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PAGE 2—October 16,1975
CARDINAL WRIGHT
ROSARY MONTH -- Erika Polet of Seattle prays
the Rosary before a small statue of Our Lady of
Fatima during October, a month traditionally
dedicated to the Queen of the Holy Rosary. She is one
of many school children in the archdiocese who are
taking part in a program begun by a Rosary
committee. The program, in effect in 14 parishes,
involves keeping the statue home for a week as a
reminder to pray the Rosary. (NC Photo by Kay
Lagreid)
Ministry For Divorced
NEWARK, N.J. (NC) - The Newark
archdiocese is expanding its ministry to
divorced Catholics, opening a new office
under the auspices of the Family Life
Apostolate.
Named to head the office is
Conventional Franciscan Father Edgar
Holden, formerly with the Center for
Applied Research in the Apostolate
(CARA) in Washington. For the past
year he has been on sabbatical leave,
while studying at the Boston
Theological Institute.
An open meeting for Catholics who
are divorced will be held Oct. 15.
STUDY SHOWS
Contraceptive Health Risks
CHICAGO (NC) - The death rate of
women using intrauterine contraceptive
devices (IUD) is lower than that of
women using the birth control pill, but
women wearing IUDs are hospitalized
more than women on the pill, according
to a study published here.
Five women died and 7,862 were
hospitalized because of problems
associated with the IUD in the first half
of 1973, according to a nationwide
sample of doctors made by the Center
for Disease Control in Atlanta.
Four of the five deaths involved
serious infections, two of them related
to pregnancy. The fifth death was
attributed to heart problems.
An estimated 3.2 million women' in
the United States and Puerto Rico were
wearing IUD’s at the time of the study.
The survey conducted in cooperation
with the American Medical Association
and the American Osteopathic
Association, queried nearly half of the
34,544 physicians in the United States
and Puerto Rico whose practices were
likely to involve IUD use.
Catholics
“Our entire purpose,” Father Holden
said, “can be summed up in a few
words: the Church cares deeply about
the divorced; they constitute a vital
aspect of the Christian community.”
Father Holden estimated that there
might be as many as 6 million divorced
Catholics in the United States. “Divorce
is no longer an issue that Catholics may
sweep quietly under the rug or speak
about in hushed tones,” he said.
He admitted that the program might
be misunderstood by some, but said:
“No new program in today’s Church is
ever understood by all or embraced
uncritically.”
He said that Catholic tradition cannot
be compromised in the slightest “by
gentle overtures of love and compassion
to those whose marriages have run
hopelessly aground.”
There is also a great deal of
misunderstanding about the status of
the divorced, he said, with many
Catholics believing “that a divorced
person is automatically
excommunicated and separated from
the sacraments, even where there is no
intention to remarry.”
Parish, Family, Religious
Observances Pillars Of Love
ROME (NC) -- The family, the parish
and regular religious observances are the
pillars on which Catholic marital love
and union rest, according to Cardinal
John J. Wright, prefect of the Vatican’s
Congregation for the Clergy.
Cardinal Wright, an American, was
addressing about 1,000 married couples
of the Marriage Encounter Movement
here Oct. 7. They had come from the
United States on a Holy Year
pilgrimage.
The Marriage Encounter Movement in
the Catholic Church was created in the
United States to strengthen the effect of
the sacrament of matrimony, on
Catholic couples. More than 200,000
couples have made encounter week ends
over the past seven years.
Cardinal Wright said humility is
needed to make marriage succeed.
“And let us never forget that a
successful marriage, one in which
the children, too, are a part of the
whole, is a marriage that is based on
family love, the community which is the
parish and regular attendance at Sunday
Mass.”
“The parish is the center of family
life and that same sense of community is
what Marriage Encounter appeals to you
all to revive as couples within the
Church,” added the cardinal.
Jokingly, the cardinal said: “This is
one sacrament that I cannot share with
you, but never leave the priests out of
it. Never leave priests out of your sense
of community, for it is the pastoral
work of the priest that binds the
community and family into a whole.”
