Newspaper Page Text
The Southern Cross, Page 2
Hundreds mark third anniver
sary of Mother Teresa’s death
Calcutta (CNS)
H undreds of people paid their respects at
Mother Teresa’s tomb in Calcutta September
5, the third anniversary of her death. Nuns, priests
and visitors crowded the long room and packed
even the cement courtyard outside the tomb during
the September 5 religious services which began
with a 6:00 a.m. Mass, reported UCA News, an
Asian church news agency based in Thailand. The
Missionaries of Charity nuns organized prayer
services for the occasion that were to continue
until September 13. Visitors included elderly,
young, blind and lame people. Hindus, Muslims
and Christians prayed at the tomb for peace and
harmony, and read from their respective scriptures.
Vatican says Catholic
Christianity necessary
Vatican City (CNS)
aking aim at the notion that “one religion is as
good as another,” a new Vatican document
emphasized the “exclusive, universal and absolute”
value of Jesus Christ and said the Catholic Church
is necessary for salvation. While acknowledging
that non-Christians can be saved through a special
grace that comes from Christ, the document said the
church can never be considered merely as “one way
of salvation alongside those constituted by the other
religions.” And despite a certain level of commun
ion with other Christian churches, the “church of
Christ... continues to exist fully only in the Catholic
Church,” said the document, released at the Vatican
September 5. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said the
Vatican’s new document responded to the spread of
a new “ideology of dialogue” that attempts to
replace mission and conversion in the church with a
“false sense of religious tolerance.” Overemphasis
on interreligious collaboration has led Catholic the
ologians and faithful to downplay Christ and reject
the absolute necessity of the church’s dogma and
sacraments, Cardinal Ratzinger said.
Group places ad depicting fetus
on New York subways
New York (CNS)
he president of the American Life League said
only after threatening a court suit was the
organization able to get an ad placed in New York
subways for the month of September. “Please don’t
do it. She’s your baby,” says the ad, which shows
an eight-week fetus in the womb. Speaking at a
press conference in New York September 1, the
organization’s president, Judie Brown, said the ad
■ Head!ins Hopscotch
originated in a suggestion from a man in New
York who was disturbed by seeing Planned Parent
hood ads on the subways. He raised the $36,000
necessary to put the American Life League ad on
1,400 subway cars for one month, Brown said.
Pope sends condolences after
death of Peruvian Cardinal
Vatican City (CNS)
ope John Paul II offered his condolences to the
people of Peru mourning the death September
4 of Cardinal Augusto Vargas Alzamora of Lima.
The 77-year-old cardinal was known as a promoter
of dialogue within Latin America’s Catholic com
munity and in Peru’s violence-tom society. Cardi
nal Vargas, who retired in January 1999 but contin
ued serving at a homeless shelter he founded in
Lima, died from complications of a stroke he suf
fered in May. In a September 5 telegram to the car
dinal’s successor, Archbishop Juan Luis Cipriani
Thome of Lima, Pope John Paul described Cardi
nal Vargas as “a diligent pastor” known for his
“self-sacrificing pastoral work and also for his
fidelity to Christ and to the successor of Peter.”
Gore notes reservations about
BILL TO LIMIT ASSISTED SUICIDE
Portland, OR (CNS)
ice President A1 Gore told reporters in Port
land that despite his personal aversion to
assisted suicide, he has reservations about a con
gressional bill that would thwart Oregon’s contro
versial Death with Dignity Act. “I am personally
opposed to physician-assisted suicide,” the
Democrats’ presidential nominee told reporters
who pursued him after a town-hall rally at Portland
State University August 30. “However, I don’t
want to see the criminalizing of doctors’ ability to
deal with severe pain.” Gore and mnning mate
Sen. Joseph Lieberman came to Oregon to talk
health care. Lieberman, a Democrat from
Connecticut, is a primary sponsor of the Pain
Relief Promotion Act, billed by some supporters as
a way of thwarting assisted suicide. The nation’s
Catholic bishops are among those supporters.
