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Father Mulroy Gets A Discotheque
BY MICHAEL MOTES
Has “Saturday Night Fever” struck
an East Cobb County parish?
Probably not, but Father John
Mulroy, pastor of Holy Family, will
soon be the proud proprietor of a
$200,000-plus discotheque equal to any
in the area.
Actually the newest addition to Holy
Family’s seventeen and one-half acres
complex will serve as a parish center,
but an interesting feature about the
building is that it can double as a
fully-equipped disco, complete with
sophisticated sound booth, strobe lights
and a portable dance floor.
“When construction began, I was
astounded at the amount of equipment
that was donated,” said Father Mulroy.
“In addition to the musical equipment
and dance floor, we’ve been given a
giant-screen television set, kitchen
appliances and other greatly-appreciated
gifts to make the new parish center a
real multi-purpose and extremely
comfortable facility.”
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The Old St. Joseph’s
It sits out there, nestling among the
little homes and lawns behind the
Greenbriar Shopping Center. It was
built for little children. Special kinds of
little children. Children without homes,
without energetic dreams, without
lavish tides of onrushing love.
You think about it twice each year.
At the highly festive feasts of Christmas
and Easter, the name pops before your
eyes. The parish envelope pack says it
clearly. The
announcement
from the altar on
high tugs at your
generous heart.
Give to our
dependent
children. Give to
the Village of St.
Joseph.
The Village is a
newcomer to
Southwest Atlanta.
Its still shiny newness speaks of recent
arrival and yet you know, from the
warmth of its rich service, that the roots
go deeper. They do. Much deeper.
It was over 100 years ago when it all
began. Black and white robed women,
with dreams of solemn service to the
cast off young, arrived in the Deep
South state of Georgia. Quickly it was
decided that the stately city of
Savannah would house a home for girls.
Boys were ushered a little further north.
The bloom and blossom of Atlanta
was still a long way off. The booming
center of Catholic life was the city of
Sharon, with its busy mills, its high
powered trading posts and its chock-full
famous academies, run by the Sisters of
St. Joseph. Close by, in the sleepy
village of Washington, the roots of a
boys’ orphanage were sown. The ladies
named their little dream for themselves.
It would ever after flaunt the name of
St. Joseph.
For over 90 years in tireless imitation
of their busy patron, the sisters made
reality of their dream. The early years
ruthlessly took a terrible toll. A tiny
graveyard, neighboring the thick grey
walls of the old orphanage, reveals
eternal resting places of sisters, some
still in their teens, struck down by the
havoc of incurable epidemics. But the
work went on.
From every comer of the state, boys
came to know a new life oozing from
the gracious work of the sisters in
Washington. Catholics, poor in number,
but rich in pride supported the
flowering dream. Recessions,
depressions, crushing crises, panics — all
haunted the humble house, called by
many, the Boys Town of the South.
Pride in the resulting rehabilitation of
their charges kept the dream alive.
1966 saw the historic haven leave the
memorable first home of Washington.
Atlanta, with a new facility and a new
challenge called. Old St. Joseph’s would
no longer belong to roughhouse male
rogues. The calming presence of girls
was added as brothers and sisters were
united in that special touch of family
healing, demanded in an age of
frustrated family collapse. The new
vision is alive and well.
I visited the campus of St. Joseph’s
last week. It had been a long time and
many memories returned. Ghosts of
goodness long gone swish among the
cottages, recalling the glories of a
century of charity to children and
proclaiming the certainty that one more
is to come.
The old St. Joseph’s goes on and on
and
Since working with young people has
long been a priority to Father Mulroy,
he is pleased that Holy Family will have
a center at the disposal of the more than
450 high school students living in his
parish.
“Many of the young people here are
really rootless,” he says. “This is a very
transient area in which families average
moving every three or four years. The
new center will be a gathering place for
our youth and we’re already at work on
regular Wednesday and Friday night
plans to keep the teenagers occupied
and happy.”
To assist with the high teenage
population, Father Mulroy has recruited
the services of Pat Kahnle and Barbara
Cotter, both of whom have backgrounds
dealing with youth having taught in
Cobb County schools.
Father Mulroy has an interesting
parish situation. When he left his
downtown Atlanta Sacred Heart
assignment, he was a Catholic pioneer in
East Cobb County. That was in June of
1973. But the area has expanded so
since that time that the pastor can no
longer even furnish an estimate of the
number of families in his parish.
Last August the establishment of
Saint Anne’s and Transfiguration
parishes in East Cobb resulted in a sharp
decrease in the membership of Holy
Family after the new parish boundaries
were established.
“While we dropped in numbers, there
has been no decrease in the activity
around Holy Family,” the pastor states.
“This entire area is somewhat of a
phenomenon in Catholic growth. Right
now, the total Catholic population of
East Cobb County is over 16 per cent
and that is the highest of any religious
denomination in the area.”
With ever-growing parish activity, the
new Holy Family center is already being
booked for numerous activities.
Completion date for the building is set
at June 1 and shortly thereafter the 27
parishioners baptised at the Easter Vigil
will begin a 10-week Bible study course
following the 10:30 a.m. and noon
Sunday Masses at Holy Family. Next on
their agenda will be a series of Monday
evening Open Forum meetings, which
Father Mulroy says will be “religious
free-for-alls, during which any topic
dealing with religion can be discussed.”
