Newspaper Page Text
Gejbrgia
Vol. 14 No. 13
Thursday, March 25, 1976
$5 Per Year.
‘SOMETHING WRONG'
Economic Woes Examined
ST. PATRICK’S DAY MASS - Archbishop
Donnellan was joined last week by a large congregation
for the annual St. Patrick’s Mass at Sacred Heart parish
in Atlanta. Nearly 25 priests concelebrated the Mass
with the archbishop. After the Mass members of the
Hibernian Benevolent Society participated in the
Atlanta parade.
Teachers Study Peace And Justice
BY MARIE MULVENNA
“Justice is the root of love, without
which there may be paternalistic care,
but no true sharing of life.” Elementary
school teachers participating in a special
workshop program at St. Thomas More
last week heard Sister Marcella Donahue
address the group, relating the various
aspects needed to foster true peace and
justice.
Sister stated that an education to
peace and justice involved attitudes.
This, she said, was vital, adding that
peace and justice was not just another
subject area or a series of acts. It was.
she said, a way of acting that colors the
way persons relate to one another,
teacher to teacher, teacher to student.
“We believe that we will win the
struggle to make a world where people
can be brothers and sisters,” Sister
Marcella said. She stated that reflection
upon attitudes takes one into the world
of experience, noting “we are made up
of our experiences and our reflections
upon them.” She said people are too
often taught that facts are what count
adding that as educators they must
reject the verbatim regurgitation of
facts. Children must understand
concepts and reasons she said, as well as
questioning values.
Reflecting on the concept of justice,
Sister Marcella said that for most
educators, experiences felt to the words
peace and justice were born of fear. She
said people did not know what to do
about their convictions, they were
afraid of some of the people connected
with it. “Peace didn’t seem like such a
bad word until we added justice to it,”
Sister said.
She said the average Christian tends
to steer away from justice because some
feel past theologies avoided it as a
secular and political concept. Sister said
justice was not the Old Testament
morality of an eye for an eye but a
concept of the new law of faith and
love.
She said Jesus spoke of love when he
called upon people to feed the hungry,
help the widow and orphan etc. “It is
only now in our bruised and battered
times, looking back over 2,000 years of
atrocities we’ve committed in the name
of Jesus’ love that we begin to see
justice as the real root of love.” Sister
said that people, by and large, are afraid
and in dealing with fears take refuge in
programs. People seek a specific
curriculum to teach peace and justice,
something telling just what to do to
achieve it. “It’s content we need,” Sister
said, adding that “once again we
recognize our need for one another.”
She said it was always easier to muddle
through if someone was with you.
“We share our fears,” she said,
“learning that everybody has them. We
take a few steps, haltingly, holding on
to one another. We reflect on these
steps, seeing that they weren’t so bad,
finding ourselves ready to take a few
more. We plan, we even talk of
programs, knowing it’s an experience we
wish to communicate.”
Sister Marcella reviewed the history
of the peace and justice efforts in the
archdiocese, explaining that the group
had first been formed in May of 1975 to
get ideas on making the goal of
education to peace and justice more
flesh than word. She said all the goals
for classrooms, schools, school systems
had to come from within saying “any
EDUCATION ON PEACE and Justice was the topic of a special
workshop held last week for elementary teachers of the archdiocese.
Taking part in the afternoon session were: Sister Valentina Sheridan RSM,
Sister Kathleen Regan CSJ and Sister Denis Marie Murphy RSM.
Mother Teresa Honored
BOYS TOWN, Neb. (NC) - Mother Teresa of Calcutta, India, foundress of the
Missionaries of Charity, will receive Boys Town’s Father Flanagan Award for
Service to Youth, it was announced here.
Mother Teresa is being honored for her years of service to the poverty striken
in Calcutta.
education to peace and justice must
begin with each individual teacher.”
“Out of our need to share
convictions, to be challenged about
them, to be supported in them, to act
on them - out of need came this group.”
Sister said the group meets monthly to
share atmospheres they have helped
create, actions they have taken and
attitudes of which they have become
convinced.
Workshop participants spent time in
small groups reflecting educational
experiences that had been liberating for
them, what they as teachers could do to
create a just society. The participants
then spent time in grade leve; ’
workshops, exploring resources
returning to their smaller groups for
reflection on their shared experiences.
WASHINGTON (NC) - If an
economic system deprives people of the
right to work and be creative, “there’s
something wrong with the system” and
it should be changed, the top
administrative officer of the U.S.
