell mill on the Flint River, caused
it to be acclaimed the prettiest interior
of any chapel in this section. The
statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary and
St. Joseph were gifts to the Misses
Swindell from friends in Canada. Miss
May gathered the few Catholic children
together for prayer and religious
instruction.”
Father Prendergast died in 1898.
Then, through the solicitation of Miss
May Swindell, Father Henry Schlenke,
of Columbus, made occasional visits to
Bainbridge, until this mission was
definitely attached to Albany with the
building of a rectory for the priest there
in 1901. The number of Catholics in
Decatur County increased slowly
through the years and the same small
chapel, without any additions,
accomodated the congregation.
With the appointment of an assistant
priest to the Albany parish, Mass came
to be celebrated in Bainbridge on the
first and third Sundays of each month.
In 1935 or 1936, Father Thomas A.
Brennan, then Pastor in Albany, moved
the small church of St. Joseph to the
center of the property, renovated and
beautified it. Our Monsignor Daniel J.
Bourke was assistant to Father Thomas
A. Brennan.
On July 1,1936, a new chapter began
in the history of St. Joseph’s Church
when Fr. Thomas I. Sheehan was
appointed first resident pastor of the
Thomasville Catholic Parish. This new
parish took in Decatur County and eight
other counties in southwest Georgia.
The priests of Thomasville now began to
minister to the spiritual needs of the
congregation of St. Joseph’s. Later
Catholic Pastors of Thomasville were:
Fr. Joseph G. Cassidy, appointed in
1939; Fr. Michael Manning, in 1940;
and Father John J. O’Shea, in 1945.
The final chapter in the history of St.
Joseph’s began in December of 1952,
when the Franciscan Fathers of the New
York Province were entrusted with the
care of the Thomasville Parish and its
extensive territory of nine counties.
Fr. Peter Charles Sheridan was the
first Franciscan pastor of Thomasville.
Father Hilary Deck was appointed the
first Franciscan administrator of St.
Joseph’s in Bainbridge. Father Hilary
was succeeded in 1956 by Father Finian
Kerwin. Since the original church was
then too small for the growing
congregation, many of whom were
working at the Bainbridge Air Force
Base, a new church was planned.
A large piece of property, extending
from Randolph to Middleton Street,
located between Alice and Ramsey
Streets, was bought and plans were
drawn up for a church to seat about 144
adults, with a parochial hall attached,
kitchen, toilet facilities, and a room to
accommodate the priest on his regular
visits to the church.
The funds for this building project
were supplied by the Franciscan
Missionary Union of Holy Name
Province. This new church was
dedicated on Nov. 30, 1958, by the
Most Rev. Thomas McDonough, Bishop
of Savannah.
With the deactivation of the
Bainbridge Air Force Base in 1961, the
congregation of St. Joseph’s was
reduced by the departure of a number
of families. However, in recent years
and months, a number of Catholic
families have been drawn to Decatur
County by the building of the various
industrial plants and shopping centes
and through the founding of the
Bainbridge Junior College, which will
open in September of this year.
The present St. Joseph’s Church is
capable of accomodating these new
Catholic families and others who will
move into this area. The Franciscan
Fathers continue to administer to the
congregation of St. Joseph’s Church.
SAINT JAMES HOME & SCHOOL ASSOCIATION
— At the helm of the St. James Home & School
Association for the 1973-74 school year will be Mrs.
Edwin Orzada, President, receiving the gavel from Mrs.
Lousis Bergmann, Past President. Other Officers
pictured are: (left to right) Mrs. Thomas McLaughlin,
Treasurer, Mrs. Bruce Render, President Elect, Mrs.
Edwin Orzada, President, Mrs. Lousis Bergmann, Past
President, Mrs. Eugene Murphy, Secretary, Mrs.
Vincent Boutin, Past Vice-President.
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206 East Bay Street Savannah 234-8868
St. Joseph’s Church and Parish Hall, Bainbridge.
SOCIOLOGIST THINKS SO
‘Family’ Staging Comeback?
BY JO-ANN PRICE
NEW YORK (NC) - The family is
making a comeback and ZPG (Zero
Population Growth) is in trouble,
according to Dr. Amitai Etzioni, a
Columbia University Sociologist.
The most important clue to the trend
in family life is that people who are
living together informally are getting
married because they find that “ad hoc
arrangements” really don’t work in
establishing families,” he said.
Dr. Etzioni, director of the Center for
Policy Research, a non-profit research
“think tank” which surveys everything
from cable television and communes to
the effects of pollution on swimmers,
sees many changes ahead for the family.
Fads will be dropped-for instance,
the demand for Zero Population
Growth (ZPG) is on the wane because
of such “negative effects” as rising
consumerism, increasing birth defects
from delayed pregnancies and an
increasingly aging U.S. population.
“We have tested all the taboos,” the
43-year-old Jewish sociologist, one of
whose early studies for Hebrew
University, Jerusalem, was on the
meaning of holidays for families living
in a dozen kibbutzim in Israel. “As a
result I would expect in the future there
will be a return to many things we have
dropped, and a new commitment to the
family.”
Dr. Etzioni’s views on ZPG are
contained in a current issue of the
magazine, “Evaluation.” In a book by
him, “Genetic Fix,” to be published in
November by the Macmillan Company,
analyzing the effects of “the new
genetics,” he questions the wisdom of
relying on abortions as a means of birth
control.
