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The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 54 No. 39-
Thursday, November 8,1973
Single Copy Price — 12 Cents
5 DIOCESES TO PARTICIPATE
Congress on Worship Opens in Savannah
“RIGHT TO LIFE” SEMINAR -- Pictured at Thomas Duffy and Bishop Raymond Lessard. (Augusta
Augusta Seminar (1. to r.) are: Doctor Russell Moores, Chronicle-Herald Photo by Lee Downing)
Doctor John Willke, Dr. King Emery, Reverend
DR. JOHN WILLKE
Noted Lecturer Speaks at Augusta
BY JOHN E. MARKWALTER
“You talk to the guy or gal on the
street and they really don’t think ‘it’
(the unborn baby) is human ...”
“Our job is nothing more, and
nothing less, than the complete
education of all the citizens of the
United States,” Dr. John C. Willke told
an Augusta gathering last Saturday.
Dr. Willke, Cincinnati physican,
author and lecturer against abortion,
told of this monumental task in a
keynote address at a regional seminar of
“Right to Life” group representatives.
The physician urged support for an
anti-abortion amendment to the
Constitution of the United States. As a
result of this year’s Supreme Court
decision, he said the state is not
allowed to forbid abortion, at any stage
“if one licensed physician says it is
necessary to preserve the life or health
of the mother.”
The definition of health is being
made in many cases solely in the realm
of social well being, he added. “It is
now legal in all 50 states to kill an
INSIDE STORY
St. Anthony’s
Pg. 2
Know Your Faith
Pg. 4
Life in Music
Pg. 6
Ban Pictures!
Pg. 7
unborn baby while the mother is in
labor and not commit a crime. All the
physician has to say is it will upset her if
she stayed pregnant.”
The nationally known speaker was
confident of the outcome of the
educational effort, saying, “the high
water mark of the pro-abortion
movement was reached the summer of
1970.” He cited the growth of “Right
to Life” groups, from about five at that
time, to the more than 700 such
organizations in the country today.”
In addition to duties as Campus
Minister at Savannah’s Armstrong State
College, Father Joseph Stranc has
accepted appointment by Bishop
Raymond Lessard as Associate Director
of the Diocesan Department of
Communications.
Father Stranc has served several posts
in Savannah, Augusta and Columbus.
After assignment to the faculty of the
former diocesan minor seminary at St.
John’s, Grimball Point near Savannah,
Father Stranc became a faculty member
at Aquinas High School, Augusta, and
pastor of St. Patrick’s parish (since
renamed Most Holy Trinity parish)
there.
His next assignment was as pastor of
Bishop Raymond Lessard has
appointed Father Michael J. Craig
Assistant Rector of the Cathedral of St.
John the Baptist. Other priests on the
Cathedral staff are Monsignor Daniel J.
Bourke, Rector, and Father Patrick
O’Brien, Associate Rector.
Father Craig, the son of Mrs. Ellen
and the late Michael Craig of Drogheda,
The speaker said, “We have the chips
to win this fight-no question about it!
We have effective materials, we have
polished our argumentative process,
we’ve got it all on our side!”
“Our job is not just to change a law,
not just an amendment (to the
constitution), although that’s what
we’re clearly after .. .it would be totally
useless to press that amendment, unless
there were public opinion underneath it
to support it.”
(Continued on Page 2)
St. Anne’s parish, Columbus. From
there, he entered the Henry Grady
School of Journalism at the University
of Georgia in Athens in 1972,
specializing in the radio and television
media.
Father Francis J. Donohue, Director
of the Department of Communications,
commenting on Father Stranc’s
appointment said, “The department is
very fortunate to have the services of
Father Stranc. The expertise he has
acquired during the past year should
enable us to move on from simply
distributing radio and television
programs produced by others to
producing and distributing programs
designed with local talent for local
audiences within the diocese.”
Ireland, was ordained in 1972 after
completion of theological studies at All
Hallows College, Dublin, Ireland.
The new Assistant Rector only
recently came to the United States,
having served since his ordination as
Assistant Priest at Our Lady of Ransom
parish in Essex, England.
Cathedral Associate Named
Assignment for Fr. Stranc
More than one thousand delegates
from parishes in North and South
Carolina and Georgia are expected to
attend the 4th annual Provincial
Congress on Worship to be held this
week in Savannah from November 8th
to 10th.