Catholic Conference (USCC) told a
congressional conference on full
employment.
The USCC general secretary, Bishop
James Rausch, repeated the U.S.
Catholic bishops’ call for the guarantee
of a job for every American able and
willing to work, and emphasized the
human, social and moral costs of high
unemployment.
Describing these costs, another
conference speaker, Dr. Harvey
Brenner of Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore, said his studies had shown
that high unemployment was a cause of
higher mortality rates and shorter life
spans within every age group.
“Dollar remedies for
unemployment,” he said, “can actually
purchase length of life.”
High unemployment has been related
to increased suicide, homicide, crime,
mental illness and death by heart attack,
stroke and other diseases, as well as
increased maternal, fetal and infant
mortality, Brenner said.
... we face a basic choice
concerning national
economic and social policy.'
He said he was conducting a study for
the Joint Economic Committee of
Congress which would attempt to show
the relationship between a given level of
unemployment and a corresponding loss
of life from factors related to economic
stress.
Brenner and Bishop Rausch joined
other speakers, including Vice President
Nelson Rockefeller, at a conference to
mark the 30th anniversary of the
Employment Act of 1946. That act
called for the federal government to
follow policies to guarantee
“maximum” employment.
The conference was sponsored by the
Joint Economic Committee whose
chairman, Sen. Hubert Humphrey
(D-Minn.), was a major drafter of the
1946 act and is the major Senate
sponsor of a new bill to improve the
original act.
Bishop Rausch repeated USCC
support for the new bill. The Full
Employment and Balanced Growth Act
of 1976, presented in House
subcommittee testimony three days
earlier by Bishop Eugene Marino,
auxiliary of Washington.
The full employment act would
require the federal government to
develop policies and programs to bring
the unemployment rate down to three
percent within four years of the passage
of the bill.
Calling on national leadership to act
“boldly,” Bishop Rausch said: “As we
energe from the deepest recession since
the Depression of the thirties, we face a
basic choice concerning national
economic and social policy.
“We can harness the concern and
experience of our people to enact
fundamental reforms in our economic
life or we can return to old policies and
programs which offer little hope of
(Continued on page 7)
San Salvador Catholic Newspaper Bombed
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (NC)
- A dynamite charge exploded at the
Criterio printing plant, home of El
Salvador’s national Catholic newspaper
and other Church publications in one
wing of the archbishop’s house here.
B\J LUti rvs
Begin Vigil
WASHINGTON (NC) - Fifty members of Congress have begun a “vigil” on behalf
of Soviet Jewish families who remain separated by Soviet immigration policies. One
member of Congress will read a one-minute message on behalf of a different family at
noon each day the House is in session through July and perhaps beyond that as
additional family names become known.
Say Keep Sermons
CINCINNATI (NC) - Although over 40 percent of those responding to a survey on
preaching here rate the quality of sermons “fair” or “poor” a majority favor keeping
them in the Mass and have specific suggestions how they could be improve. Of the
1,221 respondents to a survey printed in the Jan. 16 issue of the Catholic Telegraph,
Cincinnati archdiocesan newspaper, 14.1 percent said the preaching they hear is
excellent; 21.7, very good; 20.8 good; 26.5, fair; and 16.7, poor.
Money For Guns
WASHINGTON (NC) - Contributions from people in the United States are being
used to buy guns and explosives in Northern Ireland and are “helping to kill or maim
Irish men and women of every religious persuasion,” Irish Prime Minister Liam
Cosgrave said here. U.S. contributors “are not helping, whatever they may think, to
bring an end to what they call the British presence in Ireland,” Cosgrave said in a
speech to a joint session of Congress on St. Patrick’s Day.
Prison Population Up
WASHINGTON (NC) - The federal prison population is at an all-time high and
within only 1,000 inmates of a level not projected by U.S. officials until 1986. There
are now 26,047 inmates in federal prisons, 22 percent above their capacity of 21,322.
The previous record was 25,355 in June, 1962.
First Woman Dean
NOTRE DAME, Ind. (NC) - Isabel Charles has been appointed dean of the College
of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame. She is the first woman to hold a
deanship in the 134-year history of the university.
Protests Snub
BRUSSELS (NC) -- An international Catholic film group has protested an apparent
snub given the organization by the Danish government, which has not acknowledged
the group’s objections to a planned pornographic movie on Jesus. At its annual
meeting here, the board of directors of the International Catholic Film Organization
voted to publicize that the Danish prime minister has not acknowledged its two letters
of protest.
