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PAGE 7-April 19,1979
Commission Holds Meeting On Religious Discrimination
WASHINGTON (NC) - The federal
government has begun to take the issue
| of religious discrimination seriously, key
civil rights officials told the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights at the first
major federal inquiry into religious
discrimination.
An official of the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission said the
EEOC has made its first charge of a
“pattern and practice” of religious
discrimination against a major industry
I | it believes discriminates against Jews.
An official of the Labor
Department’s Office of Federal
Contract Compliance said his office is
calling for more affirmative action and
outreach to hire religious minorities —
including Catholics and Jews. The
OFCC monitors civil rights performance
in companies with government
contracts.
Both the EEOC and OFCC officials
said they are working on stronger
guidelines on religious accommodation -
the requirement for employers to make
a good faith effort to accommodate
their employee’s religious needs, such as
I
»
time off on the Sabbath and the wearing
of religious dress.
The rights commission — which has
itself been criticized for neglecting the
issue - titled its meeting “Religious
Discrimination: A Neglected Issue.”
Commission chairman Arthur
Flemming called the two-day meeting a
“national consultation” and said the
commission would study the material
presented to determine whether to go
ahead with further research, such as
public hearings or field studies.
Daniel Leach, the EEOC vice
chairman, said he had personally filed
the commission’s first religious
discrimination pattern and practice
charge. '
EEOC rules prohibit the commission
from naming an industry or company
under investigation until its
investigation is complete. But experts in
the religious discrimination field
specualted that the charge involves the
banking industry where Jews and
Catholics are underrepresented at the
highest levels.
Kenneth Patton, the OFCC’s chief of
regulations and procedures, said he has
found that Catholics and Jews are
“dead-ended” and “frozen” in fairly
low middle-management positions in
many industries.
He said new proposed guidelines,
which will be published about June 1,
will require employers to recruit in
schools run by religious minorities, to
advertise for jobs in the religious media
and to approach local church officials
for advice on how to reach their people.
Patton told NC News Service in an
interview that “executive suite
discrimination” is more blatant against
Jews but is also widespread against
Catholics.
Asked if it would be worthwhile for
an advertising salesman on a Catholic
diocesan paper in an area with large
government contractors to try to sell
those contractors want ads, Patton said,
“They should be coming to you.”
If such companies do not make that
kind of effort after the guidelines are
School Aid Dialogue Subject
NEW YORK (NC) - Federal aid to
non-public education was discussed at
the second meeting of a study group
created by the Anti-Defamation League
of B’nai B’rith and the National
Conference of Catholic Bishops-U.S.
Catholic Conference to
Catholic-Jewish dialogue.
further
Co-chairmen Eugene Fisher, USCC
secretary for Catholic-Jewish relations,
and Rabbi Leon Klenicki, director of
“Parents Build Foundation
99
ROME (NC) -- Pope John Paul II told
p members of a Roman parish that
society, the nation and the church are
built on the foundations laid by parents.
On April 1, the pope made another of
his Sunday visits to a Roman parish.
This visit was to San Bonaventura a
Torre Spaccata, a lower-middle-class
section of southeastern Rome.
The pope told the parishioners that
I they were seeing in the parish a support
* for their conscience and for their
families.
“You .want them to be stable, not to
dissolve. You want them to be living
hearths of love, near which man can
warm himself every day,” he said.
“Persevering in the sacramental
marriage bond, you want to transmit
life to your children and together with
life human and Christian education.
Each of you, dear parents, is profoundly
aware of this great responsibility that is
bound to the dignity of father and
mother. You know that your own
salvation and the salvation of your
children depends on it,” he said.
The pope said he knew parents asked
themselves what kind of father or
mother they are. He said he rejoiced
with them in the progress their children
made in school and in the development
of their consciences.
“You want them to become truly
‘men,’” he said. “And this, in great
measure, depends on what they acquire
in the paternal home. In this work, no
one can take your place. Society, the
nation, the church are built on the
foundation that you lay.”
THE CHURCH:
IN THE WORLD
I
DISCUSSING THE ROSARY - Pope John Paul II and Father Patrick
Peyton meet in the papal chambers recently where Father Peyton told the
pope of his hopes for the future of the Family Rosary Crusade. Father
Peyton founded the crusade 36 years ago in Albany, N. Y. (NC Photo)
the Department of Jewish-Catholic
Relations of the ADL, reported on the
meeting.
The group concluded, they said, that
at least two more meetings were needed
to continue the discussion of the legal
and constitutional issues of federal aid
to non-public schools, and to explore
Jewish perceptions, and possible
misperceptions, of what goes on in
Catholic education.
Msgr. Wilfrid H. Paradis, USCC
secretary of education, said that “the
Catholic school attempts to transmit
values. .. not only during the official
religion classes but also... in the
teaching of other subjects.”
