Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 7—The Southern Cross, December 6,1973
USCC Official Hits
WASHINGTON (NC) - A U.S.
Catholic Church (USCC) official has
criticized “widespread and systematic
repression of human rights” in Chile and
has urged the U.S. Church “to provide
Christian witness” in response to that
repression.
The repression of human rights “is
accomplished through violent
intimidation which includes the selected
use of torture to inspire fear and
violence,” Father Frederick A. McGuire
said in an article in the National
Catholic Reporter, a lay-edited paper
based in Kansas City, Mo.
Father McGuire, director of the
USCC Latin American Division, told NC
News that the article is an expression of
his personal views and is not a statement
by the USCC.
The article was based, he said, on
observations and conversations in Chile
during the week of Nov. 4-11, two
months after the militiary coup that
overthrew the government of Marxist
President Salvador Allende.
Those to whom he talked include
Cardinal Raul Silva Henriquez of
Santiago, other bishops, officials of the
Chilean Bishops’ Conference, priests,
Religious, lay leaders, Protestant church
personnel, representatives of Protestant
and Catholic human rights commissions,
delegates from the Vatican’s Justice and
Peace Commission and Amnesty
International, U.S. Catholic Relief
Service personnel, legal aid groups,
refugees in United Nations’ sanctuaries
and in hiding, workers in Santiago’s low
income neighborhoods, students and
professors in Catholic universities and
high schools and persons with direct and
indirect knowledge of torture.
He said that he “deliberately
avoided” talking to members of the
military junta now ruling Chile “because
I felt that was up to the Church in Chile
and not to the Church in the United
States.” He said he was not inquiring
into political aspects of the Chilean
situation, and therefore had not spoken
to officials of the Christian Democratic
party, the largest single party in Chile.
He had spoken, he said, to upper-and
middle-class Chileans who are
supporters of the military regime and
had found them basically in agreement
with others to whom he talked on the
question of the violation of human
rights.
In the article, Father McGuire said he
“received a report from a woman who
had been subjected to brutal electric
shock tortures because the military
believed she could supply the names of
social activitists living in her low-income
neighborhood. I cross-checked the
woman’s story and confirmed her
reliability with several objective Chilean
sources.
“The motivation for these human
rights violations is political rather than
military. Chileans have been executed,
tortured, imprisoned, exiled, beaten,
intimidated, fired with no possibility of
finding work, expelled from universities
and deprived of their constitutional
rights for political reasons.
“Anyone who participated in or
supported the programs and/or social
orientation of Chile’s deposed
constitutionally elected government is
now subject to blanket persecution with
no legal safeguards.”
Father McGuire asked: “By what
perverted logic can these people now be
labelled dangerous subversives and
hunted down as though they were
criminals?”
Violations of human rights cited by
Father McGuire include:
-“Freedom of speech and freedom of
the press no longer exist in Chile.
Government censorship combined with
the willing self-censorship of Chile’s
right-wing communications media has
silenced all dissent.”
-“Academic freedom is also a thing
of the past. Professors and students have
been summarily dismissed with virtually
no possibility of continuing their
academic careers.” He cited loyalty
oaths, book-burning and arrests for
possession of written materials
concerning socialism, a category in wich
the military include Church documents
and even papal encyclicals.
-“The freedom of workers to
organize for collective bargaining also
seems to be virtually dead. Any worker
known or thought to have been
sympathetic to the Allende government
can be summarily fired.”
-“Church-state relations are strained
in Chile. The junta has placed military
men in Catholic universities and high
schools to serve as rectors. There is a
direct campaign of intimidation and
academic censorship against Catholic
schools which have taught the Church’s
stance on distributive social justice as
presented in Pope Paul’s encyclical On
the Development of Peoples and similar
documents. ”
Father McGuire said that “certain
representatives of the Chilean Church
have apparently seriously erred in
judgment by allowing themselves to be
used by the junta. This could be
interpreted as political opportunism by
these members of the Chilean Church
and it is both an ill-advised and
unworthy stance.”
He urged the Chilean Church “to
guard against any and all appearances of
alignment with the junta until
constitutional freedom is restored. I also
urge that no Church legitimation be
given to the junta unless and until free
speech, free press and the right of
peaceful assembly are restored.”
Father McGuire encouraged the
Chilean Church “to speak out against all
violations of human rights and clearly
demonstrate that the faith placed in the
Church by those oppressed is justified.”
Father McGuire said that he is going
to urge the USCC’s Social Development
and World Peace Committee to issue
publicly as soon as possible a response
to a year-old request by an ecumenical
group of U.S. missioners in Chile that
the U.S. Church ask' the U.S.
government not to obstruct Chile’s
attempt to define its own form of
national socialism within a
constitutional framework.
