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PAGE 2—February 12,1976
CARDINAL COOKE COMMENTS -- In a speech in
New York, Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York said
“only an amendment which will return the protection
of the law to unborn infants to the maximum degree
possible” will be enough to end “the terrible
destruction of a million innocent lives each year.”
Cardinal Cooke made the comment in response to the
President’s recent answers to Walter Cronkite about
abortion. (NC Photo)
U.S. Food Aid Policy Questioned
BY JIM CASTELLI
WASHINGTON (NC) - An
interreligious group concerned with U.S.
food policy has asked Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger to “clarify” American
policy on linking American aid to
developing countries to their votes in
multinational organizations, including
the United Nations.
Noting that it would withhold “final
judgment” until Kissinger clarified the
policy, the group, the Interreligious
Task Force on U.S. Food Policy, said
“we wish to express our serious
reservations about what we understand
to be its approach and its probable
consequences.”
“We not believe it conscionable,”
the Force said in a letter to
Kissinger, “for a great nation to seek to
parlay the desperate need of poor
countries into political gain for itself.”
The Task Force consists of
representatives of 20 Catholic,
Protestant and Jewish organizations and
speaks for itself.
The letter followed press reports that
the State Department would be paying
particular attention to the United
Nations votes of developing countries
seeking U.S. aid and that such votes
would be taken into consideration in
determining U.S. aid.
A State Department official who
asked not to be identified told NC News
Service that famine and disaster aid
would not be affected by the policy,
but that aid under the Food for Peace
program, the prime source of U.S. food
aid, might be.
State Department spokesmen have
said the department has always taken a
nation’s UN votes into consideration in
making aid decisions.
The Task Force noted that Congress,
in a recent foreign aid authorization bill,
required that 75 percent of Food for
Peace Title I aid -- food sold on a
long-term, low-interest basis - should go
to countries with annual income below
$300 per capita.
The Task Force said it was “alarmed”
at an Administration policy which
appeared to be moving in the opposite
direction.
Using an example it called
“admittedly simplisitic,” the Task Force
said, “were concessional food aid denied
to every nation which voted in favor of
the recent UN resolution linking
Zionism with racism ( a resolution many
U.S. religious bodies have criticized),
food valued at a total of about $580
million, or more than 85 percent of our
Title I program, would not reach its
current destination.”
“If a punitive policy were applied not
uniformly but selectively,” the Task
Force said, “the harmful effects would
be just as great. The U.S. would move
away from the focus on need specified
by the Congress and would fuel, rather
than bank, the fires of politicization.
“Many developing nations might
come to regard our assistance merely as
a tool to gain direct leverage over their
very life and future. Only the most
desperate government would seek the
development goal of greater national
self-sufficiency by further dependence
on unpredictable outside aid.”
Although the U.S. Catholic
Conference is not a member of the
Interreligious Task Force on U. S. Food
Policy, the U.S. Catholic bishops have
condemned the political use of food aid.
In testimony on future American
foreign policy presented to the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee in late
January, Archbishop Peter Gerety of
Newark criticized the linking of food
aid to UN votes.
The Task Force asked Kissinger to
reply to five questions:
- “What are the objectives and the
broad outlines” of the new policy?
“What actions in which
international bodies might be likely to
lead to punitive steps by the United
States?”
- “What sorts of programs might be
withheld or proffered as inducements
for developing countries: food aid,
development assistance, Export-Import
Bank loans, military grants and credits,
trade preferences or others?”
- “To which countries or kinds of
countries will the new policy apply?
Will developed as well as developing
nations be included?”
South Africa: Fantastic But
(First of a three-part series:)
BY FATHER ROLLINS E. LAMBERT
There are in southern Africa: a nation
of 4 million people, half of whom don’t
live there; a nation so divided that to
travel from one part of it to another
WASHINGTON (NC) - Father David
R. Baeten, coordinator of chaplain
services for the U.S. Catholic
Conference (USCC) and executive
director of the National Association of
Catholic Chaplains (NACC), has
resigned, effective June 1, to return to
pastoral work in his home diocese.
Announcing the resignation, Bishop
James S. Rausch, USCC general
secretary, praised the “energy,
efficiency and commitment” Father
Baeten brought to his work in the
health and correctional chaplains’ fields
at the national level.
Father Baeten, 39, is a native of
Green Bay, Wis., and was ordained to
the priesthood for the Green Bay
diocese in 1962. He served from 1965
to 1972 as chaplain at Mercy Medical
Center in Oshkosh, Wis., and from 1970
to 1972 as coordinator of health affairs
for the Green Bay diocese.
He joined the USCC staff in
December, 1972. Besides serving as
coordinator of chaplain services for the
USCC and as executive director of the
NACC, he is secretary to the USCC
board of examiners, which is responsible
for certification and accreditation of
Catholic chaplains and pastoral
associa s in chaplaincy work as well as
chaplain training programs.
means entering foreign territory; and a
city of more than 1 million inhabitants
that appears on no map.
