Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 2—The Southern Cross, November 1,1973
Middle East Christians Divided on
War
FIVE BISHOPS ATTENDED INTERCHURCH
BOARD MEETING. Among these representatives of
member churches of the Georgia Interchurch
Association meeting last week at Callaway Gardens
were (front row, 1. to r.) Roman Catholic Bishop
Raymond W. Lessard, Bishop of Savannah; Bishop
Wm. R. Cannon of the United Methodist Church;
Bishop P. Randolph Shy of the Christian Methodist
Episcopal Church; Rt. Rev. Milton L. Wood, Bishop of
the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta; Bishop Richard
Allen Hildebrand of the African Methodist Episcopal
Church.
OFFICERS ELECTED
Georgia Interchurch Board Meets
The Executive Board of Georgia
Interchurch Association, at a meeting in
Columbus last week, elected officers for
1974.
The annual bazaar sponsored by the
Ladies Guild of St. Patrick’s parish,
Perry, will be held next Saturday, Nov.
4 from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the parish
hall. The hall is located at the
intersection of highways 341 and
Interstate 75.
The bill of fare, says Mrs. Henry
Casey, publicity chairwoman, will
consist of turkey dinner “with all the
trimmings.” There will be take-out
service as well as eating facilities at the
hall.
Those elected to serve the state
ecumencial organization are the Right
Reverend Bishop Milton L. Wood
(Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta),
Hand-crafted gift items will be
offered for sale. They include, said Mrs.
Casey, “All the lovely gifts they have
been making all year. There’ll be quilts,
rugs, pillows, crewel pictures, dolls,
stuffed pandas, knitted goods,
Christmas wreaths and decorations, and
numerous other gift ideas.”
The bazaar will also feature a
“country store” offering such items as
“Bertha’s Pickles” and “Mary’s Bread.”
President; Bishop Richard Allen
Hildebrand (African Methodist
Episcopal Church), Vice-President; The
Reverend Harry W. Shipps (Episocpal
Diocese of Georgia), Secretary; and the
Reverend W.J. Andes (United Church of
Christ), Treasurer.
Bishop Lessard and Father John
Cuddy are members of the Executive
Board representing the Roman Catholic
Diocese of Savannah. Father Roy Cox
of St. Anne’s Church, Columbus,
represented Father Cuddy at the
meeting.
Bishop Lessard was elected Chairman
of the Priorities Task Force Committee,
which has responsibility for
recommending matters of priority to
the Executive Board for the purpose of
establishing task forces.
Parish Bazaar at Perry
ANNUAL BAZAAR AT ST. PATRICK’S, PERRY, will feature
hand-made gift items such as those shown here by (1. to r.) Claire Pryor,
Mary Sands, Pat Brewster, Irene Habitzruther, Bertha Duckworth, Mary
Jo Offenberg, and Victoria Burchymski.
r- —>
Readers Reply
Count Me Out!
Editor:
Please take my name off your mailing
list. By mistake, no doubt, The
Southern Cross has started coming to
me again. I do not want it and will not
read it.
I opened it today for the first time
since it began coming again some
months ago and the editorial (Oct. 4)
strengthened my lack of desire for the
paper. It was bunk - not a solid thought
in it - “ . . .signifying nothing.
NAME WITHHELD
Wants Financial
Report Published
Dear Editor :
I was very pleased to see the Diocesan
Budget for fiscal year 1973-’74
published in a recent issue of the
Southern Cross. It is good that the
people of the diocese are informed as to
how diocesan funds are administered.
Those responsible are to be
commended. However, I was
disappointed that again this year only a
budget was published - which after all is
only an educated guess.
I see no reason why a financial report
for fiscal year 1972-’73 was not
published also. I would like to see this
done in the near future. If one cannot
be published, I would like to know the
reason.
Rev. Tadg O’Mahony
Columbus, Ga.
(Ed. Note: The auditors have not yet
finished the report.)
In last week’s overnight meeting, the
Executive Board engaged in intensive
process planning with the assistance of
the Reverend Nathan H. VanderWerf,
Executive Director of the Commission
on Regional and Local Ecumenism, New
York.
The Reverend Jackson P. Braddy,
Coordinator of GIA, explained that the
organization represents “an enlivened
relationship, a consortium, a coalition,
an instrument whose purpose is to be
the channel of official communication
and cooperation among and between
the church bodies.” The membership of
the organization is composed of
fourteen denominational bodies in the
state.
In another role, Georgia Interchurch
Association acts as the recognized state
ecumenical organization. In this
capacity the organization responds to
requests for information from a large
variety of sources and is the
transmission point for communications
from about 95 national and regional
organizations which report their
church-related concerns through
Georgia Interchurch Association.
Although the organization is
governed by a defined and limited
number of persons representing the
denominational bodies on the Executive
Board, its Task Force activity provides
for ' participation by the wider
leadership, clergy, and laity of the
Church and by representatives of other
agencies in the civic and governmental
community.
