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The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 55 No. 17
Thursday, April 25,1974
Single Copy Price — 12 Cents
SOUTHEAST BISHOPS TOLD:
Church in U.S
Must Invest in TV-Radio
SCRIPTURE SERVICE -- Host Bishop T. Austin
Murphy, a Baltimore auxiliary, extends his hands as he
leads part of a scripture service for episcopal, clergy,
BY USCC OFFICIAL
Religious and lay participants in the Region IV
bishops’ meeting at the Marriottsville (Md.) Retreat
Center. (NC Photo by Thomas N. Lorsung)
MULTI-MEDIA TALK -- Keynote speaker Father
Leo McKenzie of Philadelphia uses slides to illustrate
his talk on electronic communications Monday at the
first of the U.S. bishops’ spring regional meetings.
Father McKenzie said that the radio and television
have become so influential on children that dioceses
must spend more money on these apostolates. The
Region IV meeting was held at the Marriottsville (Md.)
Retreat Center. (NC Staff Photo)
MARRIOTTSVILLE, MD. (NC) -
Radio and television have become so
influential, dioceses must spend more
money on electronic communications
than any projects except education and
the diocesan press, a communications
expert told the first of the U.S. bishops’
spring regional meetings.
“After a child’s parents, television has
the greatest influence on children, far
ahead of either Church or school,”
Father Leo McKenzie, Philadelphia
archdiocesan director of radio and
television communications told the
bishops’ Region IV meeting at the
Marriottsville Retreat Center here.
Ninety persons - bishops, priests,
Religious and laity - from eight
southeastern states and the District of
Columbia attended the Region IV
meeting. The theme of the 12 regional
meetings is “The Use of Modern Means
of Communications as Instruments of
Evangelization.”
Father McKenzie said in the keynote
speech: if the Church is going to
evangelize effectively, if it is going to
communicate the word of God, it must
learn to use television more effectively.
“Throughout the centuries the
Church has utilized various forms of
EDUCATORS MEET
6 Catholic
CLEVELAND (NC) - The Catholic
school is indispensable in “The Brave
New World” that is being created by
science and technology, Bishop Mark J.
Hurley of Santa Rosa., Calif., told
delegates to the National Catholic
Educational Association convention
here.
In an address on the third day of the
convention Bishop Hurley said that “the
Catholic school has a very special place
in Catholic education which cannot be
taken over by any other agency.”
This indispensability arises, the
bishop said, from the potential offered
by the Catholic school of correlating all
knowledge with the message of Christ.
Catholic schools, in particular, and
other religious schools, Protestant and
Jewish, are the only ones “not
prohibited by law from seeing the entire
spectrum of knowledge,” Bishop Hurley
said.
Recognizing “the worth of Catholic
education from the youngest child to
the oldest” and “the necessity of
Catholic education in all its forms,”
Bishop Hurley contended that it is
impossible to equate the value of
Catholic schools with other forms of
Catholic education.
Rights for Retarded Sought
A Catholic school is “more necessary
than ever” in the “brave new world”
being created by science and
technology, Bishop Hurley said, because
“there is no neutrality on moral values,
on human values in any school.”
WASHINGTON (NC) - An official of
the U.S. Catholic Conference (USCC),
has called for a “Bill of Rights” to
INSIDE STORY
in 1919
Pg. 2
'Know Your Faith’
Pg. 5
Document on Mary
Pg. 7
Cook’s Nook
Pg. 8
guarantee “humane care, treatment and
protection of the mentally disabled.”
Sister Virginia Schwager, director of
the USCC health affairs division, called
for the legal safeguards in a statement
praising 17 governors for designating
April as “Legal Rights for Retarded
Citizens’ Month.”
The mentally retarded suffer from a
high unemployment and they are
discriminated against in housing, public
transportation and other community
services, Sister Schwager said. She also
criticized a shortage of health and
rehabilitation facilities, services, and
personnel for the care of the retarded.
She said that “200,000 retarded are
forced to live out their lives in facilities
that fail to meet their special needs, but
often set them back even further into
the depths of retardation.”
“But when the mentally retarded live
in neighborhood group homes or
halfway houses - and citizens are
personally confronted with the retarded
- intellect is often overruled by
emotion, and fear and prejudice
persist,” Sister Schwager said. “The due
process and equal protection provisions
of the Constitution - which apply
equally to the retarded -- are often
forgotten in the face of fear and
intolerance.”
The USCC official said that “studies
and experiments, particularly among
children, prove that not only can
retardation be curbed, but in some cases
it may be reversed.”
President Nixon’s recent decision to
expand the responsibilities of the
President’s Committee on Mental
Retardation was praised by Sister
Schwager as “a means and an incentive
for assuring the retarded full status as
citizens under the law, as well as a
central organization coordinating
various professional and volunteer
groups for mental retardation
activities.”
Cautioning that he was not suggesting
that Catholic educators “turn all classes
into religion classes or have moralizing
in the classes,” the bishop said “we
want our scientists to be good scientists,
but we don’t want them to have
blinkers on.”
