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Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
ST. MARY S HOSPITAL in Athens has announced
plans for a $2.3 million expansion and renovation
project. The most prominent feature in the new plan is
a three-story wing with a six-story elevator extending
from the existing building.
St. Mary’s Plans Expansion
St. Mary’s Hospital in Athens has
announced plans for expansion and
renovation comprising a $2.3 million
project.
The most prominent feature of St.
Mary’s new plan is a three-story wing
with a six-story elevator tower
extending from the front of the existing I
building. A 17-bed pediatric unit
consisting of private rooms will occupy
the top floor of the wing. Pediatrics will
be moved from its present third floor
iocation.
The second floor of the new wing will
be devoted primarily to a new radiology
department. Expansion of radiology has
been necessitated by growth in the
number of patients and by planned
acquisition of a Scanner and
Ultrasound. Other diagnostic equipment
for lengthy and complicated X-ray
procedures was recently installed in the
existing department. The remainder of
the wing will permit relocation of the
physical therapy department from its
ground floor location to the main floor.
Occupying the lower floor of the new
wing will be admissions, lobby, coffee
and gift shop, and offices for
administration, nursing, personnel,
business and other support functions of
the hospital.
In addition to this new wing,
substantial renovation will be conducted
on the main floor of the existing
hospital building.
The surgery suite will be expanded to
handle a larger surgical volume in a
more efficient and functional
arrangement. In addition, a surgical
intensive recovery area will be added at
the request of the surgeons on the
medical staff of St. Mary’s Hospital.
Additional renovations will permit
larger working areas for ancillary
departments such as laboratory,
respiratory therapy, and ambulance
service.
Special cardiac, trauma, and
observation rooms will be added to the
existing Emergency Room. A new
ambulance entrance separate from the
ambulatory entrance will be established.
Also on the main floor, special
examining rooms will be constructed for
medical staff use. Additional areas will
be provided for equipment to carry out
various diagnostic studies on an
outpatient basis requested by physicians
on the medical staff.
According to Ed Fechtel,
Administrator of St. Mary’s, the new
wing has been in the planning stages for
over 18 months, following a thorough
study by the hospital’s consultants.
Work on the final design began in
earnest in the Spring of 1976. Plans and
other data were submitted to the
Georgia Department of Human
Resources and related planning agencies
for their review. That review has now
been favorably completed and the
hospital has been notified of their
approval.
Administrator Fechtel explained that
the expansion program is needed as part
of the continuing effort to intensify the
level of patient care services in the
hospital, particularly in diagnostic and
treatment areas. He noted that the
arrival of additional specialists in the
hospital’s service area representing
neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery,
cardio-vascular surgery, cardiology,
nephrology, etc. increases the need for
modernization and expansion.
Hospital officials have indicated that
the project’s plans followed cost
containment principles, such as
increasing the capability of the hospital
to provide its services to ambulatory
patients as well as inpatients. Expansion
of the Emergency Room will enable the
hospital to handle a projected increase
in the volume of emergency patients.
According to planning data generated
by the hospital, expansion of ancillary
service areas is needed to enhance the
capacity required for the anticipated
additional diagnostic tests,
examinations, and medical and surgical
procedures which will be administered
to outpatients and inpatients.
No governmental funds are involved
in the project. According to the
hospital, grant funds for hospital z
construction and modernization have
become nonexistent. Further details
concerning construction funds for the
new wing will be released later by the
hospital.
Religion ‘Not Naive’
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Religion is not a “naive, mythical and outdated” way of
looking at reality, but rather an experience which broadens man’s vision, Pope Paul VI
declared Dec. 1. “Religion opens up vast panoramas to man,” the Pope told his weekly
general audience. “It broadens our thoughts to extend beyond the closed room of our
ordinary experiences.”
Firebombings In Rome
ROME (NC) - Teenage gangs firebombed centers of a Catholic student organization
both here and in Turin Nov. 30 in an escalating series of extremist violence against
Catholic groups in Italy. In both cases a few of the extremists participating in the raids
were over 21. Many were reportedly 14 years old.
Active Church Role Urged
WASHINGTON (NC) - Church agencies should take an active part in opposing
so-called “death with dignity” laws being pushed in various state legislatures, according
to an official of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB). Such bills
should be fought, said Msgr. James T. McHugh, director of the secretariat of the NCCB
committee for pro-life activities, not only because of “serious legal deficiencies, but
because they diminish the value of human life and relieve society - and the law - of its
responsibility to provide adequate legal protection for human life at every stage of its
existence and in every circumstance, even if the enjoyment of life is limited or
qualified.”
Letter Sent Archbishop
VATICAN CITY (NC) - In a candid private latter to Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre,
Pope Paul VI has accused the traditionalist prelate of adopting a “warped
ecclesiology” and of starting a “rebellion” in the Church. The Pope has also called for
a sweeping retraction from the French archbishop of accusations against the Pope and
an explicit affirmation of his acceptance of the new liturgy and all decrees of the
Second Vatican Council. Yet nowhere in the 15-page Latin letter, made public by the
Vatican Nov. 30, did the Pope threaten excommunication of the suspended
archbishop.
Early Deadline Notice
Due to an early publication date for our Christmas week issue, all material
for inclusion in the December 23 BULLETIN must be in our office by noon
Friday, December 17.
