Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 3—September 6,1973
NEW ROCHELL, N.Y. (NC) - More
than 500 Sisters ended a convention
here promising to put theory into action
in efforts to make the role of women
more meaningful in the Church and
society.
The pledges for action came at the
third annual convention of the National
Assembly of Women Religious (NAWR)
held at the College of New Rochelle.
NAWR representatives from 48 states
and the District of Columbia attended
the four-day meeting.
Sister Ethne Kennedy, NAWR’s
outgoing chairman, told the convention
that women have been oppressed so
long that they don’t even know how to
take advantage of opportunities given to
them.
“We have to educate and stimulate
ourselves to become active in the roles
that are presently open to us and move
toward the development of other roles,”
she said.
Sister Mary Rehmann, newly elected
NAWR administrative assistant, told NC
News Service that Sisters today are
interested in seeing all women, not just
nuns, become more active locally in
meaningful projects.
Sister Rehmann said that one of the
most heartening results of the meeting
was to hear nuns give pledges to seek
more opportunities inside and outside
of the Church. She said lay women
would be encouraged to do the same
thing.
“We want all women to be more
aware of what avenues of opportunity
are open to them,” Sister Rehmann
said, adding that opportunities within
the Church are there “but not always
implemented.”
The sisters at the convention
attended workshops covering a variety
of issues including the rights of farm
workers, education, housing, aging and
health services.
A plan of action to support the
United Farm Workers Union in its labor
struggle was outlined and distributed in
printed form, so that nuns could return
to their communities with specific steps
to follow.
Several of the nuns who attended the
convention had been among the
Religious arrested in Fresno County,
Calif., for disobeying picket injunctions.
Sister Rehmann said their presence at
the convention helped bring the plight
of the farm workers into focus.
Sister Catherine Pinkerton, newly
elected chairperson to NAWR’s
legislative House of Delegates, called
upon all NAWR members to be active in
causes like the UFW’s. “We don’t want
theorizing, we want action,” she said.
In acknowledging that today in the
Church there is a wide variety of life
styles and ministeries among nuns,
Sister Catherine said that NAWR still
provides a good base for unity.
“I see the basic unity in NAWR as an
acceptance of diversity, the support of
each Sister where she is. I further see it
(NAWR) as both a movement and a
vision with an organizational base.”
She said that NAWR affirms of the
solidarity of Sisters “with each other
and with the human community in an
attempt to make the message of the
Gospel a reality in the lives of Sisters
and others.”
DUBLIN (NC) - St. Patrick’s Day is
to become a Day of National
Commemoration “which all Irishmen
can share, irrespective of their tradition,
denomination or politics,” Irish Prime
Minister Liam Cosgrave announced.
Pope’s Ten Commandments
On Prayer and the Liturgy
GASTELGANDOLFO, Italy (NC) -
Pope Paul VI put forward what he
called a “sort of decalogue of
suggestions” on prayer and on “the
Church’s official prayer,” the liturgy.
The first is to follow the Second
Vatican Council’s liturgical reforms
“faithfully, intelligently and diligently,”
he told a general audience at his summer
home here Aug. 22.
The second is to learn the scriptural,
theological and pastoral teachings of the
Church about divine worship.
PEOPLE IN THE NEWS -
Brother James Murray Bleackley,
O.M.I., will be ordained a priest
Sept. 15 in Whitehorse, Yukon
Territory. He is believed to be the
first Yukon resident to be
ordained. Sister Margaret Patrice
Slattery, new president of
Incarnate Word College in San
Antonio, Tex., has given up the
traditional inauguration
ceremonies so that the money can
go to a new scholarship fund. (NC
Photos)
“Prayer is not a blind sentiment, but
rather the projection of a soul
enlightened by truth and moved by
charity,” he commented, paraphrasing
St. Thomas Aquinas.
The third law enjoins “great caution
in reforming traditional religious
customs of the people.” Otherwise, he
said, one might “extinguish religious
feeling in the very act of clothing it with
new and more authentic religious
expressions.”
The fourth says: “The family must be
a great school of piety, of spirituality
and of religious fidelity. The Church has
great trust in the delicate, authoritative
action of parents in the field of religious
education. For their action there is no
substitute.”
The fifth states: “The precept of
Mass on Sundays and holy days
maintains, more than ever, its gravity
and its basic importance. The Church
has made concessions to make its
observation easier. Whoever realizes the
content and role of this precept must
consider it not only a primary duty but
a right . .
The sixth of the Pope’s 10
exhortations reaffirms the right of “the
constituted community” - by which he
seemed to mean the parish - to the
presence of all its faithful.
“If it is allowed to some a certain
autonomy of distinct and homogeneous
groups in religious practice, they must
not fail to understand the genius of the
Church, which is to be a people with
one heart and one soul .. .”