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JERUSALEM (NC) - Christian
concern about the war in the Middle
East reflects the agony of loyalty to
nation and the desire for a just and
lasting peace.
In the first days of watching and
waiting for events, Christian men and
women expressed a weary sadness for
the young men on both sides who were
going again to fight and die in the
desert. The words of Pope Paul VI
deploring the senseless slaughter found
an echo in many homes of the Holy
Land. Moslems, Jews, and Christians felt
the bitterness of it all.
Gradually, as the war aims of each
party became clearer, Christians became
more perplexed. On the one side, the
Coptic Church of Egypt declared that
justice demands the return to Egypt of
the lands and people belonging to
Egypt.
The Egyptian army is not attacking
the people of Israel, it said, but is
fighting for its own land. Egypt, it said,
is implementing by force what the
United Nations failed to implement by
peace, namely UN Resolution 242
calling on Israel to withdraw from the
territory it conquered in the 1967
Arab-Israeli war. That withdrawal, it
said, must come before even a
consideration of the question of the
rights of Palestinians.
Within Israel proper, Melkite-rite
Archbishop Joseph Raya, whose
residence is in Haifa, offered his
personal services to local authorities. He
said he was “willing to work with a
broom as a clean-up man if necessary,”
and added: “I pray for our soldiers
every day.”
As the Catholic pastor of the
controversial villagers of Ikrit and Biram
(villages destroyed by the Israeli army in
1948) he told the government that he
was willing to bury his differences for
the time being, and offered “to place
our people, property and vehicles at our
country’s disposal for its well-being and
security.”
A small group of Western Christians
residing in Israel went even further in a
public statement affirming their full
support for Israel. They said that they
interpret the Arab attack on Sinai and
the Golan Heights as an attack on
Israel’s rights to exist as a nation. (Sinai
and the Golan Heights were captured
from Egypt and Syria by the Israeli
Army in 1967.) The Hebrew-speaking
Christians said that “they share in the
destiny of Israel” and called upon all
Christians “to recognize the right of
Israel and the Jewish people to
statehood.”
The main Church leaders of
Jerusalem have so far remained silent
and maintained that delicate balance of
the Vatican position: recogi ition of “all
legitimate civil and religious rights of all
people of the area” irrespective of race,
religion and national loyalties. As one
bishop expressed it: “We are for justice;
an active justice, a justice that does not
wait, but works towards a settlement of
conflicting rights on the principles of
justice, not of might.”
At the other extreme a rather
vigorous anti-Christian attack was made
against this official silence by a leading
Jewish scholar, Prof. Dr. Flusser of the
Hebrew University. He accused
Christian leaders of culpable silence and
called on them to condemn what he
called the Arab aggression.
“Apart from the Pope’s statement
deploring the war,” he said, there has
been nothing in this spirit reported from
Christian leadership. Not to
differentiate between attacker and
victim, he said, “is the very antithesis of
Christian morality.”
In the heat of the conflict, Prof.
Flusser’s attack has caused a panic-like
urge to take sides. In the topsy-turvy
fortunes of war, Arab Christians in
Jerusalem have pointed out that the
land under conflict was taken by force
by the Israelis in 1967, and that no
Arab army has yet attacked any piece or
part of Israel. They also have cited what
they refer to as the un-Christian
militarism of Moshe Dayan, Israel’s
defense Minister “to destroy as many
Egyptians and Syrians as possible.”
Many of the Christian Arabs have
expressed bewilderment that U.S. aid is
given to support such aims.
Among the Jewish Israelis there is
both a mood of shock and of criticism.
The popular Maariv, a Hebrew daily,
and the Jerusalem Post were appalled at
the number of casualties in the Israeli
army. They reported grumbling among
the people questioning Israel’s policies
and strategy.
“The danger,” said the Jerusalem
Post, “posed by the presence of the
huge Egyptian force in Sinai is not so
direct a threat,” and “a plicy of
co-existence may in the end bring us
peace.”
The war aims of the Arabs to win
back Syrian and Egyptian territory has
put Israel in the unenviable position of
fighting for land which is not her own.
The terrible contradictions of the war
has driven much Christian concern away
from politics to the victims of the war,
whether Arab or Jewish.
That voice of concern comes through
both among the Hebrew-speaking
Christians and in a lone peace ship that
is broadcasting in the sea off the Israel
coast. Each calls for an end to the war.
The radio ship calls on the governments
to stop sending their men into the
desert to die.
The Hebrew Christians, in spite of
their solidarity with one side, speak
words that all can share: “We mourn for
all those who have died and are dying.
We pray that the hearts of all parties
may be open toward a true acceptance
of each other in their own identity, as
the beginning of a process leading to a
just and lasting peace.”
RECEPTION FOR JUBILARIANS. These couples,
shown here with Bishop Raymond Lessard, were guests
of honor at a reception in Savannah last Sunday (Oct.
28) following a Mass at the Cathedral, where they
marked their golden or silver wedding anniversaries.
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