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PAGE 2—The Southern Cross, December 9,1976
Evangelization:Building From Ground Up
K.C. TOOTSIE ROLL DRIVE - From left to right,
Fr. John Kenneally, Chaplain for Council 5588,
Bernard Lowenthal, Grand Knight Council 5588, Fred
Yarborough receiving check on behalf of retarded
citizens, Lester Hayman, President of the Chatham
IN SA VANNAH
Association of Retarded Citizens, and Burch Bryant,
Chairman for the Tootsie Roll Drive for Council 5588.
Not present for the picture, Michael Powers, Grand
Knight Council 631, and Rick Jordan, Tootsie Roll
Drive Chairman for Council 631.
K.C. Tootsie Roll Drive Nets $1,800
Savannah’s Knights of Columbus
Councils 631 and 5588 participated for
the second year in The Georgia Council
of the Knights of Columbus annual
Tootsie Roll Drive. The drive was held
on October 8, 9, and 10th, with all
the proceeds going to help the state’s
mentally retarded.
This year the Councils raised a total
of $1,818.99, with one-half going to
Chatham Association of Retarded
Citizens, and one-half going to the state
association.
Chairman for the Tootsie Roll Drive
for Council 631 was Rick Jordan, and
for Council 5588 Burch Bryant. Bryant
expressed his thanks to all the Knights
who helped to make this drive a success,
and to the citizens of Chatham County
who gave so graciously to support the
mentally retarded citizens of our state.
Court Abortion ‘Errors’ Hit
WASHINGTON (NC) - Supreme
Court abortion rulings have worked to
endanger the lives of women besides
permitting the destruction of unborn
children, according to an official of the
National Conference of Catholic
Bishops (NCCB).
Msgr. James T. McHugh accused the
court of “tunnel vision” concerning
abortion, and cited a recent federal
government study which he said should
have been considered by the justices in
their decision striking down part -of
Missouri’s abortion law dealing with
saline abortions.
The study, conducted by the Center
for Disease Control (CDC), “raises
serious questions about abortion laws
and the refusal of courts and legislatures
to take careful and honest look at the
practice of abortion on request,” said
Msgr. McHugh, director of the
secretariat of the NCCB committee for
pro-life activities.
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According to the four-year study’s
findings, which involved 32 institutions
and 80,437 abortions, the medical
profession has been wrong in its
evaluations of the relative dangers of
various types of second trimester
abortions.
Dr. David Grimes, an abortion
surveillance officer at the CDC, said that
dilation and evacuation (D and E) was
found to be safer for the woman than
either saline or prostaglandin abortions.
D and E abortions are performed
using surgical instruments, and the dead
child is removed through the vagina.
Saline abortions involve the injection of
a salt solution into the amniotic sac
which surrounds the unborn child, who
is later born dead (although some
fetuses survive the procedure).
Prostaglandin abortions are similar to
saline abortions except that the
substance introduced causes uterine
contractions, expelling the baby, but
with an increased chance that it will
survive.
Prior to the study’s completion, it
had been thought that prostaglandins
were safest for the mother, followed by
saline abortions, with D and E being the
most dangerous method for the woman.
But “the findings on D and E versus
saline is a major turnaround from
previous thought,” according to Dr.
Grimes.
Major complications, including death,
convulsions, hemorrhage and
pneumonia, developed in 2.9 percent of
prostalgandin abortions and 1.81
percent of saline abortions. In a separate
comparison, complications developed in
1.78 percent of saline abortions and .69
percent for D and E.
According to Msgr. McHugh, the
study’s findings “would certainly have
been available to the (Supreme) Court if
it made even the simplest investigation.”
But the court, “apparently without any
investigation or consultation, struck
down a Missouri law restricting saline
abortion,” he said. “The CDC study,”
Msgr. McHugh continued, “now shows
that despite its common usage, (saline
abortion) is . . . unsafe.”
The court’s opinions on abortion
procedures are now contradicted by
new scientific information,” but its
fundamental error remains “its refusal
to see the abortion decision as anything
more than a matter of a woman’s
privacy, thus ignoring the basic fact that
abortion destroys the life of a
developing unborn child,” according to
Msgr. McHugh, who called on Congress
to amend the Constitution to reverse
the Supreme Court abortion verdicts.
