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Thursday, October 5, 2000 The Southern Cross, Page 3 Diocesan treasure? What a Baxley farmer found in his field Rita H. DeLorme "n late March 1978, residents _of the small town of Baxley, Georgia, had something to talk about. James Folsom, manag er of the frozen food depart ment at their local Piggly Wiggly Store, had come across something strange while plowing his 50-acre farm. The object Mr. Folsom’s roving plow had encountered in a pre viously untilled portion of his acreage was a metal cask, or cylinder, which had evidently lain buried there for years. What ties Mr. Folsom’s find to the Diocese of Savannah was the nature of that cylinder. In his March 30, 1978, letter to Sister M. Michael Joseph, RSM, who was then diocesan archivist, reporter Dean Wohlgemuth, who had written about the discovery in his newspaper, described the mysterious object as a “tabernacle about 30 inches high, and about 12 or 14 inches in diameter.” Wohlgemuth went on to say that “the door is of cast bronze and on it are the letters IHS with a cross through the center of the H. Above the letters is a cluster of grapes, with the grapevine extending down each side of the door. At the bot tom is a floral design of some type, perhaps the center of what I thought was floral is a torch; I can’t be certain. On the base rim, on each side of the door, was a small flower held on with a single screw. The flowers each had four petals.” According to the reporter, the door of the object slid into its double wall. It had been locked when found. When it was carefully opened, its contents were revealed: two pieces of cloth, both stained clay colored. One cloth appeared to be silk; the other, linen. Bureau Chief of the Florida Times-Union at the time, Dean Wohlgemuth interviewed Father Patrick McCarthy, then pastor of Saint Joseph’s Church in Waycross, and studied tabernacles at Saint Joseph’s which “appeared to be much, much lighter in weight, and were welded, or bronzed together. The one Folsom has was put together only with screws, with no welding.” The reporter stated in his letter to James Folsom and tabernacle the Savannah archivist that he really hoped the tab ernacle was very old, but that because it had a pin and tumbler lock (invented c. 1860s), it probably was not ancient. In her own meticulous notes, Sister Michael Joseph recorded an earlier telephone call from Wohlgemuth. The archivist stated that the taberna cle had been found in a field 4 or 5 miles from Baxley. She referred to three newspaper articles the reporter had sent her and said she had respond ed to Wohlgemuth’s request for information on Spanish martyrs in the Baxley region. The Baxley Times-Union account written by Wohlgemuth supplies additional details concerning the mysterious tabernacle. It had been taken to a local locksmith who was unable to unlock it. “Finally, the cask was opened after an hour and a half of careful drilling.” The cloth mentioned earli er was folded “like a baby diaper, sort of like a pocket.” Folsom and a friend of his contacted the University of Georgia via a relative of the friend and were told by someone at the Archaeology De partment there that, given the description of the lock on the tabernacle, the piece was probably about a hundred or two hundred years old. Still evidently puzzled by the matter, Folsom said that “none of his neighbors who had lived in the area for many years could remember a church being located near there.” There is no further reference to the “treasure” found on Mr. Folsom’s wooded lot. Archival sources include only the three Baxley newspaper clippings, the letter from Dean Wohlgemuth, Sister Michael Joseph’s brief summary, and a glossy 8 x 10 photo (printed here) of James Folsom and the tabernacle. Today, attempts to turn up information on the episode meet with as much resistance as James Folsom’s plow did close to twenty years ago. Several of the principals involved in the story are no longer available to supply additional facts. Sister Michael Joseph is deceased. Father Patrick McCarthy has since returned to Ireland because of ill health. James Folsom, according to a volunteer at the Heritage Center near Baxley, no longer lives in the area. Neither the library nor the local news papers in Baxley have any information other than the few articles printed at the time the tabernacle was unearthed. Dean Wohlgemuth, now retired, remembers the tabernacle incident, but does not recall turning up any additional information on the matter. He does not know why he didn’t follow up on the story and he assumes he was just too busy to do so at the time. Somewhere out there, perhaps in the small town of Baxley located ninety miles from Savannah, lurks an explanation of the incident which caused so much excitement in 1978. The contact at the Heritage Center, after some thought, intimated that she had heard of “several tombstones” that were also found on the Folsom property at some time in the past. The “Baxley Story” contains a good many “what-if’s”: What if the tabernacle had been hid den by missionaries fleeing persecution? What if the tabernacle had been Civil War-era plunder gathered by Sherman’s soldiers or hidden from them by a desperate priest? What if the grime- encased tabernacle had housed Eucharistic bread hundreds of years ago? There is another question: “Whatever became of the tabernacle dug up in James Folsom’s field in 1978?” RU-486 (Continued from page I) was based on “the FDA’s careful evaluation of the scientific evidence related to the safe and effective use of this drug.” “The FDA’s review and approval of this drug has adhered strictly to our legal mandate and mission as a science-based public health regula tory agency,” she added. Danco Laboratories in New York was expect ed to have the drug on the market in about a month. It would be sold directly to doctors and not through pharmacies. The National Abortion Federation, which accredits abortion providers, says it has 240 member clinics ready to offer the abortion drug, which was expected to cost about the same as a surgical abortion. Vicki Saporta, executive director of the National Abortion Federation, said the FDA approval marked “a milestone in the history of abortion in America.” But Joseph M. Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League, called September 28 “a black day in the history of the FDA and women’s health.” RU-486 “is a deadly poison to a tiny, defense less unborn baby,” he said, “and it can be lethal to the child’s mother as well.” J. La Verne Redden, president of the National Council of Catholic Women, said RU-486 “puts women’s health at risk and destroys the lives of innocent children.” “We are concerned that women who use RU- 486 may be unable to become pregnant in the future and that the long-term effects of the drug have yet to be determined,” she said. “We grieve for the unborn whose mothers’ 'right to choose’ has left them no choice.” The FDA placed some restrictions on use of mifepristone, requiring doctors who use the drug to be trained in surgical abortions or to have plans in advance to provide such care through others. Rita H. DeLorme is a volunteer in the Diocesan Archives. » Pope (Continued from page I) same ecumenical passion that runs through my encyclical, Ut Unum Sint (‘That All May Be One’),” he said. “It is my hope that this declaration, which I feel strongly about, after so many mistaken interpreta tions, can end up performing its function of clari fying and at the same time of opening up” dia logue, he said. The pope’s unusual public defense of a Vatican document came after verbal and written criticism by several groups and individuals involved in the various dialogues conducted by the Vatican. The document prompted two rabbis in Rome to cancel their participation in a Christian-Jewish symposium scheduled >r October 3, an embar rassment that forced the Vatican to cancel the event.