Cardinal Wright told the thousand
couples present from all parts of the
United States that St. Paul had best
expressed the union of marriage when
he had said: “One flesh. No longer two
but one.” And he added: “Just as the
Church is one body and not 600 million
Catholics.”
At a Mass at the Basilica of St. Mary
Major, that same Oct. 7, Bishop
Edouard Gagnon, president of the
Pontifical Committee for the Family,
praised Marriage Encounter couples as
“practical people.”
“You are practical people with a
great ideal, with great faith and with
wisdom,” the Canadian bishop said.
Noting that Oct. 7 was the Feast of
the Holy Rosary, Bishop Gagnon
defended recitation of the Rosary
against those who reject it as too simple
and too repetitive.
“As couples you know that happiness
and love are made up of repeating the
same simple things,” the bishop said.
Cardinal Wright celebrated an
opening Mass for the Marriage
Encounter couples in St. Peter’s
Basilica, Oct. 6.
Refugees Wonder If American
Catholics Have Forgotten Them
BY AL ANTCZAK
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (NC) -
It’s a heartbreak situation here.
The Vietnamese Catholic refugee
families still living here in tents are
suffering days and nights of anxiety.
They are wondering if American
Catholics have forgotten them.
They are frankly worried that not
enough American Catholic parishes will
come forward to sponsor them -- and
soon.
The U.S. government is giving every
indication that it intends to close this
refugee camp by Oct. 31.
Some refugees are getting panicky,
worrying that they may not be
sponsored and will have to be shipped
to Fort Chafee in Arkansas -- one more
refugee camp.
The 8,000 refugees that remain here
have been languishing in refugee camps
almost six months.
Many came from refugee camps in
Malaysia or Hong Kong; then were sent
to Guam; then to Pendleton. And now,
after building up their hopes that they
would be sponsored, they face the
prospect of having to go to yet one
more camp.
The refugees are sharp and sensitive.
They are beginning to wonder if
American Catholics have forgotten that
they are there, praying for help.
The refugees have two great anxieties.
One is the spiritual security of their
families, their children. They want to
hold on to their faith and not be in a
position where this might be
jeopardized.
The other anxiety is about material
security. They do not want to be a
burden. They want to work. They
realize that they will need help to get
started and they know that a parish
sponsorship offers the best assurance of
this security.
The trouble is not enough parishes
from throughout America are
volunteering to sponsor refugees out of
camp.
Refugees will tell you they have been
told by camp authorities that if they
turn down a sponsorship they will have
to go to Fort Chaffee.
The time is short. The nights at Camp
Pendleton are getting cold. The camps
are only about three miles inland from
the sea. At night it grows chill. There is
mist and fog and dampness.
But the greatest chill that strikes the
refugees’ hearts is the worry that the
Catholics of America are forgetting
them.
YOUNGEST AND OLDEST -- Sister Kathleen Matz (left) and Sister
Roth are the oldest and youngest of 50 women who have entered the
Divine Providence Sisters’ community from one parish, St. Martin’s in
Pittsburgh, in 98 years. They have been in the order for seven and 68
years respectively. St. Martin’s is the oldest active parish staffed by the
order which is observing its 100th anniversary in this country. (NC Photo)
Problems Of Unions, Unemployment, Church Workers
BY JERRY FILTEAU
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (NC) -- In three days of intensive hearings here Oct. 2-4,
representatives of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) heard a wide
range of witnesses promoting the labor union movement, challenging U.S. economic
policies as immoral, and urging the Church to treat its own workers more justly.
The Sacramento hearings were the fifth of six such sessions being held around the
country this year by the NCCB in an effort to develop a five-year program of Catholic
social action in the United States.
National experts on the first day testified that the labor movement in this country
has a long way to go before collective bargaining protects all workers from unjust
wages and substandard working conditions.
