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PAGE 4—'The Georgia Bulletin, February 13,1975
Editorial
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Do We Have The Will?
There have been numerous stories
about the fact of a world-wide food
crisis threatening millions of lives with
the slow but effective death of
starvation. Statistics, sophisticated and
imposing, pile up and spill over from
slick paper journals and weekly news
magazines giving a horror picture of
thousands and thousands eating so
poorly that their physical and mental
development (and consequently that of
their generation) is being irreparably
damaged. There is an abundance of
testimony.
Yet there remains among us, like a
lingering virus, an unconvinced attitude
about the seriousness of what is upon us
and the necessary urgency of our
response. Waiting to be utterly
convinced by the statistical data is a
luxury for which we simply do not have
time. It is for us to recognize the
dimensions of this possible disaster not
in the anonymous, academic atmosphere
of statistics, nor in the upper reaches of
economic theorizing but right down here
on the ground in the real terms of real
people. Men, women, children - they are
real -- and they are dying, or will unless
something significant is done.
In our history as a nation we have, in
the face of such impending disasters,
fashioned an agency in our image and
likeness to deal with the difficulty as
quickly as possible. And that is fine as
far as it goes. But, the truth is even the
agencies say we cannot handle this one
at arms length; rather, we will simply
have to be more personally committed
to dealing with the crisis as if it were at
our door . . . for it is. Those who starve
to death today cannot be “other” to us
- they are brother and sister, similar sons
and daughters of the same Father we call
“Ours.” Their hunger is ours, too,
because we are their family even as they
are ours.
To put it simply, our greatest
challenge is to accept and embrace the
fact that we will just have to do with less
so that others suffer less. We will have to
sacrifice more so that others receive
more.
In this rich but painful process, we
will learn that such choices for the
believer are not optional, but essential,
that the pain accompanying them is not
punishment, but companionship, that
the consequences of them are not
destruction and death but liberation and
life. This situation moves us beyond
charity, where we consider giving from
our surplus, to justice, where we give
whether we have a surplus or not. It
impels us to be less concerned that we
have enough for tomorrow and more
concerned that the whole family have
enough for today. It calls us to that just
action which flows from a committed
love for all members of the family.
But then, that is the gospel story all
over again - the story of a people with
the will to forget themselves for the sake
of others, people with the will to live
beyond their own vested interests for the
good of others, people with the will to
make present and active in their own
lives the sacrificial values of a Man who
knew that the only way to enable others
to live fully was to die a little himself.
Do we have the will for that? Let us pray
that God grant it to us in abundance, for
that is what the times demand.
- (Rev.) Jerry E. Hardy)
-JUr .* 1 ■awH
TflMB
Role of Women in Renewal
y-.
Teresa Gernazian
“It may come as a surprise to some but the
fact is you won’t get to heaven by the way you
keep house.” This remark, made by Fr. Richard
Kieran to the ladies of the Northeast Deanery
on February 4, was clarified with his
explanation that a balance of priorities is
needed for any woman seeking spiritual growth.
The ladies from St. Patrick’s, Norcross, were
hostesses for the Second Quarterly
Luncheon-Meeting held at the Sturbridge
Apartment Clubhouse with forty in attendance.
Mary Jane Ollinger presided over the business
meeting.
He said a Christian family can only come
about when two Christ-centered people are at
the head. Wives should always support their
husbands as spiritual leaders and as Paul advises
in Ephesians: “ . . . regard their husbands as
they regard the Lord.”
Father spoke again of Mary - this time about
her role at the wedding feast of Cana. He said it
was she who noticed the need and then pointed
to Jesus. Following Mary’s example, we too
should notice the needs of the world and then
turn to Jesus for guidance in working for
solutions.
Fr. Kieran began his talk “The Role of
Women in Renewal,” with Luke’s passage on
the angel’s visit to Mary. He said that as God
waited for a woman’s “Yes” to begin His work
of salvation, so He waits for our “Yes.” Every
woman needs to carve out thirty minutes or so
daily, just to be with God.
He commended the women who had taken
an active part in the right to life movement and
stressed that never has the world needed
emphasis on family values as it does now. He
also pointed out that many other areas are
greatly in need of dedicated women who model
their lives after Mary.
The story of Martha and Mary was used as an
example of putting first things first. The family
always comes first after God and then each
woman must discover for herself how God
wants her to use her particular talents.
