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PAGE 4—The Southern Cross, July 15,1976
The Right To Life
How much is a minority opinion
worth these days? Are those in power
sensitive to the non-majority?
This has been a most delicate issue in
American politics for the last several
years.
Those presently with hats in the ring
have been quick to proclaim their
honesty, sensitivity and concern. They
have promised us that the “old politics”
is dead and gone.
Recent events, however, seem to
weaken some of these promises. These
events center around the Democratic
Party platform. This platform has many
good and commendable planks, but one
section causes problems for those
citizens who look to a constitutional
amendment as the only way left to
protect the right to life.
The point at issue is abortion, but
more specifically it is the condescending
arrogance of the professional politicians
that we find so repulsive and insulting.
The Democratic platform has the
effect of impeding the exercise of one of
our rights - the right to petition for an
amendment to the Constitution.
A platform plank concerning abortion
states: “We feel, however, that it is
undesirable to attempt to amend the
United States Constitution to overturn
the Supreme Court decision in this
area.”
Three recent Supreme Court decisions
have dealt a terrible blow to legal
protection of the unborn. As a result
abortion is now almost unlimited in this
country. Those American citizens who
want to secure such protection are left
then only with the alternative of a
constitutional amendment. To seek such
an amendment is a right of U.S. citizens.
The cited platform statement presumes
to advise us against the exercise of this
right.
It doesn’t end here, however.
Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin,
president of the National Conference of
Catholic Bishops recently branded the
abortion plank “morally offensive in the
extreme” and “irresponsible.” In a later
statement he asked Governor Carter to
acknowledge the need for a
constitutional amendment on abortion.
He also asked the candidate to “further
clarify his position.”
All this drew the following response
from Carter advisor Stuart Eizenstat. He
said of Archbishop Bernardin: “I think
the bishop went out on a limb. He was
speaking for himself, not the conference
(and) I understand he has been told by
some people in the church to cool it . . .
that we had not endorsed abortion.”
Do minority rights have any value
these days? The answer apparently is no
when that minority’s concern is for the
unborn. The answer apparently is no
when the right championed is the most
basic of all - THE RIGHT TO LIFE.
“You know how it is with summer replacements.”
DCCW Notes
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The Hungers Of The Human Family
BY MSGR. JOHN P. FOLEY
(The following is part of a series on the themes of
the 41st International Eucharistic Congress to be held
in Philadelphia next month.)
THE EUCHARIST
AND THE HUNGER FOR GOD
(NC News Service)
“You have made us for ourself, Oh Lord, and
our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
The restlessness experienced 1,500 ago by
Augustine the sinner before he became
Augustine the saint plagues the human family
of today as well.
Individuals search for meaning with groups
or gurus - or they seek escape from mere
despair in drink or in drugs. They live without
purpose, die without hope-and wonder why life
is empty and death is dreadful. Momentary
thrills pass quickly, material pleasures soon turn
to ashes, and the happiness which is desperately
sought proves ever elusive.
What many persons fail to realize is that
there ran be no true happiness on the
pilgrimage of life unless the journey has a
destination. Getting there may indeed be half
the fun - but there is no joy if there is no
anticipation of ever arriving.
It took a forced convalescence from a battle
wound to get the soldier Ignatius of Loyola off
a merry-go-round of activity and into an
attitude of reflection, but the product of
reflections became a map for millions in the
pilgrimage of life. His “Spiritual Exercises”
have become the training manual for an army
of believers. And the principles he formulated
from reason and from revelation were caught in
capsule form in the question and answer
summaries of Christian doctrine prepared by his
spiritual sons, the Jesuits.
The basic questions for Ignatius and for
millions of persons since his day have been:
Why? Why was I born? Why am I living?
Ignatius answered this way: “Man is created
to praise, reverence and serve God, and thereby
to save his soul.”
Religion texts phrased it just a little
differently: “God made me to know Him, to
love Him and to serve Him in this world, and to
be happy with Him forever in the next.”
When that basic truth is grasped, everything
else falls into place. Human beings assume a
new dignity when it is seen that their origin and
destiny are divine. Material possessions are seen
not as ends in themselves but as means to a life
which will never end.
If that basic truth is not grasped, life remains
an unsolvable riddle. Human beings become
objects to be exploited or obstacles to
uninhibited personal freedom. Material
possessions become the only outlet for
validating human existence -- and, in seeking to
possess everything, individuals find that they
have nothing. They are dissatisfied; they are
empty; they are hungry - for God.
But the hunger for God is only partially
satisfied with the knowledge of His existence.
To be fully satisfied, man must also be
nourished by His life. Thus, just as God changes
food and drink into human body and blood
through the daily miracle of digestion, He
changes -bread and wine into the body and
blood of Jesus Christ, the God-Man, in the
miracle of consecration. So by eating what
appears to be bread and drinking what appears
to be wine, human beings have their hunger
satisfied with food that is more than human so
that they might live here and here after a life
that is truly divine.
THE EUCHARIST AND THE
HUNGER FOR UNDERSTANDING
“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen;
nobody knows but Jesus.”
