Newspaper Page Text
The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 57 No. 13
Thursday, March 25,1976
Single Copy Price — 15 Cents
Bishop Rausch Testifies On Employment
BY TICK! LLOYD
Headquarters for the 37th Annual
Convention of the Diocesan Council of
Catholic Women is the Executive House
in Augusta. Excitement is at a peak as
women throughout the diocese prepare
to attend the convention on April 23,
24, 25.
At the invitation of His Excellency,
The Most Reverend Raymond W.
Lessard, Bishop of Savannah, hundreds
of women of the diocese are expected
to share in various sessions. There is a
Mrs. Richard Bowles
Convention Chairman
tremendous challenge today for the
laity to witness to the religious as well
as the secular aspects of the Church’s
role in the varying needs of our brethren
at home and abroad.
A fitting theme for the convention is:
“Journey of Faith - Past - Present-
Future”.
Rev. John Burke, O.P., Dominican
priest, and Executive Director of the
Word of God Institute in Washington,
D.C. will be the banquet speaker on
Saturday, April 24.
Bishop Lessard will greet convention
members at Sunday’s brunch on April
25, and Sister M. Julian Griffin, V.S.C.,
Diocesan Vicar of Social Affairs will be
the Brunch speaker.
Mrs. Richard N. Bowles is General
Chairman of the convention. Serving
with her are Mrs. Frank X. Mulherin and
Mrs. A. Joseph Green.
Mrs. Bowles, a native Augustan,
attended Mount St. Joseph Academy,
Mount St. Vincent College in New
York, and was graduated from the
University of Georgia. The wife of
Richard Bowles, they are the parents of
ten children.
Mrs. Bowles previously served as
President of the Home and School
Association of St. Mary’s School and
President of the Parish Council of
Catholic Women of St. Mary’s Church
on the Hill. She also served a term as
President of the Augusta Deanery
Council of Catholic Women.
Mrs. Joseph Green
Co-Chairman
Mrs. Frank Mulherin
Co-Chairman
She was the first Chairman of The
Better Infant Birth program. Besides
other activities, she is past President of
the Theresians and the Hillside Garden
Club, and is currently serving on the
Meals on Wheels Program in Augusta.
Mrs. Mulherin, a native Savannahian,
is the widow of the late Dr. Frank
Mulherin, and the mother of eight
children, all of whom are living. She has
thirty-eight grandchildren and thirteen
great-grandchildren.
A dedicated church worker, she has
served as officer and chairman of groups
too numerous to mention. For over 46
years she was President of the Altar
Society of St. Mary’s on the Hill
Catholic Church.
Mrs. Mulherin has served as General
Chairman of two Diocesan Conventions
in previous years. For her unselfish duty
to God and Church, in 1961 Pope John
XXIII honored her with the Ecclesia et
Pontifice Medal. Last spring another
honor was bestowed upon Mrs.
Mulherin when she was nominated to
“The Second Wind Hall of Fame”.
Mrs. Green, the wife of Dr. Joseph
Green, M.D., and the mother of four
children, is also an Augustan. She
attended Mount St. Joseph Academy
and Georgian Court College in
Lakewood, New Jersey.
She has served on the Board of the
Parish Council, and the A.C.C.W., and
was formerly President of the Theresian
Organization and the Hillside Garden
Club. For the past fifteen years Mrs.
Green has been a member of the choir
of St. Mary’s Church on the Hill.
Mrs. Ernest Dinkins of Augusta is
serving as local publicity chairman,
assisted by Mrs. Eugene Long.
The deadline for payment for
pre-registration for the Convention,
banquet and brunch is April 9 and must
be forwarded to Mrs. Albert A. Rice,
423 Kemp Drive, Augusta, Georgia,
30904 - telephone (404-736-6343).
Hotel reservations should be made
directly to the Executive House in
Augusta - 640 Broad St. Augusta,
Georgia, 30903 (P.O. Box 935)
A printed form for hotel
accommodations and banquet and
brunch reservations will be found in this
issue. Husbands who want to
accompany their wives may purchase
banquet and/or brunch tickets.
Husbands who do not wish to partake
(Continued on page 7)
support for the new bill. The Full
Employment and Balanced Growth Act
of 1976, presented in House
subcommittee testimony three days
earlier by Bishop Eugene Marino,
auxiliary of Washington.
The full employment act would
require the federal government to
develop policies and programs to bring
the unemployment rate down to three
percent within four years of the passage
of the bill.
Jordan said that in many cities as
many as two-thirds of black teen-agers
are unemployed. “There is a very real
danger,” he said, “that an entire
generation will come to adulthood
without ever holding a job, without ever
learning the skills that will make
possible a productive future.
“In effect,” he said, “our society has
thrown millions of youngsters onto the
scrap heap. It seems willing to accept
crime, supportive expenses, and other
economic costs rather than invest in
increasing productive capacity of
individuals and the economy.”
Jordan said: “Part of the problem is
the stigma social programs have as
(Continued on page 7)
The annual American Catholic
Overseas Aid. Appeal, taken up in all
parishes of the country on Laetare
Sunday (March 28) will be designated
for the starving of the world. The
collection falls on the fourth Sunday of
the Lenten season and will enable
Catholic Relief Services to offer hope to
millions of the world’s hungry and
needy people.
Msgr. Daniel J. Bourke, Savannah
Diocesan Director of C.R.S., asks that
Catholics of the diocese respond as
generously as possible to this most
necessary collection. Last year,
Catholics in South Georgia donated
$18,251.90 to this collection.