The seventh was directed to priests. It
declared that the celebration of Mass
must be prepared and carried out “with
great care, under every aspect.”
To those hearing Mass the Pope
directed his eight commandment,
urging “punctuality, quiet dignity, and,
above all, participation.” He called
participation “the principal point of
liturgical reform.”
The ninth noted that the fullness of
prayer should be both personal and
collective.
In his 10th exhortation, the Pope
seemed to indicate he favors preserving
the Gregorian chant in Latin for some
of the principal parts of the Mass: the
Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus and the
Agnus Dei.
He said: “Tenth, singing! What a
problem! But don’t lose heart; it is not
insoluble. A new epoch of sacred music
is arising.
“Many are asking that the Latin
Gregorian chant be preserved in all
countries for the Gloria, the Credo, the
Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. May God will
that it be thus. Just how it can be done
might be restudied.”
The government said it had decided
that it should be a day “on which the
state will solemnly commenorate all
who died for Ireland and all victims of
civil strife in Ireland, as well as
rededicating the people of Ireland,
under St. Patrick, to the pursuit of
peace.”
The government statement said that
“St. Patrick’s Day is a feast which has
been celebrated by many generations of
Irish people. The great event which it
commemorates--the coming of
Christianity to Ireland-has long been
celebrated by Christians of all
denominations and serves to remind us
of a common heritage dating from long
before our present divisions.
“It is a day, therefore, which all
Irishmen can share, irrespective of their
tradition, denomination or politics.”
The decision takes effect from St.
Patrick’s Day in 1974.
The government statement did not
give any details on how the day of
commemoration should be observed.
For the past few years St. Patrick’s
Day has been observed in many places
as a day of prayer for peace in Northern
Ireland, where civil strife has taken
hundreds of lives.
An editorial in the Irish Press urged
that authorities in Northern Ireland
observe St. Patrick’s Ehy as a holiday
and that there be joint observances in
the North and in the Irish Republic in
the south.
In Northern Ireland in 1972 there
were three times as many murders as in
the previous year, according to a police
report.
There were 376 murders in that year,
all but 12 related to the current civil
strife in the North.
A police official said the bombings,
killings, and attempted murders (1,210
in 1972) “reflect an unprecedented
campaign of violence against police
personnel and buildings.” Seventeen
policemen died in 1972 as a result of
the strife.
In Belfast, the Social Democrat Labor
Party (SDLP) urged Catholics not to
give any support to the militant
Provisional wing of the outlawed Irish
Republic Army (IRA), which has been
blamed for much of the bombings,
killings and other acts of terrorism.
The SDLP said the Provisionals are
placing serious obstacles in the way of a
political settlement.
A statement by the SDLF -- a
predominantly Catholic party - said
that the Provisional IRA is continuing
its campaign of bombing and shooting
that is “achieving nothing whatsoever,
other than to provide excuses for the
continuation of internment and the
continuing heavy military presence and
harrassment of minority areas, which
cause so much concern and suffeing to
the people of these areas.”
The Provisional IRA’s reply accused
the SDLP of hypocrisy and called the
SDLP statement “a frightened cry from
sick politicians whose behavior is like
that of a spoiled child.”
BISHOP HERMANN INSTALLED - Archbishop
Joseph Bernardin of Cincinnati, presents a crosier to
Bishop Edward Herrmann at the bishop’s installation
in Columbus, Ohio. In the background right is
Archbishop William Baum of Washington, D.C. Bishop
Herrmann is a former auxiliary in Washington (NC
Photo)
St. Patrick’s Day Will Become
Day of National Commemoration
Changing Role of Women
In Society Is Discussed
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Privacy, an Inalienable Right?
First of Four parts
BY BISHOP MARK J. HURLEY
The citizens of California awoke on the morning of November 8, 1972, to read in
the daily papers that they had amended their State Constitution by the passage of
Proposition XI. Propostion XI? What in heaven was that?
There had been practically no campaign of any appreciable magnitude pro or con.
The press, surprisingly, by-and-large did not show enthusiastic support or intense
oppostion, but generally took the view that the proposition was unnecessary,
redundant, already a matter of law. Opponents labeled it a scheme to protect welfare
fraud on the part of the poor and tax evasion on the part of the rich. Even the
guardians of the law, judges and lawyers, took little or no notice. Proposition XI by all
odds was a “sleeper,” and the people passed it by a large majority. It involved only
three words: “people” and “and privacy.”
The first article of the State Constitution now reads: “Inalienable Rights: All
people are by nature free and independent and have certain inalienable rights, among
which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and
protecting property; and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.”
The Substitution of the world “people” for “men” may well be claimed as a victory
for women’s liberation; the addition of “privacy” to the inalienable rights an earnest
and harbinger of things to come involving the executive, legislative, judicial branches
of government, not to mention the political, philosophical, and theological
implications.
