Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 2—October 9,1975
MIDWEST VISITOR ~ Retired Archbishop Michael Cathedral. He said that ecumenism has been
Ramsey, former primate of the Anglican church, chats progressing at a rate which would have been considered
with friends at a reception in Milwaukee sponsored by “miraculous” a few years ago. (NC Photo)
St. John’s Catholic Cathedral and All Saints Episcopal
Ex-Anglican Leader Sees Reunion
BY ETHEL GINTOFT
OHIO CONVENTION
Society Needs Catholic Schools
NCCB President Tells
NASHOTAH, Wis. (NC) - The former
primate of the Church of England has
predicted a union of sorts with
Catholicism early in the next century.
Archbishop Arthur M. Ramsey,
retired Anglican archbishop of
Canterbury, made the observation in an
internew here. He is currently giving a
six-week course at the Episcopal
seminary, Nashotah House.
“When unity between the
communions comes,” according to the
archbishop, “it won’t be a takeover. It
will mean that the Anglican
Communion becomes recognized in
communion with the Holy See” in the
NASHVILLE
NASHVILLE (NC) - Bishop James
D. Niedergeses of Nashville has called
for a special mediation board to look
into prisoners’ complaints in the
aftermath of a riot which caused one
death at the state’s main prison for men.
According to the bishop, a full airing
of grievances was needed to prevent
further deterioration in the situation.
He proposed appointment of a panel
representing all segments of the
community, with members to be named
by Tennessee Gov. Ray Blanton.
The bishop has reportedly asked the
governor for a meeting to discuss the
proposal and to convey his concern.
The violence erupted recently during
the evening meal in the prison cafeteria.
Inmates claim it was touched off by the
kitchen staff’s refusal to provide
sufficient food for all. Some observers
reply that the alleged food shortage was
merely a pretext for a riot which had its
roots in a variety of other prisoner
complaints.
same manner as the Catholic
Eastern-rite churches, he declared.
The only stumbling block is the
doctrine of papal infallibility, “but even
that can be resolved,” he said, by
conceding that the Pope is “the
mouthpiece” for the authority that
“resides in the whole body of the
Church.”
He admitted, however, that great
differences divide the two churches on
the matter of abortion. “The line the
Anglican Church has taken is that
abortion is wrong except to save the life
or health of the mother,” he said.
“I think, however, that abortion has
Discussing the problem, Gov. Blanton
noted that the Nashville facility is
seriously overcrowded and that until
additional state funds are allocated,
disturbances are likely to recur. The
spring session of the legislature failed to
provide funds Blanton had requested.
After that, conditions at the prison
became so tense that the governor
ordered National Guardsmen in to back
up regular security personnel. The
Guardsmen were not deployed inside
the facility, however.
Gov. Blanton has revealed that he is
diverting money from his contingency
fund to the corrections budget. The
diverted funds will be used to hire more
security guards.
A prison reform group which met
with Bishop Niedergeses has predicted
that tighter security will not reduce
tension inside the prison, and that time
is too short to await legislative action to
increase the prison’s size. According to
that group, which includes Father Jack
Hickey, O.P., prison chaplain, a
mediation board is needed immediately.
gone too far both in England and
America,” he added.
Concerning divorce, he said, “I doubt
if there would be anything that would
separate our communions about that.”
His church is more “lax” about divorce,
he said, but pointed to the recent
Catholic trend which “allows nullity far
more freely than Anglicans.”
(The archbishop was presumably
referring to the recent streamlining of
some diocesan marriage tribunals, one
of the effects of which has been an
increase in the granting of decrees of
nullity. Such decrees do not dissolve
marriages, but declare rather that no
valid marriage was contracted.)
The validity of Anglican orders is no
longer a problem, he asserted.
According to Archbishop Ramsey, Pope
Leo XIII’s declaration that Anglicans do
not validly ordain priests is “now
irrelevant.” He said that in his opinion
that decision had been overturned by
the recent Anglican-Roman Catholic
International Commission.
(The commission’s statement in 1973
on ministry, a declaration of agreement
by Catholic and Anglican theologians, is
not an official policy statement of
either church. The statement attempted
to bypass Pope Leo’s declaration by
providing what it called a “new
context.” What the theologians
■ considered all of “the essential features”
of “ordination in the apostolic
!succession” did not include anything
that might be used to attack the validity
of Anglican orders.)
