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PAGE 7—April 12, 1979
How Widespread Is
BY JIM CASTELLI
WASHINGTON (NC) - A recent
Harris poll found that Americans
believe, by 89.4 percent, that there is no
discrimination against Catholics in the
United States.
At the same time, a number of
Catholics and non-Catholics alike have
charged that anti-Catholicism in
America is widetpread; some claim to
see anti-Catholic conspiracies from the
White House on down.
But the evidence indicates that the
truth lies in between; there is much
more anti-Catholicism than most
Americans would like to admit, but not
nearly as much as those who believe in
conspiracies see.
The Harris poll itself helps put the
issue in perspective. It found traces of
latent anti- Catholicism and a denial of
past discrimination against Catholics.
But it also found that anti-Catholic
discrimination is not nearly as serious as
discrimination against Jews, Blacks or
Hispanics.
More perspective is provided by Msgr.
John Tracy Ellis, an expert on the
history of the Catholic Church in
America. He says there were five major
waves of anti-Catholicism in the United
States between the 1840s and the
1940s.
He says there has been a decline in
anti-Catholic prejudice since the
election of the first Catholic president,
John Kennedy, in 1960. But, he says,
there seems to be a revival of
anti-Catholicism lately.
Msgr. Ellis says it would be naive to
believe there is no anti-Catholicism in
America. It persists in “the two
extremes of society” — the uneducated
poor of Appalachia and the intellectuals
— he says.
Much of the recent discussion of
anti-Catholicism has focused on political
issues — abortion, tuition tax credits
and government regulation of church
institutions.
But Msgr. George Higgins, U.S.
Catholic Conference secretary for
special concerns and a veteran of
Catholic involvement in public affairs,
points out that it is dangerous to
attribute motives.
“It is a mistake to accuse a particular
politican of being anti-Catholic simply
because he happens to disagree with the
‘Catholic’ position on a specific matter
of public policy,” he said. “Not every
politician who is opposed to tax credits,
for example, or to a constitutional
amendment on the abortion issue is
anti-Catholic.
“Nor is every politician who is in
favor of tax credits and a constitutional
amendment necessarily well disposed
toward Catholicism.”
Many of the actions often branded
“anti-Catholic” really effect other
religious and ethnic groups as well. On
Anti-Catholicism?
one level, an increasingly secular society
often has little patience for believers of
any kind.
Part of the problem is a general lack
of understanding of the values of
cultural pluralism and the role of the
voluntary sector.
For example, Msgr. Geno Baroni, an
assistant secretary of housing and urban
development, says that while he is
convinced his boss, President Carter,
understands the importance of family,
neighborhood and ethnic and cultural
diversity in making public policy, much
of the federal bureaucracy does not.
“One of my biggest frustrations,” he
said a year ago, “is the new level of
policymakers coming into government
who are ignoring the values of families”
and networks of informal support
systems.
In the past year or so several
government efforts to regulate some
aspects of church affairs have been
called “anti-Catholic” or
“anti-religious.” Some people, such as
Father J. Bryan Hehir of the U.S.
Catholic Conference, argue that
“complexity, not conspiracy” is the
source of the growing number of
church-state conflicts.
One lobbyist for a Catholic
organization offers two more human
reasons for government regulations
which aggravate church-state tensions.
First, he said, most regulations are
written by lower level career
bureaucrats who are isolated from
political considerations. Some of these
people simply take a very conservative
approach to interpreting church-state
law, he says.
But beyond that, he says, other
bureaucrats even farther removed often
bend over backwards to make sure they
don’t allow more than the regulations
permit; as a result, they sometimes
allow less.
But two recent developments indicate
that the federal government is beginning
to respond to at least some of the
concerns raised by Catholics.
Last fall, Eleanor Holmes Norton,
head of the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission, told NC
News Service that she would begin an
investigation into “executive suite
discrimination” against Catholics and
Jews some time after the first of the
year.
Even more recently, the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights has
scheduled a two-day consultation on
religious discrimination on April 9 and
10.