With the astonishing growth and amazing development of technology--and
specifically the computer, magnetic tapes, and microfilms-there has been bom
concomitantly an insatiable appetite for information- gathering by government and by
private enterprise, a gourmand hunger and endless craving to gather, store, and retrieve
data of all kinds. Moreover, “throughout the public and private sectors, the amount of
information collected and stored about individuals is increasing at exponential rates.”
This appetite for information is at once desultory, capricious, and dangerous.
Thanks to the Watergate “caper,” the Pentagon papers trial, and similar escapades,
electronic surveillance has captured the attention of the nation. Reports of Army
intelligence agents spying on civilians during civilian riots and protest marches; the
“prophecies” to foretell potential rioters; the bugging of offices, public and private;
wiretaps and videotapes and all the rest make chilling reading.
But even more ominous and portentous is the potential inherent in the technology
which has given birth to databanks and methods of systems analysis which technology
encourages. With speed akin to light, gifted with a prodigious memory, databanks are
becoming the repository of a vast amount of information about people, data that can
be kept in storage indefinitely.
The Constiutional Rights Subcommittee of the Senate sponsored a study (1969)
which noted, inter alia, that the more economical computer technology has become,
the more “an army of specialists in the formation-processing field . . .and battalions
of investigators and analysts specializing in seeking out and reporting derogatory
information on individuals” grow and wax strong. Zeal to know the “total man” has
kept government and private computers filling dossiers “to overflowing with the daily
lives of people.” Computers have come of age, and databanks have achieved a
sophistication suggestive of Orwell’s 1984.
The Federal Government has at least twenty-seven agencies and bureaus gathering
information, much of it quite private and personal. The Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare “owns” the social security numbers. It used to be that a
youth would receive his social security number when he got his first job. Today that
number may be assigned on entrance to first grade or even earlier. Can the newborn
babe escape? The Internal Revenue Service, now computerized, gathers tax return
data; similarly the Pasport Bureau, welfare departments; civilian personnel
departments in government; the Department of Commerce with its file on seafarers;
the Census Bureau; the Center for Health Statistics; the Department of Justice; the
Bureau of Narcotics; the Naturalization Service; the Department of State with its
“lookout file;” the Customs Bureau; Secret Service, and the F.B.I., the C.I.A., etc., all
seek data, much of it private and personal, not to mention confidential and
compromising in some instance.
Employers in the private sector, are wont to gather personal information of
prospective employees, seeking even security clearances, at times without the subjects
themselves having any access to these same records. In an economy heavily dependent
on credit, bankers make extensive use of computers; credit-card companies build credit
dossiers on millions of customers. A fairly accurate profile of a person’s actions can be
constructed from the transactions of a steady credit-card user. Doctors, too, build up
files-often of a very personal and intimate nature. 700 life insurance companies rely
upon the Medical Information Bureau of Boston to check prospective insurees.
Student records are a major source of information for dozens of purposes, from the
granting of scholarships to employment. Even the driver’s license has become a source
of special attention; many states have sold driver’s lists commercially.
Finally, not merely the criminal records of all law enforcement agencies, but their
general files as well--the police files- contain vast quantities of information, much of it
confidential and, at times compromising to individuals and groups.
The potential for dossier-building staggers the imagination; the womb-to-tomb
history of each person retrievable on demand becomes a possibility, at the very least.
But what if all these files and dossiers could be centalized, cross-referenced, and, in
one place, made available? Is it possible to evolve the “total identifier” in a master-file,
perhaps under the social security number?
Pressures to introduce a single identifying nnumber for each citizen, known as
S.I.N., have come from both private and public sources. The advantages of S.I.N. are
obvious for hospitals, credit card companies, schools, banks, police, and others. All
chartered banks in the U.S.A., for example, have recently been required to record the
social security numbers of depositors to facilitate the retrieval of information for tax
purposes, a breach in the initial law on social security. Contrawise, Congress refused to
allow the social security number cross-reference on the 1970 census forms.
Sweden introduced identification numbers for all citizens in 1947; Israel in 1948,
Norway, 1964; and other countries expected to follow suit include the Benelux
countries, West Germany, Spain, Japan and Switzerland.
The single identification number and the concomitant “total identifier” pose both a
temptation and a threat. The enormous value in time saved, in costs, in accuracy,
whether to employers, police, the I.R.S., banks, life insurance companies, doctors,
and educators, can scarcely be exaggerated and consitute a real temptation. At the
same time, in terms of individual-and even corporate and institutional liberties, they
pose a threat of no mean proportions. A master-file under a single social security
number does not now exist; the U.S. Health, Education and Welfare Department
(HEW) study of this matter states, however, that “automated personal data systems
present a serious potential for harmful consequences, including infringement of basic
liberties.”
EDITORS NOTE: Bishop Mark Hurley is Bishop of Santa Rosa, Calif, and moderator of the
Secretariat for Human Values of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.