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PAGE 3—September 27,1973
Adoption Program Proposed
For S. Vietnamese Children
WASHINGTON (NC) - A plan calling
for American families to adopt South
Vietnamese children of mixed racial
parentage is being studied by three
Church-related agencies.
The agencies involved are the
National Conference of Catholic
Charities (NCCC), Catholic Relief
Services (CRS), and the Migration and
Refugee Service of the U.S. Catholic
Conference.
In a memorandum to diocesan
directors of Catholic Charities, Msgr.
Lawrence Corcoran, secretary of the
NCCC, said that thus far “83 dioceses
reported and the number of possible
placements ran into the hundreds, so it
would seem that there is no lack of
prospective homes, or interest in
establishing a program.”
The program, Msgr. Corcoran said, is
being coordinated by Father John J.
McVeigh, program director of the
Catholic Relief Services in Vietnam.
“We are presently waiting for him,”
Msgr. Corcoran noted, “to give us an
idea of how many children he will be
able to locate in the near future.”
Before the program can proceed,
Msgr. Corcoran added, the U.S. Agency
for International Development (AID)
will have to provide funding, but this,
he said, would probably be “just a
matter of time.”
AID is currently considering
financing a “consortium” of agencies
connected with intercountry adoptions
to handle the program, Msgr. Corcoran
said.
Although the program is still in the
planning stages, he noted, some details
have been worked out and are available.
Among the details currently available
are information on transportation, a list
of documents required, procedures
required by the South Vietnamese
government of foreigners wishing to
adopt Vietnamese children, and some
points to be considered by the
prospective parents.
Pope Condemns Skyjacking
CASTELGANDOLFO, Italy (NC) -
Pope Paul VI has unreservedly
condemned every act of air piracy, but
urged the world’s nations to ask
themselves what drives men to such
desperate lengths.
“All countries of the world must
eventually recognize such causes, to
remedy them before they degenerate
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (NC) --
A Catholic was named to head the
Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC),
Northern Ireland’s police force, for the
first time since the establishment of the
force 50 years ago.
The new chief constable, James
Flanagan, 59, has been deputy chief
constable for the past three years. A
career police officer, he is the son of a
member of the Old Royal Irish
Constabulary, the police force for all of
Ireland before the partition of 1921,
and was born in County Londonderry in
what is now Northern Ireland.
Flanagan has asked that his term of
office not be extended beyond 1975
because of “the onerous nature of the
duties involved.”
Violence in Northern Ireland caused
by those seeking a unified Ireland and
by supporters of partition has caused
nearly 1,000 deaths in the past four
years.
Members of Northern Ireland’s
Catholic minority have repeatedly called
for reform of the RUC, which, they say,
into violence,” the Pope said. He cited
“conditions thought intolerable from
the social, political and economic point
of view.”
Pope Paul declared: “The struggle
against terrorism would be fragile
indeed without this stock-taking, and
without the determination to remove
the reasons for it.”
has discriminated against Catholics.
After the announcement of
Flanagan’s appointment, John Duffy,
general secretary of Northern Ireland’s
Social Democratic and Labor party
(SDLP), whose membership is
predominantly Catholic, said the
appointment should not be seen as an
answer to the call for RUC reform.
Another SDLP member, Ivan Cooper,
said the appointment alone would do
nothing to create an acceptable police
force in Northern Ireland.
The Rev. Ian Paisley, a leader of
those seeking to maintain Northern
Ireland’s status as a part of Great
Britain, criticized the making of the
decision before the new Northern
Ireland Assembly, or parliament, had
met. William Craig, leader of the Ulster
Vanguard, an extremist group favoring
the tie with Britain, called Flanagan an
able and loyal officer.
The Central Citizen’s Defense
Committee, a group seeking civil rights
for Catholics, has in the past criticized
Flanagan as anti-Catholic.
But he emphasized “that such causes
are never able to justify recourse to
violence against civil aircraft, on their
pilots and their passengers.”
The Pope was addressing
representatives of 107 nations and eight
international organizations participating
in an extraordinary assembly of the
Organization of International Civil
Aviation. The assembly had opened in
Rome Aug. 28 and was to close Sept.
21, two days after Pope Paul’s address.
It was his last address in his summer
home here before returning to Vatican
City the same day, Sept. 19.
“At the very outset we deplore, we
condemn violence,” the Pope told these
delegates to a meeting designed to fix
new norms for international law and
guarantee the security of civil air traffic.
He pointed out that the victims of air
piracy are “persons who have nothing to
do with the conflict it is hoped to
exacerbate,” such as women and
children.
Such piracy “augments ruin and
resentment,” he declared.
