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PAGE 2—The Southern Cross, May 29, 1975
DONALSONVILLE
Georgia Mission Has Old History
JOY AT ST. PETER’S Hand in hand inside St.
Peter’s Basilica and dancing in a circle outside the
Vatican church, charismatic^ express spiritual joy
during their international conference held during
Pentecost weekend. (NC Photos by KNA)
When Bishop Raymond W. Lessard of
Savannah dedicated the new Chapel in
Donalsonville, last month, it marked the
reestablishment of a 300-year-old
Georgia mission in time for the U.S.
bicentennial.
' The modern, air-conditioned chapel
bears the same name as one established
here by Franciscan missionaries more
than a century before the American
Revolution - the Church of the
Incarnation of the Holy Cross of
Sabacola.
The new chapel was given that name
by Bishop Lessard to commemorate the
first Catholic church in the area,
founded by Spanish Franciscans as a
mission at the Indian Village of
Sabacola.
Bishop Gabriel Diaz Vara Calderon of
Cuba, a Spaniard, dedicated the original
church in 1673 while on a year-long
visit of the southern American missions
that he had been directed to undertake
by Queen Mariana of Spain, with special
privileges of the Holy See.
Three hundred years ago, Bishop
Calderon reported to Queen Mariana
that he had visited every mission in the
Spanish-American province of la
Florida, which then included Georgia,
and confirmed 13,152 Christian Indians
and Spaniards.
To improve the living conditions of
the Indians he had also disbursed the
equivalent of about what it recently
cost to reestablish the new chapel of
Sabacola. The mission network of the
Spanish Franciscans served Indians west
as far as Apalachicola River, and up at
Georgia coast as far as St. Catherine’s
Island, just below Savannah. Of that
vast territory, the westernmost mission
outpost, almost at the border of
present-day Alabama, was Holy Cross of
Sabacola.
To traverse the rugged Indian trails,
the Spanish government allowed each
Franciscan missionary three pairs of
shoes a year.
Between 1702 and 1704, English-led
invasion from South Carolina, destroyed
the coastal misssions of Georgia and
most of the interior missions as well.
Present-day Franciscans administer
six other parishes and missions in
Georgia.
Making Eutaw a Better Place
BY CAROLYNNE SCOTT
EUTAW, Ga. (NC) ~ Not many
people know that Eutaw is part of
Greene County, and that Greene
County is one of the poorest in the
nation. But when a radio station,
funded by the U.S. Bishops’ Campaign
for Human Development, begins
operation, the problems and hopes of
this tiny Georgia hamlet will be known
beyond the city limits.
Operating on an FM frequency, the
station will air educational programs as
well as taped feature stories on the
progress of the community for
broadcast over other stations.
It is just one link in a chain of success
stories begun by Louis Barnett, Jr.,
dynamic young coordinator of the
Greene County Development Center,
which was started several years ago
when Barnett, a student at the
University of Alabama, met Maurice
Kirksey, a used car salesman from
Chicago.
More often than not, the two men
found themselves in the Urban League
Office on Courthouse Square doing
economic development work for Greene
County. “We had a borrowed car and
one credit card,” said Barnett, who was
then affiliated with the Selma
Interreligious Project.
But their status as freelance
community developers soon changed
when William McKinley Branch was
elected as the probate judge of Greene
County. He requested that they
officially operate an economic
development program for the area.
James Isaac, the first elected mayor
of Forkland, Ala., was glad the two men
undertook the task.
One of the center’s first requests
came from Isaac, who needed a Small
Business Administration loan to open a
grocery store in his hometown. The
team of Barnett and Kirksey went to
work, and obtained money to hire a
contractor, buy materials and construct
a building to house the Pay and Take
Market, the first black-owned business
in the area.
In a case where the Small Business
Administration will help if there is
evidence of some local support, Bamett
says he turns time and again to Msgr.
Edward L. Foster, director of the
Campaign for Human Development for
the Diocese of Birmingham, Ala.;
Bishop Furman Stough of the Episcopal
Diocese of Alabama, and the Rev.
