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PAGE 3—September 13,1973
Nuns Urged to Renew Spiritual Life
WASHINGTON <NC) -- Five hundred
Sisters from over 100 religious
communities around the country were
urged by speakers to renew their
spiritual life and commitment as
Religious at the sixth conference of the
Consortium Perfectae Caritatis here
Sept. 1-4.
The Consortium Perfectae Caritatis --
Consortium of Perfect Love -- was
founded three years ago to uphold
Church authority in the renewal of
spiritual life among women Religious.
“One of the major tasks for Religious
men and women today is to prove by
their lives that the love of neighbor
flows from the love of God,” said
Archbishop Jean Jadot, apostolic
delegate in the United States, at the
concelebrated Mass marking the
conclusion of the four-day meeting.
He warned against restricting the
religious life to the “horizontal
dimension” of service to men and
forgetting the “vertical dimension” of
Euthanasia Group Sues Knights
Of Columbus for $1.3 Million
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (NC) -
A $1.3 million libel suit has been filed
against the Knights of Columbus by the
American Euthanasia Foundation, Inc.
(AEF), which claims the K of C
“directed libelous and slanderous
statements to the press, including an
international wire service, in an effort
to damage the foundation’s legislative
process.”
The AEF suit contends that its
executive director, Vincent F. Sullivan,
was libeled in a letter sent to the St.
Petersburg Times by the chairman of
the ecumenism committee of K of C
Council 5869 in New Port Richey, Fla.
A copy of the letter was sent to United
Press International in Miami, according
to the suit.
The letter was written by Edward J.
O’Shea in response to a Times interview
with Sullivan.
O’Shea, Council 5869, and the
National Association of the Knights of
Columbus were named as defendants in
the case.
The interview concerned the work of
the AEF and its efforts in behalf of a
proposed “Death with Dignity” bill in
the last Florida legislative session.
Sullivan was described in an AEF
press release as a supporter of the
“Catholic Church for many years (and)
as a special consultant on public
relations for the Archdiocese of New
York.”
O’Shea’s letter severely criticized
Sullivan for his support of euthanasia
and implied that Sullivan was not
following the teachings of the Catholic
Church.
STAMP DESIGNS ANNOUNCED - These are the designs of the 1973
Christmas stamps, the U.S. Postal Service announced. They will be issued
Nov. 7 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The print order is
one billion of each. The madonna and child stamp is adapted from a
painting by Raphael in the National Gallery. The second stamp is an old
fashioned Christmas tree designed in needlepoint. (NC Photos)
prayer and contemplation-a theme that
was also expressed in various ways by
earlier speakers at the conference.
Jesuit Father Vincent Miceli scored
the “banishment of God” from modem
society and “a general loss of faith” in
the modern Church.
He called upon the Sisters to return
to living the religious vows of poverty,
chasity and obedience in order to be
witnesses to the sacred in the secular
city that has become a “sacrilegious
cesspool.”
“In our times a social climate charged
with hatred of God, poisoned with
irreducible religious — moral — political
tensions and with hourly seditious
preachments bereft of all truth, of all
objectivity, of all love, is the logical,
violent result of the loss of the sense of
the sacred,” said the American Jesuit
who teaches at the Angelicum college in
Rome.
“Indeed a fascination for the secular
with a tendency toward the sacrilegious
has eroded the sense of the sacred in the
‘New Church’ Catholics,” he added.
Father Miceli also urged the Sisters to
wear religious habits as a sign of the
sacred-a call that was echoed by retiring
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen of
Rochester, N.Y., during Benediction at
the National Shrine of the Immaculate
Conception on Labor Day. That the
Sisters agreed was evident in the fact
that all of the Sisters at the conference
were dressed in habits.
French Dominican Father Raymond
Regamey told the Sisters to maintain
their identity as women Religious in the
face of the crisis in the Church today.
He reminded them that the Religious
life cannot be reduced to a
psychological or sociological fact, but it
can only be understood in the context
of the spiritual.
“Today, the compulsion to
rationalize everything-and we must in
our scientific and technological
civilization-leads more than ever to the
use of reason without reference to the
spiritual sense of things and events,”
said Father Regamey.
“Religious life is an ‘affaire du
coeur’. . .an affair of the heart in the
biblical sense of the word heart, that is,
what is most intimate in man . . .,” he
said.
“The teachings of psychology and
sociology are highly beneficial,” said the
73-year-old priest and author, “but each
day, I see that the worst subversions
would be the reduction of Religious life
to the tenets of these two sciences.”
He warned the Sisters not to fall prey
to “instant innovations” in religious
renewal. For religious orders the
principal “source of their vitality” lies
in “fidelity to the particular ‘charism’”
of the order’s founder, he said.
OLD AND NEW - A Phoenix, Ariz., landmark - St.