The Province is composed of the
archdiocese of Atlanta and the dioceses
of Savannah, Charleston, Charlotte and
Raleigh.
Headquarters site for the congress is
the Savannah Civic Center, but a series
of workshops highlighting the three-day
meeting will be held at both the civic
center and the DeSoto Hilton Hotel on
Friday, Nov. 9.
Delegates will begin registering at
3:30 p.m. on Thursday (Nov. 8) and
will be welcomed at an evening session
at 7:30 by Monsignor Marvin Le Frois,
Chairman of the steering committee for
the congress. Msgr. Le Frois is pastor of
Augusta’s St. Mary’s-on-the-Hill parish.
Also extending a welcome to the
delegates will be Bishop Raymond
Lessard; Mr. J. Thomas Coleman,
Chairman of the Chatham County
Commission; and Mr. Frank Rossiter,
Mayor pro-tern of Savannah.
The keynote address, “Believing in
Jesus,” will be delivered by Father
Alfred McBride, a priest of the
Norbertine Order. Father McBride is the
author of several books, including a
popular church history text for junior
high schools, “The Pearl and the Seed.”
Friday’s sessions (Nov. 9) begin at
9:15 a.m. with a lecture on the
“Prayerfulness of Jesus” by Monsignor
J. Warren Holleran, Professor of Sacred
Scripture at St. Patrick’s Seminary,
Menlo Park, Calif. He holds a Doctoral
degree in Biblical Theology from the
Gregorian University in Rome.
A series of ten workshops will be held
Friday afternoon beginning at 2:30 p.m.
Seven of these workshops will be held
again at 4 p.m.
Three workshops, however, will only
be held once. They are “Renewing
Traditional Forms of Prayer,” 2:30 p.m.
“Praying the Scriptures,” 4 p.m. Both
of these workshops will be held in room
4 at the civic center. The other ‘one
time only’ workshop will be “Liturgy
and Pastoral Care of the Sick” at 4
p.m. in the civic center’s room 5.
Leading the workshops will be a team
of experts on various aspects of prayer
and liturgy. They are Dr. James May; Sr.
Mary Zighby, R.S.M; Rev. Henry Gracz;
Rev. Gene Walsh; Sr. M. Charlene Walsh,
R.S.M.; Msgr. Marvin Le Frois; Mr.
Robert Rambusch; Sr. Beverly Stanton,
R.S.M; Father McBride and Msgr.
Holleran.
A complete schedule of congress
workshops will be found on page 1 of
last week’s SOUTHERN CROSS.
Friday’s activities will close with an
address by Fr. McBride, “The Church at
Prayer”,at 8 p.m.
Closing lecture of the tri-state
worship meeting will be delivered by
Bishop Rene H. Gracida, auxiliary
bishop of Miami. Bishop Gracida, an
architect and liturgical expert will speak
on “The Church at Prayer Today.”
The Congress will close with a solemn
Liturgy at the Cathedral of St. John the
Baptist at 10:30 a.m. Saturday,
November 10.
BROADCAST NOV. 11
TV Documentary About CUD
NEW YORK - The work of the
Catholic Church’s Campaign for Human
Development (CHD) - from the struggle
for survival in the Sea Islands of South
Carolina to the rubble of urban renewal
in a Baltimore ethnic neighborhood - is
the subject of an upcoming television
documentary produced by the
American Broadcasting Company.
The documentary, “Fellowship of
Hope,” will be shown on DIRECTIONS,
ABC’s religious-cultural series, on
Sunday, November 11.
The Campaign for Human
Development, the domestic anti-poverty
program of the Catholic Church, has in
the past three years given almost $20
million to over 500 self-help projects
administered by and for the poor.
American Catholics support the
Campaign through a collection taken
each year in every Catholic parish in the
country. This year’s collection will be
on November 18.
together on problems that represent
their bread, their day-to-day living,” he
states “from there we will be able to
attack the major problems that they are
confronted with - the problems of
education, housing and general
welfare.”
Such broader problems are the
concerns which occupy thousands of
residents of Southeast Baltimore in the
other project documented in
“Fellowship of Hope.”
In a predominantly Catholic
blue-collar area of Baltimore, more than
80 community organizations are
working together through the Southeast
Community Organization (SECO).
