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PAGE 2—August 21,1975 MESSAGE TO BISHOPS: People Are Hurting, Church Isn’t There BY JERRY FILTEAU ATLANTA (NC) - People are hurting - the poor, blacks, the Spanish speaking, prisoners - and the Church simply isn’t there to help them, a wide variety of spokesmen told the U.S. bishops Aug. 7. The setting was Atlanta’s Civic Center, on the first day of a three-day congressional-style hearing on “Liberty and Justice for All.” The hearing was the fourth of six such events around the country, sponsored by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) as part of the Catholic observance of the U.S. bicentennial. The input from the regional hearings and similar parish discussions will be brought together in a national convention on liberty and justice in 1976. This in turn is expected to establish a major five-year social action agenda for the Catholic Church in the United States. Other hearings have focused on such issues as international justice, the world food crisis, immigration, the Mexican-American, the Native American, the land -- all legitimate areas of serious concern for justice. But the Atlanta hearing was devoted to an issue that affects every American day by day at the heart of his life - the family. Cleo Lamkin, 32, a black prisoner at Georgia Industrial Institute, pleaded for basic person-to-person love and concern as a key to prisoners’ dignity, self-respect and rehabilitation. Lamkin (who was accompanied to the hearing by his warden, David England) asked the Church to get people interested in prisoners as individuals, to provide simple support systems such as arranging transportation for family members to visit prisoners, and to carry that support through with jobs for ex-prisoners. From his experience - “I am 32 years old and have spent 15 of those years in prisons” - related the steady, inexorable deterioration of spirit as the prisoner waits day after day for even the smallest indication that someone outside cares. “Just a letter, a card from his family - this will motivate him to do good.” Joseph Flanagan, executive secretary of the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Atlanta, ♦ asked why the society 7 - which he described as the only major lay organization devoted to meeting the needs of the poor - is often ignored by bishops and pastors. “The whole nation,” he said, “knows the position of the Church on state aid to (parochial) education . . . and on the crime of abortion.” But, he asked, how many people have heard preached the position of the Church that the right to private property is not an absolute right, that “no one is justified in keeping what he does not need while others are in need?” Spokespersons for the Spanish-speaking noted the Anglo insensitivity to Hispanic culture and religious attitudes. The stress that this creates in the family life of Hispanic Americans, they said, is pervasive, particularly for first-generation immigrant families. From a series of witnesses emerged a picture of current American practices attacking family life and individual dignity among the Spanish speaking in the areas of jobs, education, religious education, worship, and a general, all-pervasive cultural insensitivity. Blacks told the bishops of the continuing racism in the United States that magnifies their problems. The eight percent-plus unemployment rate in the United States is double for blacks, said Mrs. Ethel Mae Mathews, who works at Emmaus House, a neighborhood center for the poor in Atlanta. And for black youths, she added, the unemployment rate is 50 percent. “It’s time that the Church . . . takes a decisive stand against racism,” said Mrs. Althea Truitt of the Atlanta University school of social work. The Church is not just an institution, she said, but it is ; people - and the people who make up the Church are the same people who treat blacks as inferiors in daily life, in business, in education, in the neighborhood. Two brothers, Kim Tran and Loi Tran, natives of Saigon who have been students in the United States for the past several years and are now working with the Catholic Office for Refugee Resettlement in Atlanta, asked the panel whether the American people are seriously willing to accept the Vietnamese refugees. “We have two uncles, said Loi, “Uncle Ho Chi Minh and Uncle Sam . . . Uncle Ho Chi Minh doesn’t want us, but does Uncle Sam want us?” Many of the offers of assistance that he receives at the resettlement office, he said, may sound superficially like acts of generosity - but they really amount to attempts by wealthy doctors, lawyers and businessmen to find cheap labor. Earlier in the day an expert on family life called in by the Bishops’ Bicentennial Committee testified that American family life is hurting at the core, and that this results from a complex set of factors which have created serious anxiety among people. The expert, Dr. Murray Bowen, is clinical professor, department of psychiatry, at the Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D. C., and chairman of the family division of the medical department of psychiatry, Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. He told the bishops’ panel he is convinced that the people in the United States are going through a period of moral regressions, in which they are becoming more and more prone to reacting to anxiety situations instead of basing their actions on principles and beliefs. He outlined several factors which, he said, have contributed to this situation: The population explosion, the lack of new frontiers for physical expansion, the rapid depletion of raw materials necessary to maintain people’s current lifestyle. The result, Dr. Bowen said, is deterioration of the moral level, of action, which affects every level of life - the individual, the family, the community, and the nation. Admitting that he had no quick or easy solutions to the current dilemma, Dr. Bowen suggested that the Church could help to counteract the tendency toward moral regression by an emphasis on beliefs and principles. - On the basis of years of clinical experience, Dr. Bowen said, the basic social unit within which the trend can be reversed is the family. Bp. Rausch Pledges Fight Against Immigration Bill ^ “ ;— Atlanta