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PAGE 4 — The Georgia Bulletin, January 7, 1971
unmmt'tsf or ATlANTA SEBV1M! AEOBCIWS 71 NORTHKtO CIH MIF-S
The Georgia Bulletin
Most Rev. Thomas A. Donnellan D.D. J.C.D Publisher
BusInaM Office
756 West Peechtree, NW
Atlanta, Georgia 30306
Harry Murphy - Editor
Member of the Catholic.Press Association
and Subscriber to N.C.W.C. News Service
Telephone 875-5536
U.S.A. $5 00
Canada $5.00
Foreign $6.50
Second Class Postage Paid at Waynesboro, Ga. 30830
Send change of address to 756 West Peacntree, NW, Atlanta, Ga. 30308
Published weekly except the second and last weeks
in June, July and August and the last week in December.
At 202 E. Sixth St., Waynesboro, Ga. 30830
The opinions contained in these editorial columns are
the free expressions of free editors in a free Catholic press.
Loving The Deformed
THE DETROIT NEWS began a series
two years ago which throws a lot of cold
water on the pro-abortionist theory that
women should be allowed to kill unborn
babies who have the slightest chance of
being deformed, because no one wants
ugly children.
The newspaper’s ad in Editor
Publisher tells the story:
“On the one hand there were the
children - motherless and
fatherless . . .many defective in body or
mind or both . . .all starved for love,
literally dying for want of love.
“On the other hand there were the
couples - hearts overfull with love and
longing.
“But between the two there was no
bridge.
“Until in August, 1968, when THE
DETROIT NEWS began its Sunday
series, ‘A Child Is Waiting.’
“The News described and pictured
children for whom agencies despaired of
finding homes.
“Then nine-month-old Mark, born
with a cleft palate and without feet, was
adopted by a childless couple who adore
him and hope to adopt three more.
“Fifteen families reaches out to
20-month-old Tommy, biracial and six
months retarded, two weeks after he was
introduced.
“And each new child presented by
The News continues to bring out a warm
and incredibly large response.
“Of the 69 children which The News
introduced to its readers in the first year
of the series, 53 have been adopted. And
agencies credit The News with creating
an atmosphere which has led to the
adoption of other hard-to-place children.
“Applications have come from all
over Michigan as well as from several
nearby states.
“In Michigan (let the cynics note)
thousands of men and women are ready
to open up their homes and arms and
hearts when The News tells them - ‘A
Child Is Waiting.’”
And citizens in other areas of this
country are just as anxious to adopt
children who may be unwanted by their
parents.
This is the reason that the children
should be given the opportunity to be
born - they have this right - in spite of
the mother’s wishes.
But if she agrees to suffer through the
pain of childbirth, knowing she probably
will not want to keep the baby, the
public must be willing to help her and
the baby after the birth.
If she needs money to help raise the
child, she should receive it.
If she wants to put the baby up for
adoption, this should be arranged. The
child will fare better under foster parents
who love him, than under natural ones
who resent the tot.
There is still plenty of love left in this
old world, just waiting for an
opportunity to surface.
There are millions wanting a baby to
love, and millions of infants wanting to
be loved.
The Church and others should
concentrate on getting them together.
LETS TRY ONCE MORE!
Tracts For The Times
BY REV. MARVIN R. O’CONNELL
Janus was the Roman god of gates and
doorways. He was always depicted with two
faces looking in opposite directions, because
presumably he took under his protection both
those who entered and those who left. Our
month of January is named after him, and
fittingly, too, since the calendar’s first month
also has, so to speak, a double set of eyes, one
gazing nostalgically over the year just past and
the other peering hopefully into the future.
@ At all times and in all cultures
the coming of a new year has
meant, somehow, a new chance, an
opportunity to start again. It
provides a moment for reflection
and an occasion for sturdy resolve.
Human nature being what it is,
however, new year’s resolutions are
more easily made for others than
for oneself. Ail the world is mad but me and
thee and sometimes I wonder about thee. If
only everyone else would shape up, if only
everyone else would start the new year with a
great burst of reform, then I could live in
reasonable contentment. To show you how
easy it is to make resolutions for other people, I
offer the following sample.
Fr. Andrew Greeley. “I will stop fretting in
public print at being called a liberal or a
conservative; labels don’t mean all that much.”
William F. Buckley, Jr. “I will not screw my
face and hiss when I am introduced as Senator
James Buckley’s kid brother.”
