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i I k
ESSAY CITED — In the poster and Essay
Contest sponsored by the Georgia Ports
Authority, Paul Hollis, a seventh grade student
at St. Francis Xavier School, Brunswick,
received an honorable mention for his poster.
For his effort Paul received an AM/FM radio -
cassette player. Pictured with Paul Hollis
(reading from left to right) Bill Dawson, Ter
minal Manager; Paul; John Powers, Director
of Trade Relations.
PAGE 9 — The Southern Cross, September 5, 1985
FR. JOHN LYONS bids farewell to the
parishioners of Holy Trinity, Augusta after six
years of service. His mother and father came
from Savannah to be present for a Reception
held in his honor.
Bishops Plan "Pastoral Response" On Women's Issues
BY MARY CLAIRE GART
CHICAGO (NC) — A committee of U.S. Catholic bishops
considering a pastoral letter on women heard diverse and
sometimes conflicting advice from different national
Catholic women’s organizations at a hearing in Chicago
Aug. 23-25.
Depending on who was speaking, the committee headed
by Bishop Joseph Imesch of Joliet, Ill., was told at various
times that the bishops should:
—Promote stronger family values.
—Lead the pro-life fight.
—Back the Equal Rights Amendment and equal pay for
equal work.
—Promote ordination of women.
—Teach clearly why it is impossible to ordain women.
—Help reconcile women alienated by male-dominated
church structures.
—Ignore such claims of alienation because they reflect a
bias of a small but vocal minority.
Sister Mariella Frye, staff coordinator for the committee,
said that the committee agreed at a meeting following the
hearings to issue a brief statement clarifying its plans.
The statement itself was not yet drawn up as of Aug. 27,
she said, but its basic thrust was that even if the committee
decides against writing a “pastoral letter,” it will make
some clear form of “pastoral response” to the many
pastoral issues being raised by women in national and
diocesan-level hearings.
“They’re not bound to a pastoral. If a better way can be
found, they might address it that way,” said Sister Frye, a
Missionary Helper of the Sacred Heart.
The hearing in Chicago drew representatives of groups as
diverse as National Marriage Encounter, the National
Right to Life Committee, Women for Faith and Family, the
Consortium Perfectae Caritatis, and the U.S. division of the
Grail.
“We’re just in the listening stage,” Sister Frye said dur
ing a break in the hearings, held in the O’Hare Hilton at
Chicago’s O’Hare airport. “A handful of dioceses have
Catholic-Jewish Ties Improve In L. America
BY PETER NARES
BOGOTA, Colombia (NC) — The Latin American
Jewish community “has a better understanding” of the
Catholic Church because of a new approach to inter
religious relations, according to a Colombian church
official.
“Errors regarding the Jewish people” are also be
ing corrected, said Father Guillermo Melguizo,
secretary general of the Colombian bishops’ con
ference.
Father Melguizo spoke at a four-day interfaith con
ference in Bogota designed to improve relations bet
ween Catholics and Jews in predominately Catholic
Latin America. Sixty bishops and rabbis attended the
August sessions, organized by the Latin American
bishops’ conference, the Latin American Jewish Con
gress and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.
Before the Second Vatican Council, Catholic-Jewish
relations tended to be strained, Father Melguizo said.
However, the situation has improved as a result of in
terfaith dialogue, he said.
Now, he said, “more unites us than divides us. We
ha ve a common patrimony which is the Bible and, more
specifically, the Old Testament.”
Father Melguizo said that as part of a new approach
to interfaith relations, rabbis in some countries teach
classes in Catholic schools, while priests meet regular
ly with Jewish groups.
Delegates at the meeting also discussed teaching
Judaism and Catholicism in schools, anti-Semitism,
Israel, and possible interfaith initiatives to alleviate
the plight of the poor and to further human rights.
Rabbis at the meeting commended recent Catholic
efforts to enhance relations with the approximately
10,000 Jews in Colombia, a country which is 95 per
cent Catholic.
“The Colombian people and state have given us the
opportunity to live and work here and to practice our
religion,” said Rabbi Alfredo Goldschmidt of Bogota.
1 ‘ Consequently, we are committed to work for the coun
try’s development.”
The rabbi said that “because the Colombian mentali
ty is clearly opposed to racial discrimination, there is
no anti-Semitism generally in Colombia.”
Thousands of Colombians, particularly in the An-
tioquia region, are descended from Jewish im
migrants who converted to Catholicism during the
Spanish colonial era to avoid persecution.
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already held consultations, but many dioceses are just
beginning to hold hearings this fall,” she said.
Her advice to women speaking at diocesan hearings, she
said, was that they should “just be open and honest and ex
press how they feel.”
At the national level, Bishop Imesch’s committee held a
preliminary hearing in Washington last March, at which it
asked Catholic women’s groups what general directions
they thought the pastoral should take.
For the Chicago hearing the committee asked speakers to
address three basic questions: what contributes to
alienating women in society and the church today, what
contributes to reconciling them, and what particular issues
should the bishops address.
Although the hearing itself was closed to the press, copies
of written testimony were made available to National
Catholic News Service. Sister Frye said the witnesses
generally followed their written testimony closely.
Helen Hull Hitchcock, wife of conservative Catholic
historian and columnist James Hitchcock and founder of
Women for Faith and Family, objected to the questions
about alienation and reconciliation raised by the commit
tee, saying that these “imply a state of oppression, or at
least exclusion,” which “is simply untrue.”
The idea that women as a group are alienated from the
church or from the rest of society “reflects the bias of a
vocal, disaffected minority,” she said.
She presented the committee with a computer list of near
ly 17,000 names of women who have signed her organiza
tion’s “Affirmation for Catholic Women” and said that
more than 3,000 other signatures had come in but were not
in the computer list yet. The declaration affirms “distinct
roles for men and women” and backs church teaching and
discipline on issues of marriage, family life and the role of
women in the church and in society.
Shrine Of Saint Jude
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Monday through Friday between
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Mass is celebrated every day of
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Saint Peter’s Catholic Church
190 Adams Avenue
Memphis, Tennessee 38103