This year CRS will also receive the
funds of American Catholics who are
participating in the nationwide
observance of “Operation Rice Bowl,”
offering up a sacrificial meal one day
weekly and placing the monetary
savings in a special cardboard rice bowl
for the hungry and starving.
The Laetare Sunday collection has
not been replaced by the “Operation
Rice Bowl” program which is seen as a
special and supplementary offering of
Catholics to alleviate world hunger.
In the past year, CRS assistance has
reached 86 countries around the world.
An estimated 20 million persons
benefitted from CRS programs last year,
which totalled in goods and services
more than $226 million.
According to United Nations
statistics, more than 460 million people
suffer from hunger and malnutrition.
This is not, statistics show, a temporary
hunger that can be appeased with one
good substantial meal. Rather, it is an
ongoing craving for enough food to
sustain life and to ward off the diseases
and illnesses that ravage a malnourished
body. Close to 10 million persons are
expected to die of starvation this year,
50 percent of that total will be children.
Staff members of CRS say that the
hunger problem is one that must be
attacked on two levels: immediate food
assistance to prevent starvation must be
enlarged upon in the most critically
affected areasand long-range agricultural
programs to increase food production
must be accelerated, particularly in the
less industrialized nations.
conference speaker, Dr. Harvery
Brenner of Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore, said his studies had shown
that high unemployment was a cause of
higher mortality rates and shorter life
spans within every age group.
‘‘Dollar remedies for
unemployment,” he said, “can actually
purchase length of life.”
High unemployment has been related
to increased suicide, homicide, crime,
mental illness and death by heart attack,
stroke and other diseases, as well as
increased maternal, fetal and infant
mortality, Brenner said.
He said he was conducting a study for
the Joint Economic Committee of
Congress which would attempt to show
the relationship between a given level of
unemployment and a corresponding loss
of life from factors related to economic
stress.
Brenner and Bishop Rausch joined
other speakers, including Vice President
Nelson Rockefeller, at a conference to
mark the 30th anniversary of the
Employment Act of 1946. That act
called for the federal government to
follow policies to guarantee
“maximum” employment.
The conference was sponsored by the
Joint Economic Committee whose
chairman, Sen. Hubert Humphrey
(D-Minn.), was a major drafter of the
1946 act and is the major Senate
sponsor of a new bill to improve the
original act.
Bishop Rausch repeated USCC
Calling on national leadership to act
“boldly,” Bishop Rausch said: “As we
emerge from the deepest recession since
the Depression of the thirties, we face a
basic choice concerning national
economic and social policy.
MANY YOUNGSTERS around the world, like this young man, are alive
today because American Catholics have always generously provided funds
through Catholic Relief Services in the annual Laetare Sunday collection.
CRS is one of the leading
organizations dedicated to alleviating
the suffering of hunger and starvation.
CRS gives the highest pr ority to food
distribution, school feeding programs
and nutritional education projects.
Great emphasis is also put on expanding
local agricultural activity such as seed
and tool banks, irrigation schemes, silo
construction, livestock breeding and
farming cooperatives. In the 86
countries aided last year by CRS,
programs provided food, vitamins, food
supplements, medical supplies and
development opportunities to over 20
million persons.
WASHINGTON (NC) - If an
economic system deprives people of the
right to work and be creative, “there’s
something wrong with the system” and
it should be changed, the top
administrative officer of the U.S.
Catholic Conference (USCC) told a
congressional conference on full
employment.
The USCC general secretary, Bishop
James Rausch, repeated the U.S.
Catholic bishops’ call for the guarantee
of a job for every American able and
willing to work, and emphasized the
human, social and moral costs of high
unemployment.
Describing these costs, another
LENTEN MENU -- This is the sacrificial meal suggested for the fifth
week of Lent for families participating in “Operation Rice Bowl”:
Spaghetti and tomato sauce, Jello. The program is sponsored by the 41st
International Eucharistic Congress to help feed the world’s hungry. (NC
Photo by Robert H, Davis)
“We can harness the concern and
experience of our people to enact
fundamental reforms in our economic
life or we can return to old policies and
programs which offer little hope of
achieving greater social and economic
justice.”
Bishop Rausch said there was a
“spiritual” aspect to the unemployment
issue and asked: “What does it mean
when our leaders say there is no way in
the forseeable future to harness the
idleness of so many for work on vital
social needs such as housing and
transportation?”
Bishop Rausch was especially critical
of the “trade-off” theory which holds
that only relatively high unemployment
rates can limit inflation.
“There are multiple causes of our
recent inflation, including supply
shortages, lack of real competition and
huge increases in cost of energy,” he
said.
Bishop Rausch and two other
conference speakers, Vernor Jordan,
executive director of the National
Urban League, and Major Kenneth
Gibson of Newark, N. J., vice-president
of the U.S. Conference of Mayors,
emphasized that unemployment was
highest among racial minorities, women,
blue-collar workers and young people.
KING AND QUEEN -- Banquets, breakfasts, luncheons and, of course,
the parade have long marked the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day in
Savannah. A relative new celebration is the Senior Citizens’ Party which
was held for the fourth year on the Saturday before the “Big Day.”
Sponsored by the Savannah Deanery Council of Catholic Women this
year’s event was held March 13 in Blessed Sacrament Gym. Pictured here
are 1976’s newly crowned King and Queen of the event, Mr. “Hawk”
Sullivan and Mrs. Mildred Blumiield. Additional photos arc .... ^ 7 -
(Williams Studio Photo)
Catholic Relief Collection
In Diocese On March 28th
Plans Progressing For DCCW Convention