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History Of The Church In South Georgia
(Fourth in a series of articles prepared by
die Savannah Diocese’s Department of
Christian Formation.)
If Bishop Lessard were to decide to
visit all the parishes of his Diocese this
Fall, he would have quite an extensive
trip to plan. He would have to take in
forty-six parishes and many missions,
spread over 88 counties and seven major
deaneries. He would make contact with
some 38 thousand Catholic people, and
look at schools, hospitals, convents and
rectories en route. In all, he might talk
to close to a hundred priests, diocesan
and religious, working within the
Diocese.
Things were very different when
Bishop John England took over the
leadership of the Diocese of Charleston,
in 1820. Bishop England came from his
native Ireland at the age of 35 to take
on the job, and found himself presiding
over a diocese which took in all of
North and South Carolina, as well as the
State of Georgia. His area spread over
about 127,000 square miles, and
included perhaps a thousand Catholics.
To help him he had one diocesan priest,
with another five on temporary loan.
One of the first actions the new
Bishop took, after his arrival in
America, was a visitation of his diocese.
In 1821 he arrived in Savannah, took a
look at the spiritual and financial status
of the Catholic parish there, and
appointed Father Robert Browne as its
pastor. He noted that twenty seven
people received communion there, and
that fifteen were confirmed. Next he
visited Augusta, where forty-nine were
confirmed. This was probably the
largest parish at the time, under the care
of Father Samuel Cooper. At Locust
Grove, which had been served by a
Father Egan, there were some three
hundred Catholics.
It was two years later before the
Bishop made another visitation, and he
seems to have been disappointed in
what he found, “great want of an active
religious spirit.” In Augusta, too, he
noted that both the pastor and the
people were very apathetic. But the
Catholic community in Locust Grove
was making real progress, and Bishop
England discovered other places in
Georgia where there were Catholic
famOies and favorable opportunities,
“especially in St. Mary’s, where they are
building a church.”
Fortunately, John England was a
man of enormous energy and one of the
most dynamic leaders the Church in the
South has ever known. He founded the
first Catholic newspaper in the country,
the “United States Catholic
Miscellany,” opened one of the first
diocesan seminaries, and encouraged the
foundation of the first Congregation of
Sisters in the South - the Sisters of
Mercy, who later came to Savannah, to
work among the poor. They opened a
school and an orphanage, worked
among the slaves and provided hospital
care for the indigent. Their first hospital
was a house on the water front, where
they toc k care of sick seamen.
Rev. J. J. O’Connell, in his book,
CATHOLICITY IN THE CAROLINAS
AND GEORGIA, described the untiring
work of this remarkable man:
“He was everywhere and all times,
when it was possible, on his mission. In
every city and town and hamlet, in the
valley and on the mountains, in the cots
of the poor, in the mansions of the
wealthy, in the woods by night, at the
crossroads, in the meeting-houses, in
Masonic halls, ... preaching, teaching,
exhorting, administering the
Sacraments, hearing confessions, writing
his letters, preparing scientific and
historical lectures, if he had a moment’s
respite ...”
His journeys were made:
“by private conveyance, on foot,
on horseback, in old jingles or sulkies,
outside of the stage lines, often
compelled to beg for a night’s lodging in
the humblest abodes.”
Once, when he was sitting beside
the driver of a stage coach, because of
the overcrowding of passengers inside,
the driver fell asleep, worn out from
long hours of rough travel during the
night.
“ ... the Bishop caught up the
lines, delivered the mail at the post
office, and conducted all safely to the
end of their journey, as the morning sun
arose over the eastern hills and ushered
in the day.”
Bishop England’s visits were
occasions of great rejoicing, and families
looked forward to each visitation, vying
with each other for the honor of
offering him hospitality. At Locust
Grove so many came to hear him speak
that the church could not hold the
crowds. The audience sat on benches,
roughly put together with planks in the
open air, listening for hours at a time.
One of the problems that Bishop
England had to deal with in his day was
the institution of slavery, which he once
described as “perhaps the greatest moral
evil that can desolate any part of the
world,” His views were not in strict
accordance with those of Pope Gregory
XVI, who had stated in an Apostolic
Letter that while slavery was an evil it
was not a “malum per se,” not
necessarily an evil for the slave worked
for a kind master, and not a barrier to
his hopes for heaven. The Pope
condemned the slave trade, but he
neither condemned nor condoned the
system of slavery as it existed at the
time.