Fr. Daniel Berrigan. “I will write a poem this
year called “The Ballad of Danbury Gaol”-and
nothing else.”
The National Association of Laymen. “We
will submit a record of our individual and
collective financial dealings over the last ten
years to our respective chanceries.”
The editors of the National Catholic Reporter.
“We will not get annoyed this year over the fact
that for nine people out of ten NCR means the
National Cash Register Company.”
Howard Hughes. “I will give the state of
Nevada back to the Indians or to Frank
Sinatra.”
Senator J. William Fulbright. “I shall
continue to fight for the civil rights of Arkansas
Negroes as I have in the past, that is, in the
deliberations of the senate Foreign Relations
Committee.”
Cardinal Tisserant. “I will admit to my age and
act it.”
Maria Callas. Ditto.
The younger generation. “We will stop being
con temp tous of middle class values until we are
prepared to do without middle class comfort
and conveniences.”
The middle aged generation. “We will stop
equating long hair and tight blue jeans with
hedonism, sloth and homosexuality.”
The older generation. “We will stop talking
about how tough we had it during the
depression.”
But alas this will never do. I could expand the
above list many times over and still not erase
from my mind the memory of December 31,
1969, when I sat at the very desk I am sitting at
now and carefully wrote down the items about
my own conduct that needed attention. The
catalogue was of considerable size, and now as I
look at the sheet of paper on which it was
written I see only one hopeful sign: to think of
resolutions this new year will demand no
particular ingenuity. All 1 need do is say, “Once
more, let’s try once more.” Will you, in the
name of double visaged Janus, join me?
“People’s Republic”
INHERIT THE PLANET
It Seems To Me
Joseph Breijr
There can hardly be
anybody more in need of our
love and understanding than
the unhappy women who
write letters to newspapers
and magazines, criticizing
other women for being the
mothers of many
children—accusing them of
contributing to the so called
p opulation
explosion, of
polluting the
earth, and ail
that sort of
bilge.
What
motivates such
cattiness, one
can only guess. Maybe the
complaining women cannot
have , children, and are
subconsciously eaten with
envy of those who can.
Maybe they have lost
children, and were so terribly
hurt as to become
embittered.
Maybe there were reared
by neurotic mothers who
plied them with harrowing
complaints about what they
endured to give them birth,
and thus filled them with
obsessive fear of childbirth.
Maybe they are women
who had the sad misfortune
of marrying the kind of
mean, self-centered,
immature men whom they
would rather not make
fathers. Or maybe these
women were spoiled in
childhood by foolish parents,
and grew up incapable of the
womanly love and generosity
which leads to the soaring
happiness and fulfillment of
motherhood.
Possibly, when all is said
and done, this is the kind of
woman of whom one is
forced, unhappily, to say that
children are lucky not to have
for mothers. At any rate, it is
all a terrible pity. In the later
years of their lives, such
women will be the loneliest
creatures under the sun.
This is tragic not only in
itself, but also because the
blame does not rest chiefly
on these women. Rather it
belongs to the professional
population alarmists and the
abortion promoters with their
crazy anti-life propaganda,
and to the superficial minds
in the press radio, TV and
movies who swallow the
propaganda whole and
promulgate it everywhere,
day in and day out.
We in the United States
are not overpopulated, but
underpopulated. Our trouble
stems not from our numbers,
but from economic,
industrial, commercial and
social errors causing us to
crowd into small areas,
leaving most of our space
nearly unoccupied. The errors
can be corrected—but not
unless we attack the errors
rather than attacking people
for daring to exist.
If I may be permitted a
personal note, I am not in the
least afraid, nor can any
propaganda make me afraid,
of inheriting the earth. My
wife and I are happy in many
ways, but in no way happier
than in being, at the moment,
grandparents of 13 — which
simply means that we are
filled with 13 new loves, 13
new joys. And these are the
joys and loves that will
endure forever. Anybody
who tries to, spook us into
cancelling mankind’s
tomorrows is wasting time.
OUR PARISH
DESK CLEARING
The
Y ardstick
By
Msgr. George G. Higgins
Director, Division of Urban Life, U.S.C.C.
I should like - by way of clearing my desk
for the new year - to comment briefly on three
miscellaneous and somewhat disparate items
instead of pontificating, as usual, on a single
subject.
