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PAGE 7—September 9, 1976
Loss Of Respect For Life Blamed For Crime Rise
DETROIT (NC) - A loss of respect
for human life is one of the major
causes for increased crime and violence,
Cardinal John F. Dearden of Detroit
said in a pastoral letter issued here a
week after the killing of a Detroit
pastor.
The pastor, Msgr. Thomas Jobs, was
shot and killed in an apparent robbery
attempt in the rectory of Resurrection
parish. Police have arrested a suspect.
Increased violence by Detroit youth
gangs has also been widely publicized
recently.
“The first thing that must be said is
that all those people are our brothers
and sisters -- the victims of violence who
live in fear and the violent ones too,”
Cardinal Dearden said. “Anything we do
or say must take that into account.
“This means that we cannot turn
away or run away from these problems,
because they are ‘family problems.’ We
cannot wash our hands of the whole
thing, leaving it to others to solve. No
Christian has that option. Those are our
brothers and sisters.
“This also means that, in our attitude
toward those inflicting the violence, we
have to resist feelings of vengeance and
hatred. Certainly we must stop them
from committing these crimes, and this
will require forceful steps. At the same
time, our underlying attitude must be
one of deep concern. We have to find a
way not only to stop them, but to help
them.”
Discussing the causes of the rise in
crime and violence, Cardinal Dearden
said: “One of the major causes is a loss
of respect for human life. Catholics are
sometimes accused of a preoccupation
with the abortion issue. Repeatedly we
have stated that abortion is one
symptom of a much larger problem, and
the problem is the lack of respect for
human life itself.”
The frequency of portrayals of
killings on television “is one of the ways
in which human life is cheapened,” the
cardinal said.
“There are other ways. Human life is
devalued on the lips of every person
who speaks with hatred. It is devalued
every time an elderly person is
disregarded. It is devalued every time an
abortion is performed, and there were
over a million last year.”
Urging a rebuilding of respect for
human life, Cardinal Dearden said:
“God so loved what is human that He
came down from heaven, emptied
Himself, suffered and died. What a
strange twist it is that God, whose
nature is divine, so loved human life,
while human beings treat it with so little
regard.”
Another cause of increased crime and
violence, the cardinal said, is
unemployment.
“In our society, employment has a
very direct effect on one’s sense of
self-worth. The ability to hold a job and
provide for a family affects a person’s
sense of belonging to the community
and to society in general. Failure to
provide adequate employment
opportunity plants the seeds of
hopelessness, anger and alienation.”
Other causes, he said, include
society’s disregard for moral discipline,
religious affiliation and family life.
These social conditions do not
remove all responsibility from those
who commit crimes, Cardinal Dearden
said.
“However, when individuals are faced
with difficult problems and are tempted
to criminal action, the strong moral
fiber of society should be something
they can fall back upon, a support to
keep their anger or desperation from
spilling over into lawlessness. That is
where our society has failed. Our moral
fiber has been crumbling and
disintegrating so that the individual
whose own moral fiber weakens, has
little or nothing to fall back upon.”
The Cardinal urged Detroit Catholics
to work to strengthen respect for life, to
achieve full employment in the nation,
to increase moral discipline and religious
practice, to strengthen family life and to
improve education.
“It is a time to weep, yes. And a time
to pray,” he said. “But it is also a time
to hope. Not with a vague or naive
wishfullness, but with a strong
confidence that we can do something,
and with a firm trust that God will give
us the help.”
NORTHERN IRELAND
Bishops Alone Can’t End Crisis
BY JOSEPH F. MCKENNA
CLEVELAND (NC) - Because many
Americans mistakenly believe that the
violence in Northern Ireland is rooted in
religious differences, they just as
mistakenly assume that only bishops
can end the bloodshed, Archbishop
Dermot Ryan of Dublin said here.
Archbishop Ryan visited Cleveland as
part of “a holiday in America,” which
included attendance at the 41st
International Eucharistic Congress in
Philadelphia and trips to a few major
cities.