In a letter in the “United States
Catholic Miscellany” for 1841, Bishop
England wrote: “I have been asked by
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The Southern Cross
• l: (-
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 59 No. 26 Form 3579 To: 601 E. 6th St. Waynesboro, Ga. 30830
Thursday, July 20,1978
Single Copy Price — 15 Cents
Brief Asks Court To Reverse Abortion Decisions
BY JIM CASTELLI
WASHINGTON (NC) - The U.S. Catholic Conference has
asked the Supreme Court to reverse its 1973 abortion decisions
and to restore constitutional protection to the unborn.
“Let us wipe the slate clean and start anew,” the USCC
said.
The USCC made its comments in a friend-of-the-court brief
filed in Beal v. Franklin, a case involving an appeal against a
Pennsylvania law which requires dqctors who perform abortions
to do ail they can to save the life of a viable fetus.
The court will hear oral arguments on the case in its fall
term. The brief was prepared by George Reed, USCC general
counsel, and Patrick Geary, USCC assistant general counsel. The
USCC has been denied permission to offer an oral argument in
the case.
The USCC said the court should not have even decided the
abortion cases — Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton — when it did
because of procedural problems in those cases. The USCC said it
realized that reversing the 1973 decisions, and subsequent
abortion decisions, would be difficult.
“Nevertheless,” it said, “we submit that to persevere in
decisions which have been wrongly decided and wrongly arrived
at can only produce new and greater difficulty.”
The USCC said Roe and Doe were wrong because they
ignored modem scientific evidence that the fetus is human. The
court replaced a biological definition of life with a sociological
definition, the USCC said.
The USCC said that “it is generally true that fetal life is
viable if it is left alone.” The brief said the legal status of a
viable fetus became an issue only because the court’s decisions
had created a new category of “potential life.”
The majority in Roe and Doe “acted on the perception that
a ‘viable’ fetus would be accepted as sufficiently ‘human’ to
warrant state protection of that life, the USCC said.
“The court’s definition of life is not anchored in biology,”
the USCC said. “It is therefore likely that the abandonment of
biological life as a criterion of Fifth Amendment protection will
continue in the future to place the court in the position of
having to supply frequent and continuing redefinitions of the
term ‘human.’”
The USCC said “there is now no legal criterion for deciding
which human lives are to be protected and which are not... If
there are no legal indications, only sociological consensus, then
there is literally no human life which cannot ultimately fall
victim before such a consensus.”
“Instead of readily confronting the fact that the full thrust
of its decisions is to prefer some human lives over others, and
dealing with the ramifications of such a principle, the court put
before us the notion that it cannot decide when human life
begins,” the USCC said.
In Roe and Doe, the USCC said, the court acted as a
legislature writing a new law and not as a court ruling on
disputes. “The fundamental difficulty with such activity is that
when the court acts as a legislature, there is no court... If this
court is to function as a legislature, where shall one turn for
the adjudication of a dispute?”
The USCC also said the court failed to recognize the
“penumbral” right of the fetus in Roe and Doe. “Penumbral
rights are ... those rights which must be recognized because
they are necessarily implied in an explicitly protected right.”
The USCC said the right to life for persons guaranteed in
the Fifth and 14th Amdnements implied a penumbral right to
life for fetal life because “a human life is a continuum.”
It was ironic, the USCC said, that the court claimed a
woman’s penumbral right to an abortion based on the right to
privacy while ignoring a fetus’ penumbral right to life.
The USCC said the Roe and Doe decisions violated the
Constitution because they allowed a constitutionally guaranteed
right — the fetus’ right to life— to be denied by “the workings
of the popular will.”
Finally, the USCC criticized the court for relying on
13th-century science in the Roe and Doe decisions. The court
had noted that traditionally abortion was allowed before
“quickening,” the first signs of movement by a fetus, usually
coming after four months of pregnancy.
The USCC said quickening was only a crude measure of a
child’s development and that the ability to measure has
advanced since the 13th century.
AD LIMINA VISIT - Savannah’s Bishop Raymond W. Lessard is
greeted by Pope Paul VI during audience for bishops of the southeast and
mid-west United States, who went to Rome in mid-June for their Ad
Limina Visits. The bishops reported on their dioceses to the pope and
Vatican Congregations. Looking on are Cardinal William Baum of
Washington, D. C. (left) and Cardinal John Carberry of St. Louis. (Foto
Felici).
