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PAGE 3—January 17,1974
BISHOPS TOLD:
“World Technologically One”
THE FACE IS FAMILIAR - Bishop Robert L.
Whelan, S.J., of Fairbanks Alaska, watches a videotape
replay of a talk he gave at a Communications Institute
on the campus of the University of Notre Dame, Ind.
Critiquing the tape for him is Philip Murray, staff
CAMPUS MINISTERS MEET
director of WBBM-TV in Chicago. Twelve bishops took
part in the five day institute, sponsored by the
Communication Department, U.S. Catholic
Conference. (NC Photo)
Seek Ways to “Reproduce” Ministry
NOTRE DAME, Ind. (NC) - The
communications revolution has created
“a world society,” an official of the
U.S. Catholic Conference (USCC) told
bishops attending a Communications
Institute here.
The official, Father J. Bryan Hehir,
director of the USCC Division of Justice
and Peace, said: “Technologically, we
have one world, and the Church has
long believed that the world constitutes,
not a competing crowd, but a
community.”
Technology, Father Hehir continued,
“can penetrate our lives and bind us
together, but it can also isolate us from
one another by placing a shield between
the doer and his action.” He cited the
examples of B-52 pilots who had
testified that they were unaware of the
specific identity of the targets they were
sent out to bomb, as well as modern
clinical abortion techniques.
Father Hehir reminded the bishops
that the world population issue involves
such matters as the availability and
distribution of resources and their
consumption.
“The consumption habits of
Americans are at least as important to
this issue as the reproduction habits of
persons in other lands,” he said.
In addition to Archbishop Joseph L.
Bemardin of Cincinnati, chairman of
the USCC Communication Committee,
12 bishops participated in the
five-day institute here, the fourth such
event sponsored by the USCC
Communication Department since
1970.
On the first day of the institute,
bishops worked with three-quarter inch
video tape cameras in learning to make
their own TV programs, and practiced
simulated news interviews and critiques
at television stations WSBT, the CBS
affiliate in South Bend, Ind., and
WNDU, the NBC affiliated station on
the Notre Dame University campus
here.
Guest lecturers and faculty at the
Communication Institute included: Sid
Darion, manager of public affairs,
BRIDGEPORT
Office for
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (NC) - Bishop
Walter Curtis of Bridgeport announced
here that he is opening a new diocesan
Office for Pastoral Care of the
Separated, Divorced and Remarried.
The office - believed to be the first in
the country - will be an agency of the
diocesan marriage tribunal, the bishop
said. It will serve as a resource center for
priests in the areas of Church marriage
law and pastoral practice in meeting the
special problems of divorced persons.
Presenting his plans for the new
agency at a meeting of the diocesan
priests’ council Jan. 7, Bishop Curtis
said the purpose of the office is to meet
the growing need for the Church to
serve separated and divorced Catholics.
According to Father Thomas Driscoll,
diocesan vice chancellor, “the awareness
of the increasing number of people who
are divorced and remarried was brought
to the bishop’s attention primarily
through the marriage tribunal.
The tribunal has had a steady increase
in marriage cases in recent years, Father
Driscoll said.
He noted that the need to provide
better pastoral care for divorced and
separated Catholics had also been
discussed among priests and at priests’
council meetings. But the plan for a
separate office “was initiated by Bishop
Curtis,” he said. “He deserves full credit
for it.”
Bishop Curtis named Msgr. Patrick F.
ABC-TV News, New York; Doris Ann,
manager of religious programs, NBC-TV,
New York; Pamela Ilott, director of
cultural and religious programs,
CBS-TV, New York; Jesuit Father
Richard A. Blake, associate editor of
America magazine; Charles E. Hinds,
executive director, Chicago
Archdiocesan Multimedia
Commimication Center and Network;
Philip Murray, staff director, WBDM-TV
(CBS), Chicago; Edward J. Roth,
communication consultant, Washington,
D.C.; and Father James P. Roache,
secretary for communications,
archdiocese of Chicago.
“If the television industry can
motivate people more effectively with
the cat food commercial than we can
with the Sermon of the Mount, then it
stands to reason we have a lot to learn
from them,” Father Blake told the
bishops.
He said “an extraordinary
communication consciousness”
developed in this country in the years
following World War II. “Visionary
BP. DEMPSEY
CHICAGO (NC) - Auxiliary Bishop
Michael Dempsey, known as Chicago’s
“ghetto bishop,” died Jan. 8 in St.
Anthony’s hospital here after suffering a
heart attack. He was 55.
Bishop Dempsey was a native
Chicagoan who for most of his priestly
life was concerned with the problems of
the inner city’s poor. Since his
ordination in 1943, he worked among
ghetto residents.
“I am not in charge of inner city
parishes,” he once explained, “but I
draw them together to realize the vision
of the Church today.”
Until a heart condition forced him to
Divorced
Donnelly, a member of the diocesan
marriage tribunal for 17 years and
pastor of Assumption Parish in
Westport, to become full-time director
of the office, which was scheduled to
open Jan. 15.
The new agency will be responsible
for alerting priests to changes in the
Church’s marriage law, offering legal
assistance in examining new cases and
re-examining older cases that might
require new action in the light of legal
changes.
