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PAGE 4—The Southern Cross, January 29,1976
Two Protests
OUR PARISH
A
“You and your equal rights for women!”
Yep, It’s
The Same Church
Joseph Breig ,
Protest marches and demonstrations
are a legitimate means of gaining
attention of lawmakers and the general
public as well.
Our generation has seen more than its
share of demonstrations. Unfortunately,
it has also seen more than its share of
mob violence. Peaceful demonstrations,
especially in the area of civil rights,
focused our attention on inequities and
injustices.
Upwards to 50,000 persons gathered
in Washington, last week, to mark the
third anniversary of the U.S. Supreme
Court’s abortion decision. The
demonstrators, from all the 50 states,
participated in a “March for Life.” They
formed a “circle of life” around the
Capitol building, gathered around a
speakers’ podium on the west steps of
the Capitol, where they heard pro-life:
speeches and chanted pro-life slogans.
Following this, visits were paid to the
various senators and representatives for
the purpose of lobbying for a pro-life
amendment.
A news account of the day’s activites
reported, “the crowd moved briskly
down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the
west steps of the Capitol building. Police
had blocked off half of the street, but
traffic continued to flow unimpeded.”
In sharp contrast, another
The invasion of the Cathedral at Milan by
militant feminists prompted Pope Paul VI to
comment on the Vatican declaration on sexual
ethics which sparked the incident.
The remarks were made at the Jan. 21
weekly audience.
The Pope said that the declaration issued
Jan. 15 by the Vatican’s Congregation for the
doctrine of the Faith restating the church’s
opposition to extramarital sexual relations,
homosexual acts and masturbation was
designed to meet “modern society’s serious and
general need for austerity in behavior.”
“Read the declaration,” he counseled, “and
you will see the wise and prudent love of the
Church emerging.”
Architect Julia Morgan was tiny, firm and
formidable. Designer of over 700 buildings, she
used her T-square with the same precision she
demanded of her contractors. She was the first
woman to earn a degree in engineering at the
University of California in 1894.
She enrolled at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in
Paris. Told that a woman didn’t have a chance
of graduating, she did the impossible: she
stayed at the top of her class and won design
competitions, determined to embarrass the
prestigious school into awarding her a degree. It
did, in 1902.
Later, a colleague, Arthur Brown, referred an
architectural school graduate to her firm.
“She’s one of the most able architects in San
Francisco,” he told the young job-seeker. “I
know. I was in competition with her in Paris.”
One of Miss Morgan’s early commissions was
the rebuilding in 1906 of the Fairmont Hotel,
gutted by the San Francisco earthquake and
fire. Her largest was the huge Hearst castle, San
demonstration was held in Pope Paul’s
former Cathedral in Milan. The
Cathedral was invaded by women who
were demonstrating against the Vatican’-s
recent statement on sexual ethics.
The Cathedral was occupied on
January 17 by 17 of the protestors
shouting pro-abortion slogans. Police
were forced to use tear gas to prevent
other feminist demonstrators from
entering. Reports tell of Leftist
demonstrators joining in, hurling stones
and Molotov cocktails at the police.
Each of these groups should be able to
express their feelings. But, when a
protest group - no matter its cause -
forcefully violates the rights of others, it
is no longer a protest group. It is a mob.
The women in Milan had the right to
peacefully protest. They did not have
the right to move their pro-abortion rally
into a house of worship. The Washington
Right-to-Life marchers were within their
rights in protesting the Supreme Court’s
decision. They would have been wrong
had they invaded the White House, the
Capitol building or impeded the flow of
traffic on the streets.
The Washington marchers called
America’s attention to the horrors of
abortion. And, they did it without
resorting to the use of stones or Molotov
cocktails.
He said that the values of life defended by
the declaration have been “defined by the Bible
with divine and unerring certitude and
interpreted and confirmed by the Church’s
Magisterium (teaching authority).”
The declaration, he said, is a call to reflect on
“the defense and advancement of the real
values of life, love and happiness.”
Pope Paul continued: “This desired austerity
is not an old-fashioned morality, nor is it a
‘taboo’ which is considered to be intolerable
today. Nor is it an authoritarian and wrongful
act of repression.”
The Pope said declaration on sexual ethics
was being used “for target practice by certain
rebellious currents of public opinion.” (NC)
Simeon. She designed residences, churches,
clubs, college and office buildings. The College
Avenue Presbyterian Church in San Francisco
became an architectural classic. Steps have been
taken to designate the Berkeley City Club
building as an historical landmark.