“The Church, for her part, will know
no rest until she forms the conscience of
all her children, until she invites all men
of good will to foster this security, to
protect universal human rights, to
defend them courageously, to achieve
justice for all, for the innocent victims
as well as for the populations who are
unjustly oppressed.”
The Pope concluded:
“Violence is an inhuman language to
resolve human conflicts. The golden rule
is still reason and love. That is the
Creator’s design.
“Without this moral contribution, the
most perfect juridical instruments run
the risk of rotting into uselessness.”
Catholic Named Head
Of Ulster Police Force
IMPRESSIONS OF AUTUMN ~ Sunflowers nearly
ready for harvest, cattails starting to go to seed -- these
are two impressions of autumn reduced to sketchlike
black and white terms. (NC Photo)
Traditionalist Reports on Use
Of Tridentine Mass Are Untrue
WASHINGTON (NC) - Reports in
some Catholic traditionalist publications
in Europe on permission for Tridentine
Masses in the United States are “simply
not true,” according to a spokesman for
Bishops James S. Rausch, general
secretary of the U.S. National
Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The Tridentine Mass is the order of
the Mass that used the Roman Missal
promulgated in 1570 by Pope St. Pius V
by decree of the Council of Trent. The
Tridentine Mass was replaced in 1971 in
most places by a new order of the Mass
that takes its orientation from the
Second Vatican Council. In the United
States, the new order of the Mass was
allowed to be used by Palm Sunday
1971 and its use became mandatory by
Advent 1971.
Some reports in Europe said that
Bishop Rausch had circulated a letter to
all U.S. bishops stating that individual
bishops can permit use of the Tridentine
Mass for certain groups on special
occasions, providing all danger of
disturbing the community of the
faithful is avoided.
In his letter to the U.S. bishops, date
May 10, 1973, and written in reply to
inquiries on the use of the Tridentine
Mass with a congregation, Bishop
Rausch said that the Vatican
Congregation for Divine Worship had
said that “the Holy See continues to
maintain the principle that the only text
which may be used is that of the Missal
of Pope Paul VI” and that the Vatican
congregation “clearly reaffirmed that it
is no longer permitted to use the Latin
rite of the Missal of Pius V in Masses
celebrated with a congregation.”
Bishop Rausch did say in his letter
that the only exception that has been
made in the past to this rule “has been
in favor of certain groups on particular
occasions,” But he added that any such
concession by the Divine Worship
Congregation “is not a general
permission, is inapplicable to normal
parish Masses on Sunday, and must be
used in such a way as not to be harmful
to pastoral unity.”
An exception that had been made for
using the new order of the Mass was for
priests who for serious reasons such as
advanced age find it difficult to
celebrate Mass according to the new
rite. With the permission of their
bishop, they can continue to use the old
Roman Missal in whole or in part, but in
so-called private Masses and not in
Masses celebrated before a congregation.
Communications Publications
Available to Dioceses
NEW YORK (NC) - A four-part series on communications has been published
by the Catholic Communications Foundations (CCF) here.
The series, entitled “Sowing in the Wind,” was prepared especially for
priests, Religious and laity serving in communications capacities for Catholic
dioceses in the United States and Canada,
The four parts are titled “The Theory,” “The Practice,” “The Man” and “The
Message.”
The series is available without charge from the offices of the CCF at 500 Fifth
Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10036.
Privacy, an Inalienable Right?
BY BISHOP MARK J. HURLEY
While the courts have long been active in the area of “privacy,” and even the U.S.
Supreme Court based its decision in the Connecticut contraception case (Griswold v
Connecticut) on the right to privacy, the legal experts, judging from the law school
reviews, labled the decision as “none-too-clear” yet “the clearest to date” on the
“elusive nature of privacy,” “a broad, abstract, ambiguous concept.”
Nor have the legislatures fared much better. Their work on the protection of
privacy has been judged “spotty and non-comprehensive.” The administrative
branches of government have patently failed in serious ways as the recitations of
the invasions of privacy grow longer and sadder, to wit, the record of wiretaps,
electronic surveillance right in the President’s own offices; the sterilization of young
girls with or without parental consent (as if it mattered morally) under the aegis of
governmental agencies and at taxpayers’ expense; the experimentation on human
beings with venereal disease, etc., etc.
Patently there are new dimensions to the problems of privacy in society today,
problems exacerbated by technology itself.
The regulatory agency in the Federal Government most deeply concerned with
the information gathered on individuals, HEW, has been working on a study for
over a year towards the protection of the right of privacy. As “owner” of the social
security numbers (and who does not, among us, have a social security number?)