1) In the Dec. 11 issue of Commonweal,
Managing Editor John Deedy reported, in his
regular column “News and Views,” that “to
some” the 1970 USCC Labor Day Statement
and a recent newsletter of the USCC Task
Force - both of which dealt with the so-called
ethnic problem - “read like a shucking off of
the guilt of racism from those most actively
racist to an abstract ‘they’ and the rich.”
I read this to mean that Mr. Deedy was
agreeing with - and not merely quoting - what
certain liberal critics have been saying about the
above-mentioned US(J(J statements, and for this
I took him to task rather severely.
I have since learned, however, that I
misinterpreted and thus misrepresented Mr.
Deedy’s personal point of view with regard to
the so-called ethnic problem. He has informed
me by letter - more in sorrow than in anger -
that he does not hold the opinion I attributed
to him. He says he “was merely reporting an
opinion which exists in sufficiently wide and
responsible circles to merit reporting.” His own
opinion with regard to the USCC statements
referred to above is the opinion of the Oct. 2
Commonweal editorial cited in my own column
of Dec. 14. As a matter of fact, he happens to
have written that editorial.
I apologize sincerely to Mr. Deedy for this
unfortunate misunderstanding on my part. May
I also take advantage of this opportunity to
wish him and his colleagues on the staff of
Commonweal a Happy NEW YEAR.
2) Ralph de Toledano, a Washington-based
author and journalist, recently dashed off a
nationally syndicated column on Cesar Chavez,
Director of the United Farm Workers
Organizing Committee, which, in my judgment,
deserves to be awarded first prize as the worst
thing written about Chavez during the year
1970. Mr. de Toledano - who, as an
experienced journalist, ought to know better -
shows a reckless disregard for verifiable facts.
He says, for example, that “according to some
with first-hand knowledge” Chavez’ two
extended fasts “left him with singularly
unchanged avoirdupois” - a snide way of
suggesting that Chavez was faking it or conning
the public for publicity purposes and, in fact,
really wasn’t fasting at all. That’s utter
nonsense - period.
Mr. de Toledano also says that “if there were
at any time more than 500 bona fide pickers
involved (in the California grape dispute), the
California press failed to find any efidence of it.”
Suffice it to say that, if this was actually the
case, the California press wasn’t looking very
hard. I might add that there is no such
conglomerate as “the California press.” There
are good, bad and indifferent papers - and
good, bad and indifferent labor reporters - ip
California as well as in every other State in the
Union. Some of the good reporters are very
good indeed, notably, for example, Harry
Bernstein of the Los Angeles Times, Eric Brazil
and Helen Manning of the Salinas Californian,
and Ron Taylor from the McClatchy chain of
papers.
Thirdly, Mr. de Toledano says that Chavez
offered the grape growers “what is in many
ways a ‘sweetheart’ contract....” With
apologies to Mr. de Toledano, I must report
that I laughed out loud when I read this
remarkable statement, knowing, as I do, on the
basis of first-hand experience, how difficult it
was for the parties to hammer out the terms of
the collective bargaining agreements which
eventually settled the grape dispute and the
four or five contracts which have thus far been
negotiated in the case of the lettuce dispute.
Sweetheart contracts? Bladerdash.
3) The Dec. 7 issue of The National Observer
- a weekly newspaper published by the same
company that puts out the Wail Street Journal
- severely criticized Pope Paul VI for having
told a group of poverty stricken slum-dwellers
in Manila that “a man’s life does not consist in
the abundance of his possessions.” The
Observer read this to mean that the Pope was
telling his Manila audience that “human activity
can be judged on an either-or basis - either one
works to improve the lot of man on earth, or
one plays down earthly misery and strives only
for the joys of the next world.”
The fact is that the Pope neither said nor
implied anything of the kind. It is true, of
course, that he reminded his listeners in Manila
that they “were created for a higher good, for a
kingdom of heaven.” He also strongly
emphasized, however, that the Church must be
concerned with the material as well as the
spiritual welfare of all of God’s children and
especially those who are poor and
disadvantaged.
It would appear that the Observer’s editorial
writer didn’t bother to read the Pope’s Manila
speech in context but relied instead on a
garbled and distorted news summary of its
contents. This kind of sloppy reporting is
harmful to the reputation of the press - and
this at a time when the press, like almost every
other institution in the United States, is
suffering from a very serious credibility gap.
The Observer could help to close this gapUby
correcting the record in the case of the Pope’s
Manila speech.
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