The words of the spiritual from which the
black people of America drew strength in times
of slavery and oppression express the reality of
suffering, the hunger for understanding and the
realization that God, Who knows all, has asked
us to endure nothing which He did not ask of
His own Son.
In an age without such faith and hope,
however, the watchword has become, “Nobody
understands!”
The “generation gap” occurs because parents
do not understand children and children do not
understand parents.
Divorce occurs with increasing frequency
because husbands and wives do not understand
each other.
There is alienation from work, because the
bosses do not understand.
There is alienation from political life,
because politicians do not understand.
The unspoken lament of millions is: “If only
somebody would listen; if only somebody
would understand!”
There is a gnawing hunger for understanding
which is afflicting young and old, rich and
poor, educated and ignorant. There is in the
hearts of millions the lonely yearning for a
friend.
Jesus is just such a friend.
First, as God, He knows the nature, the
aspirations, the longings, the weaknesses and
the strengths of all in the human family - for it
is He Who is the Creator of all. No one can
understand every human being better than He
Who made and sustains every human being.
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Second, as man, Jesus has shared our nature,
our poverty, our love, our suffering, our sense
of rejection. Jesus is truly a member of the
human family.
Thus, Jesus is a loving Creator Who has given
and continues to give us everything we have.
Jesus is also a loving Redeemer Who has healed
our misery by enduring it and Who has ended
our loneliness by sharing it.
Another hymn puts it more beautifully:
“What a friend we have in Jesus!”
In receiving Jesus in the Eucharist, then, we
are strengthened by Him Who made us and we
are renewed by Him Who redeemed us. But our
own “eucharist,” our own thanksgiving for the
friendship of Jesus, cannot end with a simple
expression of gratitude to Him.
If Jesus has loved each of us so much that He
created each of us individually, that He died for
each of us individually and that He gives
Himself in Communion to each of us
individually, then, our love must extend to all
those whom Jesus loves.
As Jesus took on our nature to be perfectly
identified with us in all things except sin, we
must attempt to bridge the “understanding
gap” - whether it be generational or economic
- by looking at things from the point of view of
others.
To those who are lonely, we must offer
companionship; to those who are
misunderstood, we must offer compassion.
If Jesus has communicated to us His life in
the Eucharist, we must, like Jesus, know and
share the troubles of others so that, through
Christ living in us, the hunger for understanding
may be satisfied.
THE EUCHARIST AND THE
HUNGER FOR TRUTH
What is truth?
The cynical and despairing question of
Pontius Pilate has articulated in three short
words the spiritual starvation of much of the
human family.
What is truth?
A philosopher might say that truth is the
conformity of ideas to reality.
In his book, “Theology and Sanity,” lay
theologian Frank Sheed says that insanity
consists in refusing to recognize reality. God is
the ultimate reality, Sheed insists, and so to
refuse to recognize the existence and activity of
God is the ultimate insanity. Indeed, all
material reality - by its very limitation -
provides a continuing reminder of its
dependence on something, or Someone, greater
than itself; and all material reality - by its
complex organization about which human
minds continually discover more - provides a
continuing reminder of its design by an
intelligence which is truly superhuman, an
intelligence which is truly supernatural.
But the arguments of the philosopher speak
to the head and not to the heart. The late
Cardinal John Henry Newman would have said
that such arguments give “notional”
knowledge, not “real” knowledge - a
knowledge to which the mind gives assent but
with which the entire person does not become
involved.
The answer of Jesus Christ to the question of
the ages is: “I am the way, the truth and the
life.”
Jesus Christ is the personification of truth. In
what He is, we see our cause and our destiny; in
how He lives, we see our model and our source
of strength.
There is a hunger for truth, real truth - the
“gut” truth about why the human family is
here and where it is headed. When answers
cannot be found, there are those who try to kill
the pangs of hunger for truth with drink or
with drugs, with unbridled sex or with
unlimited sensations. Even when answers can be
found but are found to be too demanding or
inconvenient, there are those who try to escape
truth itself.
In “The Hound of Heaven,” the poet Francis
Thompson said, “I fled him down the
labyrinthine ways of my own mind.”
For those who are searching for the truth,
the words of Jesus are a consolation, “I am the
way, the truth and the life.”
For those who are fleeing from the truth, the
words of Jesus are a discomforting restriction,
“I am the way, the truth and the life.”
Jesus is THE truth - in what He is, in what
He says and in what He does.
And Jesus, who gave Himself to the human
family as the Bread of Life, is also the Bread of
Light -- the source of truth for all who believe
in Him and receive Him.
It is true that, in receiving the Eucharist, we
are receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus
Christ, the God-man.
It is true that, in receiving the Eucharist, we
are receiving a created share in the very inner
life of God Himself -- a life which sensitizes our
perceptions so that we see the truth more
clearly; a life which influences our attitudes so
that we live the truth more completely; a life
which permeates our very being so that we love
the truth unreservedly.
In receiving the Eucharist, we become truly
identified with Him Whom we receive, Jesus
Christ, Who has said, “I am the way, the truth
and the life” - and thus we satisfy the hunger
for truth with Jesus, the Bread of Life.