Mary’s Catholic Church -- is reflected in the glass doors
of the city’s new convention center, a part of the
Phoenix Civic Plaza. The Diocese of Phoenix,
ARIZONA BISHOPS
established in 1969, with Bishop Edward A. McCarthy
as first Ordinary, includes many contrasts of
modernity and historic scenes. (NC Photo by Henry P.
Unger)
“Let Farm Workers Choose Union”
PHOENIX, Ariz (NC) - The bishops
of Phoenix and Tucson have called for k
democratic election by farm workers to
choose a union and end the serious
hardship imposed on workers and
growers alike.
The Labor Day statement was issued
by Bishop Francis J. Green of Tucson
and Bishop Edward A. McCarthy of
Phoenix who declared that the “bitter
struggle in the agriculture areas of
California has now been extended to
our own state.”
“We are gratefully aware that not all
growers in Arizona can be accused of
mistreating their workers, the bishops
said, adding the hope that the workers
would be allowed by secret ballot to
select a union to represent them.
They added, however, that in
Arizona, as in most of the nation, the
wages and working conditions of
farmers are often below the survival
level for human existence.
“We encourage our Catholic people
to support the efforts being made for a
just settlement of this conflict which is
causing harm and serious hardship to
both grower and worker alike.”
The bishops said that for the last 10
years or so the UFWU has attempted to
organize the farm workers, and that
recently the Teamsters Union has
negotiated contracts with growers.
The Teamster contracts, the bishops
contend, were negotiated with the
growers without giving the farm workers
any voice in the negotiations and with
the obvious intent of destroying the
UFWU.
“The result is that the worker has
been caught in a conflict over which he
has no control,” the bishops said. “The
bitter struggle in the agricultural areas
of California has now been extended to
our own state.”
The bishops said the question of
union membership and the choice of a
union is one which only the farm
worker can answer. “Neither the grower
nor the rival unions have the right to
answer that question for the worker,”
they said.
| |
Privacy, an Inalienable Right?
(Second of Four Parts)
BY BISHOP MARK J. HURLEY
In his Data Banks in a Free Society, Alan F. Westin labels as “mostly fantasy” the
image of computers storing up data, talking among themselves, and linking up tapes
and discs to form a surveillance net from which no fact about an individual’s life can
escape. Vast centralized computer databanks simply do not exist, despite a widespread
conviction to the contrary in the mass media and the public.
Experts affirm that it is scarcely feasible economically to store data of vast
magnitude directly in the “on line” memory of the computer. But they also point out
that the computer can be programmed to key in on the “off-line” memory with data
stored on discs, magnetic tapes, and on microfilm, as well as cards. The Taxation
Division of Canada, for example, stores on 125 reels of magnetic tape the records of
10 1/2 million taxpayers, consisting of 500 characters each. At the same time, all
’experts agree that computers will become smaller in size, more versatile in operation,
and much less expensive to purchase and operate.
While the “total identifier” does not as yet exist, it cannot so easily be dismissed as
not feasible simply on economic grounds. Rather, Westin’s study recommends a social
and legal policy be effected “with built-in safeguards hammered out before the
inevitable development of centralized computer record-keeping.”
A Canadian Government task force in its study, Privacy and Computers (1972),
which enjoyed “close liaison” with Professor Westin’s study group, stated in its
opening words the dimensions of its work: “The widespread development of highly
computerized databanks has given rise to increasing concern about their potential use
for invasions of personal privacy.” This study rejected the proposition that, in mid
-1972, “a social crisis” exists and that invasions of privacy are so widespread as to
cause alarm. Yet “continuing worries exist” because few data banks have been
designed and installed with a concern for privacy built into the planning process,
except for institutional self-interest.”
“The privacy crisis,” the study concludes, “unlike the ecology crisis, which was
predicted but largely ignored until severe damage had been done to the environment,
need never happen. Appropriate preventive measures can make certain it never will.”
While there is no doomsday syndrom forming in this matter, no need for prophets
of doom, yet the Canadian task force warns that “insensitive or wilful use of the
computer could lead us closer to 1984.”
The city of Huntington Beach, California, is reported in the press to be the first
American community to have entered each one of its citizens-man, woman and child,
guilty or innocent, accused or unindicted- on its police department’s computer. On
the basis of home address, the data includes medical information, abandoned cars,
water bills, credit history, and even the name of the family dog. Financial support
comes from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration of the Federal
Government. The question can reasonably be asked if the citizens of Huntington
Beach or anywhere else in the U.S.A. realize the extent and range of
information-gathering going on without their knowledge in many, if not most, cases.
Do they realize that dossiers are being built up without the knowledge of the persons
involved; without the possibility of review, and correction of “raw files” and “raw
data”; without the knowledge of who-in or out of government-has access to these
files?
This same Law Enforcement Assistance Administration is pumping millions of
dollars into state and local police departments to promote computerization, “108
computer projects in 1971” alone. Similarly the FBI-managed National Crime
Information Center is creating a network which ultimately will join over 6,000
law-enforcing agencies, a single source of data.
