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PAGE 4—The Southern Cross, August 3,1978
Are Catholics Powerless?
Are Catholics Powerless?
This is a question that is being asked
frequently of late. Although we are 25%
of this nation’s population, our beliefs
are being ridiculed by song writers and
some media columnists and cartoonists.
The song “Only The Good Die Young”
by Billy Joel is the latest in the surge of
offensive offerings. The lyrics offend by
their mocking references to Catholic girls
and Catholic symbols.
We Catholics are more involved in
the political arena than in the past. We
do not expect our views to be
unanimously adopted or accepted, but we
do feel we are entitled to input and
consideration by the political system
without opponents resurrecting old
Anti-Catholic tales and making light of
our beliefs. Our forefathers knew what it
meant to be a minority, to be
misunderstood and to have their beliefs
distorted. They fought back, standing
fast on the rock of their faith, and 30
years after the low-point of A1 Smith’s
defeat, saw a Catholic elected to our
highest office. It was then we breathed a
sigh of relief and said, ‘Thank God it’s
over!” In 1978 we are wondering if it is?
Our elected officials are doing little
to help the situation. Legislation
affecting our one-quarter of the
population is continually being shoved
to the back burner - particularly any
help for parents who choose to add the
fourth “R” Religion to their child’s
schooling.
An organization called “The
Catholic League for Religious and Civil
Rights has come to our attention. It
strives to protect customs, practices and
religious and moral values against
defamation by newspapers, broadcasters
and cartoonists. For those in the area
desiring additional information on this
group of over 18,000, its address is 1100
W. Wells Street, Milwaukee, Wise. 53233.
The type of action engaged in by
the Wisconsin based League should
sound familiar to Georgians, who once
boasted that their state was the home of
The Catholic Laymen’s Association of
Georgia - model of Catholic action in
America during the 1920s and 1930s.
This once proud organization was one of
the victims of the belief that the election
of a Catholic president marked the end
of prejudice.
It may take a while, but the
majority of Catholics will eventually
realize that we’re being short-changed
and we’ll stop being so passive regarding
our rights. When it happens, we’ll be far
from powerless.
-JEM
Our Thanks
This past Monday Miss Kitty
McKenzie retired after over 15 years of
dedicated service to this paper and the
Diocese of Savannah.
During these years, when someone
phoned or visited the SOUTHERN
CROSS office, it was Kitty who
answered or greeted them upon their
arrival. To countless Catholics,
especially in the city of Savannah, she
was the one they trusted to get their
news items printed or to handle a
business problem.
Kitty will be missed by many. We
take this opportunity to express our
thanks for a job well done.
-JEM
What One
Person Can Do
The Christophers
LAWRENCE ALBERT,
FRIEND OF THE POOR
Lawrence Albert’s story might be
considered to have a sad ending. But he doesn’t
admit the story is ended.
\
He had grown up poor. He knew the
embarrassment of wearing shoes held together
by string. But he became the successful owner
of two dry cleaning businesses in St. Louis and
a tavern that was a popular meeting place for
blacks in that city.
One night in 1966, when Mr. Albert saw in
a TV show, children in Mississippi who were
starving and cold, he was deeply moved. Within
two weeks, two truckloads of clothing and food
were rolling south. Then he realized there were
barefoot kids in his own neighborhood. He
went to shoe dealers and manufacturers for
help. He recruited friends and social workers.
The result was Aunts and Uncles, Inc., an
organization with 500 members who contribute
$12 a year, enough to provide six children with
shoes at cost.
Lawrence Albert and volunteers fitted and
gave free shoes to thousands of children. He
had turned over half of one of his dry cleaning
establishments for storage and weekly
distribution. But the neighborhood was
deteriorating. Robberies wiped out the shoe
supply three times. Business went downhill and
he had to close one store. The tavern was
robbed; he closed that. His health failed. Then a
fire destroyed his last source of income, and the
wholesale shoe supply. He was broke.
Already-involved friends took over Aunts and
Uncles, Inc.
“I can’t explain why,” says the ill man,
“but I never did want to give up.” He plans a
comeback when his health returns. “My main
concern now is about a generation of kids who
have got to learn to become involved.”
