Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 4—The Southern Cross, November 14,1974
The Southern Cross
Business Office 225 Abercom St. Savannah, Ga. 31401
Most Rev. Raymond W. Lessard, D.D., President
Rev. Francis J. Donohue, Editor John E. Markwalter, Managing Editor
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A Child’s Tribute
Last week we had the unhappy duty
of reporting the death of Father Stephen
Mayer, pastor of St. Mary-Star-of-the-Sea
parish, at St. Mary’s and the Mission of
St. Francis of Assisi of Folkston.
A retired Air Force chaplain, Father
Mayer had accepted his post as a pastor
in the Savannah diocese in 1964 after
serving twenty years in the military
service.
But, St. Mary-Star-of-the-Sea parish
isn’t a very big parish, and Folkston is
small, too. However, the historic town of
St. Mary’s (2nd oldest in the U.S.) is
fairly close to interstate route 95 and the
Folkston church is directly on U.S. 301.
So, undoubtedly, Father Mayer was
known by more tourists than he was by
people of the Savannah diocese.
Nevertheless, if he wasn’t known by
an awful lot of people in the diocese, he
was loved very much by many who did
know him. One of the people who knew
and loved him was a nine-year-old who
lives in Kingsland and attended Mass at
St. Mary’s. He wasn’t too eager for us to
publish his name, so we won’t.
On the day of Father Mayer’s funeral,
the youngster’s mother found this
prayer, written in the form of a letter,
beside her son’s bed:
“Dear God: This is a famous day in
my life. Our dear, beloved priest, Father
Mayer died. We all loved him and
especialy (sic) me. We went to the
Wainwright Funeral Home to see him in
his cassette (sic). He was my favorite
friend and I will never forget him. Take
him to heaven, his home, for me please.
Father was a nice man and he deserves to
be in heaven. From his pal . . .”
Could any priest ask for a better
testimony to his ministry?
HANDS WORKING TOGETHER ~
These hands are working today for a
tomorrow where people can live
together in decent housing for the first
time in a lifetime. A building
cooperative, aided by the national
Campaign for Human Development,
replaces dreams with substantial,
realistic changes.
Like Ripples on a Pond
Mary Carson
It’s hard to imagine how the individual
actions of one person can change the course of
major events. Huge social and economic
problems face our country and the world. It’s
easy to believe that as individuals we can do
nothing. It’s hopeless.
But some very minor events I witnessed
recently started me thinking about how one
person’s actions affect another’s.
My husband has a small advertising business,
employing four people. Work usually flows
along rather smoothly.
One of these employees is a grandmother and
last week her daughter was hospitalized to have
her gall bladder removed. It was necessary for
the grandmother to take an extended,
indefinite “vacation” to care for her very small
granddaughter until her daughter recuperated.
The circumstances were ordinary. But it is
interesting how one person’s being ill affected
the lives of so many others.
Obviously the baby and her father were
under stress worrying about Mommy in the
hospital. Grandma was suddenly taking care of
a year old toddler, full time. She was also
taking home some of the office work to keep
my husband’s business flowing smoothly.
To top it off, a new client, which my
husband had been after for over a year,
suddenly came in, causing further pressure in
the office.
The other three employees were all affected.
Each of them worked extra hours, pushing
themselves to complete the work, already short
25% of the staff.
They all could have said, “That’s not our
problem” and just continued doing their
normal work. After all, the illness of a
fellow-employee’s daughter shouldn’t affect
them. They could have refused to work
overtime because they had their own lives to
live.
But instead, they all over-extended
themselves, pulling together with an enthusiasm
and determination that was admirable.
And so one girl got sick.. . and my
husband’s staff and their families were affected
by it, bringing out the best in all of them.
There are ripples of effect from everything
everyone does. One little kindness, passed to
another, and another . . . Who knows how far it
will go?
I saw a commercial on TV the other night
illustrating the same principle. A woman shared
her umbrella with a business man entering an
airline terminal in the rain. He then helped a
young girl struggling to get a knapsack on her
shoulders. She then helped a mother getting a
coat to stay on the overhead rack. That woman
helped a business man trying to pull down the
seat divider. The business man later helped a
little boy reach a suitcase at the baggage
pick-up.
One small incident leads to another, good or
bad. An angry word could cause a “bad day”
for many people, because it risks being spread.
So too, our good works are multiplied. A
smile, a thank you, an enthusiastic response,
help, little kindnesses are all passed on, and on.
Little sparks can spread and light a whole
community.
I believe that if we knew the extent of the
effects of our actions it would be awesome!
