Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 4—The Georgia Bulletin, January 13,1977
Charity Still Means Love
The picture of Wallace Winborne
on our pages this week means that
something is moving financially in
our Archdiocese. Wallace has been
involving himself for the Church in
Atlanta for many years. Whether it is
the Cathedral, his beloved parish,
Marist, his academic favorite or the
whole Archdiocese, Wallace is our
man in money matters and has been
for years.
This year he is the Charities Chief
again and we all sigh a little relief
because he is there. It means that
the Charities Drive will get just the
right touch, the proper perspective
and the expert’s eye as we all come
to grips with it again.
And all this is needed. Charity still
means love. It is not just an annual
push for money, it is a labor of
love. And to be involved is blessed.
As we concoct our Special Phase
and our Regular Phase and our
Any-Way-You-Like-To-Give Phase and
get our parishes all set to be
successful, goal reachers every one,
we can be certain that we are
building up the needs of God’s
People in our North Georgia Church.
The Charities Drive touches lives,
old ones and young ones, weak ones
and strong ones. Like a long arm of
love it reaches out and touches them
and lifts them up. And the point is
that we activate that arm. By our
annual anxiety to be successful, we
are continuing that ringing message.
Yes, after it all, Charity still means
Love.
- NCB
Watchdog ’em
The Georgia Legislature is in full
swing for the New Year. All the
formalities are over and your
legislators are ready for business.
How well they conduct that business
is often left up to us.
Every year is an important year
under the Golden Dome. This year is
no different. Bills of great importance
will pass over busy desks. Some will
get the consideration they should,
others will not. Our interest will be
prime factors.
Legislators are our busy servants.
They should hear from us if we
want positive, good legislation.
Complaints after the fact are no help
and are often destructive.
How do you stand on the budget,
the ERA Amendment, 14-foot wide
mobile homes, Pari-Mutual Betting,
Welfare Reform, just to mention a
few? They will all come up for
consideration. That means OUR
consideration. You should exercise
your weighty authority.
Participation in Government is
sometimes a helpful chore. Other
times it becomes a moral duty. It is
always a needed and welcome sight.
Do it this year.
~ NCB
r
A
Tiip nro iiivR*
X JLJUvy XXX2^JXIz X IjI V L •
fm
flL vl
The Right To Die
mmBt *
Teresa Gernazian
s
A
“I’ve always been against abortion but I
knew that if my daughter were raped and
became pregnant she would have an
abortion. However, since I’ve been working
here in a hospital where day after day
unborn babies are killed by abortion, I’ve
decided that if my daughter were raped
and if she became pregnant, she would
carry it through. I would consider that to
be just as much in the sovereignty of God
as anything else that touched our lives.”
This statement made by a registered
nurse to Dr. Everett Koop, famous pediatric
surgeon, plus several scriptural references
concering the sanctity of life caused him to
do a turnabout in his thinking on abortion.
He had started out being opposed to
abortion except in certain Christian
compassionate cases. But thanks to God’s
grace, he not only changed his attitude but
has come out with a great little book that
gives answers to the anti-life proponents in
easy to understand manner. Not a Catholic,
he is greatly disturbed by the fact that so
many insist that abortion is a Roman
Catholic issue - he has one chapter
specifically on that point.
C. Everett Koop, M.D., is surgeon-in-chief
at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and
Professor of Pediatric surgery at the
University of Pennsylvania. He was
catapulted into world-wide fame in 1974
when he and his team successfully separated
Siamese twin baby girls in a spectacular
lOU-hour operation.
He states it is a privilege to have saved
the lives of thousands of babies born
imperfectly and that he has never had a
parent ask why he tried so hard to save
the life of their defective child. He knows
of many cases where terribly handicapped
people are a spiritual asset to their families
and to the community.
Half of the book is an argument against
abortion - the other half against its twin,
euthanasia. Since the medical profession has
been disappointingly silent over the
Supreme Court’s abortion decision and
relenting to overpopulation pressures, he
feels it is easy to foresee how they will be
silent if there is an over-powering question
of national economics.
Before the century is out it is quite
possible that the elderly will exceed in
number those who bear the burden of their
support and he writes: “Unless we get our
ethics and morals straightened out now, the
death selection committee that decides for
you may be motivated more by money
than by ecological concerns.”
Writing from a background of 38 years
in this profession, Dr. Koop gives examples
of specific cases where the medical decision
was quite difficult. He covers the Karen
Quinlan case as well as the theology,
morality and ethics of euthanasia.