The meeting was prompted in part by
the Catholic League for Religious and
Civil Rights, which urged Congress to
hold up the commission’s funding if it
did not look into religious
discrimination.
Efforts To End Rhodesia Sanctions Hit
WASHINGTON (NC) - Efforts in the
United States Congress to end sanctions
against Rhodesia have drawn concern
and criticism from a variety of domestic
and international sources opposed to
the white-controlled Rhodesian
government.
Their worry is that resolutions
currently before Congress would de
facto change U.S. policy from
opposition to support for Rhodesian
Prime Minister Ian Smith. Present U.S.
policy is to pressure him to negotiate
with black guerrilla leaders for an end to
the civil war and for agreements leading
to majority government.
Among the critics of the
pro-Rhodesian resolutions are black
Americans, civil rights groups and
religious organizations, including the
U.S. Catholic Conference. During the
week of March 25, three Members of
Parliament from Britain and two
members of the Rhodesian Catholic
Justice and Peace Commmmission were
in Washington to ask congressmen to
maintain sanctions.
Britain and the United States are
partners in trying to get an all-parties
conference between Smith' and black
guerrilla leaders.
One resolution would have Congress
name a team of observers for the
Smith-organized parliamentary elections
scheduled for April 20 to determine if
the elections are free and fair.
Another resolution before the Senate
would allow economic sanctions against
Rhodesia to be ended if the April 20
elections are declared free and fair.
The elections are part of Smith’s
“internal settlement” plan to maintain a
white stronghold on government while
increasing black participation.
Critics say the regulations for the
elections are inherently unfair to the
majority black population. They add
that if the United States ends sanctions
based on these elections it will be
disasterous for American foreign policy.
“To lift sanctions would show black
African and Third World countries that
the United States is putting its voice
behind white-minority rule,” said Roger
Riddell of the Catholic Institute for
International Relations in London.
Riddell was in Washington as an advisor
to the British Members of Parliament.
“It would also isolate the United
States from its Western allies. The
members of the European Economic
Community (Common Market)
announced they will not recognize the
VATICAN CITY (NC) - After two
years without a resident bishop, the
Diocese of Umtali, Rhodesia, will soon
have one.
Pope John Paul II on March 30
named Msgr. Patrick Mumbure Mutume
as auxiliary to Bishop Donal Lamont of
Umtali. Bishop Lamont, a fiery
spokesman for black majority rule in
April 20 elections,” said Riddell, a
former missionary in Rhodesia.
By supporting Smith the United
States will be “jumping on a sinking
ship,” he said.
“Under current conditions, it is
impossible to hold free and fair
elections,” said John Deary, chairman
of the Rhodesian Catholic Justice and
Peace Commission.
“Smith’s objective is to get the
sanctions lifted,” added Deary, a white,
in an interview. Deary was in
Washington with Brother Fidelis
Muxonori, a black member of the
commission, to give congressional
testimony.
The elections will not produce a
meaningful transfer of power to the
black majority and violates the
“one-man, one-vote principle,” said the
commission members in their
testimony.
“The constitution enshrines a system
Rhodesia, was declared an undesirable
person and exiled by the white minority
government in March 1977.
Thirty-five-year-old Msgr. Mutume is
a native of Umtali and a member of the
Shona tribe. After studies at the
Chishawasha Regional Major Seminary
in Salsibury, Rhodesia, he was ordained
a priest in 1972.
of entrenched clauses which cannot be
amended or removed except by the
affirmative vote of 78 members. This
means that the white members will be
an effective blocking mechanism for
legislative change,” they said.
Whites will retain further power over
national life because the constitution
guarantees them control over the
judiciary and security forces.
Election regulations ban members of
the Patriotic Front from being
candidates although the front is very
popular and controls much of the
country, said Deary.
i The Front unites the two guerrilla
movements fighting Smith’s
government. Various estimates,
including those of the government, give
the Front control of at least 50 percent of
Rhodesia.