For a free copy of the Christopher News
Notes, “Build Up, Don’t Tear Down,” send a
stamped, self-addressed envelope to The
Christophers, 12 E. 48th St., New York, N. Y
10017.
Send Stems For Publication To
The Southern Cross
601 E. Sixth St.
Waynesboro, Ga. 30830
The Southern Cross
(USPS 505 680)
Most Rev. Raymond W. Lessard, D.D., President
Rev. Joseph Stranc
Director, Department of Communications
John E. Markwalter, Editor
Please send P.S. Form 3579 601 E.6th St., Waynesboro, Ga. 30830
Send News Items to 601 E. 6th St., Waynesboro, Ga. 30830
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Business Office 225 Abcrcom St., Savannah, Ga. 31401
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Published weekly except the second and last weeks
In June. July and August and the last week in December
At 601 L. Sixth St., Waynesboro, Ga. 30830
OUR PARISH
o' CO
“I found my true identity, Sister, and you can have it!”
Trials And Tribulations
Rev. James Wilmes
There are two common reactions of men
and women when life pins them down and asks
what they are going to do about it. The first is
to curse the luck and crawl away to lick
our wounds like a stricken animal. The second is
to cling all the more tightly to the experience
and never let go (intil the truth and the lesson
of it be found. What can these things be?
The truth about trouble is that trouble is a
constituent element in all great character. In
time of general trouble, - disaster, for instance,
or Hitler’s concentration camps - the pressure
of trial binds people more closely together and
serves to make them more completely one. It
teaches this lesson: to think of trouble as a
possible blessing in disguise, as it so often is.
How often it happens that in some time of
trial, a mysterious power seems to be taking a
hand in our affairs. And how often the
unwanted event leads to ends never dreamed of
before the event, and in ways wholly
unforseen! So it comes about that after the
testing we call the unhappy event the best thing
that could have happened to us. It is hard to see
this in advance, but if we accept the general
principle, we help along the beneficient results.
The ancients saw this. Our word
“tribulation comes from a Latin word for the
instrument that threshed or flailed the wheat
from the straw. Trouble has the same effect on
the character of those who see it through,
separating the gold from the dross. Or as we
say, the men from the boys.
RESOLUTION: Praise God, repeatedly and
aloud, for bystanders to know that we see God
at work even when we are victims of obvious
malice from our neighbors. Read the best seller
“From Prison to Praise ” by Merlin Carothers.
SCRIPTURE: “Abisai offered to cut off
Semei’s head for his curses. David said, ‘Let him
curse, for the Lord has allowed him to curse
David, and who shall dare ask why He has done
so?” 2 Kings 16, 10. “It is no credit to you
when punished for your sin; but if doing well
you suffer patiently, this pleases God, for
Christ suffered as an example for us to follow
in His footsteps.” I Pet. 2,20. “For those who
love God, all things work unto good.” Rom. 8,
28.
PRAYER: Teach us, Lord, to see your
good and gracious purpose at work in all our
tribulations. Amen.
P.0. Box 10027
SAVANNAH, GA. 31402
Soviets and Human Rights . . .
Editor:
That the so-called Soviet Jewry
problem is not confined to Jews is
dramatically pointed up by the
sentencing of Lithuanian Catholic
activist Viktorus Petkus to 10 years
hard labor followed by 5 years of
Siberian exile. His trail was cleverly
hidden behind the Shcharansky and
Ginzburg trials. His crime was founding
the Lithuanian branch of the Helsinki
human rights group. The Soviets of
course signed the Helsinki treaty which
guaranteed the right to set up such
monitoring groups.
Like so many Christian religions,
the Roman Catholic church has been
restricted to the point of strangulation.
In some areas of the Soviet Union
Catholicism is virtually extinct.
Religious education is forbidden before
age 18, seminaries are closed, churches
become museums. People like Reverend
Georgi Vins, a Baptist, and Viktorus
Petkus draw from Jewish dissidents
like Shcharansky to the spark of hope
to save all mankind, Christian and
Jewish. Not only do they face 10 years
on a 1000 per day diet but then exile
from family and friends to Siberia.
Petkus needs your help and support.
