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“MAN ON THE MOVE”
PAGE 3—November 1,1973
ROME (NC) -- Legally, no Rumanian
may belong to the Eastern-rite Catholic
Church in Rumania; legally, that Church
does not exist.
After the suppression of the
Eastern-rite - Catholic Church in
Rumania 25 years ago those of its
priests who refused to join the
Orthodox Church were declared
“wagrants” in a decree of the Rumanian
ministry of the interior. Any priestly
activity on their part made them liable
to severe penalties and imprisonments.
All five Eastern-rite diocesan bishops
in Rumania were imprisoned, as were all
their principal aides. Also imprisoned
were all seminary professors. None of
the bishops survived.
The last to die was Bishop Juliu
Hossu, who was made a cardinal by
Pope Paul VI.
Shortly after their arrest, five other
bishops of the Eastern-rite were secretly
consecrated by the papal envoy in
Rumania, the late Archbishop Gerald P.
O’Hara, an American. Their identity was
discovered almost immediately by the
Rumanian police, not through informers
but simple observation of the number of
priests who approached the new bishops
for consultation.
The new bishops were imprisoned.
After terms that varied from man to
man they were released, all on condition
that they not carry out any religious
ministry.
Now they live privately in various
parts of Rumania, supporting
themselves by work in offices or
institutions. They are Bishop Joan
Ploscaru, Bishop Joan Dragomir, Bishop
Juliu Hirtea, Bishop Alexander Todea
and Bishop Joan Chertes.
They and all Eastern-rite Catholic
priests in Rumania are under
constant police surveillance. So far as
can be determined from abroad this
surveillance has not in any way been
relaxed since Rumanian President
Nicholae Ceausescu visited Pope Paul in
May.
The Stalinist-inspired suppression of
the Rumanian Eastern-rite Catholic
Church also remains in full force despite
Rumania’s virtual declaration of
independence from its Soviet masters.
One of Ceausescu’s strong cards in his
difficult game with the Soviet Union,
however, has been rigorous internal
policy, however liberal his foreign
policy may have become.
After the talk, Dr. Willke gave several
priests from the school samples of the
sex education material. “If they used
that material in their courses they’d cut
pregnancies in half,” he said.
Since the Supreme Court abortion
decision, Dr. Willke said, “the number
of pregnancies reported among high
school students has been cut to
one-third of what it was before the
Supreme Court decision. You know that
the pregnancies have not dropped. They
are just having them aborted now.
At Xavier High School, a nun
escorted him to the hall, filled with
students. The introduction.
“ .. .1 am here to speak to you today
as a doctor. I will not enter the area of
religious beliefs at all because . . ..”
He was not yet half-way through the
day, and it was one of his easier ones.
6 Learn to Take Heat 9
ST. LOUIS (NC) - “Women have
been trained not to take the heat, to get
out of the kitchen if there is heat. But
in the political arena there is heat, and
perhaps to win our fight for equality for
women we are going to have to learn to
take that heat,” said Sister Mary Luke
Tobin, former president of the
Leadership Conference of Women
Religious and an official observer at the
Second Vatican Council.
Her comments came during a
workshop on “Women’s Role in the
Church and in the World” at a meeting
of the St. Louis Archdiocesan Council
of Religious Women here.
Addressing about 40 workshop
participants, the 65-year-old Sister of
Loretto said that women are at a great
point in history, a point when “our
consciousness about ourselves is
changing. We are becoming conscious of
the fact that we can do something about
the discrimination and inequality of
women.”
“This is a message that has not yet
reached a lot of women,” said Sister
Tobin. “It will take time for it to reach
some of them. But a change in
consciousness is taking place. Jesus
Christ in the Gospels is very relative to
what is happening to women today. We
must go back to the things He said in
the Gospels for a start. If we really lool
at the Gospels we see marvelous
examples of Christ’s cutting through to
the heart of the matter which concerns
us today. Which is that we have full
humanity and it must be recognized by
men.”
She said that at the Second Vatican
Council at one of the sessions where the
document The Church in the Modem
World has being worked on, Father Yves
Congar, one of the drafters of the
document, tried to write something
good for women. He read the paragraph
on women to one of the women present
and then said: “Why do you not react?”
ISOISPUBLIC ISSUES
“And the woman said to Father
Congar, ‘You can leave out all the
flattery, just consider us full human
persons and that is enough,’” Sister
Tobin said.
On the last day of the Council there
was a Mass with Pope Paul VI presiding
where four philosophers, four literary
men, four historians and four women
made presentations to the Pope.
“I turned to the priest next to me
and I said, ‘Father, women are not
categories of the church,”’ Sister Tobin
said. “And the priest told me that men
were blind to this and that we had to
make them see the truth.”