“This great Californian,” wrote architectural
critic, Allen Temko, before her death in 1957,”
.. . deserves in American architecture at least
as high a place as Mary Cassatt in American
painting, or Edith Wharton in American letters.
The woman liberated the architect within,
with help. “My mother’s and yours,” she once
wrote to a benefactress, “are the greatest
‘faiths’ put in me.”
Can your faith be a liberating force for
someone?
For a free copy of The Christopher News
Notes, “The Time of Your Life,” send a
stamped, self-addressed envelope to The
Christopher, 12 E. 48th St., New York, N. Y.
10017.
We can leapfrog backward through time,
across 19 centuries; sit down with the Fathers
of the Church, and talk with them about the
Faith -- and it is the same Faith, whether in the
Roman Empire in the century of Christ’s
crucifixion, or under the shadow of nuclear
extinction in our own time.
The Faith was spread so swiftly and widely
in the first 50 years after the death and
resurrection of Jesus - in the very lifetime of
the Apostles -- that popes and bishops were
writing pastoral letters to local Churches, all
integral parts of the Church Universal; and were
turning out literary works to expound Christian
teaching and to explain the hierarchical
structure of the Church.
St. Clement, for example, was stressing
something that most of us instinctively feel
today; that “the unique principle of priestly
duty is to offer the sacrifice of the Mass,” and
that the Apostles had appointed bishops to
carry forward the mission given by Jesus.
St. Ignatius, less than 50 years after Calvary,
was writing about the Trinity, the Incarnation,
the Redemption, the Eucharist, and the pope as
the center of the Universal Church, and the
bishops as heads of the local Churches.
Indeed Ignatius wrote not only about papal
supremacy, but also about what we now call
“collegiality” - the sharing by each bishop in
responsibility for the Universal Church.
In short, we are one in the Faith not only
with Jesus and the Apostles but with the
earliest Christians whom they taught. This is
Tradition, which goes hand in hand with the
Scriptures; and unless one has a keen sense of
it, one misses a magnificant aspect of
Catholicity.
These and other great historical truths about
Christianity are set forth with admirable
simplicity and brevity - but also with deep
knowledge - by Father Donald W. Wuerl (an
American priest teaching and working in Rome)
in a paperback book, “Fathers of the Church,”
published by Our Sunday Visitor, Huntington,
Indiana.
Father Wuerl shows us graphically that the
Fathers of the Church taught the same
teachings that emanate today from the pope
and the other bishops, including the total,
perpetual virginity of Mary, the Incarnation,
the Resurrection from the tomb -- the conquest
of death by Christ who as God is Life and the
source of all life and all creation.
Father Wuerl reminds us that, from the
beginning, the person consecrated to Christ in
the Religious life “is a visible marker on a rough
road to an invisible Kingdom; a living sign to
attract all members of the Church to fulfillment
of their own Christian vocation.”
It is not, he emphasizes, the vocation of a
priest to get into politics. St. Ambrose - who
before ordination had been an excellent
politician - insisted on the separation of priest
and politican “for the good of God’s Church
and the spread of the gospels.”
And turn to St. Augustine for guidance
about peace. Peace, this saint emphasized, is
not obtained simply by crying “peace, peace,”
but only by patient work for justice and truth.
“Fathers of the Church” is a brief but
important book which is especially timely and
needed today.
A certain family, planning an all day outing
some miles from home, packed the car the
night before with all the children excitedly
helping. Food and equipment were all ready in
time for the whole family to get a good night’s
sleep before an early start. A few minutes after
the lights were out, the 12 year-old son got out
of bed, went to his parents room door and
whispered, “Gee, Mom and Dad, thanks for
tomorrow!”
Yes, grown folks! Thanks for tomorrow; for
every tomorrow! Thanks for the unbroken
promise of another dawn to follow up the
darkest night. For another punctual Spring and
Summer, and another harvest. Thanks for the
fact that while “weeping shall endure for the
night, but joy cometh with the morning.”
Thanks for tomorrow’s assurance of the
patient labors of those who deliver the milk and
the mail; haul provisions to market; maintain
the lines of communication; transport and
deliver safely those who must travel; keep
watch against fire and theft, and stand by to
care for the sick and the injured.