“COULD CHANGE MIND”
BUFFALO, N. Y. (NC) - Former
United Nations ambassador Daniel
Patrick Moynihan, a Catholic and a
Senate candidate in a September New
York State Democratic primary, has
said he would not vote for a
“right-to-life” constitutional
amendment to restrict abortion if he is
elected.
...... rr ’V A - '' i
But, he said, “My mind could be
changed on this.”
Moynihan made his comments in
response to questions at an Aug. 27
press conference here.
Moynihan also said he thought
language about abortion did not belong
in the Democratic party’s platform. The
platform opposed anti-abortion
amendments.
Speaking of the fighting that has
raged intensely for seven years in the six
Protestant-dominated counties of
Ulster, Archbishop Ryan said:
“It would be wrong to say that there
is no religious element to the fighting,
but... it is really a fight over political
and economic issues.
“It should be understood that the
Scotch Presbyterians were planted in
Ulster (as a move by King James I of
England to keep the native Catholic
Moynihan said “Abortion is one of
those issues where groups hold
irreconcilable beliefs, and whatever
practice obtains will be obnoxious to
the other.
“We’re going to have to do a lot more
talking about it,” Moynihan continued,
noting a political convention and the
accompanying noise emotion and
hoopla did not provide the right time or
place “to bring about the reconciliation
of fundamentally opposed views.”
Explaining his current opposition to
an amendment, Moynihan said.
“I am a Roman Catholic and I accept
absolutely the teaching of the Church,
but I feel we’re living in a
post-Constantinian Church. We can’t
expect the civil code of society to
reflect our moral beliefs.”
population under control),” he said.
“So, you see, there has been a double
factor for violence: political and
religious.
“When the Republic of Ireland was
created (in 1949),” the North remained
tied to Britain, and the Protestant
majority began to impose restrictions on
jobs and housing against Catholics
there.”
From that historical backdrop sprang
the Catholic civil rights movement in
1969, he said. And out of that
movement arose violence between the
Protestant-dominated, pro-British
extremists and the left-wing
“provisionals” of the Irish Republican
Army. The “provisionals” seek the
union of Ulster’s six counties with the
Irish Republic.
Despite what most Americans and
many British think, said Archbishop
Ryan, “the violent men on both sides
are not the churchgoers, and cannot be
controlled by the bishos.”
Archbishop Ryan noted that Ulster’s
Catholic minority - one-third of the
population - has never given its support
to such men at the ballot box.
Archbishop Ryan praised the “many
positive interactions between
professional people and families” of
different backgrounds in the North and
between people in the North and people
in the South.
Britain, however, is to be criticized
for fostering the image of “sectarian
violence” in Ulster, as well as for
“tolerating the abuse of Catholics’ civil
rights there,” he said.
Moynihan Opposes Amendment
MARCH AGAINST WAR - Tens of thousands of women marched behind a banner proclaiming the word
placard-carrying women march through the streets of peace. (NC Photo)
Dublin in sympathy with the Belfast women. The
Bishop Proano Brought Freedom To Thousands
BY JAIME FONSECA
(NC News Service)
The central figure in the mid-August
arrest of 17 bishops by Ecuadorean
soldiers is a social reformer whose
efforts at land distribution, radio
schools and cooperatives are helping to
end centuries of exploitation of the
Indian farmworkers.
The bishops had come from eight
nations to see the result of his efforts in
Riobamba, high in the Andes, and try to
apply them to their own pastoral
activities.
For his forceful leadership, Bishop
Leonidas Proano twice before had been
the target of the wrath of landholders,
merchants and high army officers. His
work was effectively undermining their
privileges in Chimborazo province,
where Riobamba is located.
In November, 1974, government
troops killed one of his Indian lay
helpers, Lazaro Condo, in a land
dispute, and arrested his vicar general,
Father Agustin Bravo, for allegedly
“agitating” the Indians to take over
lands.