Iowa Conscience Clause
DES MOINES, Iowa (NC) - The Iowa Senate has passed 40-5 a conscience clause
bill protecting the right of an individual or institution to refuse to perform or assist at
an abortion. Gov. Robert Ray has indicated he will sign the bill, making Iowa the 31st
state to adopt a conscience clause bill.
The blast destroyed much of the
printing plant and offices, and broke the
windows of the neighboring
archdiocesan seminary and the chancery
office.
“Such violence only worsens present
tensions. It must be condemned,” said
Archbishop Luis Chavez y Gonzalez of
San Salvador.
“What our people want above all is to
work and produce a climate of peace,
order and justice.”
The Criterio plant prints booklets and
other pastoral material on social justice
and Church renewal. It also prints the
Catholic weekly Orientacion, which is
edited by a team of laymen and priests.
Observers said the blast came from
the rightist groups opposing Church
attempts to improve conditions of the
poor in this nation of four million
people.
“The social reform pitch of Criterio’s
publications has angered many people in
positions of power,” said one member
of the team of editors. “Orientacion, for
instance, has been clamoring for human
rights against the abuse of campesinos
(peasants) by security forces and big
landholders.”
Archbishop Gonzalez said in his
statement that “the provocateurs of
violence” should lay down their
weapons, and that “those responsible
for keeping law and order should see to
it that our people can work in peace so
that they can overcome poverty and
reach a level of human dignity.”
The Criterio publishing enterprises
were founded by laymen, including
writer Carlos Siri, who for many years
was editor of Noticias Catolicas in
Washington, the Spanish edition of the
NC News Service.
Chancery officials said it will take
two weeks to replace damaged parts and
renew publication of Orientacion and
other periodicals.
Miraculous Cure Advances
OffllviP
Canonization Cause
GLASGOW, Scotland (NC) - John
Fagan, a Scotsman whose cure from
terminal cancer has been certified by
the Vatican as a miracle, was introduced
to the press here.
His cure is the third miracle
attributed to the intercession of Blessed
John Ogilvie, a 17th-century Scottish
martyr, and it paves the way for Blessed
John’s canonization in Rome, perhaps
later this year.
Archbishop Thomas J. Winning of
Glasgow announced the certification of
the miracle by the Vatican after 3,000
Scottish Catholics took part in the
annual Ogilvie Walk, beginning at
Glasgow Cross where Blessed John was
hanged on March 10, 1615.
Archbishop Winning emphasized that
the date for canonization ceremonies
was up to Pope Paul VI and his advisors,
but he said that the Scottish bishops
“have proposed Sunday, Oct. 17, as the
date.”
Fagan, a 61-year-old father of six and
former dockworker, sitting with his
wife, Mary, 57, told reporters of his
cure on March 6, 1967. He was in the
final stages of incurable stomach cancer,
and his doctor had told his wife that he
would probably die within the next two
days.
“I can’t explain why I should be
chosen for such an honor,” Fagan said.
“All I can suggest is that the time was
right and I was the fortunate one.”
The Scottish bishops’ press office
gave a detailed account of Fagan’s cure,
emphasizing the seriousness of his
condition at the time of the cure and
the stream of prayers by family and
neighbors to Blessed John that preceded
it.
Doctors discovered on May 5, 1965,
that Fagan had cancer in the stomach
that was also invading his colon. They
decided after exploratory surgery three
weeks later that the cancer was too far
advanced for them to remove it, and
they gave him six to 18 months to live.
His condition deteriorated through
1965 and 1966 until in December,
1966, Mrs. Fagan was told that her
husband was dying. In January, 1967,
fellow members of Fagan’s parish - the
only one in Scotland dedicated to
Blessed John Ogilvie - began to pray to
Blessed John for Fagan’s recovery.
Father John Fitzgibbon, the assistant
pastor, gave Mrs. Fagan a leaflet with a
prayer for Blessed John’s intercession,
which she began to pray every day, and
a medal of the Scottish martyr, which
she pinned to her husband’s clothing.
Father Fitzgibbon also began leading
the congregation at a local Mass every
Sunday in specific prayers that Fagan be
cured and that this would be the miracle
needed to bring the canonization cause
to its final stage.
On Saturday, March 4, the local
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