Newspaper Page Text
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Vol. 56 No. 41
Thursday, November 20,1975
Single Copy Price — 15 Cents
Value, Dignity Of Life Stressed
PORTLAND, Ore. (NC) - Calling on
“the people of God” to “bring about in
our society' the recognition of the value
and dignity of life for all citizens,”
delegates to the National Council of
Catholic Women (NCCW) convention
passed a series of resolutions on
contemporary religious and social issues.
“The great need is for leadership
among the people of God and indeed
within society at large -- leadership that
will bring about the decency and joy in
living that is the inherent right of every 7
person,” the delegates said.
The resolutions, passed during the
convention here Nov. 7-12, dealt with
prayer, women in the Church, world
hunger, respect for life, violence and
indecency on television, treatment of
rape victims, the International Women’s
Year, and illegal aliens.
The delegates resolved that the
NCCW:
- “Encourage people to develop more
fully their personal prayer-lives and
promote programs of prayer for special
needs in the communities and the
world;
“Fully respond to Christ’s
expectation of the ministries of women
in the life of His Church, recognizing
special talents and abilities in the
administrative and liturgical functions in
the Church;
- “Recognize the NCCW program,
Works of Peace, as our most direct
means of reaching the poor, the sick,
the aged of the world; that we translate
our sacrifices into positive results by
contributing what is saved to Works of
Peace to be channeled to the poor
overseas by Catholic Relief Services;
“Promote throughout all
communities the principles of a human
life amendment which will protect
human life from conception to natural
death, and actively solicit support for its
passage;
-- “Support of the statement of the
U.S. Catholic Conference
(Administrative Board) seriously
challenging the television networks and
Savannah’s Bishop Raymond W.
Lessard delivered the homily at the
closing Mass of the convention on
Tuesday, November 11. The text of
Bishop Lessard's homily will be found
in this week's DCCW Notes on page 8.
the Federal Communications
Commission to reconsider and review
the policy known as family viewing;
1 - “Support criminal sexual conduct
laws which protect the woman against
‘implied consent’ and provide her with
competent medical and emotional care
immediately upon her report to
authorities
- “Be an instrument of education,
involvement and cooperation with
existing agencies concerning alcoholism;
“Support the International
Women’s Year insofar as it urges the
greater education, development and use
of women’s talents, and the recognition
of the accomplishments of women, past
and present;
•
- “Call for meaningful amnesty that
would allow (illegal aliens) already to
adjust their status to that of legal
residents.”
Those elected to NCCW posts were:
Mrs. Arthur Horsell, of the Oakland,
Calif., Council of Catholic Women,
president;
- Mrs. Anthony P. Hillemeir of the
New Ulm, Minn., council, first vice
president;
- Mrs. Robert L. Menconi of the San
Antonio, Tex., council, second vice
president;
- Mrs. Leonard J. Tracy of the St.
Paul-Minneapolis, Minn., council, third
vice president;
- Mrs. George Supplitt of the Chicago
council, secretary;
- Mrs. Raymond Jozwiak of the
Greensburg, Pa., council, treasurer.
»
The apostolic delegate in the United
States told members to preserve the
heritage of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and
to bring the values she represented to
society.
Archbishop Jean Jadot further urged
that “uniquely feminine” characteristics
be brought into the social life of the
community as a means of establishing
and building Christ’s kingdom.
“From the time of Mary, our mother
in faith,” the archbishop said, “women
have played a central role in the mission
of Christ.” And Mother Seton, the first
U.S.-born saint, “epitomizes the
invaluable and incalculable
contributions that women have made to
the Church.”
The archbishop had high praise for
the feminine traits of “courage,
strength, indomitable perseverance and
tenacity.” Because of these, “You are
able to achieve miracles in situations
that men would have long since
impatiently abandoned,” he added.
“One of the unfortunate side effects
of the women’s movement has been the
obscuring of much that has been done
and is being done by members of your
(Continued on page 7)
Conference On Role Of Women
In commemoration of the International Woman’s Year, Savannah’s Sisters
of Mercy of St. Vincent’s Academy and St. Vincent’s Alumnae Association is
sponsoring a conference open to all persons interested in the role of women
in the Church and in Society.
Sister Elizabeth Caroll, R.S.M., staff associate at the Center of Concern in
Washington, D.C., will be the main speaker. Sister M. Charlene Walsh, R.S.M.,
Provincial Councilor of the Sisters of Mercy, will also speak on Women in
Biblical tradition. The Conference is scheduled for 4;00 p.m. Saturday,
December 6, at St. Vincent’s Hall. Registration $2.00 per person.
COLLECTION NOVEMBER 23
A ROSE FOR THE PRES -- An Oregon rose is
pinned on Mrs. Arthur Horsell of Oakland, Calif.,
president-elect of the National Council of Catholic
Women by Mrs. Anthony P. Hillemeier of New Ulm,
Minn., first vice president. In the background is Mrs.
Robert Menconi of San Antonio, Tex., second vice
president of the grom\”»bv,'V held its annual ns* ; t iy
Portland, Ore. (NC Photo)
AT NCCW NATIONAL CONVENTION
WASHINGTON (NC) Officials of
the Campaign for Human Development
(CHD), the U.S. Catholic Church’s
five-year-old anti-poverty program, are
hopeful that the 1975 collection will at
least equal last year’s, which was an
increase of almost 10 percent over the
previous year.
The amount contributed last year was
higher than the average of the four
preceding years and second only to the
initial year of 1970.
