Newspaper Page Text
The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 55 No. 44 Thursday, December 12,1974 Single Copy Price — 15 Cents
MOTHER SETON, OLIVER PLUNKETT
English - Speaking Saints to be Named
BLESSED ELIZABETH BAYLEY SETON, founder whose names will be formally proposed Dec. 12 for
of the American Sisters of Charity, is among several canonization during the Holy Year. (NC Photos)
POPE PAUL TO JURISTS
Sees Wider Rights for Women
BY JAMES C. O’NEILL
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope Paul
VI told the Italian Union of Catholic
Women Jurists that the Church “is
directly interested” in all questions
involving women’s role in today’s
changing society.
The Pope received the group of
Catholic women who hold office in
Italy as regional or local judges, or are
private lawyers, on Dec. 7. The group
held its convention in Rome this year to
discuss woman in Italian society today.
Pointing out that he has established a
special Vatican commission to study the
role of women in Church and society,
the Pope noted that Italy moved “in a
rather short period of time” from an
agricultural to an industrialized society.
Pope Paul noted that today’s women
are enjoying more equality in education
as well as “a growing emancipation in
relation to men and a new concept and
interpretation of their roles as wives,
mothers, daughters and sisters.”
He noted: “They have access in an
ever-increasing measure, on ever-wider
levels of specialization, to the
professional fields. There is also an
accentuated tendency to prefer
non-domestic areas of work.”
Not all these developments are
negative, he added, “and in this sense
women of today and of tomorrow
perhaps may more easily develop the
possibilities of their fullness of
energies.”
Even when some of the present
experiences being undergone by women
are undesirable, he said, “they may
prove useful later if in society women
will affirm the sound principles which
are universally known so as to attain a
new balance in domestic and social
life.”
Explaining his point further, Pope
Paul declared:
“The real problem consists in the
recognition of, respect for and, where
necessary, the restoration of these
principles which constitute the
irreplaceable values in the development
of an advanced people.”
Pope Paul said these principles
involve “the functional differentiation
of women through natural identity from
that of men, hence the originality of her
very being, of her psychology, of her
human and Christian vocation.”
There is also woman’s dignity, the
Pope continued, “which cannot be
debased as it often happens today by
morals, work and through
indiscriminate promiscuity, publications
and entertainment. would add that
the primacy through which women hold
sway in all the human sphere is where
they most directly encounter the
problems of life, or suffering, of
assistance and, above all, of
motherhood.”
VATICAN CITY (NC) - The 1975
Holy Year is expected to take on a
strong American ’ hue with the
canonization of the first native-born
American to be proposed to the world’s
Catholics as a model and an intercessor,
Mother Elizabeth Bayley Seton.
Irish Catholics are also expected to
get a boost with the canonization of
Oliver Plunket, archbishop of Armagh,
who was hanged, drawn and quartered
in 1681. He was the last Catholic to die
for his faith at Tyburn, the place of
execution in London where many
English Catholics were martyred.
Although Ireland is called the Island
of Saints, historians say no Irish person
has been canonized since the 13th
century, when the 12th-century
archbishop of Dublin, Lawrence
O’Toole, was declared a saint.
Pope Paul VI summoned a special
consistory here Dec. 12 to announce
some new saints to be canonized and
those to be beatified in the Roman Holy
Year.
However not all the persons to be
canonized during the Holy Year were
necessarily announced at the Dec. 12
consistory.
The Vatican announced Dec. 9 that
Pope Paul had presided over a meeting
of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes
at which cures attributed to the
intercession of five persons were
declared to be beyond natural
explanation and hence miraculous. This
approbation was a prelude to the
canonization of three: Blessed Mother
Seton, Blessed Oliver Plunket and
Blessed Vicenza Maria Lopez Vicuna, a
Spanish woman who founded the
Daughters of Mary Immaculate and died
in 1890.
It is a prelude to the beatification of
two others: Bishop Charles de Mazenod,
a 19th-century Frenchman who
founded the missionary congregation of
Oblates of Mary Immaculate, and
Mother Maria Teresa Ledochowska, a
Polish noblewoman who founded the
Sisterhood of St. Peter Claver for
African Missions in 1894.