Speaking of the recent ordinations of
women in the Episcopal Church, he
noted that the problem is “more
prominent in the United States than on
the continent. In the U.S. it has become
an obsession. I wish they’d think about
other things.”
His own view is that “if the Church
decides to ordain women, then we do; if
it doesn’t, then we don’t. What’s utterly
wrong is to anticipate the church’s
decision by doing something that is
presently unlawful.”
CINCINNATI (NC) - The president
of the National Conference of Catholic
Bishops has urged renewed efforts to
strengthen the Catholic school system,
tying the survival of that system to the
well-being of American society.
Archbishop Joseph L. Bemardin of
Cincinnati made the remarks in a speech
delivered here to the convention of the
Ohio Catholic Education Association.
“Perhaps our best contribution to
the bicentennial celebration of our
country will be to maintain a strong
alternative educational system, one
which insures freedom of choice for our
parents and children, one which will
inculcate an understanding and
appreciation of that true freedom on
which the well-being of both our
Church and our society is based.”
The archbishop criticized prevailing
notions of freedom which are in fact
endorsements of permissiveness. Some
people understand freedom as “the
capability of doing whatever suits their
fancy, whether it be right or wrong.
They want the freedom to engage in
economic or other injustices in order to
bolster their financial or social
standing . .. They insist on the freedom
to live a sexually permissive life in order
to avoid the obligations of a stable
marriage. They demand the freedom to
kill unborn children ... or the elderly,”
to improve their own lives.
“But instead of freeing people,” he
OAKLAND, Calif. (NC) - Voicing
strongly concern over prison problems
in his diocese, Bishop Floyd L. Begin of
Oakland has established a new office
dealing with criminal justice.
A six-page pastoral letter containing
over 50 specific recommendations for
Catholic action on corrections and
justice accompanied the announcement.
The bishop attacked the general
apathy surrounding the subject as well
as penal abuses. “As followers of
Christ,” he said, “we should be actively
concerned about criminals, prisons and
the whole system of criminal justice.
The vindictive attitude of ‘lock them up
and throw away the key’ is not
consistent with human dignity.”
Some of the problems, according to
Bishop Begin, are “overcrowded
facilities, insufficient alternatives
programs, indiscriminate pre-trial
detention, lack of carefully integrated
planning of all these elements, and
isolation of the community at large
from the concern and efforts of the
criminal justice system.”
The director of the criminal justice
office will be Franciscan Father Frank
M. Buismato, former head of the Center
for Peace and Justice in San Francisco.
His duties will include giving spiritual
support to the prisoners and their
families, development of a
transportation program for the families
of prisoners, and working with pastors
and parish councils on education and
rehabilitation programs. He will also be
concerned with the structure of the
criminal justice system itself and
propose alternatives.
The bishops’ recommended changes
went on, “these aberrations make slaves
of them.”
True freedom is one; it is indivisible,”
according to Archbishop Bernardin.
“Whether or not it can continue to exist
and flourish indefinitely - whether in
the Church or society - depends on
whether it is rooted in truth, the truth
of Christ, which alone guarantees
freedom.”
“It is for this reason,” he continued,
“that Catholic education is so
important, perhaps more important now
than ever before. No education is worth
very much unless it can go beyond the
purely pragmatic dimension of life and
probe the deeper questions which have
fascinated and perplexed the human
family from the very beginning.”
To accomplish this, “we must not be
afraid to emphasize the faith
dimension,” the archbishop said.
Another speaker, Dr. Mildred
Jefferson, a Boston surgeon and board
chairman of the National Right to Life
Committee, told the gathering that the
Supreme Court abortion decisions
“strike at the very foundations of our
legal system.” She called them “a
mockery of justice.” She attacked Sen.
Birch Bayh (D-Ind.) and his
constitutional amendments
subcommittee for failing to vote in
favor of any proposed amendment to
restrict abortion.
were initially hammered out by the
diocesan Social Action Board, a
six-member panel which he headed. The
proposals were formulated over the past
year, during which time the board met
with representatives of the Alameda and
Contra Costa Counties judicial system,
criminologists specializing in such things
Educators
The convention also heard from
Jesuit Father Richard T. McSorley, a
professor at Georgetown University in
Washington, D.C., who spoke on the
“moral insanity” of nuclear war. He
showed slides demonstrating the horrors
of such warfare.
Another speaker, Father Henri
Nouwen, a Dutch theologian and
author, told the group that “to be a
religion teacher calls for the courage to
enter with the student into the common
search.”