SECO began several years ago as
opposition to an expressway scheduled
to cut through the community, whose
residents are largely of Polish,
Ukrainian, Italian, Greek and German
ancestry.
What began as opposition has evolved
into constructive planning in a self-help
effort that is upgrading the quality of
life and striving to retain traditional
neighborhood values.
It may seem a long way from
Baltimore to the Sea Islands, says
correspondent Bob Young in the
program’s summation, “but there are
human aspirations which bridge that
distance and create a fellowship of
hope. What is shared is a will to make
one’s life more fully human.”
The Division for Film and
Broadcasting, U.S. Catholic Conference,
serves as a consultant to ABC in the
production of DIRECTIONS.
“Fellowship of Hope” will be
broadcast November 11 starting at 1
p.m. in the New York area. Check local
listings for time and channel.
“Fellowship of Hope,” filmed in the
Sea Islands off the coast of Charleston,
South Carolina, and in Southeast
Baltimore, examines two of the self-help
efforts funded by the Campaign. They
are the South Carolina Sea Island Small
Farmers Co-op and the Southeast
Community Organization (SECO) of
Baltimore.
With ABC News Correspondent Bob
Young as narrator, “Fellowship of
Hope” looks closely at conditions of
poverty in the so-called Low Country of
South Carolina, and at the efforts of the
Sea Island cooperative to raise the living
standard of Black farmers whose annual
average income is below $4,000.
“The people of the co-op are working
much better than when we first began,”
says the Reverend Elijah Green,
manager of the co-op. “At the beginning
a lot of them were of two opinions.
They wanted to go with the co-op and
they feared turning loose the little
livelihood they had.”
Today, encouraged by a major grant
from the Campaign for Human
Development, and with the technical
guidance of the South Carolina
Commission for Farm Workers, some
115 small farmers -- about half of all
farmers in the Sea Island area - are
purchasing seed and fertilizer
cooperatively, operating a co-op market,
and shipping to New York and other
major cities.
Reverend James G. Blake, Director of
the South Carolina Commission for
Farm Workers, says the co-op is proving
to be a “jump-off place.”
“If we’re successful in getting these
highly individualistic farmers to work
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HEADLINE
HOPSCOTCH
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Nader Raps Doctors
WASHINGTON (NC) - Ralph Nader’s public interest organization charged that
doctors in some cities are subjecting women to surgical sterilizations under pressure
and without adequate advice. The Nader study said that “in many instances, there is
little evidence of informed consent by the patient, and that these operations have been
‘sold’ to the public by surgeons in a manner not unlike many other deceptive
marketing practices.” The study recommended that HEW guidelines be more specific
in describing the information a doctor must give to a prospective sterilization patient.
No Soviet Trip for Pope
VATICAN CITY (NC) - The Vatican has denied a report by a German weekly
magazine that Pope Paul VI is considering a trip to the Soviet Union. The German
magazine “Quick” reported that the Pope was considering undertaking a visit to the
Soviet Union in the spring of 1974 to make a formal visit to Russian Orthodox
Patriarch Pimen. Vatican press spokesman Frederico Allessandrini termed (Quick’s”
report the “fruit of fervid fantasy.” Other sources close to the Vatican said that at the
present stage of relationships between the Soviet Union and the Vatican-which are
practically nil-such a visit would “seem out of the question.”
Baptisms Bring Firings
VATICAN CITY (NC) -- Two directors of collective farms in Soviet Georgia have
been Fired from their jobs and expelled from the Communist party for having their
children baptized in the Russian Orthodox Chruch. Quoting the newspaper “Zaria
Vostoka,” Vatican Radio said party officials had conducted an investigation of
reported religious practices and had uncovered “serious failures in the battle against
the harmful survivals of the past.” Among the “harmful survivals” were a large number
of believers, regular celebration of religious feastdays and cases of Baptisms of
newborn children.
Church Strong in Red Lands
PHILADELPHIA (NC) -- The Vatican prelate charged with carrying on negotiations
with Eastern Europe Communist governments sees the state of the Church behind the
Iron Curtain as healthier now than it was at the end of World War II. Archbishop
Agostino Casaroli had special praise for the Church in Poland, which he described as
the strongest Church in the Communist-dominated countries.