The sort of insight that can be gained
from a reading of the Gospels, she said,
comes from the story of Martha and
Mary.
“Christ was trying to liberate Martha
when He said to her ‘You do not need
to stay in the kitchen. Just get some
sandwiches and come out of the
kitchen. Christ was saying to her ‘You
can have the better part just as Mary
does.’”
During the centuries of the Church’s
life this attitude of Christ’s has been
dimmed, Sister Tobin said, and it must
be restored.
“Some women working for women’s
rights will be radical and strident. If this
is not our way, let us not put these
women down. They may be doing
something that needs doing and they
may be accomplishing more through
their work than we can do quietly.”
“Some women will work quietly and
sensitively, yet with a willingness to
speak up when this is necessary. That is
what we nuns can do. Some women do
not have any objection to the status quo
and these we must try to win over. We
have to speak up on the injustice of our
life.”
More Action Promised
CHICAGO (NC) - The Illinois
Catholic Conference has vowed that its
motto “Time for Action” is still a viable
one, in spite of federal and state court
decisions against state aid for nonpublic
schools.
“We do believe strongly enough in
the justice of our position to hope and
expect that at least at some future date
the courts will no longer see aid to
nonpublic schools as unconstitutional,”
a conference statement declared.
“Until that time we have no intention
of being deterred in our determination
to keep our Catholic schools. This is still
the ‘Time for Action.’ If we must go it
alone for a while, so be it.”
Like all other nonpublic schools in
the nation, Illinois nonpublic schools
received a major setback from a U.S.
Supreme Court decision last June 25
which ruled out several forms of aid to
those schools and tuition-paying parents
of those schools.
Then on Oct. 1 the Illinois Supreme
Court ruled unconstitutional the state’s
program of aid to nonpublic schools.
The state court struck down a $4.5
million provision to aid low-income
families who want to send their children
to nonpublic schools and another
provision to grant $20.5 million for
secular textbooks and auxiliary services
to nonpublic schools.
The Illinois Catholic Conference
called the U.S. and state Supreme Court
decisions “a miscarriage of justice.”
“The Supreme Courts of both our
state and national governments
seemingly have closed the door on any
immediate prospect of additional help
from state and federal sources,” the
conference declared.
“Be that as it may, we wish to
reassure all concerned that we have no
intention of abandoning our efforts to
secure for all citizens a fair share of
school taxes which they themselves
contribute.”
On a typical day in a recent week Dr.
Willke rose at 6 a.m. at his home in
Cincinnati and flew to St. Louis. He
arrived at 8:30 a.m. and rushed to
Bishop Dubourg High School for a
speech to 1,000 students, then on to
Xavier High School for another speech,
another talk at St. Anthony High
School in the early afternoon. And at 7
p.m. he gave a speech to seminarians
and clergy at Lutheran Concordia
Seminary.
Tuesday was more hectic: A speech
at Kennedy High School here, a plane
trip to New Orleans, a speech there, a
plane trip back to St. Louis to appear,
with his wife, Barbara, at Aquinas High
School.
“This schedule would kill someone
who couldn’t take the pressure,” Dr.
Willke said in an interview on his way to
his first appearance here. During the
past year he had been to most of the
states in this country.
Over the last 15 years, Dr. Willke and
his wife have written on abortion and
sex education and put together slides
and tapes. If they can’t make a meeting
they can send a slide-plus-tape
presentation.
Dr. Willke carries few personal
belongings on his travels, but he is
invariably loaded down with suitcases of
his material, including bumper stickers:
“ABORTION KILLS BABIES,
CHOOSE LIFE; and “WE’RE
PROTESTANT--PRO TESTING
ABORTION.”
“I ani a believing Christian, “Dr.
Willke says. “I do not say whether I am
a Catholic or a Protestant because I
appear as a doctor, to give the scientific
argument against abortion and if I said
that I was a Protestant or a Catholic the
listener would immediately
say-aha-that’s why he is against
abortion. But the reason that I am
against abortion has to do with
scientific arguments.”
“During high school I won every
debate I entered and I was in all the
school plays,” he said as we drove to the
talk. “Then after high school, with
college and service, I dropped out of
public speaking. But it’s something that
you can either do or can’t do. I enjoy it.
I enjoy this life.”
He was engaged in debates with
pro-abortionists, he said, but he
generally prefers a straightforward
speech to a debate.
After a 10-year hiatus from speaking
engagements, Dr. Willke began lecturing
15 years ago in the Pre-Cana Movement
in Cincinnati and then in sex education.
The Willkes have written several books
on sex education. They have also been
active for years in the Cincinnati Right
to Life movement.
The Cincinnati Right to Life forces
joined in the call for a constitutional
amendment, even though, at that time,
chances for the passage of such an
amendment looked small. Now he is
more optimistic.