Instead of ending violence, the
elections will only increase it, said the
commission members.
The Patriotic Front said it will use
violence to prevent the elections from
taking place, said Deary. About 85
percent of Rhodesia is under martial law
and government troops and private
armies loyal to balck leaders allied with
Smith are intimidating the voters, he
said.
As prerequisties for a fair and free
election, Deary suggested a ceasefire and
“adequate supervision” by a neutral
body such as the United Nations.
“Smith is the stumbling block to
this,” he said.
Umtali Auxiliary Named
New C.U. President Inaugurated
WASHINGTON (NC) - “A true
university, truly Catholic,” is the goal of
the new president of the Catholic
University of America, Dr. Edmund D.
Pellegrino, he said in an inaugural
address, in which he decried the
“amlaise of value-free learning, of
studied moral neutralism.”
Dr. Pellegrino, founding president of
the Yale-New Haven Medical Center and
former professor of medicine at Yale
University, was inaugurated March 30.
The new president of Catholic
University asserted that Catholic
universities “bear a tradition and a
future which admirably suit them to
heal what is perhaps the central
intellectual malaise in higher learning
today.
“That malaise,” according to the
12th chief executive officer of Catholic
University, “is the malaise of value-free
learning, of studied moral neutralism, of
a defect in equipping students to make
value decisions in a morally pluralistic
and morally demanding society.”
Dr. Pellegrino said “knowledge
without criticism produces directionless
minds and a directionless society, pulled
hither and yon by each new technique
and each new world view. The citizens
of a directionless society become slaves
of each other’s expertise.”
He added that the United States’
most searing national experiences attest
to the incapacity to judge critically
about values and morals.
“Where the critical intelligence is
lacking, the demonic fills the void,” Dr.
Pellegrino said.
The educator said that teaching the
humanities only as specialties, confusing
scholarship with education, and general
education with the liberal arts “are the
cardinal sins whose penance is that loss
of influence on life the humanities
suffer today.
“To criticize any culture
constructively we need the interaction
of reason with faith and belief. Criticism
without beliefs is mere analysis; beliefs
without criticism are merely free
assertions, freely deniable,” he said.
“Each alone is lethal for any kind of
enlighted life.”
The new president said there is a faith
at the root of every rational
construction of reality and “it is here
precisely that Catholic universities can
contribute indispensably to culture and
learning.
“The church has always held that
faith leaves reason intact, that their
reconciliation is fundamental to its own
intellectual ministry.”
Catholic universities must “learn to
speak with authority and without
authoritarianism, or morality without
moralizing, of the spirit of the law
without idolizing the letter, of licit
limits to dissent without repressing new
explorations of all truths — scientific,
socio-political or theological.
“These may sometimes seem the
worst of times but they are not. We can
still do the best of things,” Dr.
Pellegrino said at his inauguration, “and
that is what I will strive to do. I am
confident that we will enter the next
century with a true university, truly
Catholic.”
VIOLIN AT MASS -- World-renowned violinist, Andrzej Grabiec of
Poland surprised parishioners of Holy Family parish, located in a
low-income section of Pueblo, Colo., when he and Gerard Track,
conductor of the Pueblo Symphony Orchestra, teamed up for a violin and
organ accompaniment for Sunday Mass. Grabiec, who is concert master
for the Polish Radio and Television Symphony orchestra, was in Pueblo
for a concert. (NC Photo by Sister Kathryn Kelm)
Communication Hearings End, Sifting Through Testimony Begins
BY NANCY FRAZIER
NC News Service
“The problem is not one of having enough ideas, but how we are going to capably
sift through them and come up with somthing that will be beneficial to the
communications mission of the church in the United States.”
Auxiliary Bishop Joseph R. Crowley of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind., chairman of
the U.S. Catholic Conference Communication Committee, was discussing the imposing
task his committee faces now that Catholic Communication Campaign hearings in four
cities have ended.
