Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 2—The Southern Cross, January 24,1974
MUSLIM-CHRISTIAN CONFRONTATION
The Violent Death of a
Philippines
Honor Roll
AUTOMATIC WEAPONS tore large holes in this house in the
Philippines. Columban Father Peter O’Neill, who is inspecting the damage,
saw his entire parish plant in Dimataling burned to the ground last spring
during the Muslim rebellion on Mindanao island.
Albany Diocese Issues
DIMATALING, Philippines ~ The
dateline is wrong - there is no
Dimataling any more. This is the story
of its death - another victim of the
Muslim-Christian confrontation in the
Philippines that finally erupted into an
open Muslim rebellion.
A small coastal village on Mindanao
Island, Dimataling is the parish center of
an area served by Columban Fathers
AUGUSTA’S AQUINAS
Semester
FIRST HONOR ROOL - Students
who have marks of 90 or above in each
subject and at least a Satisfactory in
conduct.
Seniors -- Alex Boerner, Steve
Highsmith.
Juniors -- Libba Battey, Charles
Pruszynski, Matt Rice, David Munn,
Christina Rice, Susan Turner, Craig
Doolittle, Becky Whaley.
Sophomores -- Anne Marie
Markwalter.
Freshmen -- Robert Beier, Rich
Brotherton, Walter Kahres, Natasha
Fox, Haywood Moxley, Tangy Morgan.
SECOND HONORS -- Students who
have marks of 85 of above in each
subject and at least a Satisfactory in
conduct.
Seniors -- Angela Echols, Richard
Jerry Murphy and Peter O’Neill. They
did all they could -- but finally like
everyone else they could only watch
helplessly as the town, racked by
fighting, slowly died before their eyes.
It began with a single killing in June,
1972. A band of Muslims attacked a
fisherman, a Christian, and killed him.
The man’s relatives retaliated by killing
four innocent Muslims. Tension in
Fontenot, Maria Martinez, Karen
Farmer, Laura McDonald, David Ward,
Anthony Beier, Robert Randolph,
David Tucker, Marty Wallace.
Juniors -- Perry Duggar, Allyn Lay,
Doug Quarles, Libe Armstrong, Susan
MacLeod, Warren Anderson, Chris Best,
Kathy Dotson, Dawn Facey, Tom
Godbee, Joe Samulski, William Beier,
Harry Moxley.
Sophomores -- Debra Murray, Cathy
Hughes, David Heid, Mark Kuchinski,
Mary Jo Oiler, Donna Wilds, Valerie
Cooper, Valerie DeVaney, Sayona Fox,
Mike Hall.
Freshmen - Andy Godbee, Pam
O’Connor, Patrica Real, Carey Cook,
Katherine Griswald, Jack Markwalter,
Russell Moores, Bernie Norris, Greg
Vaughn, Pierre Wilkins, Mary Bowles,
Betsy Hudson, Agnes Markwalter,
Rebecca Shipps, Gigi Bush, Lucy
Mulherin.
ALBANY, N.Y. (NC) - Complete
freedom of the child, total personal
involvement of parents and communal
Penance celebrations in every parish
were among the demands made in the
new norms for first Penance published
here by the Albany diocese.
The strongly worded rules insist on a
highly individualized, personal approach
to preparing the child for Penance and
deciding on the child’s readiness to
receive the sacrament. They said, among
other things, that:
“Classes and groups, the
programmed goal of which is the
imposed first reception of the sacrament
of Penance, are to be considered a
violation of children’s freedom of
choice.”
Penance in its ideal form -- communal
celebration of the sacrament.”
The Albany norms differed from
other diocesan first Penance rules
primarily in their demand for communal
Penance as the normal procedure and in
the strength of their emphasis on
parental involvement and the freedom
of the child from pressure or coercion.
They also differed from the rules of
some dioceses in their clear statement
that either first Penance or first
Communion may come first. Most
dioceses have said that first confession
should normally occur before first
Communion, and some dioceses have
made that order of receiving the
sacraments mandatory.
BY IRISH BISHOP
Underground
Armies Deplored
MANCHESTER, England (NC) -
Ireland’s problem is the continued
existence of underground armies, not
any of the issues they exploit, Bishop
William Philbin of Down and Connor
said here.
Speaking to the Irish Association,
Bishop Philbin, whose diocese includes
violence-wracked Belfast, said such
secret armies have become “either the
sovereign legitimate authority, the
ultimate arbiters of right and wrong, of
good and evil in Ireland, or they are
immoral forces usurping the rights of
the population, the oppressors of
liberty. They are confronting every
individual with a challenge to regard
them either in one role or the other.