A year and a half earlier, conservative
landholders and elderly priests pressed
for a Vatican investigation of Bishop
Proano’s energetic reforms, charging
him with fostering “Communism.” He
was vindicated by the Vatican, but in
the process the officers found an
opportunity to use their men in a show
of armed force against the bishop and
the papal inspector. Father Bravo had to
file a formal protest with authorities
who then recalled the armed troops
from Riobamba.
This August 40 security men, heavily
armed, disrupted a pastoral meeting
organized by Bishop Proano and
arrested 57 participants, including
priests, nuns and bishops, four of them
from the United States. The government
charged that they wer d< * with
“subversive” matters.
The bishops answered that it was an
open meeting known for months to
Church authorities, and that no mention
of Marxism or any other “subversive”
topic has been made. It was purely an
exchange of pastoral experiences, they
said.
They were held in jail for more than
27 hours, and Bishop Proano was
separated from the group and
interrogated by police on his
“subversive” meeting. Pressure from
embassies, other bishops and the
Vatican obtained their release.
As a young pastor, Bishop Proano
had learned first hand of the misery in
Freed
GLORIETA, N.M. (NC)
Archbishop Robert F. Sanchez of Santa
Fe told participants at the second
annual Southwest Charismatic
Conference here that his recent arrest
by the Ecuadorean government “was a
blessing of God.”
Referring to the conference theme -
“Come, Jesus, free us” - the archbishop
told the gathering of more than 3,000
people: “You don’t know how often I
said that prayer last week.”
Archbishop Sanchez spent 27 hours
in prison along with a group of 57 other
bishops, priests and laymen after the
Ecuadorean regime broke up a meeting
in that country.
He called the arrest “an opportunity
for the 17 bishops, 23 priests, 6
Religious and 14 lay people to proclaim
to all the world that each man who
preaches Christ has his mandate not
from man but from God.
“And my message to you tonight is
that I hear the voice of all mankind
crying out, ‘Come, Jesus, free us,’ ” he
said.
He urged the participants not to
the Indian villages, and of the slavery of
Indian workers on the big cattle and
agricultural farms or “haciendas.”
The peon system had enslaved the
majority of the poor farm workers,
since they had no land of their own.
Working long hours, often helped by his
children, a man could make no more
than $17 a year in wages. The owner or
patron assigned him as further
compensation a small plot for his own
use. But it lacked irrigation and
fertilizing.
The average farmworker managed to
raise another $223 a year from crops
and a few chickens and pigs -- for a total
of $240 for a family of five.
make the charismatic movement an end
in itself but instead to use it as “an
instrument to revive within ourselves
the Spirit of Christ, to feel His
animation, His fire and His love and
therefore to go forth and cause the
transformation of the world. This is the
power that we recognize,” Archbishop
Sanchez said.
About 30 prayer groups of the Santa
Fe archdiocese sponsored the
conference. Benedictine Abbot David
Geraets and other members of the
charismatic Benedictine monastery of
Pecos, N.M., served as members of the
planning group. Messages of support
were received from all of the bishops of
the Santa Fe province, Archbishop
Sanchez said.
During the conference, all-day
workshops such as one on healing
attracted overflow crowds. A prayer
room for individual prayers for healings
remained open all night. Prophecies
spoken in prayer languages were
frequently heard at the general
assemblies with what were said to be
interpretations given by priests and
deacons on the platform and from
individuals in the congregation.
The poor tract was called
“huasipungu” and he was a
huasipunguero, a man that was counted
as “property” along with the hacienda
owner’s acreage and cattle. He was
constantly in debt and such dependence
went on for generations.
The “free” Indian was in almost the
same predicament. Although he owned
a small tract of land, it was usually
sterile. To increase his earnings from
meager crops and some animals, he had
to work at the big hacienda for a
pittance.
Most families are debt-ridden, their
homes are windowless, unhealthy and
The two-and-a-half hour closing Mass
had Abbot Geraets as principal
celebrant with 60 priests and deacons.
