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SENA TE COMMITTEE TOLD
PAGE 7—The Southern Cross, January 29,1976
Church Demands Moral Critique Of Policy
WASHINGTON (NC) - The Catholic
tradition demands a constant “political
and moral critique” of the government
and its policies, a spokesman for the
National Conference of Catholic
Bishops told the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee.
The spokesman, Archbishop Peter
Gerety of Newark, listed arms
reduction, increased economic aid to
developing nations, greater attention to
human rights concerns and reduced
arms sales and military aid as some
needed changes in U.S. foreign policy.
Archbishop Gerety, chairman of the
justice subcommittee of the bishops’
bicentennial program, was one of several
religious leaders testifying on priorities
in American foreign policy. The hearing
was one of a series of similar hearings
seeking comment from a broad
spectrum of public and private groups
about possible foreign policy directions.
Noting that other nations look to the
United States for “moral purpose and
leadership,” Archbishop Gerety said,
“This means, I think, that we need to
act with more restraint, to avoid
intervention in marginal situations, to
act calmly and deliberately and with the
understanding that we don’t have the
solution to every problem.”
“In the Catholic tradition,” he said,
“the sovereign state is to provide the
conditions and content of a decent
human existence for its citizens and to
cooperate with other states in building
an international community with justice
as the ruling norm and peace as the fruit
of justice.”
Within this “internationalist”
approach, “the concept of the national
interest is a limited one,” Archbishop
Gerety said. “The Catholic tradition
does not deny either the reality or the
validity of the state, but it affirms that
the sovereign state must constantly be
subjected to political and moral critique
by its own citizens and others.
“The purpose of the critique is to test
whether the policies and practices of the
state do in fact serve the legitimate
needs and aspirations of the people in
the international community.”
Pointing to the “existing
maldistribution of wealth” and growing
concern over the distribution of scarce
resources such as food and energy,
Archbishop Gerety said “U.S.
policymakers must accept the task of
mobilizing public opinion to accept the
necessary increases in taxes to fund
multilateral assistance programs for
economic development.”
Other groups in American society,
including the churches, must share this
responsibility, Archbishop Gerety said.
These institutions must stress the
“concrete facts of absolute need abroad
versus relative poverty at home,” he
said.
“The point is not to gloss over the
real needs of Americans or to pit them
against Third Worlders,” he said, but
“to suggest that perhaps the erosion of
public will to support overseas programs
is in no small measure due to failure to
inform the American electorate about
the pressing need to share the world’s
scarce resources in an interdependent
world.”
Specific recommendations in
Archbishop Gerety’s testimony
included:
-- Opposition to the development of
an American “first strike” nuclear
capacity and to acceptance of the
concept of “limited” nuclear war.
-- Questioning whether “in the
nuclear age there are risks inherent in
seeking too much security as well as in
possessing too little.”
-- Reducing arms sales and military
aid, particularly to countries such as
Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines,
which use such aid for control of
internal dissent.
-- Increased transfer of capital to
developing nations to help in the
construction of schools, roads,
hospitals, utilities and so on. Current
U.S. policy of emphasis on private
investment, through multinational
corporations, is insufficient and it
would be a “delusion” to say otherwise,
Archbishop Gerety said.
-- Support for ‘a larger long-term
commitment to emergency food aid”
and opposition to use of a nation’s
United Nations’ votes as a means of
determining food aid.
-- Support of a minimal standard of
human rights through both bilateral
relations and support of the UN Human
Rights Commission.
Prayer Advocate Convicted
>
WASHINGTON (NC) - Mrs. Rita F.
Warren, the combative 46-year-old
Italian-born mother of three who wants
to restore prayer to the public schools,
was found guilty here of unlawful entry
in a case arising from her protest at the
U.S. Supreme Court last November.
Associate Judge Joseph M. Hannon of
the District of Columbia Superior Court
sentenced Mrs. Warren to six months
unsupervised probation and fined her
$300, but suspended execution of the
Mrs. Warren said afterward, that she
intended to appeal the jury’s verdict. “I
intend by no means to give up,” she
said.
Members of the U.S. Supreme Court
police force, including Alfred Wong, the
police chief, testified that last Nov. 4,
Mrs. Warren and Robbins refused three
requests to leave the Supreme Court
building after it closed to the public at
4:30 p.m.
SHARING A LAUGH -- Archbishop Peter L. Gerety of Newark and the
Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. share a joke prior to testifying before the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The archbishop is vice chairman of
the Catholic bishops’ justice subcommittee; the Rev. King is the recently
retired pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Both men
testified on “Values and Goals in Foreign Policy: the View from the
Pulpit.” (NC Photo)
fine.
Ralph E. Robbins, an unemployed
journalist from Hyannis, Mass., who
accompanied Mrs. Warren in her protest
last November, was also given six
months unsupervised probation and a
$300 fine, but the judge ordered that
his fine be paid in six months.