HEW is particularly the target of information seekers, computer-experts, and all
those devoted to S.I.N., the single identifying number.
The agency, at the request of the President of the United States, has drafted
proposals for safeguarding personal information. Its faith in its project may be
summed up in its draft report: “The application of automated data processing
technology to the management of records containing personal data can be subjected
to appropriate and effective social constraint without diminishing its usefulness.”
“We share strongly the belief,” it goes on to say . . .“that protective action
should be taken and that the Department (HEW) has a unique opportunity and
responsibility to help safeguard against and overcome the potentially harmful
consequences of automated personal data systems.”
To such ends the Committee has proposed rules and regulations by way of
safeguards to nrivacv:
One person should be responsible for the proper security and safeguards. Data
must be eliminated after no longer truly useful, a sort of statute of limitations.
Public notices must be posted when, for example, an agency has an automated
personal data system. The agency must not only say it has such a system, but as
well the categories of persons on whom data is kept; kinds, sources, and uses of
data kept. Who has access to data, and how individuals may get redress, and what is
legally required of persons, must be made a matter of public record.
But while HEW struggles with the problems, what of the private sector? Who has
more sensitive and all-embracing information of a personal nature in one place than
the central databank in Boston, the resource center for 700 insurance companies?
What of the huge credit card operations of Mastercharge, Bank of America, and
American Express? Such questions have prompted Professor Miller to call upon
“credit agencies and insurance companies (to) achieve a minimal level of ethical
activity in the gathering of information.”
Miller has advocated, in answer to the total problem, the formation of “an
independent, non-operating agency specifically concerned with the task of
monitoring information systems and preventing abuse,” a National Data Center as
first proposed by Richard Ruggles.
But when all is said and done, there still remains the moral climate in which the
judicial, legislative, and administrative branches of government, as well as private
enterprise, live and breathe and have their being. A moral climate is fundamental to
the solving of the problem of the threatened invasion of privacy. If Watergate has
said anything, it has called for an ethical refurbishing of the climate of our society.
Theologians raised in the “natural law” tradition see the right of privacy, like the
right to think, as deriving from the human personality “with no direct connection
with the mission of the state.” The natural law and the jus gentium demand
privacy; people must be secure in consulting professional people in their personal
problems; in the use of the mails; in the sanctuary of their homes.
Much like its legal history, the concept of “privacy” in moral theology has not
been met head-on. Treatment of privacy centers mostly in the subject of “secrecy.”
Secrets must be kept inviolate to avoid pain, offense, loss to the “owner” of a
secret. Such a right is, of course, not absolute, except in the sacrament of
confession. Secrets must be kept in order to insure free and confident access to the
various levels of professional advice, and a violation of such secrets is an offense
against social justice. A breach of secrecy demands a delicate assessment of all
relevant factors, such as serious injury to an innocent third party, or national
security, etc.
On a related matter of the “invasion” of the human mind and possible invasion
of privacy, Pope Pius XII in 1958 warned psychoanalysts that “just as it is illicit to
appropriate anothers’s good to make an attempt on his bodily integrity without his
consent, so it is not permissible to enter his inner domain against his will.”
Thus there is a natural secrecy from the nature of the human person and of
society itself protecting individuals and groups from harm or reasonable displeasure.
It can be fairly concluded that while the bases for the protection of privacy does
exist in law and moral theology, yet the right to privacy has not been sufficiently
enunciated in either, particularly in view of the advent of modern tools of
information gathering and the temptations thereunto attached.
Some experts are calling for “a total and complete re-vamping of our legislative
approach to informational privacy, including the regulation of computer
transmissions and the movement of information in interstate commerce” (Miller).
Most will admit that an “ethical refurbishing” is necessary, a change in the moral
climate in the U.S.A. to protect the individual and groups against the threatened
invasion of privacy, a value among those few values so fundamental and yet so
undefined.
As was well stated in Stanley vs. Georgia (394 US, 564), the right to privacy is an
aspect of the spiritual nature of man: “The makers of our Constitution undertook
to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the
significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings, and of his intellect. They knew
that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in
material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts,
their emotions, and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the
right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued
by civilized man.”
That “many-splendored animal,” the computer, promises great benefits and
poses equally serious threats. New safeguards are in order and are imperative.
The people of California were walking much in advance of their legislators,
judges, administrators, and theologians when they voted affirmatively that the right
to privacy should be singled out, underscored, and emphasized in this our day and
times. Implicitly, they agreed with the judgment that “The privacy crisis, unlike the
ecology crisis which was predicted but largely ignored until severe damage had been
done to the environment, need never happen!”