Church Prepared To Dissent
MUNICH (NC) - The institutional
Catholic Church in the United States “is
fully prepared to dissent, not from the
American political system as such, but,
when necessary, from the prevailing
political ethos and from specific
governmental programs in the field of
public policy,” according to a leading
U.S. churchman.
“In other words,” the churchman,
Msgr. George Higgins, secretary for
research of the U.S. Catholic
Conference (USCC), said, “the old
charge that the Church in the United
States was uncritically committed to the
American ethos is no longer valid, or, in
any event, is not as valid as it was or at
least appeared to be until a few
generations ago.”
Following the Second Vatican
Council, he said, the U.S. Catholic
Church has moved to take a more
positive role in shaping public policy.
American Catholics, he said, “have
gone far beyond the point of explaining
that their religion does not conflict with
Americanism and far beyond the point
of simply defending the Catholic faith
and the rights of the Church in the
public order.”
groups must still speak up and try to
convince others.
Msgr. Higgins said Cardinal Dearden
had also warned that when a voluntary
association such as the bishops’
conference tries to act as a “moral
authority” in shaping public policy, “its
influence depends on its style of
presentation.”
Giving some historical background on
the relationship of the Catholic Church
to the American political system, Msgr.
Higgins said “American Catholicism in
general has felt fully at home in the
American political environment” with
its emphasis on “religious freedom and
the separation of church and state.”
In the late 19th century, Msgr.
Higgins said, the Catholic Church
devoted a great deal of effort to helping
Catholic immigrants from Europe adjust
to life in the United States.
The Catholic Church developed many
of its own institutions - schools,
hospitals, social welfare agencies, social
clubs, and so on - during this period,
Msgr. Higgins said.
“The need to concentrate almost all
of its energies and resources on the
pastoral care and the political and social
acculturation of its immigrant flock
made it difficult, if not impossible, for
the Church, during the period under
discussion, to influence public policy to
any significant degree,” he said.
The Church became more involved in
public policy issues after World War I
through the efforts of the National
Catholic Welfare Conference and its
proposed Program of Social
Reconstruction, Msgr. Higgins said.
The Church became more involved in
the area of social reform during the
Depression of the 1930s, he said.
Throughout that period, he said,
many Catholics, through “a feeling of
social and cultural insecurity,” tended
to be “cautious about social and
political change.”
But, he said, that situation has
changed greatly over the past 20 years.
Court ‘Errors’ Hit
Msgr. Higgins made his comments in a
speech on the U.S. Catholic Church and
the public order before the Bavarian
Catholic Academy, an adult education
and conference center established by
the late Cardinal Julius Doepfner of
Munich.
Msgr. Higgins noted that the U.S.
bishops had been involved in a
controversy during the recent
presidential elections in which a
misperception was created that the
bishops were endorsing President Gerald
Ford because of his support for a states’
rights constitutional amendment to
restrict abortion. The Church is
nonpartisan, he added.
The controversy, he said, “will have
served a useful purpose if it helps to
clarify the manner or the mode in which
the institutional Church should exercise
its legitimate and indispensable
prophetic role on matters of public
policy.”
Msgr. Higgins said Cardinal John
Dearden of Detroit has already begun
that clarification with a major statement
delivered in September to the National
Conference of Catholic Charities.
In that speech, using abortion as an
example, Msgr. Higgins said, Cardinal
Dearden said that in a pluralistic
society, “public consensus cannot be
determined by one religious group.”
But, Cardinal Dearden said, religious
WASHINGTON (NC) - Supreme
Court abortion rulings have worked to
endanger the lives of women besides
permitting the destruction of unborn
children, according to an official of the
National Conference of Catholic
Bishops (NCCB).
Msgr. James T. McHugh accused the
court of “tunnel vision” concerning
abortion, and cited a recent federal
government study which he said should
have been considered by the justices in
their decision striking down part of
Missouri’s abortion law dealing with
saline abortions.
The study, conducted by the Center
for Disease Control (CDC), “raises
serious questions about abortion laws
and the refusal of courts and legislatures
to take a careful and honest look at the
practice of abortion on request,” said
Msgr. McHugh, director of the
secretariat of the NCCB committee for
pro-life activities.
According to the four-year study’s
findings, which involved 32 institutions
and 80,437 abortions, the medical
profession has been wrong in its
evaluations of the relative dangers of
various types of second trimester
abortions.
Dr. David Grimes, an abortion
surveillance officer at the CDC. said that
(Continued on page 2)
‘Providential, Timely’
WASHINGTON (NC) - Writing on behalf of Pope Paul VI, the papal secretary
of state has told the U.S. bishops that their recently adopted pastoral letter on
moral values is “providential and timely.”
In a letter to Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin of Cincinnati, president of the
National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB), Cardinal Jean Villot, the papal
secretary of state, called the pastoral “a strong reaffirmation and faithful
expression, on the part of the American hierarchy, of the authentic magisterium
of the Holy See and of the entire universal Church in the field of morality.”
Pope Paul “is indeed grateful for this providential and timely exercise of the
teaching office by the bishops of your country in communion with the See of
Peter and the universal Church,” Cardinal Villot told Archbishop Bernardin
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