It will also encourage more concern
in parishes for people who are
separated, divorced and remarried, and
it will give priests information and
assistance to help them decide on
questions of pastoral care, approach to
the sacraments and other issues facing
Catholics whose marriages have broken
up.
The Church’s position on the
indissolubility of marriage has not
changed, but in recent years the norms
and procedures for declaring a first
marriage null have been relaxed. The
result has been a significant increase in
the number of marriage cases brought to
diocesan tribunals and resolved.
The steadily increasing number of
U.S. Catholics divorcing and remarrying
over the past decade has caused the
Church to focus more of its efforts on
caring for their religious needs, but the
establishment of the Bridgeport
diocesan office seems to be the most
far-reaching effort of its kind so far in
the United States.
writers and thinkers held out the
prospect of a planet bound together in
brotherhood by means of
communications, of education reaching
the most remote peoples, and of a
Gospel spread throughout the ‘global
village’ at the flip of a switch.
“Yet the visions are far from the
realities in the 1970s,” he continued.
“In the United States especially, where
commercial TV is an industry with
annual revenues in excess of $4 billion,
high ideals and an important message do
not insure a hearing. Media systems are
simply overloaded, and only the most
professional executed messages get
through. ”
Cautioning against a sense of defeat,
Father Blake said: “We have learned
that effective use of the media demands
as much of churchmen as it does of
advertisers: professionally trained and
experienced personnel; capital
inventment; market analysis; and a
willingness to throw out a cherished
idea when it becomes tired, or to try a
bold experiment when the right people
say ‘Go.’”
curtail his duties more than a year ago,
Bishop Dempsey had been national
director of the U.S. bishops’
anti-poverty Campaign for Human
Development. (CHD).
As CHD director, Bishop Dempsey
was principal spokesman for the CHD
multi-million-dOllar fund-raising
campaign which provides self-help
projects for the poor on national and
local levels.
He was the recipient of the 1972
Good Samaritan Award of the National
Catholic Development Conference. The
award goes annually to the person
whose life work embodies the spirit of
the original Good Samaritan of the
Gospel.
Bishop Dempsey was bom in
Chicago, Sept. 10, 1918. He attended
Quigley Preparatory Seminary in
Chicago, and St. Mary of the Lake
Seminary, Mundelein, Ill., where he was
ordained on May 1, 1943.
As a priest, he held pastoral
assignments, served on the matrimonial
tribunal, and was made a papal
chamberlain in 1959. In 1960 he was
named executive director of the
Catholic League for Religious Assistance
of Poland.
By 1970 it was estimated that Bishop
Dempsey had logged 25,000 miles
across the country to explode what he
considered were myths about poverty.
He believed that human problems of
the ghetto could be solved by giving the
poor decent jobs. “Better jobs are a
ticket to a better life. It’s that simple,”
he said.
Bishop Dempsey
MIAMI (NC) - A national conference
of over 250 Catholic campus ministers
was told that, to make their work more
effective, they must “reproduce” their
ministry to others.
The Catholic Campus Ministry
Association (CCMA) met at Marymount
College in Boca Raton to consider how
an individual priest or Sister cai be
more effective on campus and what
type of presence the Church should
maintain there.
Father Gerard Egan, a psychologist
from Loyola University of Chicago, told
participants that they must “reproduce”
their ministry by involving more
parishioners in their work.
“You have to get a small number of
men and women who are willing to
minister, and train them to
communicate, learn the skills of
ministry to the sick and troubled -- in
other words reproduce your ministry in
others until you have a ‘ministering
parish’ where parishioners are helping
one another.”
Father Egan said that ineffective
ministry stems from identifying
leadership exclusively with the pastor or
chaplain.
“The parish or chaplaincy is
ineffective unless leadership is seen as a
function of the whole parish or
community,” said the psychologist.
“Ministry must be the function of
everyone, or at least a large number of
people. ”
Father Patrick O’Neil, chairman of
CCMA, said that it was especially
important for campus ministers to share
their ministry since about 60 percent of
them have no assistants.
The CCMA chairman said that
membership has doubled to 800 in two
years because the organization has
helped meet the diverse needs of
campus ministers. He noted the CCMA
provides a consultation service in which
a team evaluates a campus ministry
operation and suggests programs to
make it more effective.
The convention program included
workshops on such subjects as abortion,
the women’s movement on campus, the
occult, and the Church in politics.
Father Richard Leonard of the
University of Iowa led a workshop on
BY CATHOLIC MEN
CINCINNATI (NC) - Over the next
two years the International Council of
Catholic Men (ICCM) will work to
promote the Holy Year theme of
“reconciliation among men,” according
to Ferd J. Niehaus of Cincinnati, ICCM
vice president and immediate past
president of the U.S. National Council
of Catholic Men.
Reporting on a recent meeting of the
ICCM board in Cologne, Germany,
Niehaus said that the organization’s
1974-75 program will emphasize active
participation in the Holy Year and a
rejection of “the spirit and practice of
materialism.”
