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PAGE 4—The Southern Cross, January 24, 1974
The Southern Cross
Busines Office 225 Abercorn St. Savannah, Ga. 31401
Most Rev. Raymond W. Lessard, O.O., President
*ev. Francis J. Oonohue, Editor John E . Markwalter, Managing Editor
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The Abortion Problem
January 22nd, the first anniversary of
the U.S. Supreme Court decision which
opened the door to unrestricted
abortion, was marked in the Diocese of
Savannah by prayer and fasting in
reparation for the unjust destruction of
human life which has followed in the
wake of the court’s decision.
This, alone, will not bring about a
change in the climate of public opinion
which appears to have been the driving
force behind the court’s action, but it is
a certainty that without continued
prayer no such change will come about.
Hearts need to be changed and softened
so that the majority of the American
people will come to see that the
destruction of unborn human life simply
because it is unborn is a monumental
injustice, and that will only happen
under the influence of the light of the
Holy Spirit -- a light that is turned on by
prayer.
But even if such a change in public
opinion eventually occurs, there will
remain very serious personal and social
problems which cause some women to
turn to abortion.
Some women find the prospect of
bearing and bringing into the world an
illegitimate child almost impossible to
face. Often the love of their parents is
hidden from them by a curtain of
resentment, recrimination and shame.
Many of these young women are
acutely conscious of moral guilt for their
predicament, but instead of forgiveness
and support they find they are living in a
world which will not let them feel
forgiven. Instead it conspires to
continually remind them of their guilt.
Often times they are led to believe that
abortion is the only way out of their
unhappy situation.
How tragic that they are not
surrounded by people and a society
ready to constantly reaffirm the value
and worth of everv man and woman,
even when they are sinners. How sad
that Christian people so often take the
words of Jesus - “Let him who is
without sin cast the first stone” -
seriously only when it is their own sin
which is exposed.
Jesus also said, “Greater love no man
has than that he lay down his life for his
friends.” Mindful of this, we proclaim
policemen, firemen, soldiers heroes when
they lose their lives protecting the lives
of others. But when a woman loses her
life in childbirth (as sometimes, but very
seldom happens these days) society,- as a
whole, sees her death as nothing more
than a needless tragedy. Society will ask
men to lay down their lives for others,
but balks at asking mothers to be
prepared to lay down their lives for their
own children.
Not all poverty-stricken mothers are
pregnant through their own choice. But
instead of a society willing to reach out a
helping hand to ease their minds of
worry, they find themselves in a society
which says, in effect, “You knew you
couldn’t afford another child so you
shouldn’t have become pregnant. If you
want to be free of your worries, then,
get an abortion.”
Catholics, as much as people of any
other religious belief, often contribute to
the situations just outlined by a lack of
social awareness, a failure to speak out
against the situations, and an
unwillingness to work effectively to
change them.
Our prayers, then, ought to be
directed to God on our own behalf as
well as in reparation for the sins of
society. We need to ask God to show us
how to give real support to expectant
mothers who are troubled and suffering,
and a deepened spirit of love by which
all men can know that we are Christ’s
disciples.
- FJD
Catholic Schools Needed
More Than Ever
Mary Carson
Catholic schools have come a long way since
I attended elementary school more than thirty
years ago. Comparing my education then with
what my children are learning now in our parish
school, I’d say there are some vast
improvements.
Specifically I find that children taught by
today’s methods understand their religion
better than we did. The old Baltimore
Catechism was a great book. (I still have mine
and refer to it from time to time.) But the
emphasis years ago was on memorizing the
answers instead of learning what they meant.
Unfortunately, we didn’t always know what we
were talking about when we rattled off those
answers.
This was especially true when it came to the
sixth and ninth Commandments and the
Sacrament of Matrimony. Today our parochial
school has a program for teaching human
sexuality which is part of every grade’s
prescribed work.
This introduction of sex education in our
Catholic schools comes as a result of a
statement five years ago by the American
bishops. They noted there is a value and
necessity of wisely planned education of
children in human sexuality adapted to the
maturity and background of our young people.
