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The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 55 No. 1 Thursday, January 3,1974 S ingl e Copy Price - 12 Cents
KEEPING A PATIENT ALIVE ~ A patient in the
Trauma Center of the Albany (N.Y.) Medical Center is
kept alive with a variety of apparatus as shown on the
special “ABC News Closeup On - The Right to Die,”
Jan. 5. The program shows how medical engineers as
well as doctors and nurses, are needed for the
operation of complex life-saving devices. (NC Photo
from ABC)
POPE’S CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
Man Still Needs Christ
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope Paul
VI, speaking from the balcony of St.
Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Day,
praised man as a fine and noble but still
imperfect creature who needs Christ as
his Savior.
Pope Paul exalted the Christian
concept of man that sees him as noble
but hobbled by sin. The Pope spoke out
against modem humanism that makes
man his own god and, in an apparent
allusion to abortion, he warned: “Woe
to the person who interferes with him
(man); for man is bom sacred in his life,
from his mother’s womb.”
INSIDE STORY
Korean Freedom
Pg. 2
Cardinal Shehan
Pg. 3
Entertainment
Pg. 6
Cook’s Nook
Pg. 8
On Christmas eve, the bells of St.
Peter’s began tolling at 11:30 p.m., and
literally tens of thousands of visitors
and Romans converged on St. Peter’s
Square to stream into the brilliantly
lighted basilica. The night was mild and
the hundreds of statues topping the
twin colonnade circling the great square
were illuminated, as was the great dome
of Michelangelo.
Inside the basilica the Sistine Choir
filled the air with singing in Latin.
The glare of half a hundred kleig
lights trained on the basilica’s high altar
robbed the scene of some of its possible
mystery but enabled not only the
thousands in the church to see the
ceremony clearly but also enabled
television cameras, carrying the entire
service throughout the world, to follow
the Pope’s every move.
The Pope’s sermon on Christmas eve
was almost as if it had been written
according to a journalism school’s
textbook. In retelling the story of the
birth of Christ, the Pope answered the
standard questions which are demanded
on any newstory: who, what, where,
when, why and how.
“He has come!” the Pope exclaimed.
“Who has come? The Savior, Christ the
Lord!”
When did he come? The Pope asked.
“You know already. He came at the
time of the first Roman emperor Cesar
Augustus.”
Why did He come? “He came to
establish the focal point of religious
events, the events which give meaning
for the existence of mankind.”
Where, asked the Pope?”- “Who does
not know the answer? In Bethlehem, in
a humble and welcoming crib.”
Lastly, the Pope asked: “How did He
come?” he answered: “Women, rejoice!
Admire the Blessed One among you! He
has come by the way of human birth.”
Speaking in strong and compelling
tones, Pope Paul finished her sermon by
declaring: “Whoever experiences in
some way this enthralling and now
central truth of Christmas, as he returns
to his own home and to his own affairs,
will feel rising in his heart a spontaneous
song, the song of this festivity: Glory to
God! Peace on earth! A son of divine
love, the song of Christmas.”
The ceremony on the balcony was
televised and the Pope was very
conscious of the fact he was speaking to
a much larger audience than the roughly
50,000 persons standing below him in
the overcast square of St. Peter’s.
The Pope chose to exalt the Christian
concept of man but at the same time to
inveigh against a concept of man which
is totally without any reference to God.
Today, he said, many men accept the
feast of Christmas and Christianity as a
“human value. . .they do not see the
divine truth that gives this human value
its reason for being and its infinite
worth.”
SENATE SETS APRIL DATE
National Day of Penance
WASHINGTON (NC) - Sen. Mark O.
Hatfield (R-Ore.) introduced, and the
Senate adopted, a resolution to set aside
April 30 as a “national day of
humiliation, fasting and prayer.”
Hatfield’s resolution says it
“behooves us to humble ourselves
before almighty God, to confess our
national sins and to pray for clemency
and forgiveness.”
The resolution passed by voice vote
with no debate or opposition.
Hatfield told the Senate:
“We witness a country tom apart
with division and lacking the spiritual
foundation which would restore its
vision and purpose. We, as a people,
through our acquiescence to corruption
and waste, have helped to create a moral
abyss that produces a disdain for
honesty and humility in high levels of
national leadership.”
The resolution is modeled after a
proclamation issued by Abraham
Lincoln fixing April 30, 1863 as a day
of reflection. It was a time when the
Union cause in the Civil War had
reached a low point.
“President Lincoln had a profound
sense of the sovereignty of God. He
knew how the nation stood accountable
to God’s judgment,” Hatfield said.
“I believe that only a national
confession of corporate guilt can save us
from the worship of our own finite
power and the tragedies that this
worship creates,” he said.
Several times in other speeches,
Hatfield has referred to what he called a
“civil religion” where Americans set
themselves up as God’s chosen people.
He said that there are all kinds of
symbols of religiosity, such as the motto
“In God We Trust.” But he called this a
kind of lip service to religion.
One section of the resolution states:
“We have grown in numbers, wealth
and power as no other nation nas ever
grown; but we have forgotten God.”