“Many themes occurred and reoccurred during the hearings, but they were
sometimes contradictory,” the bishop said. “For example, many presenters stressed
the importance of prime-time network television, while others emphasized the need to
reach different audiences at different times.”
The committee heard testimony from more than 140 people during seven days of
hearings in Washington, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and another 100
people submitted written testimony. The hearings were the first step in a process
leading to the establishment of priorities for use of the national share of funds from
the new Catholic Communication Campaign.
A synthesis of the recommendations will be prepared by the bishops’ Public Affairs
Office and reviewed in May by a group of advisors appointed by Bishop Crowley. A
staff report based on the synthesis and the advisors’ responses will be reviewed by the
Communication Committee at a meeting June 13-14 in Washington. The committee’s
final recommendations will be submitted to the bishops at their semi-annual general
meeting in November.
Msgr. John P. Foley, editor of The Catholic Standard and Times in Philadelphia and
the only Communication Committee member who attended all four hearings, said
witnesses generally agreed on one thing — the need to develop “a national vision or
strategy for the church’s work in communications.”
But there was little else on which they agreed. Jesuit Father Avery Dulles, a
respected commentator on the theology of communications, touched on the possible
problems the diversity of testimony could cause when he said: “There is a real danger
that in the struggle among rival interest groups the communications effort of the
Catholic Church in this country might be parceled out to limited constituencies and
might consequently have very little total impact.”
The witnesses’ testimony ranged from broad commentaries on the church’s role in
the world of modern media to very specific requests for funding particular projects.
Some urged that the message be relevant to their particular interest group — Hispanics,
singles, the handicapped, blacks, alcoholics, young people, divorced Catholics -
whatever the media, while others politely battled over which media would most
effectively convey the good news of Christ.
Msgr. Foley noted “basic differences” in testimony on whether the church should
purchase broadcasting time or stay with the concept of free “sustaining” time on radio
and TV; whether it should buy its own production facilities or concentrate on
producing quality programs through others’ facilities; and whether the emphasis
should be on direct Catholic preaching through the media or on indirect evangelization
through value-related drama and spot announcements.
Several witnesses in Chicago and elsewhere said the church has little time to lose if it
hopes to catch up with the sophisticated equipment and skills already possessed by
other denominations, but in San Francisco, Father Miles O’Brien Riley pleaded with
the committee not to let the church adopt the tactics of the “televangelists” now
popular among religious broadcasters.
The director of public relations and information for the Archdiocese of San
Francisco condemned most current religious broadcasting as “blasphemous idolatry, a
plastic parade of puffed-up preachers, selling cotton candy Christianity with air-mail
second collections.”
Other witnesses split over the issue of whether funds should be primarily directed
toward use of television, radio and other electronic media or toward sustenance and
expansion of the Catholic press. Among proponents of electronic broadcasting,
television was often referred to as “a pervasive influence in American society,” but
advocates of the press said their medium still provides the greatest benefit for the least
amount of money.
Cardinal John Cody of Chicago and others called for serious deliberation before any
decision about priorities and allocations are made. “Make no small plan,” the cardinal
advised. “When the entire church can perceive a national vision, then we will be ready
to make the sacrifices that are required to accomplish the goal of ‘sharing his joy.’”
The second day of the San Francisco hearings provided a good example of the
electronic media at work on behalf of the church, as witnesses from as far away as
Alaska gave testimony to and answered questions from the committee. That
interaction was made possible by a video satellite network in selected cities in 12
Western states.
Although no two witnesses said the same thing, some recommendations received
support from more than one presenter. Among popular suggestions were plans for
improved media training of both practicioners and consumers; development of an
information-sharing network among dioceses and religious groups; and an increased
religious role in monitoring and responding to the actions of federal agencies and
Congress related to communications.
And although the committee’s role was not widely mentioned, most of the
witnesses would probably agree with the comments of Frank DeRosa, director of
public information for the Diocese of Brooklyn, N.Y., and one of the first to testify in
Washington, who spoke of the “difficult but crucial” task of establishing priorities for
the Catholic Communication Canmaign funds.
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