Mass was co-celebrated by Fr. Kieran and Fr.
Shawn Fleury, Pastor of St. Patrick’s. Fr.
Fleury ended the homily in words which set a
hopeful tone in the year of renewal: “With
Jesus and Mary, I think we’ll make it.”
Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
Most Rev. Thomas A. Donnellan - Publisher
Rev. Peter A. Dora — Editor
Michael Motes - Associate Editor
Marie Mulvenna - Associate Editor
Member of the Catholic Press Association
Telephone 881-9732
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i
Action
The Ford Administration still has not announced how much food aid it
intends to provide in the current crisis. The World Food Conference
indicated that there is a crucial 7.5 million ton grain gap between present aid
commitments and the amount needed to prevent impending mass starvation
before the next harvest.
All major religious groups in the United States are preparing to mount an
intensive letter-writing campaign to President Ford in early February to
persuade him to do something before millions die. Citizens are also being
encouraged to write to Congressmen.
ADDRESSES:
Senator (Nunn, Talmadge)
Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20025
The President
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20025
Representative
House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
More Action
1) Personal letters to Congressmen, Representatives, the President.
• In support of the Pro Life Amendment to the Constitution.
• In support of S13 which blocks increasing the cost of food stamps.
• In support of increasing the United States contribution to the world
food reserve for the starving.
2) Personal acceptance of the challenge from the American Bishops “to
fast 2 days each week.”
• This could be done either on 2 whole days.
• it could also be done by fasting from one major meal every day.
• in either case, dedicate the money saved from the by-passed meal to the
Catholic Relief Services or Bread for the World.
Catholic Relief Services
c/o Father Joseph A. Sanches
756 West Peachtree Street, NW
Atlanta, Georgia 30308
Bread for the World
602 East 9th Street
New York, New York 10009
3) Personal reduction of grain-fed meat at your family’s meals,
substitution of chicken for beef whenever possible.
4) Personal encouragement to those in your parish to support the FOOD
DROP NETWORK which depends on churches across the metro area to
collect canned goods on an on-going basis for distribution to two local
centers: The St. Vincent de Paul Center in downtown Atlanta, or The
Clothes Closet in Roswell.
r
N
V.
Lent:
A Time for Action
Rev. Noel Burtenshaw
You see the bodies and the gashed and
wounded suffering being brought into the field
hospital - on the seven o’clock news. They
come from some obscure battle front - that we
never see, to these towns in Cambodia with
exotic names. Names like Phinam Phem. There
are too many dead and too few boxes to cart
them away, too many wounded and too few
doctors, too many medical needs and too few
supplies. Their families wait for the inevitable:
death, total disability, total ruin.
They have been fighting, the commentator
tells us, for years and almost no one can
remember why it all began.
We look at all that, and wonder and think.
Are we going to have to go back over there and
help? Are the Communists beating the
non-Communists and are we going to have to
come to the aid of the non-Communists -
again? Or are we going to have to pay
more taxes to keep them in arms and
ammunition?
We are watching and thinking. What’s going
to happen if they’re beaten? Will the rest of
Asia fall too? We go on thinking. Why on earth
can’t all this stop, what can we do, what must
we do, what are we going to have to do? It all
goes through the mind as we watch the seven
o’clock news.
But we don’t ever think - that man there is
my brother. That man who has been blown
apart, or that man who has been burned like
wood, or that man whose legs are missing
somewhere. He is my brother. Jesus Christ has
told me something about him. He has told me
he is the Salt of the Earth - he is the Light of
the World.
I may be thinking about the number of tanks
he will have to get, or the billions it will cost to
rebuild his country. But first I should be
thinking - he is suffering and he is my brother.
He is the Salt of the Earth.
Our problem is a normal 20th century one.
We think in terms of doing and not in terms of
being. Look at the example of Christ. They
wanted him here and now to destroy Rome and
set up the Kingdom. He did nothing but he was
something to them. He was a Brother, suffering
and dying. Love is first. We are all too ready to
do - but not ready enough to be.
Our active achievements are fantastic. We
have won two wars for the free world and a
dozen other skirmishes. We are the richest
country in the world and almost every nation is
in our debt. We have done it all - we are a
shiney, envied country.
But while this has been achieved, look at the
losses; look at our failures. Look at the bread
lines and hunger lines at home. Look at the
racial divisions. And worst of all, look at the
unborn whose right even to be alive has been
taken away. While we were doing powerful
things, we forgot the flesh and blood angle, we
forgot the human connection, we forgot we all
fall under the endearing title of brother. You
are the Salt of the Earth. First things first.
