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The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 54 No. 33 Thursday, September 27,1973 Single Copy Price - 12 Cents
Black Catholic Collection Set for Oct. 7
On Sunday, October 7, 1973, Black
Catholics -- as well as all concerned
Catholics throughout the United States
- will be asked to give their support to
the National Office for Black Catholics.
NOBC -- a unique organization in the
Church -- was developed by black
Catholic priests, sisters, brothers and
laymen to give them a stronger voice
within the Church, and to renew the
basic approach to Church-related
services in the black community.
NOBC was initially funded by the
National Conference of Catholic
Bishops. At the present time, the major
part of the funds for programs
sponsored by the Black Catholic Office
are raised in the annual Black Catholics
Concerned program. Although the
appeal is directed primarily to black
parishes, NOBC welcomes the
participation of any individual or parish.
The programs for which the National
Office for Black Catholics will use the
money collected on October 7, are:
1. A National Office for the
recruitment of Vocations among black
youth.
2. The development of
Afro-American resources for liturgical
use.
3. Theological and Pastoral Education
programs for seminarians and priests,
religious and lay personnel working in
the black community.
4. Lay Leadership Development.
5. Educational Services for Catholic
Schools in the black community.
Basic to NOBC’s philosophy is the
belief that black Catholics have a
responsibility to build the Church in
their own community, and to
contribute to its human and social
needs. NOBC also believes black
Catholics have a responsibility to the
Church itself on all levels of
organization.
SAVANNAH, NOV. 8-10
Congress Speakers Named
MEET MY FATHER/FATHER. Chaplain (Capt.)
Andre Legault of the Canadian Army is shown with his
family -- five children he adopted in Haiti. The Roman
Catholic priest, 30 years old, was the first Catholic
clergyman to take advantage of a new Canadian law
permitting adoption by unmarried persons. Says
NOBC WORKSHOPS
Father Legault: “I was young, healthy, getting a good
salary as a chaplain that I had nobody to give it to.”
With parent Legault, clockwise, are Denis, 18; Yolene,
14; Gabriel, 16; Hugues, 10, and Margaret, 14, all
natives of Haiti. (RNS Photo)
Hope for Black Vocations
REV. JOHN R1CARD, S.S.J.
One cannot help but wonder when
one reflects even in a cursory manner on
the million or so black Catholics in this
country and discovers that of that
number there exist only a frightfully
few 180 black priests, about 300
brothers and 900 sisters.
In an area as Washington, D.C., for
example, which has a relatively large
black Catholic population - 70,000 plus
-- there are only 5 black priests, 18
sisters and religious brothers.
Historically, I suppose, one can cite
many factors which brought us to our
INSIDE STORY
Soul in Worship
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Privacy
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Films
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Mt. do Solos
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present dilemma - a deliemma indeed,
for a Church which is universal in scope
by its very name, yet in the mid-20th
Century has such a contradictory void.
Viewing the situation from a
historical perspective, we cannot
overlook the fact that black candidates
were often systematically discouraged
from the active ministry in the Church.
Early accounts of the Church in this
country (and also some fairly recent
ones) as it came into contact with the
black freedman, indicates a reluctance,
if not outright refusal, to accept black
candidates for the priesthood and
religious life. Evidence of this climate is
found in the fact that of the few black
priests who were ordained in the early
part of this century, most were ordained
in Canada.
Unfortunately, this discouragement
of the black candidate is not new to the
Church nor is it peculiar to Blacks. We
need only to read the chronicles of the
Middle Ages to find that the Church in
Southern and Eastern Europe, still
enjoying the fruits of Greek and Roman
Civilization, looked with suspicion and
discouragement at the possibility of the
Northmen - the non-Greek or
Latin-speaking (and therefore barbaric)
Celtics, Germanics and Franks -
entering the holy ranks of Orders or
religious life.
The National Office for Black
Catholics is forging a major recruitment
effort which it hopes to conduct
nationwide. Beginning with a National
Black Vocation Workshop to be held in
Washington in November for Vocation
Directors from all parts of the country,
NOBC will attempt to sensitize Dioceses
and Religious Communities to the needs
of additional black clerical and religious
personnel. It will offer through this
Workshop and other programs, creative
and innovative insights and techniques
in recruitment.
\
Borrowing from the highly successful
Black Professional recruitment efforts
used in private industry and from the
experience of the Black Protestant
Church, it will seek to inform vocation
recruiters about such methodology and
thereby move ahead in a long neglected
area.
A major aspect of NOBC’s Vocation
Workshop will be the development of a
working plan of action drafted by the
assembly of Vocation Directors
themselves, and which will act as a
catalyst and guide to dioceses and
religious communities in their
recruitment efforts.
There does remain hope that we will
begin to see meaningful changes in the
near future in a condition that is
over-due. Certainly NOBC, and many
black priests and religious are striving
for this as they place top priority on
this effort and invest much time and
resources towards bringing the Chqrch
in this country to its true catholicity, at
least among its clergy and religious.
Major speakers at the forthcoming
Catholic Congress on Worship to be held
at Savannah’s Civic Center Nov. 8-10
will be Father Alfred McBride, 0.
Praem., Msgr. J. Warren Holleran and
Bishop Rene Gracida.
They will use four main presentations
to develop the theme of the Congress:
“We Believe - Let Us Pray.”