Eleanor Blumenberg, director of the
ADL Department of Education, said
that in many areas of the Jewish
community there is a deep-held fear of
the particularism in Catholic moral
education which they feel teaches that
those who are not Catholics have less
valid value systems and beliefs.
ADL members expressed the league’s
position on separation of church and
state.
Jeff Sinensky, director of its Law
Department, said, “While we strongly
support the independence and integrity
of both the public funds and private
school systems, we are opposed to any
public education programs which may
result in the exposure of public school
students to sectarian influence or to
governmental financial aid programs
which violate the principle of separation
of church and state.”
He said the Anti-Defamation League
is committed to the values of religion
and that it is equally committed to “the
principle of separation of church and
state as the means whereby the religious
freedom of all Americans is
safeguarded.”
George E. Reed, USCC acting general
counsel, presented the USCC’s position
on aid to non-public schools, tracing the
development of attitudes toward
church-state separation and the First
Amendment.
He said that during the 19th century
the Nativist and Know Nothing
movements “perverted the pristine
concept of relationship between church
and state resulting in a series of laws
which precluded any direct or indirect
assistance to church-related schools,
specifically Catholic schools.”
Reed said this concept was
incorporated in many state
constitutions of the time and has
substantially conditioned the
church-state relationship.
“It is time now for the Supreme
Court to return to the basic thrust of
the First Amendment and to re-examine
issues involving aid to children in
parochial schpols on the basis of
religious liberty as distinguished from
Nativist aberration,” Reed said.
published, he said, church groups should
use the guidelines to pressure the
companies to do more recruiting.
Studies indicate that while Catholics
are above the national average in
education and income, they are
underrepresented in the board rooms of
big businesses, banks and law firms and
on the faculties of major universities,
Michael Schwartz of the Catholic
League for Religious and Civil Rights, a
Milwaukee-based organization, told the
commission.
“It seems the more prestigious the
position, the more difficult it is for a
Catholic to attain it,” he said.
Schwartz used a number of statistics
in making his point, noting, for
example, a study by the Massachusetts
Banking Commission which found that
while 75 percent of the population in
Boston was Catholic, only six percent of
bank directors in the city were Catholic.
But he agreed with spokesmen for
Jewish groups at the consultation that
the solution to religious discrimination
does not lie in quotas.
“My use of those statistics is not so
much to say that Catholics (who make
up about 25 percent of the population)
ought to occupy 25 percent of every job
category in the country,” he said.
“It was, rather, to indicate that they
are so far out of line in very widespread
categories that it’s apparent that there is
a problem. If there were no such thing
as anti-Catholic discrimination, I don’t
know what the percentages would be,
but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be
what they are,” he said.
Schwartz said he did not claim that
anti-Catholicism was the most serious or
most widespread form of discrimination
in America.
But, he said, “some people are being
denied jobs or promotions because of
their religious beliefs, and if that
happens to just one person, it is to the
shame of our nation’s tolerance of
freedom of conscience.”
Representatives of six state human
rights commissions told the consultation
that they received few religious
discrimination cases. An analysis of the
figures they presented shows an average
of about 330 cases a year, about two
percent of the total, in the six states,
with more than half coming in New
York State.
But the state officials said they
believed religious discrimination was
underraported.
Homer Floyd, executive director of
the Pennsylvania Human Relations
Commission, cited several reasons he
believes such cases are underreported.
First, he said, there is little
knowledge of the law.
Second, he said, there is little
organization around the issue. Except
for Jewish groups, he said, religious
groups in Pennsylvania do not organize
to fight discrimination against their own
people, although most have offices to
fight other forms of discrimination.
Third, Floyd said, people are
reluctant to call attention to their
religious beliefs in the workplace.
PRO-LIFE PRAYERS - More than 1,000 kneel in
prayer during a demonstration at an abortion clinic
which had been open only a week in Hagerstown, Md.
Leaders of the prayer vigil said they believe God won't
allow the clinic to continue operating. (NC Photo)
Abortion Arguments Called “Asinine
55
WASHINGTON (NC) - Rep. Robert
K. Dornan (R-Calif.), who sponsored
last year’s prohibition of military
abortion funding, termed “asinine” the
arguments offered by Navy and Air
Force officers who asked a Senate
subcommittee to restore the cuts.
Dornan’s reply followed testimony
by Air Force Lt. Gen. Paul W. Myers
and Navy Vice Adm. Willard P.
Arentzen, the surgeons general of their
services, who said the abortion cutoff
passed last year could undermine
defense readiness.
Myers called abortions “an earned
military benefit,” and said armed forces
personnel “view (the Dornan
amendment) as a health entitlement
loss,” as he testified before the Senate
armed services manpower subcommittee
March 20.