All over this country people are
forming interreligious Task Forces on
Soviet Jewry and Human Rights. The
lives, no less the dreams, of many brave,
committed people may hinge on such
organizations. If you wish information
on starting such a group or joining the
one nearest you, please write to me.
William A. Gralnick
Southeast Regional Director
American Jewish Committee
1699 Tullie Circle, N. E. Suite 118
Atlanta, Georgia 30329
Holy Land Collection . . .
Your Excellency:
I have received the Good Friday
Collection offerings of the good people
of the Church of Savannah for the year
1978 in the amount of $3,416.90.
The Franciscan friars of the
Commissariat of the Holy Land are
most grateful to you and to your people
for the collection you have so
generously taken up for the care of the
holy places and the support of our
missionary activities. Please assure your
faithful people that they will be
remembered in the Masses and prayers
of the Holy Land Franciscans.
It is the continuous aid of your
people that enables the friars of the
Custody to help preserve the “Christian
Presence” in the Holy Land, maintain
the sites sacred to our Saviour’s life, and
work to improve the lot of the people
now dwelling where Christ lived and
worked. Without your concern and
assistance our apostolate could not long
endure.
So in the words of St. Paul, may
the Lord “multiply His favors among
you so that you may always have
enough of everything and even a surplus
for good works.” (2 Cor 9:8)
Asking your Excellency to bless the
work of the Holy Land, I am
Gratefully yours in Christ,
Rev. Matthew M. De Benedictis, ofm
Commissary
On Test Tube Babies
As of now, I am waiting for further
enlightenment concerning the morality
of producing so-called “test tube
babies” so that husbands and wives
unable to conceive children normally
may do so with technological help.
The whole question, when looked
at in depth and breadth, not only from
the point of view of a couple, but in
light of the good of the family of
humankind, is immensely complex.
I am prepared to listen, to study, to
ponder.
Meanwhile, however, I can say this
much with complete confidence: The
ultimate solution of this problem (as of
all moral problems) depends upon the
educating of people to a deeper
spirituality. And such educating, if it is
to be successful, requires that all of us
do more praying; turn more and more
to God and to the mind of God.
We must remind ourselves
repeatedly how tirelessly Jesus Christ
strove to teach his apostles and disciples
the primacy of spirit over matter, and of
timelessness over time.
He chided the crowds that followed
him, accusing them of assembling
around him because he healed their
Joseph Breig
ailments and because he multiplied
loaves and fish for them - not because
they sought his wisdom.
He turned on St. Peter and called
him a tempter because Peter protested
against his going to Jerusalem to die for
all of us. He rebuked Peter as being
concerned with the things of men and
not the things of God.
All of us have difficulty in
combating the natural tendency to be
absorbed in material considerations so
that the light of the spiritual can hardly
penetrate. Sometimes it does not
penetrate at all.
It seems to me there is a
considerable failure in such penetration
when a couple resorts to test-tube-baby
technology in order to conceive a child,
while all around them there are millions
upon millions of infants needing to be
adopted, cherished, cared for and
educated.
I suppose it will come as a shock to
many persons to be told that an
adopted child often is more perfectly
and completely the true son or daughter
of adoptive parents, than is many a
natural child the true child of the
natural parents.
If the thought comes as a shock, it
is because we do not perceive, as sharply
and clearly as we ought, the fact that in
the final analysis, natural parenthood is
of little consequence unless it is
accompanied by, or leads to, spiritual
parenthood, supernatural parenthood.
A dog can bring forth a dog; a bear
can bring forth a bear. And any normal
human male and female can conceive a
human being. But the difference - the
soaring difference -- is that between the
new human being and its father and
mother there is, or should be, a
tremendous spiritual relationship.
Such a relationship is almost
certainly present between a child and
adoptive parents; if it were not so,
adoption would be most unlikely. The
adoption normally comes about because
the adoptive parents have a deep
spiritual love of children - a love that
transcends natural conception and birth.
If we could instil such love into
people generally, adoption would be
universal, and “test tube fertilizing”
would be shunned.
One additional thought: In light of
test tube conception, what becomes of
the Supreme Court’s silly idea that “we
don’t know when life begins,” and of
the media’s stubborn refusal to face the
truth that abortion is the slaying of
innocent human beings?