Today’s young people are different in certain
respects. They are living in the age of the
information explosion. They accept a TV
picture from the moon as a casual event, not
the marvel of science and electronics that we
parents do.
They refuse to consider war as a viable
answer to international problems because their
education in nuclear science makes them
understand war really could wipe out
civilization. We parents think of war in terms of
a patriotic undertaking involving machine guns,
victory gardens and air raid wardens.
Sex, too, is regarded differently by today’s
young people. It’s all around them. I’m not
talking about X-rated movies and porno stores.
I’m talking about the lyrics of songs that come
•:.x-x*x , x*x-x*x-x*x*x"x*x’x*x*xv’x-x*x-x*xyx;x:x;x
out of every radio, the plots of such wholesome
family entertainment as “The Brady Bunch”
and “The Partridge Family,” and advice in the
daily paper by Ann Landers, Dear Abby, and
Dr. Joyce Brothers.
So it was wise of our bishops to call for the
introducation of sex education into our schools
at all grade levels. Sex education has also been
introduced into many public schools and I’ve
heard from some of those parents who are
unhappy about the way it is presented to their
children.
So I think that the subject of sex education
is an additional reason why we parents need our
Catholic schools even more today than ever
before.
If we parents are the ones who really need
our Catholic schools, it follows that it’s up to
us to solve the problems that are plaguing these
schools and threatening their existence. Let’s
consider some of the problems and what we can
do about them:
FINANCES: We can indicate to our bishops
that we will support a broad-based
diocesan-wide fund raising campaign for
education. This has been the proved method of
building these schools and it will work to keep
them operating.
Parents in New York State are organizing
into a federation to solve financial problems
themselves. These are not parents who grumble,
complaining that it’s hopeless. They’re doing
something other than meekly giving up.
ENROLLMENT: If your schools are closing
because there are too few students, “sell” your
school to others.
LACK OF RELIGIOUS TEACHERS:
Vocations, in most cases, come from Catholic
schools. There won’t be more vocations until
we boost our enthusiasm for these schools.
The only thing that can kill Catholic
schools is parental anemia.
GIVE YOUR SCHOOL A TRANSFUSION
TODAY!
/
OUR
PARISH
“Why must my talents be hidden
in the choir loft?”
Melancholy Symptoms
Of Disenchanted Healists
Reverend John Reedy C.S.C.
Most of the people I know, including myself,
are basically idealists. Some are idealistic about
the nation and our society, with their idealism
turning to disillusionment and bitterness over
the Vietnam fiasco, the Watergate follies, the
shabbiness of Spiro.
Others have focused their idealism on the
Church and religious values, only to experience
the same kind of disillusionment in discovering
that Pope John and his Council were not in fact
the fanfare for the Second Coming. These
people go sour when they recognize that the
Church, as it has from Peter to the present,
continues to exhibit all the weaknesses of the
men and women who comprise it.
We also have the idealism associated with
Martin Luther King, Tom Dooley, the
Berrigans, the astronauts .. .even that of John
Wayne. For each kind, we have seen flaws,
we’ve seen campaigns to tarnish the myth,
we’ve seen the collapse of a whole succession of
Camelots.
I’ve decided that one of the problems with
those of us who are idealists is that we take
ourselves much too seriously.
It’s hard, I suppose, to avoid the sense of the
cataclysmic when we have coffee each evening
to the background of ponderious judgments by
Eric Sevareid and Howard K. Smith, when we
are bathed in doom and disaster with each
morning’s newspaper.
We’ve not yet learned to recongnize that,
with the whole world being covered each
morning and evening, we are bound to find all
hell breaking loose somewhere, that each day,
somewhere, someone is making a fool of
himself . . .or a crook.
I suspect that in the days before instant news
it was hard for a farmer, a tradesman, a
businessman to look at the everyday activity of
his job, family and town - and see it constantly
teetering on the edge of disaster.