The resolution further states that
Americans are “intoxicated with
unbroken success. We have become too
self-sufficient to feel the necessity of
redeeming and preserving grace, too
proud to pray to the God that made
us.”
4
IN HIRING COORDINATOR
Parishes Warned Against Haste
BROOKFIELD, Mass. (CPF) - A
layman experienced in the growing field
of parish religious education
coordinators has warned parishes against
prematurely hiring coordinators for
their religious education programs.
George P. Bergeron, who has
established a religious education
consultation service here, told The
Catholic Free Press of the Worcester,
Mass, diocese that hiring a full-time
religious education coordinator may not
necessarily be the best way to solve its
religious education problems.
“As a matter of fact,” he said,
“sometimes the worst thing that can
happen in a parish is to hire a full-time
coordinator. And sometimes the worst
thing that can happen to a coordinator
is to accept employment in a parish that
is not ready yet for his or her ideas or
services or for the personality of the
particular individual.”
Mr. Bergeron, who studied at the
Lumen Vitae School of Religious
Education in Brussels and who has
coordinated religious education centers
in the Archdiocese of Chicago, observed
that the idea of a concerted,
coordinated program for all members of
a given parish “is catching on and, for
many reasons, led to the ‘coordinator
phenomenon.’”
However, he said, “the simple fact of
employing a coordinator to develop,
organize and manager comprehensive
education program, statistics prove, is
not the automatic solution to a
particular parish’s education problems.
To the contrary, sometimes it only
compounds the problem.”
One major problem Mr. Bergeron has
discovered in his work is that many
parishes become enthused about the
idea of a religious education coordinator
but become disenchanted when results
are not quickly seen.
different needs from virtually every
other parish,” try to assess what kind of
religious education program it desires.
“This may,” he said, “demand the
immediate employment of a full-time
paid coordinator. But maybe not. If it
does, however, what kind of person
should be employed? What particular
talents should he or she have to meet
the needs of this or that parish? Is the
person to be employed really looking
for this type of work or is he or she
merely fleeing from another type of
work?”
Whatever is decided upon, he insisted,
it should be fully explained to all the
people of the parish, who should be
given a role in arriving at the decision.
(Catholic Press Features)
HEADLINE
HOPSCOTCH
Local CHD Funding Deadline
The deadline for applications for funding local anti-poverty programs from the
Campaign for Human Development (CHD) is February 28,1974 the Savannah Diocese
Social Apostolate office has announced. Guidelines and applications forms may be
obtained by writing to the Social Apostolate, P.O. Box 2303, Savannah, Georgia
31402.
Dominican Repression
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (NC) -- Sixty priests, semimarians and
Religious urged the government to grant a general amnesty for political prisoners and
to allow the return of exiles. The group said that it is a “monstrous injustice” that
many persons are jailed and tortured because they disagree with the government.
Although the group did not speak for the Dominican bishops, some high Church
authorities have moved to pressure the government into easing its policies.
Children’s Masses
VATICAN CITY (NC) - The Vatican issued a directory, or guidelines, for children’s
Masses that are designed to initiate youths gradually into participation in community
Masses. Children, the directory said, must first grasp the human values that are bound
up with the Mass, such as acting in community, listening, asking forgiveness and giving
thanks. The family, the directory added, has the primary responsibility in inculcating
the attributes.
One reason is that no budget has been
allocated.
Opposition to Berrigan
“Of itself, this only results in
frustration for the coordinator and even
for the entire parish when the people
don’t see results from the new way of
approaching education. And inevitably,
results will be few without a budget.”
Mr. Bergeron added that “national
statistics show that formalized religious
education programs have sprung up like
mushrooms in recent years. Yet, the
same statistics show that there has been
something like an 80 to 90 per cent
turnover in personnel who took on the
role of a parish coordinator of religious
education.”
“Sometimes,” he explained, “this was
the fault of the parish that had set no
goals for its coordinator or its program;
other times it was the fault of the
coordinator who, even though
well-intentioned, was ill-prepared for
the demanding role he or she was
undertaking.”
What Mr. Bergeron recommends is
that each parish, realizing that it “has
different problems and, therefore,
NEW YORK (NC) - Plans to present Father Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit anti-war
activist, with the Gandhi Peace Award have met strong opposition because of a speech
he made recently accusing Israel of criminal imperialism and racism. The Rev. Roy
Pfaff, executive director of Promoting Enduring Peace, the sponsoring organization,
said the board members are being polled again to see if they still want to give the peace
award to Father Berrigan.
Korean 'Crisis’ Seen
SEOUL, Korea (NC) - A group of 15 South Korean politicians, educators and
religious leaders, including Cardinal Stephan Kim of Seoul, has called for the
restoration of full democracy before “a grave national crisis” occurs. The group
demanded that the powers of the National Assembly be restored and a “way opened
for peaceful transfer of power through elections.”
Oppose Philippine Aid
NEW YORK (NC) - More than a hundred clergymen and educators urged
Americans to write their legislators to suspend military and economic aid to the
Philippines “until human rights are restored” there. The group of 113, known as
Americans Concerned for the Philippines, includes three Catholic bishops and several
prominent priests and nuns. The group charged that President Ferdinand Marcos has
jailed thousands of political opponents.