Welton Gregory of the United
Methodist Church.
“We’ll have a project where a little
help would turn into a viable revenue
producing entity and a model for black
kids” (who often leave the area when
they grow up) “and but for people like
Msgr. Foster and Bishop Strough it
would not happen,” Bamett said.
After their initial success with the
grocery store, Bamett and Kirksey
aimed higher and soon landed a prize in
federal money. They were instrumental
in getting $7 million for a self-help
housing project and then another
$600,000 to install water and sewer
systems. Each new homeowner
contributed $1,500 worth of labor
toward the project to keep the rent on
the 200 units at a modest $40 per
month.
At the suggestion of Msgr. Foster, the
center also organized a United Council
of Churches on a $10,000 grant from
the New York Foundation. The council,
among other things, helped finance a
cancer operation in New Orleans, and
assists local college students in meeting
the costs of tuition.
Bamett and Kirksey are just as
interested in preserving the existing
strengths of Greene County as in
developing new ones. For instance, they
convinced the Greene County
commissioners to take steps to keep a
garment company from leaving the
county, a move that would have pushed
80 people out of their jobs. The Eutaw
Apparel Company agreed to leave its
equipment and send a representative to
provide the necessary management
training if area residents would rent the
building and buy the machinery in it.
Through bond sales, the company will
be locally owned within five years.
The center follows the same finanical
acumen that it tries to develop in its
projects. Barnett and Kirksey have
recently paid off most of the center’s
bills with a grant from the New York
Foundation and it continues to operate
at no expense to the county. “We now
have two credit cards and borrow my
wife’s car,” Bamett says with a laugh.
The Urban League lends financial
support to the center, and although its
shoestring budget is frail, “our spirit is
not bankrupt,” Bamett says.
Echoing the sentiments of Judge
Branch, Bamett voices his policy this
way: “We’re not building roads. We’re
building people.”
They in turn can build the roads.
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Archbishop Binz Retires
WASHINGTON (NC) - Pope Paul VI has accepted the resignation of Archbishop
Leo Binz of St. Paul and Minneapolis, 74, and named Auxiliary Bishop John R. Roach
of St. Paul and Minneapolis, 53, to succeed him as archbishop. Announcement of the
resignation and appointment was made here by Archbishop Jean Jadot, apostolic
delegate in the United States. Archbishop Binz will serve as administrator of the
archdiocese until Archbishop-designate Roach takes possession of it.
Vatican Protests
GENEVA (NC) - The Vatican has protested that the World Health Organization
(WHO) is overstressing the subject of family planning. Msgr. Silvio Luoni, head of the
Vatican delegation to the 28th general assembly of that United Nations agency here,
charged that WHO research in the field of human reproduction is oriented almost
exclusively toward a medical technology, instead of being guided by a sense of human
dignity and responsibility and by moral values.
Church Membership Down
NEW YORK (NC) - For the first time, the total membership of churches in the
United States showed a slight loss in 1974, according to the 1975 Yearbook of
American and Canadian Churches 1975. The yearbook reflects counts primarily made
in 1973 and 1974 of 221 religious denominations in the United States.
Ask Sponsorship of Refugees
NEW 7 ORLEANS (NC) - Because living conditions in the three government refugee
camps “are not the best,” Catholic Charities and resettlement bureau representatives
meeting here recently have urged the public to sponsor Vietnamese refugees. Meeting
participants said that no city or area will be designated a quota of refugees to resettle,
so success in resettlement efforts will depend on the number of people willing to
sponsor them.
By the way...
BY REV. WAYLAND BROWN
Pluralism
During the theology seminar
sponsored by the Department of
Christian Formation in Savannah May 9
and 10, Father Charles Curran
mentioned prominently in his talks the
pluralism of theologies and viewpoints
which exist in the Roman
Catholic Church. He went on to say that
he feels Roman Catholics can expect
this phenomen to continue in the
future.