U.S. BISHOPS SHARED IRISH BISHOPS’
CONCERN ON READINGS
Washington (CNS)
he U.S. bishops shared concerns about certain
New Testament readings on women that the
Irish bishops recommended be omitted from their
new Lectionary, said a U.S. bishops’ official.
Father James Moroney, executive director of the
U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for the Liturgy, said in an
interview August 31: “This is an issue that the
Thursday, September 7, 2000
U.S. bishops addressed 10 years ago and one
which I am gratified to see the Irish bishops deal
ing with as well.” A document titled “Domestic
Violence,” issued August 27 by two Irish bishops’
commissions, denounced all forms of violence in
marriage and identified seven New Testament
readings they said should not be used at Mass
because they give “an undesirably negative im
pression regarding women.”
Retired Bishop Federal of Salt
Lake City dies at 90
Salt Lake City (CNS)
ishop Joseph Lennox Federal, retired bishop
of Salt Lake City, died August 31. He was 90.
Ordained to the priesthood December 8, 1934,
Bishop Federal served as priest and bishop under
six popes—Pius XI, Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul
VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II. He was one of
the last living U.S. prelates to have participated as
a bishop in all four sessions of the Second Vatican
Council. A Mass of Christian burial was scheduled
for September 6 at the Cathedral of the Madeleine
in Salt Lake City.
Parole denied for man jailed for
1980 church women’s murders
San Salvador (CNS)
1 Salvador’s Supreme Court rejected a petition
for parole for one of five former national guards
men convicted of the 1980 murders of four U.S.
church women. The request for parole for Carlos
Joaquin Contreras Palacios was “turned down
because it does not meet the requirements estab
lished by the law,” Supreme Court Judge Eduardo
Tenorio told reporters August 30. The decision was
unanimous, said Tenorio, based on the fact that
Contreras “had not been favorably rehabilitated.”
China reportedly arrests more
THAN 20 UNDERGROUND CATHOLICS
Stamford, CT (CNS)
he Chinese government arrested a priest, a sem
inarian, 20 nuns and two lay people of the
underground Catholic Church in Fujian province,
eastern China, reported the Cardinal Kung Foun
dation. The August 30 arrests occurred in Qibu
township, Luoyuan county, the foundation reported
September 1. The foundation, headquartered in
Stamford, said 38-year-old Father Liu Shao-Zhang
was beaten brutally, causing him to bleed severely
and vomit blood. Two of the nuns were released
one day later after parishioners paid “a large sum of
money” to the Public Security Bureau, it said. The
other people remained held and their whereabouts
were unknown, it added.
To Subscribe
1
1 Send this in to your parish,
! together with your check for
^ $15, made out to the parish.
1
I
For more information call
j The Southern Cross
1 (912) 238-2320
I
1
I
l Name
l
| Address
I
|
I Phone ( )
| Parish
\
(USPS 505 680) Deadline: All material for publication on Thursday
Publisher: must be received at the latest by noon
Most Rev. J. Kevin Boland, D.D. on the previous Friday.
Director of Communications:
Mrs. Barbara D. King
cpaji
Editor:
^fss ^ Rev. Douglas K. Clark, S.T.L.
Editorial and Business Office:
Catholic Pastoral Center
601 E. Liberty Street
Savannah, GA 31401-5196
(912) 238-2320 FAX: (912) 238-2339
E-mail: DCIark5735@aol.com
or Southerncross@ix.netcom.com
Internet Home Page:
http://www.dioceseofsavannah.org
POSTMASTER:
Send Change of Address to circulation office:
Chalker Publishing
Southern Cross Subscription Department
P. O. Box 948
Waynesboro, GA 30830
Subscription Price: $15 per year
Periodicals Postage Paid
at Waynesboro, GA 30830
Published weekly except the second and last weeks
in June, July and August and the last week in
December.
At 601 E. 6 th Street
Waynesboro, GA 30830