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BAN THOSE PICTURES!
Who Speaks for the Unhorn Child?
BY ELLEN MCCORMACK
In addition to the National
Association for Repeal of Abortion
Laws, a second pro-abortion stronghold
Editor:
We would like to express our
gratitude to the Family Life Bureau for
the opportunity to participate in the
“Golden — Silver Jubilee Celebration”
on Sunday, October 28th in St. John’s
Cathedral.
It was an honor to take part in the
Mass celebrated by Bishop Lessard and
assisted by Monsignor Bourke and
Father Boland as concelebrants. The
music by the James Copps Memorial
Choir accompanied by Mrs. Joseph
Schreck was superb.
Sincere
Editor:
Please accept my sincere thanks for
the attention The Southern Cross gave
me - both front page story and editorial
mention - on my election to the office
of first vice president of the National
Council of Catholic Women. Thank you
particularly, though, for the recognition
given the work of the women of our
councils throughout the diocese; women
who find DCCW a medium through
which they can effectively serve those
who need them through the various
programs sponsored by our Councils --
national, state, and local.
Training
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine
(CCD) teachers of the Augusta Deanery
are presently engaged in a series of
training workshops presenting the
document “Basic Teachings For
Catholic Religious Education.”
This statement was prepared by the
National Conference of Catholic
Bishops in consultation with the
Catechetical Office of the Holy See. The
text sets down the principal elements of
the Christian message and makes clear
what must be stressed in the religious
formation of Catholics of all ages.
Workshops are conducted by Mrs.
Dorothy Mainz and Mrs. Betty Gill of
St. Teresa of Avila Parish with the
cooperation of Sister Camille Collini.
The fall luncheon of the Augusta
Deanery Council of Catholic Women
(DCCW) was held at Nicholas Hall on
Lumpkin Road, on Sunday, October 28.
Mrs. Clifford Herzberg, President,
presided. “Projects of the Augusta
Deanery” including “Birthright”,
“Community Clothing Center”, “Social
Apostolate“, “Youth Health
Education’” “Georgia Right To Life”
and “Marriage Encounter” were the
subjects of the program.
“The Community Clothing Center.”
now a project of the United Church
Women was started by the Augusta
Deanery Council and had its first
“store” behind Immaculate Conception
Church, Mrs. J. Eckert said. The center
has moved many times since then but its
purposes remains the same “to provide
clothing for the low income people for a
nominal fee.
Sister Celine, representing “The
Social Apostalate,” said that its purpose
is to create a sense of Christian
responsibility in the area of human
needs and rights, to make people aware
of these needs, and to coordinate with
the church and community in alleviating
them.
Miss Diane Tanner of BIB told how
the Augusta Deanery, in association
with the March of Dimes, Better Infant
Birth, and alliance of women’s church
and civic organizations dedicated to
combat infant deaths and birth defects,
will be operating the Youth Health
Education Project. This is a course of
preventive medicine for problems like
drug abuse, V.D., genetic disease, etc.,
by providing accurate, frank and
positive information to teens through
and/or with their parents at P.T.A.
meetings, church youth group meetings
or special Mother-Daughter, Father-Son
meetings.
Mrs. C. Quinn, Chairman of Right To
Life explained that this committee is a
- MS. magazine -- has also issued a call
to arms. Its October 1973 issue carries a
four-page article by Bea Blair entitled
“Abortion: Can We Lose Our Right to
Choose?”
voluntary, non-profit,
non-denominational organization
concenred over the many lives being
destroyed by abortions. Their primary
purpose is to educate the public on the
abortion issue and oppose anti-life
actions.
Speaking as a team, Mr. & Mrs.
Charles Scavullo gave a report son a
“Marriage Encounter Weekend” Just
one weekend, they said can help
married people profit and be better able
to communicate with their spouses and
children.
Ms. Blair’s article contains the usual
rhetoric about the “small minority”
who are determined to fight for the
unborn child.
“The anti-abortion groups are well
financed, well organized, and politically
astute. They have the moral backing of
the Catholic Church - and often its
financial, organizational, and political
lobbying support as well...”
“The National Right-to-Life
Committee has opened an office in
Washington, D.C., and, according to
reports, has a large bank account...”