C “ ~ • '
USCC Official Blasts State Of Union Address
/
Mrs. Warren, a naturalized U.S.
citizen who came to the United States
in 1947 after she married a U.S. soldier,
told the jury that she had come from
her home in Brockton, Mass., on Nov. 4
because she wanted to find out why the
Supreme Court had refused to hear
argument on a suit she had filed in a
Massachusetts federal court two years
earlier.
The grey-haired, bespectacled Mrs.
Warren said she believed she “had a call
from God” to try to reverse the 1963
Supreme Court ruling banning prayer in
public schools.
WASHINGTON (NC) - A U.S. Catholic Conference official
has charged that President Ford’s State of the Union message
calling for a “new realism” is not in itself realistic.
“The President asked for a politics of realism, but his
program for this year simply does not speak to the reality of
eight-and-one-half million Americans who need jobs,” according
to Francis Butler, USCC associate secretary for domestic social
development.
Decries Use Of 4 Liberators ’
VATICAN CITY (NC) - The Vatican weekly L’Osservatore
della Domenica (Jan. 22) objected to defining as “liberators”
only forces supported by Moscow.
Commenting on the war in Angola, Vatican spokesman
Federico Alessandrini, writing in a personal capacity, noted the
presence of 7,500 Cubans in Angola.
He mentioned that Pravda, the official Soviet Communist
Party organ, wrote after the Addis Ababa conference
breakdown, that some African countries are dominated by
foreign capital and that Western pressures are used on many
states.
Allessandrini commented: “Nothing new, as one can see. As
ever, the ‘liberators’ are only those movements which are
organized, moved and supported by Moscow.”
Alessandrini added: “The situation is followed closely with
pain and anxiety by him who through the mandate which he
holds watches over humanity and, in particular, over those who
suffer most and who today pay an exorbitant tribute of pain
and blood for the rivalries and conflicts of powers foreign to
them.”
Alessandrini was referring to Pope Paul VI.
Butler called the President’s message “visionless” and “the
tired rhetoric of complacency.”
He was particularly critical of the President’s claim that a
national health insurance program was not economically
feasible. The President proposed a program of insurance for
catastrophic illness coverage for those on welfare and Medicare.
“We encourage the President,” Butler said, “to enjoin the
Congress and people to enter into a politics of realism which
speaks to the unemployed millions in this country, to the
countless numbers who are sick and tired of carrying their
disproportionate and unjust share of the tax bill and to the
millions of Americans who are fed up with a health care system
which is too costly and inefficient.”
Butler also criticized the President for not supporting strong
gun control measures and for asking funds to build four new
federal prisons.
Also critical of the prison construction fund request was
Sister Carol Costen, director of Network, an organization of
nuns and others lobbying on social justice issues.
“Two independent congressional studies,” she said, “have
found that no new federal prisons are needed.”
The President’s request for prison construction funds is
particularly disturbing, she said, because unemployment causes
crime. “He seems to be doing nothing about unemployment and
putting the emphasis on prison to deal with increased crime,”
Sister Costen said.
She was also critical of the President’s health care proposals
and said “health is evidently not a priority with him.”
Sister Costen also disagreed with the President’s claim that
American foreign policy is solid. “There is a lack of direction,
conflicts with Congress, lack of understanding of detente and an
ambiguous relationship with the United Nations,” she said.
In the suit she filed in U.S. District
Court in Boston against Joseph Killory,
the Brockton superintendent of schools,
Mrs. Warren had contended that the
prohibition of student prayer in public
schools, in effect, establishes atheism as
a religion and violates the First
Amendment.
She had also argued that, by not
permitting her daughter and other
students “the right to their voluntary
religious expressions,” Brockton school
officials had taken away the children’s
constitutional rights.
She asked the court to issue an order
restraining the school officials from
interfering with the students’ expression
of religious belief during normal school
hours if that expression did not
interfere with classroom procedures.
After the district court dismissed the
case, she appealed to the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the 1st Circuit, which
refused to hear her, and then to the U.S.
Supreme Court, which also refused.
Mrs. Warren testified to the jury here
that she came to the U.S. Supreme
Court last Nov. 4 to ask Michael Rodak,
clerk of the court, why the court had
refused to hear her case. She and
Robbins had seen Rodak about midday,
she said, and he told them that the
justices do not give reasons for refusing
to hear cases.
Exiled Archbishop
MORTGAGE BURNING - An informal celebration for the Burning of
the parish mortgage was held in the Sacred Heart Church
Cafetorium (Warner Robins) after the 7:00 p.m. Mass on Saturday,
January 24th. Pictured burning the mortgage 1. to r. Fr. Richard Minch,
Associate Pastor, Mr. Richard Whitenack, President, Parish Council, and
Fr. Walter L. DiFrancesco, Pastor.
UNA UTHORIZED ORDINA TIONS
Excommunicated
SEVILLE, Spain (NC) - Archbishop
Pierre Martin Ngo Dinh Thuc, exiled
brother of assassinated President Ngo
Din Diem of South Vietnam, has
incurred excommunication along with
five men he ordained without
authorization to the priesthood and to
the episcopacy.
