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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)