“All of these trends must be looked at as a unit because their confluence represents
a terrifying spectre,” writes law professor Arthur Miller.
One need only reflect on the Watergate hearings to note that “informal”
interchanges of FBI files took place between the Attorney General’s office and the
Committe to Re-elect the President. The computer hasn’t much changed the methods
of political campaigns, but it has made such exchanges easier, more efficient, and most
tempting. Moreover, under the old manual files, it was possible to get away from one’s
past and begin again a new life free of damaging information.
Technology, however, promises to create a “dossier prison” wherein every entry will
remain for life, a possible “hearsay narrative” without literal or contextual accuracy.
The prospective employee may be asked if he were ever “arrested.” Even though
subsequently acquitted, his “yes” answer may well foredoom his chance for
employment.
The computer will keep that “fact” indefinitely. In his official inquiry for the
House of Representatives, Congressman Cornelius Gallagher contrasted the
Judeo-Christian concept “to forgive and forget, to make amends and begin again” with
the “computer that cannot forget and that is incapable of forgiving.”
Assemblyman Kenneth Cory, who introduced the “privacy” amendment in
California, summed up the matter in these words: “The frightening thing about many
of these files is the individual may never know he is in them or who has seen the
information recorded. If this information were centralized and augmented (by
cross-reference files), government could truly know more about many of us than we
know ourselves.”
The June 25,973 U.S. News and World Report reported, “A Fight Over Who Can
Look at Your Tax Return” in which a presidential order to open the income-tax
returns of 3 million farmers to the U.S. Department of Agriculture has engendered a
reaction in Congress described as “explosive.” The Department sought the requested
data “on tapes” directly from the I.R.S. computers at Martinsburg, W.Va.
Senator Sam Ervin has recited a litany of offenses against personal privacy: the
selling or lending of lists of names on government files; the sharing of “blacklists”
among agencies; the sharing of credit lists, check on the finances, sex life, personal
beliefs, and associations of famous and unknown people alike; and even the
questioning of women by the Federal Housing Administration on birth control
practices, the private advice of doctors, in reference to loans on homes. “Unchecked,
we will have the trappings of a police state,” he concluded.
One technical expert said simply: “Considering what I know about
micro-electronics, I must conclude that the worst is yet to come. We must manage the
keepers of the machines!”
Computer technology and databanks serve men and are controlled by humans. They
are not autonomous. But who controls the human factor? Who protects not only the
individual citizen, but as well groups, associations, corporate entities, racial and etnic
and religious assemblies from the mis-use and abuse of technological data gathering?
How control the insatiable appetite and inordinate zeal of some of those in power,
whether in the public or private sector? Quis custodit custodem? Who will watch the
watcher?
The computer is a man-splendored animal; consequently, there is much potential
protection right in the technology itself, sophisticated means whereby safeguards can
be part and parcel of the databanks themselves. Most observers call for new laws.
Others, while conceding the role of law, would add the need for a public morality and
moral consensus on the protection of privacy. But no databank system can ever be
fully secure and “security measures can be broken if the pay-off warrants the trouble.”
Thus, physical security and control of access as well as steps taken to insure honest
personnel are at least as important as some of the sophisticated protection measures
programed in the computer system itself.
Computer systems use such devices as “passwords” stored in two places, i.e., with
the user and the system, for the retrieval of data; various codes for scrambling and
unscrambling data; limited access control not only as to “who” but as to access to
“what”; audit trails to detect unauthorized usage. IBM, for example, has announced an
investment of $40 million in the next few years to develop security protective
hardware for its computer systems.
With its wondrous capacity to accept, store, and retrieve information, the computer
in its very sophistication can as easily be programed to destroy data. Medical facts, for
example, can be processed for research and statistical purposes and then “forgotten”.
Similarly the facts may be stored but the identity of the human subject erased.
Futhermore, the computers can be “taught” to require the identity of the person who
takes information.
The salient point is, however, that security up to this date has been geared awards
the protection on industrial and political security against espionage, and not in the
context of individual privacy. Databanks that contain sensitive information require
technical programing that protects the human right to privacy insofar as is reasonable.
Much can be done, then, to build-in certain safeguards. But such is but a first step; the
law of the land must reckon the new technology and its ramifications even beyond the
invasion of privacy.
This legal approach to the protection of privacy is not so simple. To leave it to the
courts and judiciary will not solve the problem of proper protection; nor will
legislatures solve the questions alone. There is a necessary interplay between the
judiciary and legislative branches of government; but equally there is similar
relationship between them and the administrative and regulatory agencies of
government.
Courts can be slow; litigation costly and time-consuming. Principles are developed
over a long period, case-by-case; the redress of wrongs is past history. More is needed,
yet the court’s role is crucial. Similarly, the need for new laws that will undoubtedly
emerge as challenges, particularly to the regulatory agencies,-is v«ised. Yet the key
question seems to be: Is there a superior public interest to which individuals must
yield their privacy?