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The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 57 No. 15 Thursday, April 8,1976 Single Copy Price - 15 Cents
CHRIST CF L CIFTTD - “Now it is finished.” Th >r He bowed His head,
and delivered over His spirit. (John 19:30) A hanging crucifix catches the
light which sets it dramatically apart from the dark background at the
National Monument of the Valley of the Fallen near Madrid. (NC Photo)
Holy Week At Cathedral
WEDNESDAY
Mass of the Chrism
7:00 P.M.
HOLY THURSDAY
Mass of the Lord’s Supper
5:30 P.M.
GOOD FRIDAY
Stations of the Cross
3:00 P.M.
GOOD FRIDAY
Celebration of the Lord’s Passion
5:30 P.M.
SATURDAY
Easter Vigil Mass
8:00 P.M.
EASTER SUNDAY
Masses 8-10-11:30 A.M.
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HEADLINE
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Announcement Expected
VATICAN CITY (NC) -- An announcement of the canonization of Blessed John
Neumann, 19th-century Bohemian-born American bishop, is expected in April,
Vatican sources said March 31.
TO RESTRICT abortion
Hearings Held On Amendment
WASHINGTON (NC) - Two Catholic
prelates joined 20 other witnesses in
week-long hearings before a House
subcommittee on proposed
constitutional amendments to restrict
abortion.
The two, Cardinal Terence Cooke of
New York and Archbishop Joseph L.
Bemardin of Cincinnati, argued that
abortion is not a religious issue, but one
of “human rights.”
They refused to endorse specific
wording for an amendment, preferring
to leave that to the Congress. But they
sketched in outline form the principles
that any amendment should embody.
Those principles, according to
Cardinal Cooke, chairman of the
National Conference of Catholic
Bishops’ Committee for Pro-Life
Activities, would establish that the
unborn child is a person under the terms
of the Constitution, express a
commitment to the universal and
maximum protection of human life and
give the states power to enact enabling
and related legislation.
All this, according to Cardinal Cooke,
would restore to the unborn the right to
life of which they were stripped by the
Supreme Court decisions of January,
1973, which struck down most state
laws against abortion.
Other witnesses told the
subcommittee, which has voted down
attempts to bring amendments to the
floor of Congress, that life begins at
fertilization and that abortion is
therefore the taking of human life.
That argument was advanced by Dr.
and Mrs. J. C. Willke of Cincinnati, a
husband-wife team long active in the
right-to-life fight.
The Willkes attacked the “viability”
argument for abortion, calling it
“completely irrational.” The ability to
survive outside the womb “is a measure
of the sophistication of the external life
support systems, of the knowledge and
ability of the doctors, .nurses and
laboratories around the baby, it is not a
measure of the baby himself,” the
Willkes told the subcommittee.
With today’s technology, viability is
down to 20 weeks, the couple said.
They played a recording of a fetal
heartbeat made eight weeks and two
days after fertilization to underscore
their contention, and cited evidence
that brain waves are measurable at six
weeks of gestation.
Another physician, Dr. William J.
Keenan, attacked the Supreme Court’s
use of viability as an argument for
abortion. Dr. Keenan told the
congressman, “There is a great paradox
in medicine’s efforts to help one child in
his struggle for life while killing other
infants of comparable physiological and
anthropometric measurements.”
Dealing with the psychiatric problems
of expecting mothers, problems which
have been used to justify abortions, Dr.
Irving C. Bernstein, professor of
psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology at
the University of Minnesota Medical
School, said: “None of the patients
(who were) referred to me for a
recommendation for abortion and did
not obtain it ever commited suicide.”
Suicide rates for pregnant women are
lower than those for non-pregnant
women, Dr. Bernstein told the
subcommittee.
Pro-abortion witness Dr. Elizabeth D.