“It is extremely encouraging that
these hard times have not made hard
hearts,” said Father Lawrence J.
McNamara, CHD executive director, in a
progress report on the campaign.
“People have been more willing than
ever to share what they had. When it
became necessary to cut back on
something, it wasn’t on the help one
had previously been giving to those who
were suffering the most; it was on
something for oneself, something one
could live without. . .the kind of things
we lived without just a few years ago
anyway.”
The 1975 collection to finance next
year’s CHD projects is scheduled to be
♦ 4 .■■■/’ -/up on Sunday Nov. 23 in Catholic
churches throughout the United States.
these people, and thus make life better
for the next generation, and perhaps
make it possible that no more workers
get brown-lung.”
In New Mexico, he said, “a campaign
grant helped win from the supreme
court of the state the decision that
every child in the state is entitled to
bi-lingual education.” That decision will
make a better life for generations of
Spanish-speaking children in the state,
Father McNamara said.
Among the other projects funded by
the campaign are:
- The Black Belt Community Health
Program in Epes, Ala. Residents of 11
communities and a health facility that
provides ambulatory services and is
introducing a preventive health care
program. The program includes a sliding
fee scale based on ability to pay and use
of paraprofessionals to extend service.
- Bootheel Area of Mississippi.
Residents of six rural counties in
poverty-ridden southeastern Missouri
have established a community
controlled and managed credit union
providing savings, loans and financial
counseling to over 900 black and white
low-income members and their families.
They have started the first
community-controlled legal aid program
providing legal assistance to low-income
people in the areas of welfare, consumer
affairs, housing, employment
discrimination and law reform. They
have built the first black community
owned and managed supermarket in
Missouri, serving 275 families.
*- Legal Services for Hungry
Americans, New York City. The CHD
grant has enabled the Food Research
and Action Center (FRAC) to work
with other poor people’s groups for
basic changes in governmental
institutions that administer food
assistance programs. FRAC successfully
sued the U.S. Department of
Agriculture to release $278 million in
funds appropriated by Congress for the
Food Stamp Program for fiscal 1973.
CHD-funded projects in these and
other areas, such as education,
transportation and communications,
“all have the ultimate goal of building
human community, of enabling people
to come together to solve their own
common problems,” Father McNamara
said.
Recently, announcing grants to
projects in Delaware, Maryland,
Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.),
including $46,850 to the Neighborhood
Development and City-Wide Organizing
Project in Wilmington, Del., Father
McNamara said: “These projects
embody many of the campaign’s high
priority criteria for funding.
He gave the example of the Carolinas
Brown-Lung Project in Columbia, S.C.,
which received $27,500 from the
campaign.
“Brown-lung is an emphysema-like
disease which strikes people who work
in the cotton mills,” he said. “In this
area of Carolina, there are some
25-30,000 persons who can’t work
because they have the disease.
“Up to this time, they couldn’t
collect workmen’s compensation,
because they couldn’t prove that
brown-lung was occupationally cause.
The grant of the campaign may release
around $800 million in benefits owed to
Romans Warned Of Corfimunism
ROME (NC) - Pope Paul VI has warned Romans not to make compromises with the
“inadmissable formulas” of communism and Marxism. The Pope, at Holy Year Mass
for Rome, did not mention communism or Marxism by name. But he clearly
associated himself with widely publicized statements against compromising with
Marxism and communism made recently by his vicar for the Rome Diocese, Cardinal
Ugo Poletti.
“Basic Human Right”
WASHINGTON (NC) - Man’s “basic human right” to housing requires living space
“available in a manner consistent with human dignity,” not just a roof over his head,
according to Msgr. Francis Lally, secretary 7 for Social Development and World Peace of
the U.S. Catholic Conference, who made his comments at a symposium on World
Housing Needs and Environment at American University here.
Since 1970, more than $24 million
from such collections have made
possible the funding of about 900
projects by the national CHD.
One-fourth of the amount collected in
each diocese remains in the diocese to
fund local anti-poverty programs.
Last year, the total income to the
national CHD, which consisted of
three-fourths of the amount collected in
the dioceses, of interest, special gifts
and sales of printed materials and films,
came to $6,219,000.
The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
“For example, the Wilmington-based
project is bringing people of different
racial and economic groups together to
build a strong community organization
that will identify common problems -
and attempt to solve them. This type of
effort has always received high
consideration in CHD’s funding.”
Additional criteria require that most
of those benefitting from a project be
from low-income groups and that poor
people themselves have the dominant
voice in the planning and implementing
of the project.
Father McNamara said also that
funding is granted primarily to those
projects that have been able to secure
adequate funding from other sources,
governmental or private, and to projects
that demonstrate an ability or potential
to bring about long-term institutional
change.
“We want to go after the causing
problem of poverty, rather than fund
temporary measures for a few people
for a short time,” Father McNamara
PEOPLE . . . HOPE -- “People together with hope” is the theme of the
1975 Campaign for Human Development fundraising plea. An elderly
woman is among the people pictured on the campaign’s 1975 poster. The
campaign, a self-help project for the poor, depends on parish collections
every year (Nov. 23 this year) to fund its projects. (NC Photo)
m
HEADLINE
HOPSCOTCH
ft:
Catholic Schools Cost Less
CHICAGO (NC) - A recent survey of public and Catholic school systems in Illinois
indicates that it costs, on the average, nine times more to administer public school
systems than it does Catholic schools, on a per pupil basis.
Human Development Drive
Officials Hopeful For 1975