There is so much to tell each and every one
of you that I am writing to you through this
column to inform you of various plans under
way in order to implement a “Shared
Responsibility” among us all in obtaining the
goal that has been set by the Diocesan Council
of Catholic Women.. . that of UNITY,
Pro-Life Activities, Bible Sharing, Works of
Peace, Recognition of Human Dignity.
I would like to enlarge on UNITY. It is my
feeling that in order to get the work done that
our Lord would have us do, we need the help of
each and every woman in the diocese. We, the
Savannah Diocesan Board, are looking for any
interested group to inform us, so we may have
communication with them. We need you to
find out what is going on, so we may benefit
from you; and if there is any problem you are
having, perhaps someone else has had the same
and we can assist you in resolving it. At least,
whether you are structurely the same or not,
we need each other . . . Only if we unite under
the same Banner of Christ can we grow in our
love and knowledge of God.
In an evaluation of present procedures, it was
agreed that “Shared Responsibility” is the
keynote of today’s Church. There is a definite
need of commitment and accountability at all
levels in the National Council of Catholic
Women. It was noted that old style “top down”
decisions are obsolete. Everyone sharing
responsibility with each other will assure
energy, credibility and efficiency within this
federation. Having articles of government in
Bylaws does not necessarily constitute
commitment and shared responsibility.
We want to stress that recommendations and
programs must find their way down into human
lives in all the dioceses of the Country - into
human actions of loving generosity and
self-giving, into acts of at-one-ment with human
misery. We recognize that planning and
implementation for human settlements must, of
course, remain flexible and adapt to changing
priorities or conditions -- however, it is
paramount, the humane goals.
It is clear from history that the humaneness
of human communities depends to a great
degree on the capacity of men and women in
those communities to express ideals of the
community in a body of laws. Laws serve a
community the way a bony structure serves a
body. So one of the real ways of assuring the
humaneness of our communities is by the
action and daily monitoring of legislation.
Central issues of particular concern to Catholic
women are:
- the Food Stamp Program
- the Full Employment Act
- Abortion
- National Health Insurance
- Foreign Aid appropriations for nutrition
programs
- Tax Reform
-- Revenue Sharing
- Child and Family Services
- Social Security changes
- the problem of illegal aliens residing in the
United States
- Euthanasia
A special ALERT has been received from
Kay Horsell, President of the National Council
of Catholic Women, requesting each of you to
contact immediately Governor Carter, P. O.
Box 1976, Atlanta, Georgia 30301 indicating
your dissatisfaction with the Democratic
Platform, specifically the plank upholding the
Supreme Court decision on abortion, negating a
human life amendment. Time is short! ACT
NOW!
Also, Bible Sharing Institutes have been
announced. Anyone interested in attending
may contact their Deanery Presidents or the
Church Communities Diocesan Chairman, Miss
Ann Walker, P. O. Box 72, Waycross, Georgia
31501 for further information. Our Holy
Father called upon lay people to exercise a very
special form of evangelization. Institutes will
help you become a leader; will help you
transmit your learnings to your local group.
Learn to share the joy and love and Word of
Jesus, by registering for an Institute.
It is our hope that a united effort of all
women in the Savannah Diocese will become
affiliated with the Diocesan Council; a
continuous communication among us all; and a
continuity within the Diocese will fill your
mind and heart with a certainty of truth, love,
and spirit. We welcome all of you!
Mrs. Betty Logan, President
Savannah DCCW
What One Person Can Do
Rev. Richard Armstrong
LIZ CHRISTY, GREEN GUERILLA
Liz Christy is leading a campaign. It’s a battle
against urban blight, and it’s being fought in the
middle of New York City - with plants.
In 1973, Ms. Christy was working for an
architect-planner. They were planning, as a
Bicentennial project, to restore a vacant lot on
the Bowery to its original use as farmland.
When her boss died, Ms. Christy decided to go
ahead with the plan herself.
She lined up a few volunteers, and they
created a mini-farm with 66 plots for use as
vegetable gardens by people from the
neighborhood. Other gardens followed. Slowly,
a need for expert help emerged.
“I kept coming up against the same problems
over and over and over again,” Ms.' Christy
recalls, “and it seemed to me absurd that there
wasn’t one organization that offered this kind
of service.” So Green Guerillas was born.
In the three years of their existence, this
loose confederation of volunteers has received a
total of $356 in donations. Members have
spent, out of pocket, over $3,500. The group is
not incorporated, so there is no accurate tally
of members. But the Green Guerillas number
among their ranks horticulturalists, landscape
gardeners, botanists, agronomists, architects,
planners and biologists - all volunteers.
They have worked on over 100 projects all
over the city, each involving neighborhood
people. There is now a waiting list of
community groups who would like to bring in
the Green Guerillas.
What can one person do? Enough persons
like Liz Christy could turn our cities green.
For a free copy of the Christopher News
Notes, “Why Not Be A Volunteer?” send a
stamped, self-addressed envelope to The
Christophers, 12 E. 48th St., New York, N.Y.
10017.