“In religious education,” said Father
Nouwen, a theology professor at Yale,
“we encounter a God who cannot be
understood; we discover realities which
cannot be controlled and we realize that
our hope is hidden not in the possession
of power, but in the confession of
weakness.”
Charles Silberman, author and
advocate of “open classrooms,” told the
audience classrooms “must not be
corridors through which children are
rushed to the next stage ...”
And according to Father Richard
Rohr, O.F.M., director of a
1,000-member charismatic community
in Cincinnati, there is “no special
charism” in presenting Christianity to
the young. “It is only necessary to
present the Word of God, and ears will
hear it,” he told the educators.
Justice
as juvenile crime, drug addiction and
prison reform. Bishop Begin toured
several correctional facilities during that
time.
4 1* *
Father Buismato is a native of Derby,
Conn., and a graduate of Purdue
University in Indiana.
HEADS NEW SEE - Bishop Rene Gracida, auxiliary of Miami, has been
named to head the new See of Pensacola-Tallahassee in northwestern
Florida. It will have a total of 37,000 Catholics in an area 14,000 square
miles. (NC Photo)
Bishop Wants Mediation Board
To Hear Prisoners’ Complaints
Oakland Establishes New Office
Dealing With Criminal
Religious Communities Seen Smaller, More Dynamic
BY JERRY FILTEAU
BETHESDA, Md. (NC) - The Catholic religious community of the future will be
smaller but more dynamic, more flexible, and more alive to the Gospel, said several
speakers at a seminar on The Future of Religious Life here Sept. 29.
The seminar drew nearly 300 Sisters from around the country and about 20
Brothers and Religious priests. It was the first in a series of workshops on the future of
the Church by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), celebrating
CARA’s 10th anniversary as a national agency for planning and research in the Church.
Most of the Sisters were also in town for another conference Sept. 30-Oct. 2, a
“futureshop” on the formation of Sisters, sponsored by the Sisters Formation
Conference.
At the CARA seminar, speaker after speaker stressed a belief that religious
communities, particularly women Religious, have been in the vanguard of renewal
since the Second Vatican Council, a decade ago.
Because they have already undergone so many external changes, the speakers
suggested, Religious have come to a much more direct and conscious awareness of
their real identity as persons, as Christians and as Religious.
One speaker, Sister Kathleen Keating, president of the National Assembly of
Wome: Religious, predicted that as a result women Religious will be in front lines of a
battle for women’s equality in the Church.
“As a Sister becomes more aware of her call to be a full participant in the mission of
the Church,” Sister Keating said, “then she will find that she has no choice but to seek
full equality in all ministries, all decision-making roles, and all offices in the Church. It
will become for her a Gospel imperative.”
Sister Margaret Brennan, former president of the Leadership Conference of Women
Religious and now superior general of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in
Monroe, Mich., stated flatly that “religious life as we have known it in the past will not
continue.”
She said there has been a steady trend toward diversification of ministries in
religious communities and a continuing support attempt to adapt ministries to meet
new needs.
As religious orders have begun to rediscover the original spirit of their founders, she
said, they are questioning many of their current efforts.
As an example, she noted that many women Religious began parochial school
apostolates in this country to meet the needs of marginal, immigrant peoples. As these
groups became established in the American mainstream, she said, in many cases the
Sisters and their schools “followed them into the suburbs.”
But in many religious communities today, she said, there is a new stress on the
original spirit of the order, to serve “where others will not serve,” caring for the needs
of “the marginal, the scorned in our culture.”
Jesuit Father James Connor, research associate for the Jesuit Conference of Major
Superiors, said he believes that in the past decade religious communities have taken on
a fundamentally different character.
Ten years ago the prevailing notion of a religious community, he said, was that of a
kind of “halfway house between heaven and earth.” But today Religious are generally
seen as deeply involved in the wider Church community, he said.
According to Father Connor, one major difference between the two attitudes is that
in the former view the religious community was securely in control of its own world,
but in the latter view there is need for risk and adaptation, because it involves listening
to the needs of the people one serves and setting one’s apostolate according to those
needs.
There was a general agreement among the speakers that, while the shape of religious
life in the future will be more actively apostolic, there is also a growing trend towards
renewal of prayer life and contemplation among Religious. A temporary phase of
busy-busy activism that accompanied the beginnings of renewal is on the wane, they
suggested, and men and women Religious today are developing a new sense of the
close relationship between prayer life and apostolic ministry.