Connell of the Rockefeller Foundation
and the Planned Parenthood Federation
of America agreed “there is no evidence
to indicate that abortion will improve
the mental status of a woman with a
very serious psychological or
psychiatric disorder.”
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope Paul
VI, who this Lent has cut back on his
traditional program of public
ceremonies, will preside at a full
schedule of Holy Week rites, the
Vatican announced March 31.
This Lent the Pope has not followed
his normal lenten schedule which once
included weekly Masses at Rome’s
stational churches and an Ash
Wednesday procession on the Aventine
Hill.
Although the Vatican insists that the
Pope’s health is good, Vatican officials
have curtailed nonessential papal
ceremonies involving great physical
exertion.
The 78-year-old Pontiff suffers from
an arthritic condition. Sources close to
the Pope said recently that he suffers
considerable pain especially in his legs in
the early morning, but that the pain
diminishes later in the morning.
On April 4, the Pope will say an
evening Mass in the Garbatella section
of Rome at the stational church of St.
Francis Xavier.
Garbatella is on the periphery of
Rome’s center and was built up during
the post-war years as a
lower-middle-class residental zone.
He will lead the Palm Sunday
procession at St. Peter’s Basilica and
celebrate the Mass. The ceremonies will
begin at 9:30 a.m.
On Holy Thursday the Pope will drive
Dr. Mildred F. Jefferson, a professor
at Boston University and president of
the National Right to Life Committee,
attacked the “assignment of killing
functions to the doctor,” saying it
“jeopardizes the entire foundation of an
organized society.”
Abortion is not a woman’s rightful
choice, said Dr. Jefferson.
“As long as the human family has
only women naturally equipped to bring
forth its own kind, it must not grant her
the privilege of throwing its offspring
away,” she said.
A pro-abortion witness, Dr. Irwin M.
Cushner, argued that the number of
abortions taking place since the
Supreme Court decisions of 1973 is a
reason to reject any pro-life measure.
across Rome to celebrate the Mass of
the Lord’s Supper at 5 p.m. at the
Basilica of St. John Lateran, his
cathedral church as the bishop of Rome.
He will then lead the impressive 9
p.m. Way of the Cross at Rome’s
colosseum on Good Friday.
The Holy Saturday vigil service, led
Because of the “fundamental
disagreement” which “exists at the very
core of our society, neither side of the
question should be allowed to dominate
the other, Dr. Cushner said. “That is
what ‘freedom of choice’ is all about,”
he said.
The seven member subcommittee will
hold one more day of hearings to
accommodate two witnesses, Leo
Pfeffer and Professor Thomas Emerson
of Yale. Pfeffer is opposed to an
amendment, which he contends would
violate First Amendment prohibitions
against an establishment of religion.
Emerson, a law professor, is known to
back the 1973 Supreme Court decisions.
No date has been set for the final day
of hearings.
by the Pope, will begin at St. Peter’s at
10 p.m.
Pope Paul will celebrate an open-air
solemn Mass Easter morning at 10:45
on the steps of St. Peter’s. He will then
climb to the basilica’s Loggie of the
Benedictions at noon to impart his
blessing “urbi et orbi” (to the city and
the world), read his Easter message and
extend Easter greetings in various
languages.
LENTEN MENU -- This is the sacrificial menu suggested for the seventh
week of Lent for families participating in Operation Rice Bowl: Tomato
Soup, Two Crackers. The program is being sponsored by the 41st
International Eucharistic Congress. (NC Photo by Robert H. Davis)
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Pope Has Full Holy Week Schedule
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NEW JERSEY SUPREME COURT RULING
4 Low Point’ Reached
WORCESTER, Mass. (NC) - Cardinal Humberto Medeiros of Boston told delegates
to a pro-life conference here that never in memory “has respect for life reached so
low a point as it has at the present.” But those who battle against contraception,
mercy-killing and abortion “are defending God’s law,” and they should “never give in
to the temptation to discouragement -- no matter how tremendous the opposition or
how persistant the pressure,” the cardinal said.