“There is no middle course in
meeting this challenge. It is time we
made up our minds clearly and made
our minds known without any
possibility of misunderstanding.”
A tiny minority, the bishop said, has
put itself outside the guidance of the
Church and, indeed, outside the
influence of Christianity where their
particular interests are concerned.
Members of this minority 7 , he said,
indoctrinate others, mostly the young
and least intelligent, to the effect that
neither parents, nor churchmen, nor
ethical authorities of any kind have any
right to interpret the moral law where
political or nationalistic affairs are
concerned.
“The line is that in a fight for
freedom there is no moral law,” Bishop
Philbin said. “Secret leaders, unknown
to most of their agents as well as to the
population generally, have the only
authority there is, and it is the most
absolute and arbitrary authority
conceivable, in all that has to do with
public affairs in Ireland.”
Bishop Philbin maintained that the
campaign of atrocities in Northern
Ireland has been “organized and carried
out from the beginning in the face of
the Church’s repeated condemnation.”
He asserted that Church leaders had
carried out St. Paul’s command to
“reprove and rebuke in season and out
of season, whether the message was
welcome or unwelcome.
“This responsibility has been
discharged. We are not to blame that
news media did not always make known
what was said.”
The bishop said that the “deliberate
poisoning of the minds of children --
girls as well as boys -- and their
enrollment into junior armies as agents
of terrorism has horrified everyone
holding any moral standards.
“It is a feature that is new in the
history of conflict in this country.
Indeed, the whole concept of an
organized and sustained campaign of
outrages against a total population -
against civilians and the whole apparatus
of civilian life - a war of blackmail
against society for political ends, is
something that has been taking shape
among us for the first time. Everyone
knows the international forces whose
interests are promoted by the chaos.”
He said the whole population has to
bear some blame for tolerating the idea
that “authority may attach to any
underground group who claim and seize
it. . .The collective voice of a whole
people should have talked and ridiculed
such an idea out of existence long
before the horrifying evidence of what
it leads to began to accumulate.”
-- “Strongly leading questions” or
parental pressure can erode the child’s
freedom.
-- “There is no one apart from a child
itself who has the slightest right to
decide if the sacrament of Penance shall
precede first Communion day or follow
it.”
- The timing of a child’s first
confession “shall be arrived upon as a
result of a clear desire of the child to
make such a response - never as the
result of an administrative decision
which presupposes that the Spirit of
God will oblige.”
“Parents are by right and
responsibility the chief educators of
their children.. .The prior right of
parents to educate must remain intact.”
- “Parishes which do not provide at
least occasional opportunities for the
communal celebration of the sacrament
of Penance must be considered, at the
very least, neglectful of an intensely
important dimension of the Church’s
life...”
- In most instances “children are to
be introduced to the sacrament of
Savannah
Blessed Sacrament and St. James are
tied for first place in both the boys and
girls divisions of Savannah’s Parochial
School League after the third weekend
of play with 2 wins and no losses each.
In games played last weekend in the
boys division, Blessed Sacrament
defeated Cathedral 45-35 and St. James
won over a scrappy St. Mary’s team
53-33.
In the girls division, Blessed
Sacrament no 1 won easily over
Cathedral 30-5, Blessed Sacrament no. 2
pulled away in the second half to defeat
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In a letter, Bishop Edwin Broderick
of Albany made it clear that, as in other
dioceses, the catechetical preparation
for first confession must precede the
preparation for first Communion.
Programs which delay preparation for
Penance until after preparation for
Communion, he said, may continue
only until June.
Bishop Broderick said the norms are a
“faithful response” to statements of the
Vatican and the U.S. bishops.
“Because they will establish practices
and attitudes with which most of us
have not been familiar during our lives,
these norms will require careful study,
patient effort and the rhythm of passing
time,” he said.
But some questions about the rules
were raised by a national religious
education official in Washington.
“The emphasis on the freedom of the
child and the necessity of allowing the
child to exercise this freedom is
unusual, and in my opinion it is
excellent,” said Father Thomas Kramer,
Basketball
Sacred Heart 10-5 in a game which was
tied at 3-3 at half time, and St. James
had to come from behind to defeat St.
Mary 36-26. .