In a homily the abbot urged the
participants to be sure to make a good
“reentry” into their homelife on leaving
the conference.
“To be at peace with the human
situation brings healing,” he said. “The
source of our peace is the glory of God
the Father.”
In wanting to witness to Jesus, he
warned, it is necessary to see to it that
all rights are respected and that any
witnessing is done only in the power of
the Holy Spirit.
“There will be as much unity in our
lives as Jesus is Lord in our lives,” he
said. “In seeking to minister to others
remember either Jesus is Lord or we
lord it over one another.”
In a roll call of states at the opening
conference Catholics from 41 states
answered along with participants from
Korea, the Philippines, Canada, Mexico,
England and Costa Rica.
crowded. Overworked and
undernourished, most Indian families
are hit with epidemics, disease and high
mortality.
Because children are kept at home to
help in the farming, schooling is poor
and illiteracy rates high.
Widespread alcoholism aggravates
conditions. Some say it has been fed by
frustration. Others blame the deliberate
urgings of the dealers in “chicha” - a
fermented corn mixed with toxics to
increase its power - and of
“aguardiente” or sugar-cane alcohol. At
any rate, Indians drink on all occasions:
religious or civic festivities, the end of
the crop season, family celebrations, the
completion of their thatched home.
Thus they sink further into debt and
disease.
Bishop Proano and his priests and
nuns began a multi-pronged attack,
against these conditions, saying that
land ownership was the key to
liberation from the people’s wretched
plight.
In the late 1960s the bishop launched
a land redistribution program, using two
big farms bequeathed to the diocese
decades before, Zula and Tepeyac. He
organized technical and financial help
and provided education. Soon many
Indian families in Chimborazo province
were receiving parcels of 10 acres each.
They paid a “social price” for the land,
about a third of its commercial value,
and took mortgages of 15 years at a
nominal interest rate.
Besides avoiding handouts, the
bishops wanted to create a fund to
further expand social works.
His example was followed by Jesuits
and Salesians, who broke up two more
large farms under the same system. By
1971 other dioceses in Imbabura and
Pichincha provinces were distributing
their land to the Indians. Soon some
1,200 families had titles to a total of
124,000 acres, or about half of all the
Church- owned lands in the country.
Land was the key opening the doors
to success in other areas. Instead of
being drunken orgies, religious and civic
festivities began to have a constructive
meaning. Stimulated by land ownership,
Indian families produced more, to the
point of breaking their dependence on
local bosses and big landholders.
The Shuara tribe, for instance, has
10,000 members in its own federation
of land settlements, and has joined a
national federation of Christian
farmworker unions. As they financed
their own crops through cooperatives,
old vested interests of landholders and
merchants began to hurt.
Observers see the August arrest of the
religious leaders in Riobamba as another
step in the opposition by vested
interests that led earlier to the Vatican
investigation, the killing of Lazaro
Condo, and the arrest of Bishop
Proano’s vicar general.
When he was subjected to the Vatican
investigation, Bishop Proano welcomed
it “as verifying what is good and fair” in
his programs. The projects that Bishop
Proano described were already reaching
275,000 of the 350,000 people in his
diocese.
There are social action programs for
the Indian farmworkers that include
cooperatives for savings, loans and farm
production; training centers in skills
such as masonry, carpentry and home
economics; radio schools that teach
basic literacy and civil rights; modern
housing, and land distribution.
Church renewal has also taken place
in preaching, in liturgy, in a pastoral
emphasis on dealing with men and
women as total beings, body and soul,
and in placing priority on the poor.
“For that I have been accused of
training guerrillas,” he later said, “and
of opening a church cabaret because
youth programs included folk music.”
Some Church sources have
commented that, if Bishop Proano is
engaged in “subversion” as charged by
military authorities, then it is the
Church’s duty to be “subversive.”
Archbishop Speaks