Bicentennial Hearings <. * ATLANTA (NC) - The U.S. Catholic Conference (USCC) will wage a “full lobbying effort to defeat” immigration legislation now pending in Congress because it fails to provide full amnesty for illegal aliens as supported by the USCC. BICENTENNIAL HEARINGS -- Above, four panelists for the U.S. bishops take on different poses of listening at Tidy Creek Campgrounds, Ga., as they enter their eighth hour of hearing testimony on the needs of American families. Below, during an interlude in the testimony a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses from Athens, Ga., sing gospel songs. The hearings two days in Atlanta and one day at Tidy Creek Campgrounds, were part of bicentennial observance “Liberty and Justice for All” sponsored by the U.S. bishops. (NC Photos) Bishop James S. Rausch, general secretary of the USCC and of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB), explained the effort by the bishops’ national offices Aug. 7 at a hearing in Atlanta on “Liberty and Justice for All” sponsored by the NCCB as part of the American Catholic observance of the Nation’s bicentennial. The bishop said he had sent a memo out to the USCC offices in which “I instructed the staff to work with the Senate and House (of Representatives) to work against the legislation as proposed.” The current legislative proposal, which was recently approved in committee, “does not provide the avenues needed” to deal equitably with an estimated 8 million illegal aliens now in the country, Bishop Rausch told more than 100 persons gathered for the hearing. The House Judiciary Committee has approved a bill granting “amnesty,” or allowing regularization of immigration status, to illegal aliens in residence in the United States before June 30, 1968. The bill also imposes penalties on employers who “knowingly” hire illegal aliens. A similar bill has twice passed the House, but no action has been taken by the Senate. The USCC has supported amnesty for illegal aliens living in the United States before Jan. 1, 1975, if they had been in continuous residence since March 19, 1974. Msgr. George Higgins, USCC secretary for research, has explained that as of that date all Social Security card holders had been cleared by the Social Security Administration regarding their right to employment. USCC officials termed the June 30, 1968, cut-off date for amnesty as “harsh.” The USCC supports using the Social Security card as proof of legal eligibility for employment. Bishop Rausch, who was a member of the panel of bishops, priests and lay persons listening to testimony on liberty and justice issues facing the Church today, stated the USCC position at a question-and-answer period following testimony on the needs of Spanish-speaking people by Mr. and Mrs. Heman Machicado. The Machicados, natives of Bolivia and leaders in the Movimiento Familiar Cristiano (MFC -- the Christian Family Movement for the Spanish speaking), had testified that immigrant Spanish-speaking families face serious problems in the United States not only because of language barriers, but especially because of American insensitivity to the cultural differences of the Spanish speaking. The couple, who now live in the Boston area, had said the problems of integration and assimilation are especially difficult for those who are in this country illegally, because their status forces them into closed ghettos out of fear of discovery, prevents educational advancement, and usually forces them to take jobs at or below the minimum wage. The Spanish speaking make up the largest single group of illegal aliens in this country, they said. Bishop Rausch asked the Machicados if they agree with the USCC stance on the pending legislation. Hernan Machicado said that he agrees completely, that only a bill incorporating full amnesty for illegal aliens will resolve the current situation. The bishop later told NC News that one of the chief USCC concerns is that, if a bill is passed without an adequate amnesty provision, it could result in the break-up of many family units by the deportation of one family member - and thereby make already difficult situations even worse. He said the USCC cannot support ATLANTA (NC) » The year 1976 may mark a “new crossroads” for the Catholic Church’s social justice policy in the United States, according to Bishop James S. Rausch, general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB). i The reason, he said, is the U.S. Catholic bicentennial observance, “Liberty and Justice for All,” which is geared to establishing a comprehensive social action program for the Church in this country. Bishop Rausch told NC News during an NCCB-sponsored regional hearing on liberty and justice in Atlanta Aug. 7-9: “A number of bishops have told me that they are beginning to see this (program) as another 1919, a new crossroads in social action.” In 1919 the Catholic bishops in the United States issued a major document, “Bishops’ Program of Social Reconstruction,” which called for social policies still considered revolutionary at the time, such as minimum wage laws and old age and health and unemployment insurance. “Some of the items on that agenda were not realized in federal law until 1938, ‘39 or ‘40,” Bishop Rausch added. According to many observers, a great deal of the Church’s social policy in this country today can be recognized as legislation that does not meet the minimum amnesty requirements outlined by the USCC earlier in testimony before the congress. having its origins in the bishops’ 1919 statement. Some of the leading social actionists in the U.S. Church today still speak fondly of Msgr. John A. Ryan, architect of the 1919 policy, as their chief mentor and inspiration. The 1975-76 bicentennial observance, “Liberty and Justice for All,” will culminate with a national convention in Detroit in October 1976. The convention is expected to emerge with a major statement establishing the directions and priorities for Catholic social action over the next five years at least. Preceding the convention there will be a nationwide consultation of Catholics at the parish and diocesan levels this fall and winter, as part of an attempt to discern the real needs of the people. The other major segment of the observance preceding the convention is a series of six regional hearings in 1975, of which the Atlanta hearing was the fourth. Earlier hearings took place in Washington, D. C.; San Antonio, Tex. and St. Paul, Minn. The next hearing will be in Sacramento, Calif., in October, and the last .one will take place in Newark, N. J., in December. The hearings have focused on injustices and needs in particular areas -- family life, land ownership and use, minority groups, food, international affairs, the aged, the poor, the working' person, immigrants, farmers, urban dwellers, prisoners, and numerous similar topics. 