Thanks for tomorrow’s hope for a better day
than this day. For faith in tomorrow’s greater
wisdom to work out today’s problems. For the
operation of those slow molecular forces which
Called
By
Name
“Georgia - Carolina
Ministry”
Rev. Mr. Benedict Swiderek
Deacon - Savannah Diocese
Priesthood In Perspective - Seminarian
It’s not too often that someone gets the
chance to voice a few thoughts to this large an
audience. Usually, I find it’s a matter of ranting
and raving to a few friends who, as with the
friends of Paul, have the grace to put up with
me. Given this opportunity, I thought I would
vary my approach and write about what is on
my mind as I continue my deacon internship
here at St. Benedict’s in Savannah. I’ve just
finished my last academic semester at St.
Meinrad, a seminary in Southern Indiana, and
am now doing parish work to “Get on with the
practical,” as one of the parish oners put it tfye
other Sunday.
Some of that practical involved a retreat I
helped give with Fr. Mike Smith; Wayland
Brown, another deacon for this diocese; and
Mike Wayne, a religious ed director from
Columbus. This retreat was a follow-up to a
planning workshop we had held for the same
people back in August. We must have had about
40 CYO leaders and about 25 of their advisors
from all over the diocese. This time around we
thought we should be prepared for a lot of
frustration and discouragement, but that is not
what we met with at all. Instead, we faced 65
people who had been successful to a large
degree and who were enthused about their
work. As we shared together on the retreat a
number of things came home to me that I
would like to share with you.
These people were leaders in the Church,
ministers in a true sense of the word, to the
people of South Georgia. So often I find that
my own definition of ministry contracts around
priesthood and only that, but each one of these
people said that ministry is as wide as the name
Christian. Every Christian is a minister and
these 65 proved that. They possessed talents
and enthusiasm and initiative that will make
them tremendous workers in the Lord’s service.
For myself, I thought that this might lead to a
kind of competition. I mean if they are
ministers, too, what is my job going to be. But
there are just so many things that need doing
and so many people that need to hear about
and see God’s love for them that the Lord
needs all the hands and feet and eyes and ears
he can get hold of.
It struck me, too, that the Lord’s Spirit
moves thru all the members of his Church, and
that recognizing his movement often calls for
sitting down with the many members to discern
his direction, to ask one another’s forgiveness
for going off on our own ways, and to
encourage one another as we move along his
way together.
Then, too, it was just a lot of fun being
together with a bunch of people who knew how
to enjoy themselves, who were able to be
“celebrators of life” - a phrase all of us will be
hearing more of as Fr. Elmer Powell makes his
rounds.
In the midst of all this, I thought back to the
week before, when the Savannah seminarians
had gathered for their semi-annual meeting. Fr.
Mike Smith had talked with us about the
structures of the diocese. He said the structures
represent a sort of skeleton; the people who
man the different offices, its flesh; and, of
course, the Spirit is the force which gives the
body life. It was an exciting feeling on Sunday
as we broke up and people returned to their
homes - to Savannah and Augusta and Macon
and Columbus, to Dublin, and Cordele, and
Hazlehurst. Well, I thought this body is alive
and well. Them dry bones never looked so
healthy.
alter the shape of things in ways beyond human
contrivance.
Above all, thanks for the faculty of
anticipation which turns the pain of waiting
into pleasure. Every tomorrow comes wrapped
in this aura of expectation. Go to meet it, like
the lad in the story, with contented mind,
confident of good!
RESOLUTION: Fall asleep each night
thinking about tomorrow’s blessings, and not
crosses; tomorrow’s gaines, and not losses; joys,
and not woes; friends, and not foes; kind deeds,
and not mean; health, and not wealth; God’s
help and not just self.
SCRIPTURE: Jesus said, “Blessed are your
eyes for they have sight; blessed are your ears
for they have hearing. Believe me, there have
been many prophets and just men who longed
to see what you see and never saw it; to hear
what you hear and never heard it.” Mt. 13,16
Jesus said to them, “I have longed and longed
to share this Paschal meal with you.” Lk. 22,
15.
PRAYER: Dear Jesus, trusting in your
promises, I hope to obtain pardon of my sins,
the help of your grace, and life everlasting.
Amen.
The Southern Cross
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Most Rev. Raymond W. Lessard, D.D., President
John E. Markwalter, Editor
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6 'Not Old Fashioned Morality
; W ;
What One Person Can Do
Rev. Richard Armstrong
JULIA MORGAN, ARCHITECT
Thanks For Tomorrow
Rev. James Wilmes