Father McBride will open the
Congress with his lecture on “Believing
in Jesus^L, which will be followed by a
prayer service on the theme “Jesus is
Lord.” He will also give the third
lecture, “The Church at Prayer.”
Msgr. Holleran will speak on “The
Prayerfulness of T esus,” and Bishop
Gracida will give the fourth main lecture
on “The Church at Prayer Today.”
The Congress is sponsored by the
Bishops of Georgia and North and
South Carolina. It is the fourth of its
kind to be held in the Atlanta Province,
which includes the Archdiocese of
Atlanta and the dioceses of Savannah,
Charleston, Charlotte and Raleigh.
Father Alfred McBride, author and
educator, is Director of the National
Forum for Religious Educators at
N.C.E.A. A member of St. Norbert
Abbey in De Pere, Wisconsin, he was
ordained in 1953 and has worked as a
parish assistant, a high school teacher,
and as a professor of Religious
Education at Catholic University. He
holds a diploma in Catechetics from
Lumen Vitae, in Brussels, and a
doctorate in Religious Education from
Catholic U.
Father McBride is the author of
“Homilies for the New Liturgy,”
“Catechetics: a Theology of
Proclamation,” “The Human Dimension
of Catechetics,” “A Short Course on the
Bible,” and “Growing in Grace.” He
also wrote the popular Church History
text for Junior High Schools, “The Pearl
and the Seed.”
Msgr. J. Warren Holleran is the
Director of Vallombrosa Retreat Center,
and Professor of Sacred Scripture of St,
Patrick’s Seminary of Menlo Park,
California. A native of San Francisco, he
pursued his classical and philosophical
studies in the San Francisco
Archdiocese and then went to Rome as
a student of the North American
College.
After his ordinatiofi in Rome in 1952
he returned to the United States, where
he worked as an Associate Pastor in San
Francisco parishes and served as a
Newman Director and college teacher.
He acquired his Master’s Degree in
Philosophy at Berkeley.
In 1962, Msgr. Holleran went back to
Rome as Spiritual Director of the North
American College. He did post-graduate
work in Biblical Theology at the
Gregorian University and received his
Doctoral Degree “summa cum laude.”
He assumed direction of Vallombrosa
Retreat Center after leaving Rome in
1968.
Bishop Rene H. Gracida, Auxiliary
Bishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of
Miami, is an architect and liturgical
expert who received his B.S. degree in
Architecture and practiced that
profession before his ordination to the
priesthood in 1959.
A native of New Orleans, La., he
received his early education in New
Orleans, Houston, and Texas City,
Texas.
During World War II he served in the
U.S. Air Force, and was assigned as crew
Father McBride
chief of a B-17 Flying Fortress. As a
member of the 303rd Bomber Group of
the Eighth Air Force he flew 32 combat
missions in the European theatre of
operations.
Bishop Gracida returned to the States
to train as an architect at the University
of Houston, and then undertook post
graduate studies in Theology and
Philosophy at the University of
Fribourg in Switzerland. He later
studied at St. Vincent Seminary,
Latrobe, Pa., and was ordained as a
priest in 1959.
‘ He became Chancellor of the
Archdiocese of Miami in 1968, and was
consecrated Auxiliary Bishop in Miami
in 1972.
Bishop Gracida has collaborated on
designs for a number of churches,
combining his talents as an architect
with a sound background in liturgy. In
addition to his position as Chancellor of
the Miami Archdiocese, he also serves as
Vicar General and Archdiocesan
Treasurer.
Leading the workshop sessions at the
Congress will be a team of experts on
different aspects of prayer and liturgy,
Monsignor Holleran
Bishop Gracida
including Dr. James May; Sister Mary
Zoghby, R.S.M.; Fr. Henry Graz; Fr.
Gene Walsh; Sr. M. Charlene Walsh,
R.S.M.; Msgr. Marvin Le Frois; Mr.
Robert Rambusch; Sr. Beverley
Stanton, R.S.M.; as well as Fr. McBride
and Msgr. Holleran.
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HOPSCOTCH
Religious Senate to Meet
The Diocesan Senate of Religious will hold its regular fall meeting on October 13,
1973 at Immaculate Conception Parish Hall in Dublin, Ga. at 11:00 A.M. Please bring
your lunch.
Fundamentalists Scored
WASHINGTON (NC) - Catholic Bible scholars blasted Catholic “fundamentalists”
who “freely level against responsible scholars charges of heresy and perversion of
faith,” often by means of “half-truth, innuendo, distortion and outright
misrepresentation.” In a letter sent to U.S. bishops, the executive board of the
Catholic Biblical Association of America charged that the attacks are causing
confusion among Catholics and threatening scholarship and ecumenism. The letter
came several months after a similar attack on “ultra-conservative or fundamentalist
Catholics” by Father Raymond E. Brown, a former CBA president and a member of
the Pontifical Biblical Commission.
Chile Bishops Plead
SANTIAGO, Chile (NC) - The Chilean bishops asked the nation’s new military
rulers to show respect rather than revenge for the followers of ousted President
Salvador Allende in the aftermath of their coup. “We ask for moderation toward the
defeated ones, and that all unnecessary reprisals be avoided,” the bishops said in a
statement calling for peaceful reconstruction. “Many of the now ousted leaders were
moved by sincere idealism, and this must be taken into account,” the bishops said of
the Marxists leadership that three years ago started a series of radical reforms.