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The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
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Vol. 55 No. 25 Thursday, July 4, 1974 Single Copy Price — 12 Cents
And just as the city presents a
sensory contradiction, it also stands in
contradiction to the peace movement
throughout the rest of the Middle East.
Israel has not annexed other territories
that it won in the 1967 war; it simply
calls them “administered territories”
and apparently their future status is
negotiable.
But Israel has annexed the eastern
part of Jerusalem, conquered in that
same war, and in spite of United
Nations resolutions and the opposition
of the United States and most of the
other world powers, it gives every
indication that its position in Jerusalem
is barely negotiable. Israel seems
determined to retain sovereignty over a
united Jerusalem and to make Jerusalem
a truly Jewish city, appropriate to its
position as the historical capital of
Israel.
Israeli officials seem genuinely
surprised at the intensity of the
opposition to some of their plans for
Jerusalem. Mrs. Yael Verev, who heads
the Middle East department of the
Israeli foreign office, has insisted that
the rights of all religions are protected
in Israel. The rights of the individual
religious groups to maintain their own
shrines is unrestrained, she has claimed,
and restrictive laws passed during
Jordanian rule against Christians in
Jerusalem have been repealed by Israel.
And there is no denying her words.
The Israeli government and the Israeli
military scrupulously avoid infringing
on the holy places.
The Franciscan Fathers are doing a
better job than ever of maintaing the
sacred sites in Jerusalem. Repairs,
needed at least since the earthquake of
1927, are finally being made on the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site
of the crucifixion and the improved
access to other holy places; for example,
it has enlarged Manger Square outside
the Shrine of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
What then is the complaint? The
complaint was expressed most
succinctly by a Christian I spoke to in
Jerusalem. “Sure they’re maintaining
the shrines,” she said, “but they’re
making Jerusalem into some kind of a
holy Disneyland.”
Another, more thoughtful appraisal
was given by a western journalist in
Jerusalem. “There’s a fundamental lack
of agreement between Christians and
Israelis as to what the church is. To the
Israelis, the Church is institutional and
clerical. Their concern is for protecting
the place, rather than the people who
make up the community.”
Father Edward J. O ’Donnell is editor of the
St. Louis archdiocesan newspaper, the ST.
LOUIS REVIEW. He recently toured the
Middle East with a group of American
newsmen and wrote the following analysis of
problems facing the Christian communities of
Jerusalem, a city one Christian there told him
the Israeli government was turning “into some
kind of a holy Disneyland. ”
JERUSALEM (NC) - Some people
think that the witch’s brew of ethnic,
sociological, political, military and
economic problems confronting the
Middle East make the securing of peace
all but impossible. In dealing with the
question of Jerusalem, all of those
problems are evident. In addition, deep
religious convictions are involved.
And so, in Jerusalem the cauldron
bubbles even more violently than in the
rest of the Middle East.
Jerusalem is pre-eminently the Holy
City. For the Jews, it is the city of
David, the capital of their ancient
kingdom and the site of the temple,
where God dwelt with man. It is also a
pledge of the future of the Jewish
nation, tied in to the Messianic
expectation of many Jews. But it is also
a holy city for Moslems and Christians.
It is the third holiest city in the Moslem
world, the city from which the Prophet
Mohammed ascended into heaven. And
for the Christian, of course, it is the city
hallowed not only by the Old
Testament prophets and kings, but by
the presence of Christ Himself. It is the
birthplace of the Christian faith.
But Jerusalem is more than a historic
and religious shrine. Jerusalem is a
bustling, growing city where goat herds
are scattered by the horns of crowded
buses and where the evening sun shines
through the smog to glint eerily on the
yellow-brown of the Old City walls.
Jerusalem has been named the capital
city of Israel. The shadows of new
apartments fall across the site of
Herod’s temple and the sound of air
hammers drowns out the wailing call to
prayer from dozens of minarets.
Jerusalem: Shrine-Land or
TRADITION LIVES IN NEW SETTING -- The town” of Columbia, Md., between Baltimore and
traditional brilliance of July 4th fireworks lights up Washington, D.C. (NC Photo by Thomas N. Lorsung)
spectators along Lake Kittamagundi in the “new
And while Christian and Moslem
places seem safer in the Holy Land then
INSIDE STORY
Charismatics Meet
Pg. 3
Opinion
Pg. 4
'Know Your Faith’
Pg. 5
DCCW Notes
Pg. 6
IRA Called “Agents of Devil”
LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland
(NC) - “The IRA are agents of the
devil,” said Bishop Edward Daly of
Derry in one of the harshest criticisms
of the Irish Republican Army ever made
by a Catholic bishop.
Speaking to Catholics living in the
Bogside and Creggan areas of
Londonderry, which have long been
IRA strongholds, Bishop Daly said that
the IRA “and their various satellite
organizations should not be assisted
politically, financially or otherwise until
they proclaim a total and permanent
cease-fire in this community.”
(Derry is the name used by Catholics
for Londonderry.)
The bishop, who recently urged the
British government to grant the request
of hunger-striking IRA members in
British prisons to be transferred to
Northern Ireland, said: “Many young
men and women have been lured into
these evil organizations by subtle
propaganda in the past and have had to
pay for their decision with their lives or
their liberties.”