These three absurdities are only part
of the scene in southern Africa. As
other details are added, the scene
Among the developments in the
Catholic chaplaincy field since Father
Baeten took office here are these:
In November, 1973, full
membership in the NACC, until then
limited to priests, was opened to
non-ordained persons, both men and
women, and to permanent deacons.
NACC membership now stands at
2,000, of whom about 500 are pastoral
associates.
- The USCC board of examiners has
developed close working relationships
with other groups involved in chaplain
certification and accreditation.
Currently the USCC body is one of six
such groups cooperating in a joint task
force on certification and accrediation.
- Closer working relationships have
also been developed between the NACC
and the American Catholic Correctional
Chaplains Association.
- Certification requirements have
been established for Catholic chaplains
who work with the elderly and with
handicapped persons.
The number of continuing
education workshops offered annually
for Catholic chaplains has doubled;
from two to four.
becomes no longer absurd, but cruel,
inhuman, tyrannical.
The three absurdities are:
- The Transkei, which is due to
become an independent nation this
year. Half of its population of four
million live in black reservations several
miles from white metropolitan areas.
- Another proposed “homeland,”
Kwazulu, which is to consist of
scattered bits of land within the
Republic of South Africa.
Soweto, one of the black
reservations near Johannesburg, South
Africa, has a population of more than
one million.
Nor are these features mere relics of
an ancient system that has not yet died;
on the contrary, the entire system is a
modern, 20th-century invention, and it
receives the cooperation and support of
some of the best governments in the
world: Japan, West Germany, France,
Great Britain, and even the United
States.
The dominant political and economic
power in southern Africa is the
Republic of South Africa (RSA). In the
Republic, the Nationalist party has been
in control of the government since
1948, and its present Prime Minister, B.
J. Vorster, has held that post since
1966.
Internally, the policy of this ruling
party has been to enforce aportheid (a
word in the Afrikaans language meaning
separateness) against the majority of
Chaplain Coordinator Resigns
BUT WON’T BACK AMENDMENT
President Ford Disagrees
With Decision On Abortion
WASHINGTON (NC) - President
Gerald Ford, while feeling the 1973
U.S. Supreme Court abortion decision
“went too far,” declined to support a
constitutional amendment that would
overturn it, repeating instead his
support for the right of states to set
abortion laws.
In an interview with CBS news, Ford
described himself as holding “a
moderate position” on the abortion
issue, saying he does not advocate
“abortion on demand.”
But, he said, “I think we have to
recognize that there are instances when
abortion should be permitted. The
illness of the mother, rape or any of the
other unfortunate things that might
happen, so there has to be some
flexibility.”
President Ford’s position hinges on
the so-called “states rights” formula
which would return to the states the
authority to set their own abortion
standards much in the way they did
before the high court struck down most
laws restricting abortion.
“I think the court went too far,” the
President said. “I think a constitutional
amendment goes too far. If there was to
be some action in this area, its my
judgment that it ought to be on the
basis of what each individual state
wishes to do under the circumstances.”
Some political observers believe that
the abortion issue may be a sleeping
giant in this year’s race for the
presidency, and some candidates have
scrambled to adopt a position. Ford’s
challenger for the Republican
presidential nomination, former
California governor Ronald Reagan, has
taken a strong anti-abortion stand based
on a “human life amendment” to the
constitution designed to outlaw all
abortions.
The president indicated that the
responsibilities of office have shaped his
position on the abortion issue. Ford
pledged, for instance, that he would
“uphold the law as interpreted by the
court,” even though he disagrees with
its abortion ruling and thinks “there is a
better answer.”
Two Doctors Reject Criticism
Of Natural Family Planning
BY BILL LOUGHLIN
LOS ANGELES (NC) - Doctors John
and Lyn Billings, developers of the
ovulation method of family planning,
rejected as “unsubstantiated and
unscientific” a statement that rhythm
birth control is ineffective and increases
the population of the physically and
mentally handicapped.
They spoke at the second
International Institute of the Billings
Ovulation Method of Natural Family
Planning here.
The statement they answered had
been issued by Redemptorist Father
Bernard Heering during a talk in Tampa,
Fla.
“Scientists have throughly disproved
the old but lately revived allegation that
natural family planning may result in
physically and mentally retarded
children from the union of an aged
sperm cell or ovum in conception,” they
said in a statement issued on the first
day of the institute.
“Such unsubstantiated and
unscientific statements serve only to
distress those who follow the moral law,
and if true, married couples would need
to learn the ovulation method in
planning to have children, so that the
act of intercourse would be timed to
ensure the union of fresh cells.”