“This view is based on two medical
facts-that for a woman who has had an
abortion, the next child is nine times
more likely to be premature. Premature
babies weigh less, and are more likely to
be illness-prone.”
Research for this chapter, he noted,
was done by Dr. Christopher Tietze, of
the Population Council, New York.
“Whatever one thinks of birth
control,” he said, noting that he
personally did not oppose it, “one is
advised not to rely on abortion.”
Discussing Zero Population Growth,
Dr. Etzioni observed that “we get
enthusiasms as a society. We have sold
each other an idea which asks people to
give up something dear to
them-children-and, second, doesn’t get
them what they want, namely, the relief
of scarcity.”
His article notes that in March, 1973,
the number of births in the United
States in 1972 was the smallest in 27
years, dipping below the Census Bureau
“replacement level” of 2.1 children per
woman to an average of 2.03 children.
This has put the country not into ZPG
but into DPG (Declining Population
Growth) with no firm predictions for
the future. SRPG (Slowly Rising
Population Growth) is more desirable in
his view.
“We have been conditioned by years
of intensive campaigns to view
population growth as a source of many
evils, including crowding, tough
competition over ever scarcer resources,
war, low standards of living, and so on,”
he wrote. “But as with most
propagandistic campaigns, the fight for
smaller families has looked away from
the less attractive facets of the goal.
“These facets can no longer be
avoided.”
He went on to list negative factors as:
an increasingly aging population,
bringing spiraling health costs, crowded
facilities for the elderly and more and
more not-well Americans; more children
born with genetic deformities such as
mongolism--because of delayed
pregnancies; less demand and a slowing
down of the economy because of a
leveling off of the work force; increased
political conflicts since, within a stable
or shrinking economy, no one group can
get anything without taking it from
somebody else, and increased racial and
ethnic strains because middle-and
upper-middle-class whites appear more
willing to limit their families than some
groups of poor, blacks and Chicanos.
As the pendulum swings away from
perimentation, the family of the future
will be characterized, he observed, by a
return to former values.
“There will be a lessening of
husband-wife separations,” he
continued.
“We will have more children and a
greater commitment to the family as a
meaningful unit, rather than as a pad.
“There will be a new division of
labor. Somthing valid has come out of
ROCHESTER, N Y. (NC) - Bishop
Joseph L. Hogan of Rochester expressed
his “personal disappointment” and said
that he was “disturbed and confused,”
over the Vatican decree ending
experiments allowing children to receive
First Communion before First
Confession.
Saying that immediate
implementation of the decree would
cause serious problems in diocesan
programs in which first communion
comes before first confession, the
bishop said in a letter printed in the
Courier-Journal, diocesan newspaper:
“No modifications are to be made in
existing programs until the issuance of
new guidelines which will incorporate
the values learned from our experience.
I include especially the values of
parental involvement and the deeper
insights which we have learned in the
meaning of Penance and reconciliation.”
Calling the decree disciplinary in
nature, Bishop Hogan predicted
“exciting dialogue and confrontation”
when the U.S. bishops meet in
Washington, D. C., for their annual
meeting this November. He said that 80
percent of the bishops had presented
favorable reports on the experiments
last fall and that they expected the
Vatican to grant a two-year extension of
the experiment.
Saying that many pastors found the
experiment pastorally sound, the bishop
added, “ . . .The Eucharist could
precede it (Penance) because this
sacrament centers around a Person and
love which should be an earlier and
familiar part of a child’s life.”
Women’s Lib. With 5.5 million women
on the work force, home duties of
husbands and wives will be divided up
differently.
“Children will be taught differently.
Boys, for instance, are beginning to
learn that it is all right to cry.
“There will be great interest in the
extended family, and a realization that
dumping older people into institutions
can be inhumane. Grandparents have a
role. They’re more than baby sitters,
but a source of affection-without
demands-for children.”
Dr. Etzioni’s early studies in the
kibbutzim about holidays, in which he *
discovered a de-emphasis on meaningful
festivals such as Passover and a buildup
of such “carnival” feasts as Purim, is a
trend apparent on the American scene.
“We have taken the ‘holy’ out of
holiday. We prefer a Woodstock to an
Atonement day or a Fourth of July.
New Year’s used to be a day of
accounting and re-commitment-now it
is a carnival.”
But people are aware of this, he said,
and there is rising up in his sociological
statistics, “a great demand for ritual in
family life.” This is seen in Jewish
families as a vague effort to “have
something on Friday night”-the
Sabbath-in the home in the form of an
ad hoc ritual and perhaps by increased
numbers of home Masses among
Catholics.
Bishop Hogan is organizing a task
force of pastors, religious education
coordinators, sacramental theologians,
liturgists and parents to deal with the
“practical pastoral problems” causes by
the declaration.
JULIAN TONNING, a member
of St. Joseph parish, Way cross and
a Senior at Waycross High School
is on Safari with Explorer Scouts
from throughout the southeastern
U.S. The archaeological
expedition is headquartered in
Akumel, Mexico, and is studying
underwater life and habitat in the
Mexican city many consider as the
“Scuba-diving Capital of the
World.” Tonning is the son of Mr.
and Mrs. R. W. Tonning of
Waycross.
ROCHESTER PRELATE
Decree Disturbs Bishop