Not that people didn’t care as much. It’s just
that major worries, joys and tragedies have a
certain rhythm when you are preoccupied with
feeding the hogs, inventorying the storeroom,
managing peace negotiations among growing
kids.
Another problem in this time of instant news
is that it allows no opportunity to consider
yesterday’s crisis. As soon as the beef shortage
is over, it is forgotten. As soon as we are out of
Vietnam, the agony of those years is only a dull
hurt. When the riots and fires in the cities end,
we ignore all the problems they expressed and
all the disasters they forecast. It’s on to
Watergate, the Mideast war, the gurgling end to
the oil supply. And Lord knows what disaster
will come next.
It’s very difficult for us to look at the
problems of today while remembering that we
are the generation which lived through the
Korean war, the agony of World War II, the
bleak years of the depression. It’s hard to
realize that we are only a little more than a
century away from the war that threatened to
tear our nation apart.
I’m not arguing that our problems are not
serious or that we should be indifferent to
them . . .only that we should recognize that in a
few years many of our present worries and
efforts will be seen as wrong or ineffective, that
most of our problems will pass without turning
into monumental disasters, that many good
things, now unforseen, will moderate the
predictable hardships.
There is a fundamental humility involved in
the Christian vision. While we are expected to
make good use of the opportunities available to
us, it would take an absurd optimist to think
that our hope rests in our own best efforts.
In these times, most of us could use the
perceptions expressed in Peguy’s poetic
meditation on sleep. He depicts God inviting
man to lay down his fears and worries and
busyness - at least long enough to get his sleep.
God’s message, beautifully formulated by the
author, is: Trust me. You can safely take time
out to close your eyes. I have been handling the
affairs of the world for a long time now. I can
manage it while you sleep.
And if we reach that perspective, maybe we
can go one step further -- trusting Him enough
to smile at ourselves and at the* inflated
importance we attach to our problems and
actions.
Growth and Development
Rev. Joseph Dean
The basic means of growth in the spiritual
life are these: prayer, study, service and
community. You can make a diagram of the
Christian Life by drawing a large circle or
wheel. At the hub of the wheel write “Jesus.”
for he is the center of our lives. Entitle the rim
of the wheel “Christian Life.” Make four
spokes reaching out from the hub, showing that
the hub is the source of power and direction for
the whole wheel. It holds the wheel together.
As long as the rim is in contact with the hub,
through the spokes, it can move forward. Some
of the spokes for the Christian life are: prayer,
study, service and community. These are the
means we need to put the whole of our lives
into contact with Christ, so that he can
transform and direct our lives with his power
and his purpose.
1. Prayer: We should spend time with our
Lord in prayer every day. Friendship does not
grow without people spending time together,
developing personal relationships. We can
expect the Lord to reveal himself and his ways
to us if we give him a chance.
2. Study: Set aside time each day for
Scripture reading. Decide on a definite time.
Find a definite place.
3. Service: One form of service is to share
with others what we have found ourselves. With
our friends and family we can begin by showing
them the kind of love and consideration they
too can experience by a new life in the Spirit of
Jesus.
4. Community: We can get together regularly
with a group of Christians with whom we can
grow in what we have found. God’s plan is for
us to come to him with others, in a body. The
Holy Spirit does work often through the
ministry of others to build us up. The results of
Pentecost itself created a community of
Christians.
The Lord does not want a group of dedicated
Christians to leave the Church, but to become
more active and better members of the church.
Every church congregation needs to be
supplemented by a prayer group or a
cooperating, praying community. Once we see
the need to make a definite commitment to
grow in the life of the Spirit that Jesus is
sending into our lives, we must take the steps
necessary for this development: prayer, study,
service and community, all done in union with
the will of Christ Jesus our Lord.
t .
A
Revolutionary
Breig?