And so we begin Lent. It is a time of penance
and all Christians are seriously bound to do
penance. But don’t forget to define that word
in your own mind before you go off half
cocked giving up things. It is simply denying
yourself for your brother. Not for some cause,
or some law or some written principle of
religion. You do it for your brother. So that
he’ll have some of yours.
The inflationary cost of food must stop, not
only because it will cost us more, but our
brothers on food stamps will get less and the
stamps will cost more. This must not happen to
him, your brother. So during Lent act, tell your
Representative, fast and abstain and most
important stop wasting food.
We do these things not because of inflation
or high costs or anything else. We do it because
“my brother suffers” and he is the Salt of the
Earth. We put ourselves out for him whatever
he is, wherever he is. We have ignored him
enough, forgotten him enough. It is time to
stop backing causes and time to start backing
him. Lent is the time.
t
Spirit
Of Poverty
Demanded
Rev. John Reedy, C.S.C.
y, ^
The Church in America has been subjected to
a corporate lesson in religious poverty. With our
current economy, that lesson will probably
become more painful in the months ahead.
Here I’m not talking about personal restraint
in the use of material goods - the matter of
priests refraining from wearing the most
expensive clothes, drinking the best Scotch,
driving luxury cars.
There is another kind of attachment, an
attachment to the institutions and projects of
the Church to which we have dedicated much
effort, from which we derive a sense of
accomplishment and self-importance.
For a number of years I worked as an
assistant to a priest who had spent a long
lifetime in the work of administering Church
institutions. In the closing years of his life, he
had the painful responsibility of presiding over
the dismantling of a number of those same
institutions which had grown out of his own
efforts and those of his companions.
One day, after a meeting which had been
very hard for him, he remarked sadly, “It looks
as though my administration will go down in
history as the one which wiped out half the
things this community built up during the past
century.”
A couple of years later, when I had to
preside over the death of the magazine I had
edited for almost twenty years, a publication
which had survived for over 100 years, I was
better able to appreciate the reality of his pain.
In the following months I did a lot of
thinking about that experience. I was not so
sure that the death of our publication had been
inevitable. I kept going back over decisions
which I had made - seriously and in good faith
- but always wondering what might have
happened if . . .
Finally, though, I came to the conclusion
that much of the hurt came from my own
vanity, the reluctance to admit that my abilities
were unable to pull the magazine out of its
difficulties. Also I recognized an “attachment”
to that publication which closely resembled
those things we were warned against in
seminary lectures on poverty.
Those lectures warned that all material things
should be seen simply as means to be used in
our fulfillment of God’s plan. They do not
belong to us. In themselves, they are not
important. Too much attachment to them can
blind us to the basic purposes and values of the
Christian life.
American Catholicism has a remarkable
history of generous support of all kinds of
institutions: parishes, schools, seminaries,
hospitals, works of service and devotion.
Any reasonable person has to be impressed
by the intense dedication on the part of the
Church administrators who planned these
institutions, and by the extraordinary support
of the people who contributed to them,
frequently from the inadequate wages of
immigrant laborers.
Such a heritage has to be taken seriously.
Anyone who casually tossed away that kind of
a corporate effort would have much to answer
for.
Yet, these are times of rapid changes in
attitudes, values and economic circumstances.
It was inevitable that many of these institutions
would collapse under new circumstances. With
the mounting pressures of inflation and
recession, it now seems likely that even more
will go under.
Such losses are sad, like the death of
someone we love. However, we should try to
keep them in perspective. The success of the
Church cannot be measured directly by the
magnitude of its institutional structures. Many
of the richest moments in the history of the
Church have come when it was stripped bare of
material support.
Certainly this does not mean that we should
hold these institutions in contempt, that we
should give up efforts to preserve those which
are clearly useful to the work of the Church.
However, we should recognize that we can
become attached to this wealth of institutions
just as we can become attached to the
satisfactions of a pleasant home in the suburbs.
If we hold ourselves open to the mystery of
God’s providence, we shall always recognize
that our dependence is on him, not on our
buildings and administrative abilities.
That is the perspective toward which the
Christian should strive. Such a view is that of
the gospel, even though it does not cushion the
Christian against pain when his own pet project
goes under.
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