LA PAZ, Bolivia (NC) -- Catholic
missionaries arriving with the
16-century Spanish conquistadors made
a practice of constructing huge churches
atop the temples of the conquered
inhabitants. The aim was to suppress the
religious beliefs of the native people and
show the power of the newly implanted
religion.
The current thinking of Latin
American Catholic missionary officials
is the reverse. They want to build
Christian communities which arise from
the cultural realities of the numerous
non-Latin ethnic groups living
throughout Latin America.
The concept would make Latin
American clergymen missionaries in
their own countries.
“Evangelization is not a transplanting
of one Church diagram within another
culture. No roots grow this way,” said
Bishop Roger Aubry, president of the
mission department of the Latin
American Bishops’ Council (CELAM).
The result, the bishop said, is
confusion and a hodge-podge of
different cultural expressions of faith,
not the “communion characteristic” of
a church that grows out of the native
milieu.
The headquarters of the mission
department are in La Pax, although the
main offices of CELAM are in Bogota,
Colombia. CELAM, a service
organization for communication and
collaboration among the 23 Latin
American national bishops’ conferences,
has taken a leadership role in developing
Church policies of renewal and social
reform throughout the area.
“A particular culture is like the
‘language’ of a group,” Bishop Aubry
said. “In this ‘language’ man expresses
his profound being, his aspirations and
anguishes, his groping for God. God
already speaks to him in his language; in
his language the Holy Spirit works.”
Each culture “is in itself premeable to
the Gospel,” the bishop said. The
proper method of evangelization, he
said, is “announcing the Gospel within
the language of this particular people.”
The aim of the mission department is
to form local churches which build
upon the existing culture nad reality of
each ethnic group. The numerous ethnic
groups in Latin America include:
- Andean Indian cultures, the most
important of which is that which has
come down from the Inca empire
conquered by the Spanish;
- The Mayan Indian culture of
Central America and the Azteca of
Mexico;
- Amazon Indian cultures;
- Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Caribbean
cultures tracing their origins to black
Africa.
Because of the poor census
techniques throughout the region, no
reliable statistics are available of the
population of each ethnic group. Brazil
alone is believed to have more than one
Pacelli High, Columbus
Forms Alumni Association
Arthur J. DeLuca, teacher at Columbus’ Pacelli High has been appointed
Director of Alumni Affairs. He will try to create the climate and generate the
motivation for the alumni to want to assemble at various times during the
year.
The following Pacelli grads living in the Columbus area have volunteered to
act as temporary officers for an Alumni Association:
President — Dr. Leo Berard; Vice-president — Mrs. Donna (Eversman) Lipp;
Secretary — Mrs. Daphne (South) Brown; Treasurer — Ken Graddy.
These officers will write a Constitution and By-Laws and draft a program
for the year 1976-77. An Alumni Newsletter will be published as soon as
possible.
The Alumni Director can be reached at school (404) 561-8243 or at home
(404) 687-5611.
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million Amazon Indians. It has been
estimated that half of the 16 million
people of Peru - seat of the Inca empire
-- are Indian.
“How God reveals Himself to man is
always culturally conditioned,” said
Maryknoll Father John F. Gorski,
executive secretary of the mission
department. “There is no uniformity of
culture. What we look for is a
communion of these different cultures
within the universal Church.
“Conversion is situated where man is
at in history. We have to show each
person that God is calling him at this
point in history and that God has a plan
for history.
“Christ accepted cultural
conditioning when on earth. He
accepted death - the condition of man
-- in order to be open to a new life.”
The CELAM officials admitted that
this approach will be difficult to apply,
noting that it first involves changing the
mentality of missionaries.
The traditional approach, since the
time of the Spanish conquest, has been
to superimpose the culture of the
missionary on the indigenous people as
a prerequisite for understanding
Christianity. Today this is considered
cultural imperalism.
“Missionaries have to avoid the
thought that Christ comes down in their
suitcases,” said Father Gorski. “If we
really believe that Christ comes before
us, then we must first discern how the
Holy Spirit is already present among
these people.”
This involves understanding the
culture first to draw out the Christian
values already existing, such as love of
neighbor and a sense of a world beyond
that of the material, he said.
The two CELAM officials are
themselves foreign missionaries to Latin
America and their ideas have evolved
from their own experiences.