I agree with Father Curran for the
most part, and I want to offer some
thoughts about the existence of varying
viewpoints among people all of whom
would seem to have the right to be
considered Roman Catholics both by
themselves and by others.
A look at the history of the Church
will reveal that our situation is not new.
If I may cite early attitudes toward
women in the ministry as an example,
perhaps my point will be somewhat
clarified. Both Saint Thomas Aquinas
and Duns Scotus, medieval theologians
of great importance, opposed ordaining
women to the priesthood, but for very
different reasons. Scotus simply thought
that women were inferior, frequently
hysterical beings who were obviously
unsuited to much at all, let alone the
ministry. Women were sometimes
reduced to no more than the occasions
of sin for men.
Thomas, on the other hand,
recognized the fundamental injustice
against half of humanity constituted by
the failure of the Church to allow
women to become priests. He, however,
still wished to maintain this prohibition,
but without having the Church appear
unjust. To do so he found it necessary
to say that it was not the Church which
forbade their ordination (therefore the
Church is not unjust), but the divine
will of God. Thomas then avoided the
problem of making God appear unjust
by appealing to the fact that God
cannot be unjust. The ways of God are
not those of persons, he claimed, as the
book of Job would prove.. .
(Parenthetically it is this view which we
find most nearly reflected in Pope Paul’s
recent statements on the subject.)
Here then are two quite different
theological positions, somewhat grossly
over simplified^ I must acimit, bo& of
which have been held and to some
extent are held today in the same
Roman Catholic Church. At no point,
however, do we meet persons on either
side of the question seriously suggesting
that those who do not agree with them
are screwballs, crackpots, or even
heretics to be cast out of the Church.
We can trace disciplinary division
right back to the time of the Apostles
and find no hint that the parties
considered one another outside the
faith: Father Curran mentioned the
dispute between Paul and Barnabas
which we find in Acts 15: 36-41 when
the two evangelists actually split up.
We are faced by many issues today on
which we find little agreement;
however, we must learn from history
that we are to depend on our Christian
faith and the Holy Spirit and to exercise
Christian Charity towards those with
whom we disagree. Dialogue need never
become diversive among people whose
faith is strong. Charity and gratitude
must always seek to overcome
resentment and bitterness. We find in
the scriptures many examples of Jesus’
mercy (see Luke 15) and the doctrine
that no sin is too great for God’s
forgiveness through the Church
(Matthew 16:19), except the hardness
of persons own hearts to the point that
they refuse forgiveness because of their
inability to see the Good (First Epistle
of John 5: 16-17).
It must be said that there are times
when we must wonder if the
championing of a certain cause or the
adoption of a position might not so
contradict fundamental principles of
Christian Faith as to raise questions of
orthodoxy; however, these must remain
few, serious, and never simple. Nothing
so personal as the type of instruments
used at the liturgy or the quality of
singing or the celebration should ever be
magnified to this proportion, nor should
such cause divisive, bitter colloquy. We
are simply too good for that; our faith
has made us so.
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ESSAY & POSTER CONTEST WINNERS - Each year the Knights of
Columbus of Warner Robins sponsor an Essay Contest for the 7th and 8th
grade students of Sacred Heart School. This year the topic was “How
Christ Works In My Life.” Pictured on left are the winners (left to
right): Patty McKinley, 3rd; Lisa Rowell, 2nd; Christine Ponarese, 1st;
Suzanne Casy, 4th. The winner received a $25.00 government bond. This
year the Knights of Columbus also sponsored a poster contest in keeping
with the bicentennial celebration for grades 3rd through the 6th. The
theme was “Catholic Heritage.” Pictured on right are the winners
(left to right): Carrie Grimaud, 4th; Michael Silvetti, 1st; Nina Bueno,
2nd; Patricia Keating, 5th; not pictured, but 3rd place winner, Terry Ann
Phillips, C. C. D. student. The winner received $10.00. Pictured in both
photos along with the winners are: Father Walter L. DiFrancesco,
Chaplain, Knights of Columbus; Sister Joan, Principal; and Lowell
Grimaud, Chairman of the contest.
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