STANDINGS AFTER
THREE WEEKENDS
BOYS WON LOST
Blessed Sacrament 2 0
St. Jamess 2 0
Cathedral 1 1
Sacred Heart 1 1
Nativity 0 1
St. Mary 0 3
GIRLS WON LOST
Blessed Sacrament no. 1 2 0
St. James 2 0
Cathedral 2 1
Nativity 1 1
Blessed Sacrament no. 2 1 2
St. Mary 1 2
Sacred Heart 0 3
Games scheduled this weekend will
be played at Blessed Sacrament Gym as
follows: Saturday, January 26th at 2
p.m. (Girls) Blessed Sacrament no. 1 -
Sacred Heart, 3 p.m. (Boys) Blessed
Sacrament - Sacred Heart. Sunday,
January 27th 1 p.m. (Girls) Nativity -
Cathedral, 2 p.m. (Boys) Nativity -
Cathedral, 3 p.m. (Girls) St. James -
Blessed Sacrament no. 2.
Dimataling stretched to the breaking
point.
Coexistence has always been uneasy
for the two groups. Their cultures, as
well as their religions, are so different
that Dimataling has been a divided
town, even having two separate wharfs.
But many Muslims did attend the
three Columban high schools in the
area, and so were friendly with the
missionaries. Against the Christians’
advice, Fr. O’Neill went to the Muslim
datu (chief) to express his sympathy
and to offer the Muslims food supplies.
They never came for them.
A peace conference was called, but
something went wrong, and the day that
had held some hope ended with a
full-scale gun battle that lasted 24
hours.
The next day both wharfs were
crowded with fleeing people. In their
haste they took nothing but their fear -
food, clothing were unimportant.
The missionaries opened the church
to those who stayed. Its concrete
foundation offered more protection
than the usual thatched building^. They
also used the parish boat to bring the
Philippines Constabulary.
The extra defense was needed as
fighting broke out again in earnest.
The next day the priests went to the
municipio. “What I saw there I will
always remember,” Fr. Murphy recalls
in Columban Mission magazine. “The
body of our mayor stretched out on the
table with three big hatchet wounds. My
thoughts went back to the time I saw
him crying at the peace conference as he
saw his hopes for peace slipping away.”
Finally, the army came in and the
town was quiet at last, but the tired,
hopeless faces of the people told at
what price. Gradually many who had
fled returned, but they lived with the
nagging knowledge that some day it
might happen again.
It did last April - after the Army
departed to fight elsewhere. There was
no resistance left in Dimataling. The
people fled to the mountains - part of
the flood of an estimated one million
refugees from the fighting. The rebels
burned everything - church and school
included.
Things are quiet now in Dimataling,
reports Fr. O’Neill. “But why wouldn’t
they be? There’s nothing left - only the
soldiers and dogs to disturb the peace.”
Strict Penance Norms
executive secretary of the National
Conference of Diocesan Directors of
Religious Education, who has been
studying Penance guidelines in the U.S.
“It sets an ideal to be worked for that is
basically sound. . .But I’m not sure
whether we can or should dump that
much freedom into a child’s lap - I
wonder if they don’t need more
direction than the norms allow.
“If the catechesis (religious
education) under these . norms is
adequate, I see no problem. The child
will want to go to confession. But what
if the catechetical program is less than
perfect?”
Father Kramer also questioned the
degree of emphasis in the norms on the
responsibility of parents to educate
their children for Penance.
“This presumes an awful lot on the
part of parents,” Father Kramer
commented. “The fact is that parents
are generally reluctant to involve
themselves in Penance preparation.
They are more at home preparing their
children for the Eucharist, and many of
them do this eagerly. But with Penance
it’s another story.”
Sister Edward Marie Tesiero of the
Albany diocesan religious education
office told NC News that the office had
anticipated the questions raised by
Father Kramer and she said the norms
would be more flexible in practice than
they looked on paper.
“We (in the office) all agreed that it is
idealistic, but we felt that unless the
ideal was put forth here it would never
be put forth,” she said. She added that
she has been assigned specifically to
answer pastors’ questions on the norms.
“Each pastor can call us with his own
specific problems, and with each one
calling from the context of his own
pastoral situation, we can work out how
best to incorporate the ideals within the
situation, on a one-to-one basis.”
The emphasis on freedom is not
meant to rule out guidance by pastors,
parents and educators, she said, but
only to combat potentially harmful
pressure.
UU66K OF PRflYER
FOR CHRI/Tlflfl
UrHTY 1974
UNITY WEEK THEME -- This artwork contains the theme of Christian
Unity Week which ends Jan. 25. “The honeymoon is over” for the
ecumenical movement, according to Father Arthur Gouthro of the
Atonement Friars, and director of the Graymoor Ecumenical Institute. He
added, “But the ecumenical movement is by no means dead. There are
signs of health and strength everywhere.” (NC Photo)