Taking the farm labor struggle in California as a key example of future
developments in the labor movement, the witnesses urged the Church to take a strong
stand in favor of the fundamental right of workers to organize freely.
Among those testifying were Msgr. George G. Higgins, secretary of research for the
U.S. Catholic Conference and long recognized as the leading labor priest in this
country; Lionel Steinberg, a grape grower and president of the California State
Agriculture Board; Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, president and vice president of
the United Farmworkers of America (UFWA); and Alan Kistler, director of organization
and field services for the AFL-CIO, of which the UFWA is an affiliate.
Archbishop Peter L. Gerety of Newark, N.J., chairman of the bishops’ panel,
announced twice during the hearing that the Teamsters had declined repeated
invitations by the panel to present their views on the three-way
Teamsters-UFWA-grower struggle in California.
On the second day of the hearings, three national experts in succession charged that
U.S. economic policies which allow high unemployment rates are not only
economically disastrous but morally evil.
Bayard Rustin, president of the A. Philip Randolph Institute in New York and a
long-time leader in black labor and civil rights causes, argued that current economic
policies are creating a generation of “economic untouchables,” youths who will grow
up with no meaningful work experience and will therefore lose any capability for
integration into the mainstream of society. The social crisis being created, he said, is
not one of race but of class, affecting poor blacks, whites and browns in the same way.
According to Rustin, current U.S. social and economic policies amount to “free
enterprise for the poor, socialism for the rich.” The only answer, he said, is a massive
effort to create jobs.
On the third day of the hearings, focusing on issues of justice in the Church toward
its own workers, a string of expert witnesses stressed more participation in
decision-making as a central factor in achieving justice.
Joseph Cunneen, editor of Cross Currents, said there is a “widespread apathy to the
Church among rank-and-file Catholics.” Too often, he said, dedicated, interested lay
persons who had had their hopes for stronger participation in Church life raised by the
Second Vatican Council, found these hopes dashed by repeated rebuffs from priests
and bishops.
He praised the bishops’ bicentennial program for its efforts to get grassroots input
into a national social action policy. But the program has not received the publicity it
should have, he said, and many Catholics who have heard of it feel, “This isn’t real.”
Sister Lora Ann Quinonez, national secretary of the Leadership Conference of
Women Religious, told the panel that women Religious no longer view themselves
simply as a cheap labor force of “functionaries” for the institution, but as an
innovative group of ministers vitally involved in carrying out the Church’s apostolic
mission in the world. They are becoming increasingly aware of their prophetic and
countercultural role and their own potential and oppression as women, she said.
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She urged the bishops to “struggle with us in opening all ministry within the Church
to women,” to bring women into the Church’s decision-making processes at every
level, to involve women in pastoral planning and reassessment of ministerial needs,
and to support women Religious who are engaged in new apostolates.
Father Joseph Francis, president of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, told
the panel that men Religious in recent years have begun to take strong prophetic
stands for justice on behalf of the poor and oppressed, and they have begun to change
their lifestyles in the light of a renewed sensitivity to Gospel values. He urged bishops
to be more supportive of men Religious and to help increase their influence on the life
of the whole Church by incorporating them more fully in diocesan, national and
international decision-making processes in the Church.
Father Reid Mayo, president of the National Federation of Priests’ Councils, argued
that central to many of the reforms called for by the Second Vatican Council is a
change in the way authority is exercised in the Church.
He urged greater efforts at developing structures and practices of shared
responsibility. Without shared responsibility, he said, the total mission of the Church is
hindered and many good priests become demoralized and drained of energy simply
“because they feel excluded and unheard.”
Several witnesses charged that, although the Church pays lip service to the right to
unionize, it often fights unionization among Catholic school teachers and hospital
employees.
Several said that the efforts of many lay people to serve the Church are frustrated
by arbitrary exercises of power by pastors and bishops and by a failure to establish
parish councils or to take them seriously once they are established.
The laypersons who testified were from the dioceses of Sacramento, San Francisco
and Los Angeles.