Bishop Daly spoke two days after
two 17-year-old IRA members were
killed when a 30-pound bomb they were
carrying exploded prematurely outside a
supermarket in Londonderry. Three
other persons, including a baby in a
carriage a few feet away from the
explosion, were injured slightly.
The night before the bishop spoke,
Ivor Cooper, a former member of the
Northern Ireland government and a
member of the predominatly Catholic
Social Democratic and Labor party,
criticized the IRA in the border town of
Strabane.
“Strabane is sick and tired of the
IRA,” he said. “They have reduced the
town to rubble and exposed it to army
excesses. It’s time they got off our
backs.”
Disneyland?
ever before, the living vital Church in
those areas is in trouble.
Christians and Moslems both are
moving out of Jerusalem - especially
the “Old City” built around the sites so
sacred to all three religions of the area. I
was told, and could verify by
observation, that the Christian
community in Jerusalem is becoming a
community of old people. Young
Christians are not oppressed by the
Israeli government, but they feel there is
no future for them in the Jewish state.
They feel that government positions are
filled first by Jews.
They point out that although there
are seven major universities in Israel,
and although Arabic is supposed to be
one of the official languages of Israel,
only this year has the first university
been opened giving courses in Arabic. In
the predominantly Jewish universities,
Arab Christians feel the same kind of
pressures felt by black American
students on many predominantly white
campuses in this country through the
last decade.
Only six Israeli Arabs were graduated
from Israeli universities last year; only
328 were graduated from 1961 to 1971.
And stronger, uglier charges are also
made about deliberate attempts to
expropriate Arab housing and replace
the Arab citizens with Jews. Several
blocks of Arab housing were swept
away to open up a large court facing the
Wailing Wall. I saw whole blocks of old
houses and shops being torn down to be
replaced with housing that the local
people insisted was restricted to Jewish
families.
The facts, however, are in dispute.
Israeli officials claimed that the homes
were really Jewish homes that the Arabs
had occupied after some Jewish families
moved to the Jewish sector of the city
in 1948. And some of the
reconstruction is understandable.
Jerusalem is undergoing slum removal
and urban renewal. Most of the
construction is displacing Arab families,
and sometimes replacing them with
Jewish familes. To update an American
slogan of the early 60s, urban renewal
means Arab removal.
Whatever the reason, the Christian
presence in Jerusalem and its environs as
a living Church, a thriving community,
(Continued on Page 2)
“Father Tim” Dies
More than forty priests concelebrated
the Mass of the Resurrection for the late
Father Timothy Flaherty at Savannah’s
Sacred Heart church, June 24th
“Father Tim,” who was associate pastor
of Sacred Heart for 25 years from 1943
to 1968, died June 21 at Savannah’s
Benedictine priory.
Chief celebrant at the funeral Mass
was his brother, Monsignor Francis
Flaherty of Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Burial was in Father Flaherty’s home
town of Collingwood, New Jersey.
Ordained at Belmont Abbey, N.C. in
1941, Father Flaherty came to
Savannah in 1943 as associate pastor of
Sacred Heart parish where he remained
until 1968 when he was appointed
pastor of St. Michael’s, Savannah Beach.
The following year he accepted an
appointment as chaplain to the Little
Sisters of the Poor home for the aged.
When the home closed in 1972, “Father
Tim” returned to Sacred Heart where he
was living in retirement at the time of
his death.
He is survived by his father, Patrick
Flaherty of Collingwood, Monsignor
Flaherty and two sisters.
Fr. Timothy Flaherty
HEADLINE
HOPSCOTCH
n
Seeks Recognition
BALTIMORE (NC) -- The Baltimore Archdiocesan Lay Teachers Organization has
filed a request with the National Labor Relations Board asking to be recognized as the
sole bargaining agent for approximately 140 teachers in five archdiocesan high schools.
Some people have expressed fears that the organization, which would in effect be a
labor union, would increase strain on the already financially troubled schools.
New Sacramentary
WASHINGTON (NC) -- The English Sacramentary, the official liturgical book
containing the prayers of the priest who presides at Mass, is now being distributed. The.
U. S. bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy said that the Sacramentary may be used as
soon as it is available after July 1. However, it must be in use throughout the United
States beginning Dec. 1.
Smut Decision Softened
WASHINGTON (NC) -- The U. S. Supreme Court has softened a previous decision
which declared that community standards would ultimately govern judgments in
obscenity cases. In a case involving an Albany, Ga., theater owner who was convicted
for showing the film “Carnal Knowledge,” the court ruled that juries do not have
“unbridled discretion in determining what is patently offensive” to a community.
Readers Aid Starving
LOS ANGELES (NC) - Approximately $80,500 in donations contributed by
readers of The Tidings, the Los Angeles archdiocesan weekly, was forwarded to four
African dioceses whose people are suffering starvation because of the famine in the
sub-Sahara region. The total was reached in only six weeks.
Pope Observes Anniversary
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Despite the suffering and inner conflicts troubling the
Catholic Church the present time is, nevertheless, “an epoch of extraordinary vitality
for the Church, “Pope Paul VI told a group of cardinals who expressed congratulations
on the anniversary of his election. He specifically singled out the problems in Northern
Ireland, the Middle East and Portugese Africa territories.