ICCM board members from Germany,
France, Italy, England and the United
States attended the meeting. In a
statement issued at the end of the
meeting, they said:
“In the harassed pursuit of alleged
prosperity, the idea of God and the
supernatural disappears and justice,
brotherhood and charity are trampled
underfoot. No reconciliation is possible
without education to deep respect for
man and nature, a respect that
marriage courses. He said that campus
ministers should avoid the old idea of
sitting a couple down and telling them,
“Here’s what the Church says about
marriage and you’d better heed it.” His
approach, he said, is to ask the couple
what their ideas and expectations about
marriage are. That way they gain real
insight into themselves which they may
not have gained in any other way,
Father Leonard said.
corresponds to God’s own way of acting
with regard to man and all creatures.”
The board announced that an ICCM
General Assembly, to be held in Rome
in October 1975, will discuss how these
commitments will be carried on beyond
the Holy Year.
Meanwhile, the ICCM has delegated
to a small commission the task of
drawing up a memorandum for the
world Synod of Bishops to be held next
fall in Rome. The memorandum “will
set forth , some requirements,
characteristics of adults of our time,
with regard to an evangelization that
will respect particular local cultures as
much as possible and be at the same
time open to the prospects of more
intense relations in international life,”
the statement said.
The board also said the ICCM is
planning a document of confirmation of
its positions on the family, abortion and
any attempt on human life. The
document will be presented to the Latin
American meeting on. Population and
Development to be held at Quito,
Ecuador, next June.
“Ghetto Bishop” Dies
Reconciliation Urged
India Remembers Christian Holy Men and Women
BY FATHER JOHN BARRETT, S J.
BOMBAY, India (NC) - Officially the
Indian government observes 30 holidays
during the year, nearly all of them
religious. So it is not surprising that
Christmas and Good Friday appear on
the list, though Christians are only
about two percent of the population.
The nationally distributed
English-language Illustrated Weekly of
Bombay this year featured “Christian
Saints of India” in the special
Christmas issue. Two pages in color
depicted scenes from the lives of St.
Francis Xavier and four other well
known holy men.
“India is particularly rich in holy
men, and Christianity has produced
many saints, both from the sons and
daughters of the soil and persons of
foreign extraction who made the
country their own,” the weekly said.
Featured in the article are 11 Indian
men and women and 10 foreigners
considered holy. Of the latter, St.
Francis Xavier was considered
outstanding for men and Mother Teresa
of Calcutta the best known among the
women.
St. Thomas the Apostle is naturally
the first of Indian saints because he
brought the faith to this country in 52
A.D. and was martyred here. No other
saints are recorded until the first Jesuit
missionary to India, Francis Xavier,
arrived in 1542. He died 10 years later
off the China coast but his body is
preserved in Goa
The first Indian saint tried to imitate
Xavier. He was Gonsalo Garcia, bom
near present-day Bombay, joined the
Jesuits and was sent to Japan. In the
Philippines, Garcia left the Jesuits,
joined the Franciscans, returned to
Japan and was martyred with others
near Nagasaki in 1597. He was
canonized in 1862.
Another Indian missionary was the
venerable Joseph Vaz, the apostle of
Ceylon, that large island off the
southern tip of India now known as Sri
Lanka. He died there in 1711 at the age
of 60. More recent was Father Agnel
d’Souza, a saintly man in Goa who died
in 1927 and at whose tomb miraculous
cures are reported.
His contemporary was a holy
Carmelite nun in Kerala, Sister
Alphonsa, who died 27 years ago. The
diocesan proceedings for her
beatification are now completed and the
process has been sent to the Vatican.
Albanian-born Mother Teresa holds
the stage today, not only in India but
also aboard. This founder of the
Missionaries of Charity in a quarter
century has set up 150 centers in 25
Indian cities for 27,000 destitutes and
35,000 lepers. Her Sisters are now
working in slums in Bangladesh,
Venezuela, Sri Lanka, Italy, Tanzania,
Australia, Jordan, England, Ireland and
the United States.
Two Italian Jesuits and a Portuguese
of a former era left indelible marks on
the country. Father Robert de Nobili
was the first to adopt the dress and
austerity of Hindu holy men in the
south, became a master in Indian
languages, and converted many high
caste Brahmin families. Father John de
Britto, the Portuguese, followed him in
style and method and was martyred in
1693. The other Italian was Father
Constanzo Beschi, author of a classic
poem still studied in colleges here. He
died in 1742.
A minor “Joan of Arc” was
Zebunissa, a Moslem dancing girl who
married a Luxembourg adventurer,
Walter Reinhardt. He acquired a large
estate in service of the Mogul, Moslem
emperor at Delhi, then died. His widow,
known as Begum Samru, took over and
twice rescued the emperor with her
army. She became a Catholic, persuaded
the Pope to send her a bishop from
Italy, and in 1800 built a great church
that attracts large pilgrimages twice
every year, though the bishopric no
longer exists.
Protestants of great religious
distinction in India are Pandita
Ramabai, born a Hindu, who founded
communities for women in Bombay and
Poona before her death in 1922, and
American Dr. Ida Scudder, founder of
the Christian Medical College and
Hospital in Vellore, where she died at
the age of 90 i 1960.