“The Catholic Church is planning to
spend $5 million to $10 million a year
on the anti-abortion campaign ...” ,
“Anti-abortion constituents,
including priests and bishops, make up a
stream of regular visitors to
Congresspeople ...”
“As an emotional backdrop to the
legislative lobbying, the anti-abortion
groups continue to leaflet the country
with their inaccurate but horrifying
publications and pictures ...”
Ms. Blair indicates that
pro-abortionists are particularly worried
about the visual presentations of Right
to Life spokesmen - pictures of the
unborn baby’s development and
pictures of the reality of abortion. To
combat such pictures, she suggests a
tactical maneuver.
“The most effective tool the
anti-abortionists have is their slide
presentation. Pictures of women dead
from botched abortions, pictures of
dead and battered babies are equally
distressing and effective. Merely having
these available often results in a decision
to disallow all pictures.”
There it is! The best way to combat
the pro-life pictures is to prevent people
from seeing them! That way one can
continue to assure the public that
abortion is like a tooth-extraction. With
all visual evidence banned, one can
blissfully announce that abortion is
simply the removal of a “cell” or a
“zygote” or “protoplasm” or a “blob”
or a “product” or a “tissue.”
If a pro-abortion group cannot
succeed a picture-banning, Ms. Blair
suggests that the credibility of pro-life
pictures may be called into question by
branding them “inaccurate” and
“undocumented. ” How should Right to
Life groups respond to this charge?
First, many of the pictures CAN be
documented - the LIFE magazine
photographs, for instance. Second, if
the Right to Life pictures were really
“inaccurate,” should not the
pro-abortionists be able to prove this
conclusively by producing the
“accurate” pictures of abortion? Does
not their failure to do this, coupled with
their insistence that visual evidence be
banned, constitute an implicit admission
that the Right to Life photographs
cannot be adequately refuted?
If pro-abortionists succeed in banning
the Right to Life slide presentation
from a debate, a pro-life speaker might
still find ways to introduce the visual
evidence. For instance, he or she could
hold up the Life magazine reprint -
“Life Before Birth.” (“On the front
cover we can see an unborn baby at 18
weeks after conception. The baby
would usually be aborted by the saline
method, which would bum his skin and
send him into convulsions ... on this
inside page, one can see a 12 week
unborn baby, who would probably be
aborted by the suction method, which
would pull him apart.. .”)
And, if Ms. Blair wishes to claim that
LIFE faked those award-winning baby
pictures in 1965 in order to embarrass
the pro-abortionists in 1973 .. . well, I
just don’t think the public is going to
buy that.
(If you have any questions on
abortion for this column, please write to
Women For The Unborn, Box 269,
Merrick, New York 11566.)
Albany
Deanery
The Albany Deanery of the National
Council of Catholic Women held its Fall
Meeting at 1:00 p.m. at the Holiday Inn
in Americus on Sunday, October 28.
Sister Elizabeth of Macon’s SERVE,
an interparish social action group, then
presented a program of slides depicting
the many ways in which SERVE helped
the poor, both Catholic and
non-Catholic, of Macon and Bibb
County. She mentioned that during the
past year SERVE has clothed over
5,000 people; fed over 3,000 people;
sheltered over 1,000 families;
distributed over $10,000 in emergency
aid; held classes in Nutrition and
Tutoring for adults and children in the
inner city; made bi-weekly visits to the
jail; had a house renovation program for
the elderly poor this summer; sponsored
a handicrafts program at the County
Jail; organized and conducted a
six-week summer tutorial program for
poor children at two locations. Over
thirteen organizations from various
parishes in Macon had helped with this
work.
Court Balks on
Smut Guidelines
WASHINGTON (NC) - The U.S.
Supreme Court has rejected a number of
requests to explain its recent guidelines
concerning pornography.
The requests were rejected without
comment by the court. The June
Supreme Court decision on
pornography rejected the standard that
material must be “utterly without
redeeming social value” in order to be
judged as pornographic.
In its place, the court inserted the
guide that material must be judged by
community standards and that the
material must, “taken as a whole, appeal
to the prurient interest in sex, which
portray sexual conduct in a patentaly
offensive way, and which, taken as a
whole, do not have serious literary,
artistic, political, or scientific value.”
Among the requests for a clarification
of the new guidelines, was a request
from the state of Virginia asking that
the court explain whether “community
standards” means statewide standards or
city or county standards.