Bishop Aubry is a Swiss
Redemptorist serving for the past five
years as apostolic vicar of Reyes,
Bolivia. He has been mission department
president since 1974.
Father Gorski, a Maryknoll priest
born in Elizabeth, N.J., has been
working in Bolivia for 13 years. Before
he was named to the CELAM Post in
January, 1975, he was executive
secretary of the catechetics department
of the Bolivian Bishops’ Conference.
The two see the development of local
ethnic churches as healthy for the
universal Church.
“We hope to be opening these
cultures to the rest of the world. But
their ways also contribute positive
things to our life,” said Father Gorski.
ARCHBISHOP DIES
Archbishop Thomas J. Toolen, 90,
retired Archbishop of Alabama,
died December 4.
Youth Challenge
(Continued from page 1)
necking with a steady date. The study
found increases in approval of having
some serious doubts about religion,
reading an obscene magazine and
drinking heavily so as to become high.
The changes were attributed to
increased emphasis on personal
conscience and greater questioning of
Church authority after the Second
Vatican Council.
Data indicate, the study said, in terms
of church attendance, self-reported
religiosity or religious knowledge and
understanding, Catholic college
graduates score higher than graduates of
non-Catholic colleges.
Among young adults too, the study
said, research indicates that parental
religious belief and practice and parental
relations with their children are major
factors in influencing the religious belief
and practice of the children.
The Boys Town center researchers
attributed changes among young
Catholic adults to increased assimilation
to modern American culture. “Efforts
to define Christian principles of
behavior in new social situations are
sorely needed,” th^y $aid. <
Noting an increase in both religious
and political independence in U.S.
society, the study suggested that this
development set the stage for large-scale
rejection by Catholics of the
reaffirmation of Church opposition to
artificial birth control in the encyclical
Humanae Vitae.
Among the study’s projections for
the future are:
- The changes in U.S. society over
the past five decades are not likely to be
reversed. These include greater stress on
personal freedom and less adherence to
detailed codes of moral behavior.
- The rapid decline in religious beliefs
and practice among Catholics since the
Second Vatican Council is probably
over, but its effects are now being felt
among younger children and religious
instruction will have to adapt to a
greater degree of questioning among
them.
Church Dissent—
(Continued from page 1)
served a useful purpose if it helps to
clarify the manner or the mode in which
the institutional Church should exercise
its legitimate and indispensable
prophetic role on matters of public
policy.”
Msgr. Higgins said Cardinal John
Dearden of Detroit has already begun
that clarification with a major statement
delivered in September to the National
Conference of Catholic Charities.
In that speech, using abortion as an
example, Msgr. Higgins said, Cardinal
Dearden, said that in a pluralistic
society, “public consensus cannot be
determined by one religious group.”
But, Cardinal Dearden said, religious
groups must still speak up and try to
convince others.
Msgr. Higgins said Cardinal Dearden
had also warned that when a voluntary
association such as the bishops’
conference tries to act as a “moral
authority” in shaping public policy, “its
influence depends on its style of
presentation.”
Giving some historical background on
the relationship of the Catholic Church
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to the American political system, Msgr.
Higgins said “American Catholicism in
general has felt fully at home in the
American political environment” with
its emphasis on “religious freedom and
the separation of church and state.”
In the late 19th century, Msgr.
Higgins said, the Catholic Church
devoted a great deal of effort to helping
Catholic immigrants from Europe adjust
to life in the United States.
The Catholic Church developed many
of its own institutions - schools,
hospitals, social welfare agencies, social
clubs, and so on - during this period,
Msgr. Higgins said.
“The need to concentrate almost all
of its energies and resources on the
pastoral care and the political and social
acculturation of its immigrant flock
made it difficult, if not impossible, for
the Church, during the period under
discussion, to influence public policy to
any significant degree,” he said.
The Church became more involved in
public policy issues after World War I
through the efforts of the National
Catholic Welfare Conference and its
proposed Program of Social
Reconstruction, Msgr. Higgins said.
The Church became more involved in
the area of social reform during the
Depression of the 1930s, he said.
Throughout that period, he said,
many Catholics, through “a feeling of
social and cultural insecurity,” tended
to be “cautious about social and
political change.”
But, he said, that situation has
changed greatly over the past 20 years.