He said that the Latin American
Division will continue to cooperate with
members of the U.S. House of
Representatives and Senate “seeking to
reexamine this country’s aid and trade
relations with Chile.
“SENSATIONALISM” CHARGED
Repression in Chile
“It is my hope that further U.S.
foreign assistance to the Chilean junta
will be withheld until Congress is
convinced that current human rights
violations have been terminated. It is
directly contradictory to the
Judaeo-Christian values of the U.S.
People for our representative
government to use our tax dollars to
assist governments which torture,
intimidate and deny the constitutional
rights of its people.”
BLESSED SACRAMENT HOME AND SCHOOL
ASSOCIATION will sponsor their annual Bazaar and
Chicken Supper, Saturday, December 8th from 5:00
p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in the School Gym. Shown holding
some of the items for the Bazaar, are left to right, Mrs.
Bill Gaudry, Mrs. Roger Lowery, Mrs. Charles
Harrison, Bazaar Chairman, and Mrs. Dick Fogarty.
Psychologist Disputes Newsweek on Priests’ Dating
NEW YORK (NC) - Father Eugene
Kennedy, author of an extensive
psychological study of American priests,
disputed the “sensationalism” of a
Newsweek article on priests who date.
According to the Dec. 3 issue of the
national news weekly published here,
“thousands of U.S. Catholic priests are
experimenting with what they call ‘the
third way’-a priestly life-style that
includes close personal relationships
with women leading sometimes to sex
but seldom to marriage.” The article
quoted Father Kennedy several times in
a context indicating he supported
Newsweek’s analysis of the situation.
Contacted by NC News, Father
Kennedy said he had written to
Newsweek to tell them:
“I must dissociate myself from the
overall impression created by the article
on priests’ dating,. . . It makes it seem
that many American priests are abusing
their vow of celibacy and leading sleazy
and hypocritical lives. This is not true of
men who, according to the extensive
research I have conducted, keep their
religious promises and try to approach
all human relationships with integrity
and responsibility.”
Father Kennedy told NC that he
respects the journalistic ability and
integrity of Newsweek’s religion editor,
Kenneth Woodward, but he felt that the
article “got out of hand” in focusing
too much attention on isolated cases of
obvious immaturity on the part of
priests.
“This is not true of the majority of
priests,” he said.
He said the point he tried to make
when interviewed by Newsweek was
that “priests take human relationships
seriously-and that makes them like
other men.”
He admitted that his psychological
study of U.S. priests, conducted under
the sponsorship of the U.S. bishops, had
indicated many of them were immature
heterosexually. “This is also the
common problem of American men,”
he said. “Despite these challenges, there
is not a great deal of breaking celibacy
or abusing it among priests.”
THE SAVANNAH ITALIAN CLUB marked 20
years of selling Christmas trees at Victory Drive and
Bee Road in Savannah on Dec. 1 when it began its
1973 sale. Trees on sale are Douglas Firs, 3 ft. to 20
ft.; Scotch Pine, 5 ft. to 10 ft.; White Pine, 7 ft. to 8 ft.
“Smells like a Pine,” says Metro Russian. “Feels like a
Fir,” counters Paul Matthews (photo on left). Both
men demonstrate how to “put a tree in a bag” in
photo to right. Tree bags are also on sale. For
information call 232-6048.
He questioned the factual value of
Newsweek’s statement that “an
estimated 5 to 25 percent of the
Catholic clergy are currently going out
with women” in the Los Angeles area.
“My God, the margin of error in that!
That sounds like rumor,” said Father
Kennedy.
His own experience with hundreds of
priests, he said, indicated that many
have problems in learning to deal with
women in terms of personal
relationships of friendship. But, he said,
as a married or single layman “you have
to learn a way to deal with women, a
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way that respects your integrity and
their integrity.”
The problem itself, he said, is “a good
kind of problem to have. It forces you
to search yourself to try to find out
what kind of person you are.”
He objected to the commonly used
term for dating priests-the “third way”
between celibacy and leaving the
priesthood to marry. “I have never used
this term, I have disavowed it,” said the
priest-psychologist. “There is only one
way for each person to live, and that is
in the context of his own
responsibilities and promises.”
He said Newsweek’s article left the
impression that the incidence of illicit
intimate relationships between priests
and women, including sexual
intercourse, is widespread. On the
contrary, he said, the large numbers in
recent years of men who have left the
priesthood openly and with dignity in
order to marry indicates the seriousness
which priests attach both to celibacy
and to human relationships.
In his experience priests in this
country take the obligation of celibacy
“with extraordinary seriousness,”
Father Kennedy said.
A SPECIAL MASS on Thanksgiving Day was an inspiration for many at
St. Francis Xavier Church (Brunswick). Highlights included the “Tables of
Blessings” (Family, Freedom, Food, Fun, Fellowship, Faith) and recorded
“thanksgivings.”
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