A request from California noted that
state courts have come to contrary
positions on obscenity cases and the
state supreme court “has refused to
authoriatively construe its own penal
statute” concerning pornography.
Attorneys for two adult theaters in
Georgia-theaters which were involved in
the Supreme Court’s June decision-said
the opinions left the state courts “in a
quandry” as to disposition of the cases
sent back for further proceedings.
The petition of the Georgia
attorney’s listed nine instances since
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger wrote
the court’s opinions on June 21 where
books have been burned or seized or
arrests have been made for selling such
publications as Playboy.
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Readers Reply
Jubilarians Pleased
AUGUSTA CCD TEACHERS
Augusta DCCW Meets
A special note of thanks should be
given to Father Gerard Murphy who
coordinated the affair along with the
ladies of the Savannah Deanery who
hosted the lovely reception in St.
Vincent’s Hall.
It was indeed a memorable occasion
for all of us!
Mr. & Mrs. P.H. Thompson
Mr. & Mrs. Dennis Leonard
Mr. & Mrs. Paul Thompson
Mr. & Mrs. Philip Armstrong
Mr. & Mrs. Edward DeMarco
St. Mary’s on the Hill Parish
Augusta, Ga.
Thanks
Our “hats off” to you, for your kind
and gracious words. To feel appreciated
is sometimes all that is necessary to
elevate the spirit.
We ask your prayers for success in
our efforts as Council women and
Catholic women in the Diocese of
Savannah; and we thank you very much
for your support.
Wilhelmina D. Hall (Mrs. J.F.)
President, Savannah DCCW
Workshop
The first session dealt with the
introduction to the booklet which
points out that there are three themes
which carry through all religious
education. They are: Prayer,
Participating in the Liturgy, and
Familiarity with the Bible. These
themse are of such basic importance
that the teachers in attendance felt that
an in-depth study of each would be
helpful.
The second meeting began with a
study of the first nine “truths” as set
down in the Basic Teachings and then
went on to a discussion on the
importance of prayer. The next session
will deal with more basic teachings and
the theme of Familiarity with the Bible.
PAGE 7—The Southern Cross, November 8,1973
THE ATMOSPHERE of Mrs. Margaret Jones’s fifth grade classroom on
Thursday at Savannah’s Blessed Sacrament School was one of excitement
and togetherness as the girls busily prepared bread for baking, while the
boys worked at making a collage to be used the next day at their first class
Mass for the year. Father Liam O’Sullivan celebrated the Mass on Friday.
SOMEONE
FOR
THANKSGIVING
THE HOLY FATHER'S MISSION AID TO THE ORIENTAL CHURCH
You’ll be happier this Thanksgiving if you give
something of yourself to someone who has
nobody.
Giving belongs in Thanksgiving.
Attend Mass that morning in your parish church.
SOMEONE Take fifteen minutes to visit someone in the
WHO hospital.
HAS
NOBODY Have someone who eats alone join your family
for turkey and all the trimmings.
Better yet, feed someone who needs food.
Once again the Middle East has been ravaged
by war. To many innocent people there this has
meant fear, bloodshed and death. Driven from
their homes, they are without clothing or food.
Perhaps you can share the price of your Thanks
giving Dinner with them.
Your $10 by itself will feed a family of refugees
for a month.
$100 will feed ten families.
$975 will give a two-acre model farm to a parish
in southern India, so that the priest can raise
his own food and teach his people better crop-
production.
$10,000 will enable Archbishop Mar Gregorios
to give a churchless village a church, school,
rectory and convent. Name the parish for your
favorite saint, in memory of your loved ones.
The Archbishop will write to you.
Giving belongs to Thanksgiving, it's part of life.
How much will you give back to God?
© AX
Dear enclosed please find $
Monsignor Nolan:
FOR
Please name
return coupon
with your street !
offering
CITY STATE_ ZIP CODE
THE CATHOLIC NEAR EAST WELFARE ASSOCIATION
NEAR EAST
MISSIONS
TERENCE CARDINAL COOKE, President
MSGR. JOHN G. NOLAN, National Secretary
Write: Catholic Near East Welfare Assoc.
330 Madison Avenue • New York, N.Y. 10017
Telephone: 212/986-5840