1976 Viewed As Turning Point For U.S. Church Canon Lawyer Says, ‘Family Number One Disaster Area In Our Nation’ ATLANTA (NC) - “The family is the number one disaster area of our nation,” a leading canon lawyer told a panel of U.S. bishops and their advisers Aug. 9. And the Church, he told them, is not giving justice to the casualties of marital breakups. The lawyer, Father John T. Finnegan, president of the Canon Law Society of America and a professor at Pope John XXIII National Seminary in Weston, Mass., was testifying at a three-day regional hearing on “Liberty and Justice for All,” which is part of the national Catholic observance of the U.S. bicentennial. Striking chiefly at injustices to divorced-remarried Catholics, Father Finnegan told the panel that the Church in this country is seriously inadequate at every phase of marital life: marriage preparation and premarital counseling, support for married life and family life, and pastoral and legal care for divorced Catholics. At the same time the priest noted strong positive trends within the Church in those areas and urged bishops to do all they can to promote and encourage those developments. He also noted the severe practical difficulties of trying to provide full justice for all. At one point, for example, Father Finnegan charged that most bishops in the country have “largely ignored” their “grave obligation in conscience” to provide adequate professional staffing for their diocesan marriage courts. One result, he said is that a person seeking a marriage annulment may receive it in one diocese but not in the next - a situation “creating the confusion of ‘geographic morality’ and a divisive pluralism.” But on the other hand, the priest noted, it has been estimated “that it would take $20-30 .aillion by the American bishops to make the tribunals (courts) function in a manner required by law and as needed by our people.” * « “Even if this money was available, should it be so allocated?” he asked. Father Finnegan began his presentation by noting that there is a flood of factors today that make it difficult for Christians to live a full, healthy Christian marriage commitment. The official teaching authority of the Church and recent legal developments in the Church have been moving in the direction of viewing marriage primarily as a covenant of love rather than a legal contract, he said, but pastoral practice has not kept pace. He cited u recent study in wnich “it was estimated that 57,000 marriages (of Catholics in the United States) in 1972 were probably entered into invalidly” according to the Church’s understanding that a permanent commitment is required for a valid marriage. Because of the divorce mentality in the United States, he said, “the problem is massive,” and it requires a major commitment to marital permanence by the Church not only in education but also in “life and witness.” Other significant social factors that affect young people’s attitudes and can affect the validity of marriages, he said, are the widespread “Contraceptive mentality” and the idea of “open marriage.” “The juridical presumption in favor of the validity of marriage is pastorally sound,” he said. “Our people need the assurance that something happens, something definitively has occurred, on the wedding day. However, the Church must realize herself as a ‘community of mental health’ where this societal contagion is filtered out and our young people are able to grow and develop” to a point where reality backs up the legal presumption. But under the present circumstances, the legal expert said, there are in fact a large number of divorced persons who have a legal right to a declaration by the Church that their former marriage was invalid and they are free to marry again. He praised the bishops for their solidarity last year in appealing to maintain easier court procedures for resolving marriage cases. But even with the easier procedures, Father Finnegan said, the diocesan courts are unable to do their job. He said: “The statistics are unnerving: 25 percent of American tribunals have members with no degree in canon law and would most likely be unaware of the advances in canon law and .. . jurisprudence; 30 percent of the tribunals have no full-time personnel; 54 percent have one man or less; only 26 percent meet the minimum standard set by the Code of Canon Law; 71 percent say their greatest need is lack of adequate staffing; only 10 percent of the dioceses . . . claim the bishop’s support as their greatest asset.” In addition to being unable to provide legal services, he charged, the Church is unable to provide adequate pastoral and counseling services to resolve marriage problems short of divorce or to care for divorced Catholics. As a result, he said, divorced persons “are dispirited and walk away from us in droves with the impression that we are hard-hearted, self-righteous, and the Church of the Perfect Response Only.” Father Finnegan called on the bishops of the country to take a step in increased pastoral care by lifting “the automatic excommunication . . . for those Catholics who remarry after divorce.” This excommunication, he said, is “found only in the United States, and is not part of the universal discipline of the Church . .. For all its good intentions originally, it has become harsh and vindictive and a counter-sign to the Church’s call to mercy and forgiveness.” He also called on the bishops to make full use of advanced marriage jurisprudence in every diocese, to participate more fully in the current process of revising the Church’s marriage law, and to place on their agenda “for many years to come” the development of pastoral care and marriage support programs. i