In the Air Force, said Myers,
tax-funded abortions were down from
2,000 per year to fewer than 200 under
the Dornan restriction.
Both officers criticized the law for
refusing to pay for an abortion when
tests show the child might have a
genetic disease.
Myers called Down’s syndrome
(mongolism) and anencephaly (absence
of a brain) “indications for abortion
(which) are recognized by medical
authorities.”
“The restrictive language in the law
does not allow for Air Force personnel
to get appropriate care in such cases,”
he said.
While the long-term effects of the
restriction cannot be measured now,
said Myers, if there is an increase in
child-bearing in the military, “it will
have an adverse effect on the
non-effectiveness rate.” Furthermore,
“There will be an increased loss of duty
time due to the pregnancy in addition
to the time lost while on convalescent
leave.”
Dornan said March 29 the argument
that readiness would be affected by the
cutoff was “fraudulent and
intellectually inane.” He said it was first
advanced in congressional debate over
the cutoff last August by Rep. Elizabeth
Holtzman (D-N.Y.).
He will ask Myers and Arentzen to
meet with him and other pro-life
members of Congress, and he will also
contact President Carter to ask whether
Carter approves of his surgeon generals’
stance, Dornan promised.
While both surgeons general opposed
the restrictions on tax-paid abortions,
the Pentagon reportedly said it would
not seek a change in the law. But
Dornan called that report “a lie.”
He produced a copy of the fiscal
1980 budget, which in an explanatory
note says, “Brackets enclose material
that is proposed for omission.” On page
345, brackets enclose the Dornan
amendment.
The Office of Management and
Budget reported that it had received the
budget, authorizations for which will be
voted on in late April or May, with the
brackets around the restriction.
In answer to a question from NC
News Service, a source at the Defense
Department said, “Well, it’s the
president’s budget, but, yes, that (the
request that the Dornan amendment be
deleted) originated with the Department
of Defense.”
Violence Is Not Answer To Social Problems, Pope Tells Students
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope John
Paul n has denounced violence as a
means of solving social problems and
rejected the Marxist contention that
belief in everlasting life distracts man
from concern about temporal reality.
In a homily at a Mass for over 10,000
university students in St. Peter’s Basilica
April 5, the pope also encouraged use of
the sacrament of reconciliation, or
penance. Those who charge that the
invitation of the church to penance
comes from a ‘repressive’ mentality are
lying,” he said.
The Italian word for Easter,
“Pasqua,” means.passage, the pope said.
“Human life is a passage. This life is
not a whole which is enclosed in a
definite way between the date of birth
and the date of death. It is open toward
ultimate completion in God,” he said.
“Each of us feels painfully the closing
of life, the limit that death places. Each
of us is in some way aware that man is
not completely contained in these
limits, and that he cannot die
definitively,” he added.
The pope said Christ accepted the
whole reality of human dying. “And
just because of that, he is the one who
brought about a fundamental revolution
in the way of understanding life. He
showed that life is a pasage, not only to
the limit of death, but to a new life.”
Christ’s followers “impress this
significance of life on all of temporal
reality,” the pope said.
“The followers of Marx” say “such a
concept of life distracts man from
temporal reality, and in a certain way
cancels it out,” the pope added.
“The truth is quite otherwise. Only
such a concept of life gives full
importance to all the problems of
temporal reality. It opens up the
possibility of their full positioning in
the existence of man,” he added.
“Such a concept of life does not
permit closing man in temporal things,
it does not permit subordinating him
completely to them. It is decisive for his
freedom,” said the pope.
Christ taught by his example that life
“is the great test of man,” the pope
said.
Students should examine their lives
and the personal projects they are
interested in developing, he added.
“Perhaps you still lack an exact vision
of your place in society, of the work for
which you are preparing through your
studies. Certainly this is a great
difficulty, but difficulties of this kind
cannot paralyze your initiatives,” he
said.
“They cannot give rise only to
aggression,” because aggression “will
not change life for the better,” the pope
said.
“There exists in the contemporary
world a great tension. In the last
analysis this is a tension over the
meaning of human life, over the
significance we can and must give to this
life if it is to be worthy of man, if it is
to be worth the trouble of being lived,”
he said.
“There exist also clear symptoms of
alienation from these dimensions. In
fact materialism in various forms, heir
of recent centuries, is capable of
restricting this meaning of life. But
materialism in no way forms the deepest
roots of either European or world
culture,” he added.
The pope urged the students to
prepare for Easter by the sacrament of
reconciliation.
“Sacramental confession does not
constitute a repression but a liberation.
It does not revive the sense of guilt but
cancels out guilt, dissolves the evil
committed and gives the grace of
pardon,” he said.