The Australian physicians added that
once a husband and wife have been
instructed adequately in the ovulation
method, they are not likely to opt for
artificial contraception.
The ovulation method of natural
family planning will be on the agenda of
the Feb. 9-11 meeting of the World
Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva,
Switzerland, said Dr. John Billings.
True
people in the country who are divided
into three groups: Bantu; Colored
(mixed race); and Indian. All three
groups are the object of increasingly
severe restrictions.
The South African government has
given much publicity recently to some
modifications of the apartheid system,
but people who have been there dismiss
them as “cosmetic” changes, not
affecting the fundamental and almost
total exclusion of black people from the
life of the nation.
Black people make up more than
three-fourths of the population, but
they have no voice in the government of
the nation, even in matters directly
affecting their lives. They are allotted
13 percent of the land area, while the
white population occupies the
remaining 87 percent. The government
in 1968-9 spent almost $100 per capita
for the education of white children, but
less than $4 for black children.
All blacks are assigned a “homeland”
on the basis of their tribal origin,
whether or not they have ever lived in
that homeland. To live elsewhere
requires an official government pass,
and this, in turn, requires that the
bearer be employed.
If a man, for example, is employed in
a mine, he leaves his homeland (if he
was ever there), leaves wife and children
behind, and works for long periods
under contract to the mining company.
The black workingman suffers further
restrictions: he cannot belong to a
union with legal status, cannot legally
strike, no matter how grievous his
He said WHO is sponsoring a
multi-center teaching program on the
ovulation method in three countries,
India, the Philippines and El Salvador.
If these prove satisfactory, he said,
“you can expect WHO to deflect funds
from artificial methods of family
planning to natural family planning
methods.”
The centers will operate for a couple
of years, he explained. If the results are
complaints, cannot occupy a position in
which he is over white workers; and is
paid about one-twentieth of what white
workers receive for similar jobs.
This situation persists, in part,
because the white population of the
Republic of South Africa has the guns
(an ever-increasing supply of them) and
tanks and planes. It has the money, the
army, the police.
But the Republic of South Africa
could not survive without a large
amount of support and cooperation
from other nations, including the
United States. Most of the world’s
production of gold and of diamonds
comes from the RSA; the nation is rich
in many other minerals which are
needed by an industrial world. In 1974,
value of RSA mineral production was
about $6 billion.
With its supply of cheap labor “under
stable conditions” (powerless unions, no
strikes), it is an attractive place for
foreign business enterprises to settle.
Moreover, in terms of global military
strategy, the RSA is important as a
refueling area for aircraft and ships, and
for a satellite tracking station.
Protesting against apartheid, the United
States has not used these facilities for
several years. But with the increased
importance of the Indian Ocean for
access to Middle Eastern Oil, the RSA
offers a tempting strategic location.
The black population - along with
the Colored and Indians - has none of
these resources under its control. It has
good, then WHO will add
supplementary programs and will also
open centers in other countries.
The institute here was sponsored for
the second year in a row by the
department of health and hospitals of
the Los Angeles archdiocese.
It drew more than 160 participants
from 16 states, Canada, Mexico and 16
other foreign countries.
the support of the United Nations in its
demands for freedom and justice; (but
the United States last year vetoed a
proposal in the UN Security Council for
a mandatory embargo on military
equipment to the RSA). The black
majority has the moral backing of Pope
Paul VI, the World Council of Churches,
and the Organization for African Unity.
But in South Africa itself, the Dutch
Reformed Church is a mainstay of the
apartheid system.
At the present time, widespread
“security” raids against non-whites are
being carried on throughout South
Africa by the white minority
government. The total number cannot
be known, because such arrests are
often made in secret, but it is estimated
to run into the hundreds. Most
detainees are being held under the
Terrorism Act, which allows for the
detention of anyone, in solitary
confinement, without the right of access
to lawyers, or even family, for an
indefinite period of time.
A few months ago, a black man, the
Rev. Canon Burgess Carr, spoke on
behalf of the All-African Conference of
Churches: “Too often we Christians, by
our silence on the burning issues of
social and political injustice, and by our
active support of a social order that
denies millions of persons their
birthright, have helped to sow the seeds
of violence . . . No people - and
certainly not the people of Africa -
wishes to embark on a course of
violence for the sheer joy of it. But we
are driven to this position by the sheer
force of the intransigence of the
political order that we know as
apartheid.”
NO HOME IN “HOMELAND” -- In the Republic of South Africa, the
ruling Nationalist Party has enforced a policy of apartheid (separateness).
Under the policy, blacks are assigned a “homeland” on the basis of their
tribal origin even if they have not lived there before. The resettlement
areas are termed “lands of limitless opportunities” by the white
government but in reality they are characterized by unemployment,
extreme poverty, and unproductive land. This photo is from the film
“Witness” produced by the International Defense and Aid Fund. (NC
Photo)