Joe Breig
Don’t tell me that a revolutionist has been
born into the Tribe of Breig. By the way, tribe
and Breig go together better than you might
suppose. Breig, you see, is not pronounced
Breeg, or Bregg, or Bragg. It is pronounced like
bride or bribe -- or like that name of a dog,
Tige.
In short, Breig is pronounced with a broad
“I” like tribe. Have you got that straight now,
friend?
Where was I? Oh, yes - I was wondering
about having a revolutionist in the family. All I
know is what I hear about our grandson Jimmy.
I mean the New York State Jimmy, not the
Florida Jimmy. The Florida Jimmy gives every
promise of growing up to be a non-boat-rocking
citizen. But the New York Jimmy - .
The way I hear it, he discovered that a
thumb is useful for sucking. And he soon grew
weary of his parents’ anti-thumb-sucking
propaganda. So he said one day to his mother,
“I’m going to get a cage and put you and
Daddy in it so that I can suck my thumb all I
please.”
I will concede that you don’t convict a kid of
revolutionary tendency without more evidence
than that. But more there is. On an occasion
when he was chided for something he was
observed doing outdoors -- like maybe shoving
his younger brother down an embankment --
New York Jimmy announced, “I am going to
get a house without any windows so that you
can’t see out, and then I will do all the bad
things I want to do.”
Sounds ominous, doesn’t it? Fortunately,
New York Jimmy is only three going on four,
so maybe he can be made into a law-abiding
citizen. But it must be done with tact and
wisdom, lest the good revolutionary instincts be
destroyed. A reasonable quota of revolutionary
zeal is something that ought to be cherished.
Take our American Founding Fathers, for
instance. They were revolutionists, and unlike
most revolutionists, they were intelligent about
it. They had clearcut and legitimate objectives
in mind. In no sense were they crackpots, and
never did they utter silly sophomoric slop.
Rather, they led the way in one of the few
truly great political revolutions since Adam.
It was political, but it was theological too --
which everything of lasting revolutionary value
must be at root.
They asserted that it is self-evident (meaning
that anybody with a smidgin of sense can see it)
that all men are created equal and are endowed
by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,
including, before all else, the right to life.
The 200th anniversary of our Declaration of
Independence is only two years away. Will we
bungle this tremendous occasion? Or will we
realize -- and help the world to realize -- that
the Declaration of Independence, which is also
a Declaration of Dependence of God, was one
of the watershed events in the history of
humankind?
What we should do first is to go into a house
without windows, so that nothing can distract
us, and study the Declaration and the
Constitution to which it gave birth. Then we
should come outside and trumpet the greatness
of this nation, and its devotion to human rights,
to the world.
Second
Chance
Rev. James Wilmes
Something about the passage of time induces
guilt. It seems somehow, that getting older is a
fault that could be prevented if we took a firm
hold of time instead of letting it slip between
our fingers. We are haunted with the realization
that time is often not used well. With all the
concern about waste of our resources today,
the primary human waste remains that of time.
The poet Virgil may have said, “When time
flies, it cannot be retrieved.” He was wrong. In
June of 1972, the whole world received a gift
of time when the master clocks everywhere
ticked for one extra second before they struck
midnight. The most accurate timepiece yet
devised, the atomic clock, had determined that
the rotation of the earth on its axis, the basis
for our time measurement had slowed down to
that extent.
How will we use this modest gift, this brief
prolongation of our lives? A Second is time
enough for a kind word, a happy thought, a
deft phrase, a quick prayer, a good,resoluton.
On the other hand, it provides ample chance for
an empty pause, a hurried curse, a puzzled
frown, a stifled yawn.
In short, it confronts us with yet one more
moment of decision. Everyone must make his
own individual choice how to spend each
Second well, but Shakespeare has given good
advice that applies to all: “T’were well it were
done quickly.” For, as another man put it, “We
have just a tiny little minute. Only sixty
seconds in it. Forced upon us. Can’t refuse it
Didn’t seek it. Didn’t choose it. We must suffer
if we lose it. Give account if we abuse it. Just a
tiny little minute, but eternity is in it.”