Earlier this year Pope Paul stated
publicly that he hoped Cardinal John
Henry Newman would be beatified
during the Holy Year. Not only for
English Catholics but for
English-speaking Catholics everywhere,
the beatification of Cardinal Newman
would make Holy Year a time to
remember. Newman was the Church of
England’s outstanding theologian when
he entered the Roman Catholic Church
in 1845, and is still widely read for the
depth of his thought and the elegance of
his style.
A canonization widely expected
during Holy Year but not presaged by
the Dec. 9 meeting of the Congregation
of Saints’ Causes is that of Blessed John
Nepomucene Neumann, first bishop of
Philadelphia.
The postulator for the cause of
Blessed John Neumann, Father Nicolo
Ferrante of the Redemptorists, told NC
News Service that a final miracle
attributed to the bishop of Philadelphia
is still under examination by the
congregation’s medical experts.
He said this meant that Blessed John
Neumann would not be among those
named during the Dec. 12 consistory.
However he said the approval of the
miracle might come through in a short
time. Another consistory dealing with
the same subject of canonizations for
Holy Year might be held by Pope Paul
in the near future, he said.
Mother Seton was bom Elizabeth
Bayley in New York in 1774 of a
distinguished Protestant family. She
married William Magee Seton at the age
of 19, and was a widow at 29. The
Christian charity shown her by the
Italian Catholic family that sheltered
her husband, her children and herself
during his last illness gave her a deep
interest in the Catholic faith. She
entered the Catholic Church in 1805.
By the time of her death less than 16
years later, at the age of 46, she had
founded the American Sisters of Charity
and laid the foundation of the American
Catholic parochial school system. In
that time she had kept her children with
her and devoted herself to their
education.
She was beatified by Pope John
XXIII on March 17,1963.
Blessed John Nepomucene Neumann
was bom in 1811 in what now is
Czechoslovakia. He arrived in the
United States as a seminarian with only
the clothes on his back and a dollar in
(Continued on Page 2)
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INSIDE STORY
Clemency Program .....Pg. 2
'Know Your Faith’ Pg. 5
Catholic Communications Pg. 7
Readers Reply Pg. 8
4
IT IS ANTICIPATED in some quarters that Blessed John Neumann, a
former Bishop of Philadelphia will also be proposed for canonization
during the Holy Year. (NC Photos)
&
HEADLINE
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HOPSCOTCH
VJ
Terrorism Condemned
BUENOS AIRES (NC) - The bishops of Argentina have condemned terrorist
activities in the country but blamed the troubles on a moral crisis affecting all of
society. Three leftist guerrilla groups, a rightist paramilitary organization and
government forces have been locked in a mini-civil war for almost two years. Almost
200 persons have been killed in the violence this year. “These conditions and facts
amount to a prolonged moral crisis, and they certainly challenge God’s wrath and
thwart His peace,” the Argentine Bishops’ Conference said. The widespread terrorism,
the bishops added, “will never succeed in establishing a new political order.”
Nuclear Weapons Treaty
UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. (NC) -- A papal representative, arguing that man’s future
on earth “is literally at stake,” has pleaded for wider government adherence to the
treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. Jesuit Father John Lucal, a member of
the Holy See’s observer mission at the United Nations, told the general assembly’s
political and security committee that while the Vatican rejects no “valid and hopeful”
approach to the problem of nuclear armaments, as a party to the treaty on
non-proliferation it attaches special importance to it “as a very constructive approach
to the problem.”
Siamese Twins Baptised
PHILADELPHIA (NC) - Clara and Alta Rodriguez, the 15-month-old Siamese twin
girls from the Dominican Republic who were separated in a historic operation at
Children’s Hopsital here in September, were welcomed into the Catholic Church in
baptismal ceremonies at the hospital. The two infants were baptized conditionally
because an emergency Baptism was performed just after they were born. They had
eight Official godparents, including two physicians who were part of the operating
team that separted the two girls.
American Jesuits Elected
ROME (NC) -- Two American Jesuits have been elected to key working committees
for the extraordinary general congregation of the Society of Jesus. Father Michael
Buckley, a theology professor at Rome’s Gregorian University, was elected to serve on
the committee on the state of the society. Father Robert Mitchell, a former provincial
superior of the Jesuits’ New York province, was elected to the screening committee for
the nearly 80 postulata, or action proposals, drawn up from 1,020 papers submitted
by Jesuits throughout the world.