In the Fall, the parish center will
house a Week of Spiritual Renewal,
featuring Father John Kieran as guest
speaker. The facility will also become
the permanent meeting place of the
Middle School religious education
(Continued on page 6)
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THE NEW PARISH CENTER at Holy Family
Church in East Marietta is more than first meets the
eye. The center can double as a fully-equipped
discotheque complete with sophisticated sound system
housed in the glass-panelled booth shown here. Strobe
lights and a portable dance floor will add to the
“Saturday Night Fever” atmosphere of the
multi-purpose facility, scheduled for completion next
month.
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Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
Vol. 17 No. 20
Thursday, May 17,1979
$5 Per Year
SALT Treaty Closely Watched By Church Leaders
“ENOUGH TO LIVE ON” was the general theme of
a day-long seminar on welfare reform held last week at
First Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. Church leaders
and concerned individuals from throughout the state
attended. Father John Mulroy (left) served as
chairman. Among the Catholic participants were Mrs.
WELFARE REFORM
Mary Ann Hughes and Mrs. Robert Schellman of the
Archdiocese of Atlanta; Hazel MacLeod of Augusta;
Cheatham Hodges, Executive Secretary of the Georgia
Catholic Conference, and Sister Kathleen Toland of
Catholic Social Services of Augusta.
Strong Church Support Urged
BY MICHAEL MOTES
“Our churches have forgotten that
poor people not only have the right to
food but the right to make decisions
about their lives and to be involved in
making decisions with the middle class
systems that control our churches. The
church has forgotten how to reach out
to the whole community and in many
instances it does not want to.”
Addressing more than 100 church
representatives and welfare reform
advocates, Mary Ellen Lloyd, Director
of the National Council of Churches
(NCC) Working Group on Domestic
Hunger and Poverty, drew enthusiastic
support as she launched into the need
for national welfare reform and its
implication for the religious
community.
Mrs. Lloyd was in Atlanta at the
invitation of the Georgia Interchurch
Association, sponsor of the day-long
program at First Presbyterian Church
May 8 focusing on “Welfare Reform:
Enough To Live On.” Father John
Mulroy, pastor of Holy Family Church
in East Marietta and Priest-Secretary for
the Archdiocesan Commission on
Religious Unity, was general chairman
for the forum.
X
Mrs. Lloyd began her address by
explaining that she had been the
recipient of “a special kind of welfare”
since the days of her childhood in rural
Ohio.
“I was born to a special kind of
welfare -- white, girl-child, middle
class,” she said. “As I grew up in the
’30’s and ’40’s, I wasn’t aware of
(Continued on page 6)
WASHINGTON (NC) - American Catholic, Protestant and Jewish groups greeted
the announcement of agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union on a
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty - SALT II - with comments, advice and debates on
the issue.
Bishop Thomas Kelly, general secretary of the U.S. Catholic Conference, which has
authorized congressional testimony supporting the treaty, said the USCC “plans to
contribute to the moral dimensions of the SALT debate from the resources of the
Catholic tradition.”
“The danger of nuclear war and the Gospel imperative to work for peace place a
claim on us, as Catholics and citizens, to pray and labor for the day when the threat of
nuclear war is banished,” he said.
Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, a board member of Pax Christi, a
Catholic pacifist group which has refused to endorse SALT II, said the treaty would
legitimize the use of nuclear weapons and expand the arms race by focusing it on new
weapons technology.
In San Antonio, Texas, the 265-member governing board of the National Council of
Churches, an umbrella-group of 32 Protestant and Orthodox denominations,
unanimously endorsed a statement calling for the earliest possible ratification of SALT
n.
The statement also called for a total ban on nuclear arms testing, new nuclear
veapons systems and the development of chemical and radiological weapons.
The statement was first issued by religious leaders from the United States and the
Soviet Union at a three-day meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, last March.
The American Jewish Committee, a human relations organization, heard a debate on
SALT II at its 73rd annual meeting in New York, but did not itself take a position on
the treaty.
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), regarded as leaning against the treaty, said
he would like to vote for SALT II, but will do so only if he believes the Carter
administration will not tolerate Soviet violations of the agreement.
Hodding Carter III, assistant secretary of state for public affairs, said Moynihan’s
(Continued on page 6)
Sheen Plugs Collection
WASHINGTON (NC) - Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the U.S. Catholic
Church’s most famous broadcast personality, has urged Catholics throughout
the country to “help the bishops communicate” by giving to the new
Catholic Communication Campaign.
“We have the light, we have the faith - but we’re lacking the flame, the
passion, the fire” said the retired archbishop in an eight-and-a-half-minute
message on behalf of the new collection. The tape is being distributed to
dioceses and parishes throughout the United States.
Maintaining that “divine communications make manners nobie and men
and women gentle,” Archbishop Sheen said that “the bishops have now
decided in a big way to use electronics for the communication of the Gospel
of the Lord.
“We would like to reach not only those who belong to the faith but all the
unchurched and all the souls in America who are consciously or
unconsciously searching for God,” he added. The message was recorded on
the day before the archbishop’s 84th birthday, May 8.
The communications collection, scheduled in most U.S. dioceses on May
27, World Communication Day, was approved by the U.S. bishops last
November. Half the funds raised will be distributed at the national level and
TAKING HIS CUE -- Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan discusses the
Liturgy with Monsignor Noel C. Burtenshaw as he prepares to celebrate
Mass on television. The television Mass is part of Atlanta’s Department ol
Communications. Support Catholic Communications on Sunday, May 27
as the first annual collection is taken in each parish.
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