Violence In Spain
BILBAO, Spain (NC) - Following a wave of protest strikes by Basque workers that
left five of them dead in clashes with police, more than 1,000 Basque priests lamented
“the extraordinary moves of repression” taken by the government in Madrid. For four
decades the Basques — some 2 million people living chiefly in Spain s northern
mountains -- have resisted attempts by Madrid officials to restrict their languages and
traditions and exact heavy taxation.
Cautions On Human Rights
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (NC) - As Argentina’s new military rulers pledged to
side with “the western and Christian world,” the country’s leading bishop agreed, but
cautioned that human rights must be defended. Archbishop Adolfo Tortolo of Parana,
president of the Argentine Bishops’Conference, and military vicar of the armed forces
said that the military has shown “a deep sense of Christian values.” The armed forces
staged a bloodless coup March 24 against the populist government of Isabel Peron,
charging it with incompetence and corruption.
Quinlans May End Life Support System
TRENTON, N. J. (NC) - The New
Jersey Supreme Court March 31
transferred full guardianship of Karen
Ann Quinlan to her father, Joseph
Quinlan, and set up standards to
discontinue extraordinary means of
prolonging her life.
The historic decision delivered by
Chief Justice Richard J. Hughes, placed
Quinlan in charge of his daughter’s
person after releasing attorney Thomas
R. Curtin, who had been appointed by a
lower court. He gave Quinlan full
authority to decide which doctor would
treat her.
The court also called for a
consultation with the ethics committee
of St. Clare Hospital in Denville, where
Miss Quinlan has been a patient since
April, 1975, to determine that there is
no “reasonable possibility of Karen’s
ever emerging from her present
comatose condition to a cognitive,
sapient state, (before) the present life
support system may be withdrawn and
said action shall be without any civil or
criminal liability therefor, on the part of
any participant, whether guardian,
physician, hospital or others.”
Only the use of a respirator, a
tracheal tube and other apparatus
sustains her life, the ruling said, adding
that current medical definitions of
death, whether the cessation of heart
action, or so-called “brain death,” have
been “obfuscated” by developments in
modem medical technology.
An ad hoc committee of the Harvard
Medical School, studying the definition
of death in the light of modern
technology, declared in 1968 that the
definition of death as the cessation of
respiration and heart action is no longer
valid “when modern resuscitative and
supportive measures are used.”
In the light of the fact that the
Quinlans are practicing Catholics, the
court also considered teachings of the
Church about the use of extraordinary
means of prolonging life for a terminal
patient. Also admitted was the
statement of Bishop Lawrence B. Casey
of Paterson, which made theological
distinctions between withdrawing
extraordinary means and using
euthanasia.
The opinion pointed out that at the
time testimony was taken last January,
“no physician risked the opinion that
she could live more than a year and
indeed she may die much earlier.”
Also quoted was the 1957 statement
of Pope Pius XII on ending
extraordinary measures of life
preservation.
Turning to the constitutional and
legal questions involved, the court
reaffirmed that “the right of religious
beliefs is absolute, but conduct in
pursuance thereof is not wholly immune
from governmental restraint.”
The court cited under this principle
the ordering of blood transfusions for
Jehovah’s Witnesses; forbidding
exposure to death from handling
poisonous snakes or ingesting poison;
and making vaccination compulsory.
Turning to the question of the cruel
and unusual punishment limits of the
Eighth Amendment, the court held that
it is “not relevant to situations other
than the imposition of penal sanctions.”
In the case of the “unfortunate Karen
Quinlan,” the court said, “neither the
state, nor the law, but the accident of
fate and nature, has inflicted upon
her conditions which though in essence
cruel and most unusual, yet do not
amount to ‘punishment’ in any
constitutional sense.”
“It is the issue of the constitutional
right of privacy that has given us most
concern in the exceptional
circumstances of this case,” the court
said.
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