“The Right to Life; The Right to Die”
is an eye-opener and thought provoker. It’s
recommended in the Bishops’ Respect Life
Booklet; comes in paperback for $2.95
(Tyndale House Publishers, 1976) and
Georgia Right to Life Committee will have
a supply at Respect Life Day, January 22,
at Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Euthanasia as a public policy seems far,
far away - but I can remember so well in
1967 when abortion on demand seemed far
away to all except a few of us.
The
Gejorgia
IMP 5
Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
DEADLINE: All material for publication must be received by
MONDAY NOON for Thursday’s paper.
Most Rev. Thomas A. Donnellan - Publisher
Rev. Noel C. Burtenshaw — Editor
Michael Motes - Associate Editor
Member of the Catholic Press Association
Telephone 881-9732
Business Office
756 West Peachtree, N.W.
Atlanta, Georgia 30308
U.S.A. $5.00
Canada $5.00
Foreign $6.50
Postmaster: Send POD Form 3579 to THE GEORGIA BULLETIN
601 East Sixth Street, Waynesboro, Georgia 30830
Send all editorial correspondence to: THE GEORGIA BULLETIN
756 West Peachtree Street, N.W.
Atlanta, Georgia 30308
Second Class Postage Paid at Waynesboro, Ga. 308 30
Published Weekly / except the second and last weeks
in June, July ana August and the last week in December
at 601 East Sixth St., Waynesboro, Ga. 30830
“She feels she has to work twice as hard as a
man to get equal consideration!”
The Egg That Made
Me Feel Sick
Dave McGill
r
■\
Called
By
Name
Georgia Carolina Ministry
By Rev. S. R. Miglarese
Vocation Director
Diocese of Charleston
V.
J
St. Paul:
Called To Be An Apostle
For the first time in ten years I saw the
movie “The Parable” produced for the
Protestant Pavilion at the 1966 New York
World’s Fair. In that classic religious film,
the Christ figure is protrayed as a circus
clown. Without dialogue the film identifies
this clown with the fatigued, the
discriminated against and the manipulated.
In doing so the selfless clown incurs the
wrath of Magus the puppeteer. Magus is so
disturbed and annoyed by his stealing his
thunder that he killed him with the very
instrument of manipulation that he used
previously to entertain people.
V -
I love eggs. I love ’em cooked any old
way - scrambled, fried either sunny-side-up
or over medium or light, poached, hard- or
soft-boiled, Benedicted or omeleted, you
name it. I eat one or two a day and still
have a good cholesterol count, so I guess
I’m a good advertisement for chickens.
There was once an egg, however, which
made me feel sick. I saved an ad from a
ritzy magazine a while back which says,
“Eggs. $60,000 a dozen.” It advertises
platinum eggs “to put things in. Like rings,
or pills, or paper clips. Or just to put
someplace where it can sit around looking
beautiful.” It won’t break, scratch, nick, or
chip because platinum is the strongest of
all the precious metals. You could order
one at $5000.00 a throw from some place
on Madison Avenue to put your pills or
paper clips in.
By way of contrast, Fred Hedges told
me today of a family he is helping, a poor
family with staggering needs. The story is a
familiar one: A tiny house, jampacked with
a mother and a number of children, the
father packed up and gone, $190 a month
coming in to live on, $80 a month going
out for rent and $60 for food stamps,
leaving $50 per moqth for clothes, utilities,
toys, doctor bills and medicine and
everything else.
To a family like that, $40 per month is
more than 20 per cent increase in income.
Such a percentage would go a long way on
anybody’s salary. THAT $5000 EGG
WOULD GIVE SUCH A FAMILY AN
EXTRA $40 EACH MONTH FOR OVER
10 YEARS! It would also, at 85c a dozen,
buy 70,588 eggs. This is an egg-a-day for
each person in a family of 10 for nearly
20 years!
The platinum egg made me feel queasy,
for it reminded me of how out-of-balance
our money and value priorities can get.
Many people trying to live the Christian
life have everything but their money and
finances underneath their spiritual umbrella.
It’s a great feeling to know it’s ALL dry;
it’s very freeing to realize that all that we
have (talents, children, and time as well as
goods and money) belongs to God and that
we are merely the stewards, to be held
accountable as in the parable of the talents
(Mt. 25:14-30). If all that we have isn’t
used to its best advantage for good, we’ll
be no better off than the one steward who
buried his talent in a hole in the ground
(and subsequently found himself out in the
dark, weeping and grinding his teeth!)
J
It is exciting to me to have recently
learned that God expects us to pray about
purchases, investments, savings, parish
pledges, and charitable gifts to better
determine His will for us in these
endeavors. He wants us to sit down and
take stock and discern the difference
between our needs, wants, and desires and
to prayerfully establish for ourselves what is
surplus in our lives.