And I also can not think of any instance where
the action of one person affects only the person
involved. Even an action that apparently is
related entirely to yourself, in some way affects
your own personality, which will rub off on the
next person you meet.
We have tremendous powers in the everyday
“little” things we do. We have the ability to
change the whole world with them.
Whether that change is for the better is up to
us!
CAMPAIGN FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
UNITED STATES CATHOLIC CONFERENCE
If I Had a Son...
Reverend John Reedy, C.S.C.
“If I had a son or daughter . . .”
I suppose one of the frustrations experienced
by those of us who are without offspring is the
feeling that there are a few things we’ve learned
from life that we’d like to transmit in the hope
that they might help young people avoid some
mistakes, some bruises.
(Yes, I’m sure many parents experience the
same frustration, but as an outsider I’m
convinced that most have conveyed far more to
their children than they or the children realize.)
One of these insights arose from a painful
experience I had some years ago with a young
friend.
He was a fine athlete whom I had known
since his early years in college. Academically he
was no fire-eater, but he was an impressive boy,
with solid values. He came from a simple family
which lived on a pretty tight budget but one
which seemed to appreciate the warmth and
happiness they had in their home.
Because he was an outstanding athlete, the
boy had been subjected to the kind of attention
and favors used by a lot of middle-aged
adolescents who try to manipulate such kids for
their own purposes and egoes.
During his college years, he seemed to handle
this situation well. Though he accepted some of
the favors, he appeared to retain his own
integrity and commonsense.
After college, he went with a pro team and
again was successful. However, as I continued
to see him, I began to observe something that
concerned me.
He was making good money, but each year
when the season ended he seemed to have
another special deal that someone was willing
to cut him in on. All these deals had one thing
in common. They didn’t depend on the talent
or experience he could bring to the effort. They
depended on favoritism, on somebody giving
him special consideration.
For one reason or another, none of these
gold mines paid off. For the most part, he
frittered away the time between seasons on five
or six month vacations.
After he got a little older, he decided it was
about time for him to retire from pro play.
There was a sports-related job he wanted. After
a little negotiation, he had a firm offer which
he was ready to accept.
It turned out, however, that his prospective
employer was a friend of the man for whom he
had been playing. The young man was told that
the new employer was reluctant to “hurt” the
coach who wanted the player to continue for a
few more years.
At that point we talked it over. I asked him
what he wanted to do. He said, “I want the new
job.”
“Would you be violating any contract or
understanding?” The answer was no.
“Is there any tie other than friendship
between these two men who are deciding what
you can and can’t do?” Again, the answer was
no.
My comment was pretty blunt. “It seems to
me that these people are treating you like a side
of beef. You’re capable of doing the new job. It
was offered to you. Now that offer might be
withdrawn, but I think you would forfeit all
your personal dignity if you continued playing
under these conditions. I think you’d become
an athletic bum.”
I wish I could say he followed my advice. He
didn’t, and our friendship chilled - from his
side, not mine.
My point is that I’ve seen this same kind of
thing happen in business - people losing their
dignity and freedom because they felt they
were enslaved by more money than they could
get elsewhere, more prestige, more favors.
And I’ve never seen acquisitions of this kind
result in happiness.
If I had a son ... I would try to convince
him that any time he achieved an income or
prestige he didn’t think he could get
ANYWHERE else, that in itself would be a
good reason to quit. You pay something for
that kind of consideration, and your freedom
and self-respect are too high a price to pay.
We’re no longer a society of tradesmen, but
it’s still possible to develop a realistic set of
tools, of marketable talents, which will enable
you to be a free man in a computerized society.
What One Person Can Do
Reverend Richard Armstrong
Dave Gagne claimed the entire population of
the world as his dependents on his 1972 tax
return. He listed 20 imprisoned Vietnamese'
civilians as symbolic dependents, each
representing one-twentieth of the earth’s two
billion people. His claim was disallowed.
Mr. Gagne subsequently left his
$12,000-a-year job in Minneapolis to reverse his
lifestyle as the $50-a-week director of AMOS
(Alliance to Move Our Society). Mr. Gagne
chose the unlikely, upper-middle-class
community of Wellesley, Mass., as his starting
place. So far, he has nothing but praise for his
lowered standard of living. “Life is easier with
no car and fewer possessions,” he says. “It’s a
more human way to live in this commuting,
consuming community.”
Moving society is slow work. But last spring
almost a thousand people in Wellesley -
students, church members and the previously
uninvolved -- joined in a nationwide fast day
and sent the food money they saved for use in
long-term development programs for the
world’s poor. The money was forwarded to
Oxfam-America (474 Centre Street, Newton,
Mass. 02158).