“I don’t think you can tell how
things are going to go,” he said. “The
interest is enormous. The book that my
wife and I wrote, ‘Handbook on
Abortion,’ has sold 500,000 copies in
the past two years.”
At his first high school talk here, Dr.
Willke was greeted by enthusiastic
applause.
“I will not enter the area of religious
beliefs at all,” Dr. Willke was saying. “If
the only reason that I can give for being
anti-abortion is ‘my religious belief’
then in a pluralistic society I do not
have the right to force my religious
beliefs on others. I will speak as a
doctor and a scientist on the subject of
abortion, showing that purely from a
scientific standpoint abortion is
wrong. . .”
The lecture, complete with slides,
lasted approximately 40 minutes. It was
followed by a nine-minute movie, the
actual depiction of a suction type of
abortion. At the end the students again
applauded.
MAN ON THE GO -- Dr. John C. Willke (left) rushes to Bishop
Dubourg High School in St. Louis with its administrator Floyd Hacker to
give one in a series of speeches on the abortion issue. Dr. Willke spends
half his time travelling like a political campaigner as he lectures
extensively against abortion. The remainder of his time is spent practicing
medicine in Cincinnati. (NC Photo by The St. Louis Review)
NUNS TOLD
NCCL Hears Call to Action
NEW ORLEANS, La. (NC) - The
National Council of Catholic Laity
(NCCL) elected new officers and heard
the president of the National Council of
Churches call for more involvement by
churches in society’s problems.
Mrs. John Eckstein of Iowa City,
Iowa, was elected president of the
NCCL and is the first woman to hold
that office.
William H. Sandweg of Annandale,
Va. was chosen as the new president of
the National Council of Catholic Men
(NCCM) and Mrs. G. Sam Zilly of
Brooklyn, N.Y., was elected president
of the National Council of Catholic
Women (NCCW).
Mrs. Eckstein, who served as
secretary of the NCCW for two years,
spirt thp first, item on her agenda will be
to study the concerns expressed at the
NCCL assembly as reflected in various
reports.
“Then, I’ll bring these to the board,
will evaluate them, get priorities
established, then get some action on
some of the programs,” she said.
But what Mrs. Eckstein said she is most
concerned with is bringing NCCL’s
program to the people.
“We have to get our programs down
to reach every individual Catholic man
and woman, so that they can relate to
NCCL on a person to person basis,” she
said. “If we have to use the structure of
the parish council then there will have
to be a great renewal of spirit so that
every layman, in or out of the pew, will
be reached.”
Sandweg said he is looking forward to
the day when both the NCCM and the
NCCW will be joined under one banner.
“But, as at the present time,” he said,
“We need this organization because so
many parish groups are organized under
the auspices of and are helped by the
NCCM.”
The Rev. Sterling Cary, president oi
the National Council of Churches,
closed the convention by noting that
religious institutions cannot influence
the world by “simply singing the Psalms
of Zion” but have to work for the
betterment of man.
“Religious institutions,” he added,
“must have agendas which address the
issues of peace, justice and
liberation .. .decent housing for the
poor, adequate income and quality
education.”
Rumanian Bishops Restricted
THREE PRESIDENTS -- These are the three new
presidents elected at the National Council of Catholic
Laity (NCCL) convention in New Orleans. From left
are: Mrs. John Eckstein of Iowa City, Iowa, NCCL;
William Sandweg of Annandale, Va., National Council
of Catholic Men; and Mrs. G. Sam Zilly of Grosse
Pointe Farms, Mich., National Council of Catholic
Women. (NC Photo)
He eats breakfast on the fly, lunch on
the run, dinner often at midnight just
before retiring after an 18-hour day.
He is not a political candidate,
although half of the time his schedule is
like that of a candidate in the last
frenzied days of a national campaign.
The other half of the time he is
attending his medical practice in
Cincinnati.
He is Dr. John C. Willke, author of
the “Handbook on Abortion” and
lecturer against abortion.
are: Bishop Joan Ploscaru, Bishop Juliu Hirtea, and
Bishop Joan Dragomir. Legally, the Church does not
exist in Rumania. On Oct. 22, Pope Paul received a
group of Eastern-rite Rumanian Catholic priests. (NC
Photos)
BY STEPHEN DARST
ST. LOUIS (NC) -- He rises at 6 a.m.
on a typical day, flies to a distant city,
hops in a waiting car which whisks him
to the first of four or five speeches, with
television and newspaper interviews
sandwiched in.
SECRETLY CONSECRATED - These are three of
five Rumanian bishops who were secretly consecrated
25 years ago but imprisoned shortly thereafter. The
bishops have been released by now on the condition
that they not carry out religious ministry. From left
DON’T LEGALLY EXIST
Dr.Willke: Anti-Abortion Campaigner