This was announced by the papal
nuncio in Spain, Archbishop Luigi
Dadaglio, and at the Vatican. Both
announcements said the
excommunications were automatic and
could be absolved only by the Vatican.
Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc ordained
the men priests Dec. 31 and ordained
them bishops Jan. 11. They are three
Spaniards, Clemente Domingo Gonzales,
Manuel Moreno and Camilo Estevez,
and Irishman, Michael Donnelly, and a
Frenchman, Francois Sandler.
Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc headed
the Hue archdiocese in Vietnam from
1960 until his transfer in 1968 to Rome
as a consultor to the Congregation for
the Evangelization of Peoples. The
Vatican yearbook lists him as resident in
Rome, but no longer as a consultor to
the congregation.
One of the irregularly ordained
bishops, Clemente Domingo Gonzales,
said: “This is only the beginning. We
will keep on ordaining priests and
consecrating bishops.”
He was speaking in the name of a new
group calling itself the Carmelites of the
Holy Face, reportedly founded by the
78-year-old archbishop to foster
3rd Refuge
BOMBAY, India (NC) - Mother
Teresa has opened her third home in
Bombay for dying destitutes and
abandoned children.
The new home, called “Asha Daan”
(Gift of Hope), is situated in a
warehouse in a slum. The neighborhood
is predominately Moslem, with a few
Christians.
Referring to the home’s name, Gift of
Hope, the diminutive nun from
Yugoslavia told a large crowd at the
inauguration:
“It will be a home of hope not only
for people who are going to be loved
and cared for, but also for you and me.”
She explained that while she
welcomed gifts in money and goods she
was “more anxious that you come
sometimes to this home and give those
living here your presence, smile at them
and make them feel they are your
brothers and sisters.”
devotion to alleged apparitions of Our
Lady at Palmar de Toy a near here.
Such devotion has been expressly
condemned by Seville Church
authorities.
Gonzalez, who claims to be a
visionary of the apparitions, added:
“These ordinations are intended to
foster a worldwide publicity for the
apparitions at Palmar de Toy a.”
He and the other irregularly ordained
bishops said they were not seeking to
start a schism.
“We are true followers of the Pope,”
Gonzales said.
Both ordination ceremonies were
attended by hundreds of followers of
the alleged apparitions.
Public reaction as voiced in the
Spanish press went from bewilderment
to ridicule. One newspaper called the
Carmelites of the Holy Face “an
ultra-conservatice group.” Others
pointed out to the defiant attitude of
the irregularly ordained men.
The order claims to have 15 men and
15 women members, in addition to the
priests and bishops.
(Vatican spokesman Federico
Alessandrini said: “All, and this includes
the man ordaining and those ordained,
incurred by that fact excommunication
reserved in the most special way to the
Holy See.” He cited a 1951 decree of
the Holy Office, now called the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith.)
Is Opened
Mother Teresa asserted that people
today are hungry not only for bread and
rice but for love.
“This hunger exists even in the
well-to-do families because people are so
busy that mothers do not have time for
their children and husbands and wives
do not have time to smile at one
another.
“The poverty of love is growing, and
we must make our houses homes of
love.”
Mother Teresa said the new center,
given by the Hindustan Lever company,
would accommodate 100 men and
women and 50 children.
She, her more than 1,000 nuns, 180
Brothers and 80,000 part-time
volunteers run 93 centers around the
world, 61 of them in India. Of these, 67
are leprosariums caring for 46,000
patients suffering from Hansen’s
Disease.
Food Problem—
(Continued from page 1)
that the human life movement has.” He
called for action to “launch the country
on a new commitment to the most
fundamental right, the right to life.”
Another speaker, Rabbi David Novak
of Beth Tfiloh Congregation in
Baltimore, said: “In our activities we are
dealing with the fundamental human
problem of rejection. We’re asking
society that none be rejected.”
Pointing out that some women “feel
that they are being made to carry the
wrong child at the wrong time and in
the wrong place,” he urged the members
of the right-to-life movement to work so
that “none in our country will feel so
rejected as to reject those who are most
weak and helpless.”
Other speakers at the prayer
breakfast included the Rev. Robert
Holbrook, president of Baptists for Life;
Mrs. Jean Garton of the Lutheran
Church-Missouri Synod’s social concerns
committee; and the Rev. Calvin
Eichhorst, an American Lutheran
Church pastor who is president of
ForLife, Inc.
Sponsors of the prayer breakfast
included American Citizens Concerned
for Life, Inc.; ForLife, Inc.; Baptists for
Life; the Washington-based Christian
Action Council and the Women’s Task
Force for Life.
The donation for each prayer
breakfast ticket was $8 and the sponsors
have agreed that cash contributions are
to be given to World Vision, a
Protestant missionary service
organization. The sponsors had also
urged contributions of foodstuffs,
which were to be given to the
Washington organization So others May
Eat (SQME).
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