This November 21st, just before
Thanksgiving, there will be another “Fast for a
World Harvest.” Why fast? “It’s easy for people
in Wellesley to write out a check for world
hunger and not do anything personally,”
explains Mr. Gagne. “People everywhere are
starving (fasting). A fast requires us to think
about that on a very personal level. Oxfam tells
us that there is something we can do to help.”
If you’d like to help the world’s hungry, you
might consider fasting on November 21st, and
sending your food money to Oxfam-America.
You may lose a few pounds. And you may also
help save a few lives.
For a free copy of the Christopher News
Notes, “World Hunger Can Be Overcome,” send
a stamped, self-addressed envelope to The
Christophers, 12 East 48th Street, New York,
N.Y.10017.
Selling
Souls
For Oil?
Joe Breig
1 am profoundly shocked by the vote of the
United Nations General. Assembly to include
the Palestine Liberation Organization in
deliberations on the Palestine question “as the
representative of the Palestinian people.”
It is a grave injustice to the Palestinian
people to suggest that the PLO is representative
of them and their aspirations.
PLO is a coalition of terrorist groups formed
10 years ago by Arab rulers - not by the
Palestinian people. Its 10,000 trained terrorists
are sworn to a war of atrocities aimed at the
extermination of the people and the State of
Israel, which is a UN member.
PLO leaders have publicly claimed -- nay,
boasted about - responsibility for such outrages
as the wanton slayings of the Israeli athletes at
the Munich Olympic Games; the massacre of
women and children at Nahariya, and the
murders of American and Belgian diplomats at
Kartoum.
Nevertheless, 13 free European nations
joined with the Iron Curtain-Arab-Afro-Asian
bloc to vote, 105 to 4, to invite PLO to the UN,
which until now has declined to admit anyone
except accredited spokesmen of governments.
Are the European nations selling their souls
for oil and the material things which oil makes
possible? Are those things more important to
them than human rights and a decent world
order?
Must we give up, at last, our long-held hope
that the UN would develop into a world forum
for truth and justice, rather than for naked
power?
Is mankind to be dominated by the spirit of
Herod and Pilate with its contempt for human
rights and innocent blood?
A year ago, after the Arab attack on Israel on
the Yom Kippur holy day, an open “Letter to
Friends” was issued by Father Marcel Dubois,
head of the Center for Jewish Studies and
Jewish-Christian dialog of the Dominican
Fathers in Jerusalem.
“Once again,” wrote Father Dubois with a
deep sadness, “Israel finds itself alone,
misunderstood, exposed without defense to the
calculations of the powerful and to the ill-will
of the whole world .. . Israel has seen countries
of the Third World, with which it had
laboriously woven links of friendship and
support, turn against it in strange rivalry,
victims of political blackmail, or feeling
threatened in their own interests.”
Father Dubois noted that Israel “has lacked
magnanimity and enterprise” in seeking
solutions for the misery of refugees and the
aspirations of the Palestinians. But now, he
wrote, the Palestinians were being used as a
mere pretext, “an alibi for all Arab bitterness.”
Israel, he said, “is condemned to isolation
because of misunderstandings and lies which
surround us on every side.”
Father Dubois concluded with a forthright
statement about the responsibility of Christians
in this tragic situation which endangers not
only the lives of the people of Israel, but the
peace and survival of the whole world. “It falls
to us, then, as Christians,” he said, “to make
this hostility against Israel disappear by trying
to understand Israel’s x destiny, which began
with Abraham and will end in the fulfillment of
the Kingdom.”
Fear
Rev. James Wilmes
One measure of a man is the kind of fear he
opens his heart to. For just as there are loves
and loyalties which may be called “lower or
higher,” so there are fears which are worthy
and others which are contemptable.
The person who loudly affirms that he has
no fear is fooling himself, but not those around
him. For fear is so much a necessary part of life
that we seek out the experience of terror if life
does not offer enough of it in the normal
course of events. What else, indeed, are horror
movies and ghost stories, but exercises in
feeling and handling fear? What fills the ringside
seats at a boxing match, or the stands at the
auto races, but the need to be exposed to
fearsome situations?
This built-in capacity to fear has its
life-preserving value: without wholesome and
normal fears, we would inevitably run headlong
into danger and death. “Fools rush in where
angels fear to tread.” And on higher levels,
there are fears, in the moral and ethical realm
that steady us and keep us honest and whole.
In our day, despite what cynics tell us, we
humans are less fearful of “being caught” than
we are of betraying our true selves and of
harming other persons. The measure of a man is
still the kind of thing he fears. Stephen Crane
long ago put it this way: “A man feared that he
might find an assassin; another that he might
find a victim. One was more wise than the
other.”