Bishop Hurley described a “new
world being born before our eyes” as
one in which the “human values and
basic moral principles of the
Judeo-Chrisitan tradition, once assumed
as ‘in possession,’ accepted on all sides
as basic to modern society and
American civilization . . .have been
overturned and deeply eroded.”
He described too the dangers made
possible by science. “By unraveling the
secrets of the atomic code, men had it
easily within their power . . .to commit
global suicide; by unraveling the secrets
of the genetic code, man has also made
himself capable of controlling and
manipulating man in a new dictatorship
media to communicate the Gospel,”
Father McKenzie said.
“The Gospel is meant for all people,”
he said. “Therefore the Church must
constantly evangelize so that those who
do not believe may come to the faith,
and those who do believe may grow in
the faith.”
“But before the word of God can get
itself lived,” he said, “it needs to get
itself believed. Before it can get itself
believed, it has to get itself heard. And
before the word can get itself heard, it
must get itself communicated.”
“We live in an era df communication,
of mass communication, where virtually
every American household has a radio
and television set. Where 44 percent of
American households have more than
one set. . ,The average household views
the television six hours and 52 minutes
per day -- 44 hours and seven minutes
per week . . .At present 65 percent of
television households have color sets as
compared to 54 percent last
year . . .Cable television is promising to
be revolution within the television
industry.”
Father McKenzie said the Church has
used the broadcast media to some
extent for “pre-evangelization” -the
work of preparing people to hear the
word of God - by discussion of moral
issues and through Church news. But, he
said, it has done very little
evangelization, or direct preaching of
the word.
He called on the Church to involve
itself more in educating youth to watch
television critically and with the
consciousness of the effect television
programming has on one’s own life.
It should also help television
broadcasters and producers to become
more accountable through constructive
criticism, he said.
While there are many ways to make
the Church’s influence more felt
through the mass media, he said, “two
things are desperately needed by the
Church for religious communications:
trained personnel and finances.”
Because of the importance of radio
and television in today’s society, he
said, the Church must place a high
priority on them in diocesan budgets
“next to schools, the religious education
department, and the Catholic
newspaper.”
Region IV covers the District of
Columbia and the states of Delaware,
Mary land, West Virginia, Virginia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and
Florida.
' A,,
Schools Indispensable 9
of tyranny and control through
biological engineering.”
Listening devices that pick up
conversations a block away, cameras
that take photographs through walls,
computers and data banks, Bishop
Hurley said, have led to a situation in
which “man’s right to be left alone is
coming into question.”
He quoted the Russian novelist
Alexander Solzhenitsyn: “The time will
come when .computers can be
programmed to deliver human hapniness
and social justice. The price is our
freedom.”
The question that confronts society
today, the bishop said, is “how can any
man live in a society which is
worshipping false gods?” He agreed with
the author of the bestseller “Future
Shock” that “ultimately the problems
are not scientific or technical but ethical
and political. Choice - the criteria of
choice - will be crucial.”
Bishop Hurley challenged Catholic
schools to address themselves to this
issue.
The message of Catholic schools, he
said, “is Christ. Christ brings good news,
not bad. We get moral values from
Christ.” He pointed out that Catholic
schools will not accomplish their
mission unless their message conveys
“the primacy of Christ.”
HIIIlT
HEADLINE
HOPSCOTCH
DCCW Convention April 27th and 28th
The 35th Annual Convention of the Diocesan Council of Catholic Women takes
place this weekend, April 27th and 28th, in Albany. Registration opens at 6
p.m., Friday April 26th, followed by a pre-Convention party at the Downtowner
Hotel. Principal speakers at this year’s convention will be Judge Genevieve Blatt, of the
Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, and Mrs. Mamie B. Reese, a member of the
Georgia Pardons and Paroles Board. Bishop Raymond Lessard will be the main
celebrant at the Convention Mass on Sunday.
Theology Seminar
Father Geprge McCauley, S.J., of Fordham University, will lead the Diocesan
Theology Seminar for 1974. Sessions will be held at Savannah’s St. Vincent’s Hall on
May 3rd and 4th. Theme of the Seminar - to which all priests, sisters and teachers of
the diocese are invited - is “The Sacraments — Values of Jesus.”
Mansion-dwelling Out
WASHINGTON (NC) - Archbishop William Baum of Washington has decided that
he will not take up residence in a $525,000 mansion after the acquisition of the
property brought strong protests from some priests and lay persons. A statement
released by the archdiocese said, “The archbishop has decided that this residence
cannot fulfill the purpose for which the property was purchased.” The decision was
reached, the statement continued, “after further consideration of the views of many
whose judgment (Archbishop Baum) respects.”
Nun Tries to Say Mass
BOSTON (NC) - A nun resigned her position as a Boston University campus
minister here after what was described as her attempt to celebrate a Mass for nine
persons at the university’s Newman Center. “Sister Gloria Fitzgerald,” said Father
Robert W. Bullock, the Boston archdiocesan director for campus ministry, “attempted
to celebrate a Mass on March 16 as an unordained person.” He called the violation “so
serious that it necessitated her resignation from campus ministry.”