Jesus tells the short story of the Pearl of
Great Price in Matthew 13:45,46. In it, a
merchant, on finding the priceless pearl of
great value, sells everything he owns and
buys the pearl. Of course, the pearl
represents the Good News of peace,
purpose, pardon and power that awaits us
upon coming to know, love and serve Jesus.
The discovery of the same is overwhelming,
and, as stated by the editor of an ARCH
Book about the Pearl, “we leave all other
interests behind and concentrate on the one
goal of living the new life of Christ . . .
Money, honor, popularity, power, and
material things fade away as goals in life
when we come to have faith in Christ.”
A $5000 platinum egg may be an Egg of
Great Price, but it’ll never be a Pearl.
In the discussion following the film, one
viewer remarked that when the repentant,
Magus, began to place the greasepaint of a
clown on his face that she was reminded
of the about face of Paul of Tarsus and
his conversion of persecuter to Apostle. I
thought that the comparison was well
taken.
There is no question that Paul’s
experience of the Risen Lord on the road
to Damascus was a pivotal moment in his
life. Like Magus, Paul recognized that the
Jesus of Nazareth who died in Jerusalem,
was yet alive, not just alive in himself but
alive in his people, the Church. This was
an identification so intense that when Paul
and his misguided zealotry and overzealous
bigotry persecuted the Church he also
persecuted Jesus. There he realized like
Magus, that the Risen Jesus is still at work
in the circus of life through the
instrumentality of his followers. Paul’s
response to God’s call like Magus was a
radical change of face. From that moment
on Paul was an Apostle, a man on mission,
sent and set apart for the service of God’s
Word.
The challenge of Jesus’ call to apostleship
awaits our response too. Through the flow
of persons and events in our lives, we can
and must experience the driving force of
Christ sending us to be Apostles. As men
and women open to the Vocation of
Apostleship (in particular as Bishops, priests,
deacons and religious) we have to be ready
and willing to give our whole lives to the
ministry of God’s Word alone. We have to
be ready and willing to leave, to set out
without delay or reluctance in service to
God’s call of Apostleship. We must lay
aside anything that hinders or blocks our
going out on mission with God’s Word.
This means concretely that we must empty
ourselves in order to be replenished with
that living Word of God alone.
Paul is one of Scripture’s many heroic
hearers of the Word who saw the radical
implications of his saying yes to the Lord.
Are you so called to be an Apostle?
What One Person Can Do
Rev. Richard Armstrong
Flip Quips
“Look around the habitable world;
how few know their own good, or
knowing pursue.”
Dry den.
Many, expert at failing, usually
work so hard searching for the faults
of others, they have no energy left
for their own good.
Many in jail honestly know that
the pursuit of happiness takes pluck,
but are there for dishonestly plucking
what didn’t belong to them
unhappily.
The greedy grasper, pursuing the
mirage in the greener pasture, usually
never finishes the work at hand
before initiating a new venture that’s
never finished.
Frank J. McArdle
J
ANNE BECKMAN, BUSINESSWOMAN
It took 13 years of hard work, but
Anne Beckman has created a whole new
job market for elderly people in
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
In 1962, Mrs. Beckman was a widow
with many years of experience in social
work. She was also looking for a job. She
decided to create work for elderly and
retired people in a program which she
named “Rent-a-Granny.”
Since she began her non-profit work,
Anne Beckman has placed over 4,500
people in some type of employment.
“Everybody here WANTS to hire my
people,” says Mrs. Beckman. “They know
they will do a good job.”
Federal funding initially supported much
of “Rent-a-Granny’s” activities. It has now
been withdrawn, leaving the business the
problem of paying its own way. But Mrs.
Beckman credits that loss with opening a
whole new dimension in services. Whereas
federal funding demanded that she
concentrate on jobs for low-income people
only, she is now also entering job
placement for topline executives over 60.
“I think the retirement age is changing,”
she says. “Just last week the telephone
company hired one of our people who was
58.”
If they are to succeed, opportunities to
be of service can often demand that little
extra investment of optimism. Anne
Beckman saw a need. She set out to find
an answer - and she stayed optimistic.
Wherever there is a need, there also is an
opportunity. Sometimes, to see it, we have
to look with the heart, rather than the
eye.
For a free copy of the Christopher News
Notes, “Age - Problems/Promise,” send a
stamped, self-addressed envelope to The
Christophers, 12 E. 48th St., New York,
NY 10017.
*