ST. ELIZABETH’S DEDICATED -- Bishop Raymond W. Lessard was
the principal celebrant of the Mass of Dedication for the new St. Elizabeth
Seton Church. Cairo. The new church which received a grant from The
Catholic Church Extension Society was dedicated on Sunday, July 9.
Story and additional photos will be found on page 3.
Pope Paul Calls Soviet Sentences “Unjust
99
CASTELGANDOLFO, Italy (NC) ~
Pope Paul VI said July 16 that the
sentences “inflicted with great severity”
on Soviet dissidents were unjust and
violated the 1975 Helsinki accords.
Speaking to crowds at his summer
villa in Castelgandolfo, Pope Paul said
that “political opinions or the
revendication (legal recovery) of one’s
own rights cannot, as such, be
prosecuted and punished as a crime.”
The promotion of human rights is
“not subversive,” he declared.
The pope was referring to heavy
sentences given to three leading Soviet
human rights activists after partially
secret trials. The dissidents -- Alexander
Ginzburg, Anatoly Shcharansky and
Lithuanian Catholic Victoras Petkus -
were given sentences ranging from eight
to 15 years on charges of anti-Soviet
agitation or espionage.
“The end of the trials, which are
being talked about in all the papers,
obliges us as well to express our pain -
not out of polemical passion, but in
order to confirm our trust in the
consistent and progressive maturation of
mankind’s moral sense,” said the
vacationing pope.
“We feel obliged to do this,” he
continued, “because of the sentences
inflicted with great severity on those
accused, as is commonly believed, of
ideological rule-breaking, as well as
because of our r commitments
undertaken at Helsinki to call one
another back to a spirit of human
feeling to which we are all bound.”
The pope said that final judgments
could not be formed about the trials
because of the lack of complete
information. “But no one can fail to be
struck by the unanimous reaction” to
the trials, said the pope.
He said that the universal
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PAPAL MEDALIST
Albany Funeral Mass
For Mrs. McCormack
Mrs. R. E. (Louise) McCormack,
Sr., of St. Teresa’s Parish, Albany, died
suddenly at her home on July 7. Mrs.
McCormack, widow of the founder of
Bob’s Candies, was a native of Little
Rock, Ark., where her father was
organist of the Cathedral.
During her 58 years in Albany, Mrs.
McCormack, known affectionately as
“Mom” was a choir member at St.
Teresa’s for 50 years and volunteer
director of the choir for over 40 years.
Last November, the parish’s new
computer organ, a gift from her
children, was dedicated in her honor.
She also taught Sunday School for
many years and hand-made the altar
linens for the new church (1958) and
maintained them for many years.
After Vatican II, she was a member
of the Bishop’s Committee on
Ecumenism for the Diocese of
Savannah. She was at various times
parish, deanery and state president of
the Council of Catholic Women.
Her husband had been honored by
Pope Pius XII with the knighthoods of
St. Sylvester and Malta. Pope John XXIII
recognized Mrs. McCormack’s work for
the church by awarding her the papal
medal “Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice” in
1960. For her many civic concerns and
endeavors she was chosen as Albany’s
Woman of the Year in 1969.
Msgr. Daniel J. Bourke, P. A., a
friend of Mrs. McCormack’s for 44 years
was principal celebrant and homilist at
the funeral Mass at St. Teresa’s on
Monday, July 10. Her brother, Fr.
Keller, Abbot Hilary of St. Bernard’s,
her nephew Fr. Tom Keller, and four
past and present priest’s of St. Teresa’s
concelebrated the Mass, with Abbot
Hilary giving the final commendation.
James Barnett of Albany played the
organ dedicated to Mrs. McCormack and
Sherri Holiday was soloist, singing,
among other works, an Ave Maria
composed by Mrs. McCormack’s father.
Fr. Douglas Clark of St. Teresa’s
conducted the graveside services at
Crown Hill Cemetery.
She is survived by her son, R. E.
McCormack, Jr., two daughters, Anna
Louise and Bee McCormack all of
Albany; her brother, Father Gregory
Keller of St. Bernard, Ala.; and four
grandchildren.
Mrs. R. E. McCormack, Sr.