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Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta Vol. 18 No. 9 Thursday, February 28,1980 $6 Per Year Winners Moscow is doubtful. Very doubtful. The long road to those record-breaking games in the sun may be closed. We may not run for the gold, or jump high in air or hurl gigantic hammers long distances. Moscow may be very well a doubtful proposition. But there was no doubt about Lake Placid. Old glory headed into the beautiful snowy mountains with a little Heiden in the pocket and that’s all. Eric would be great. His gold was a sound invest ment. Little else could be expected as the cold countries invaded our shores. What could we possibly do against the Alpine Swiss or the icy East Germans or the flashing supersonic skating miracles from the Soviet Union. The Russian stick men were better at ice hockey than a Russian bear is at dancing. We nau no chance. We looked at the record and almost fainted. The Russians had beaten every last team on steel skates. Their international tours were sell-out spectacles of skillful power and art. Even the Philadelphia Fliers were badly beaten when they stopped hacking Russian heads and started playing the ice game. The Russians were the brilliant best. But Mike Erizione, captain of the underdog U.S. twenty had news for the flashing blades of the Red monsters. His gang wanted it. Silver would be fine, bronze would be nice, but this team was just a glutton for gold. They would make possible the impossible - and they did. Winners. Unexpected, undisputed. We love them. We love their grit, their rugged determination, their persistant refusal to stay down. Maybe it was this new wave of patriotic fever, maybe it was the press relegating them to a respectable third or maybe it was the imprisoned, held hostage Americans who would have this bright marvelous moment in one of their never ending bleak days. Maybe Winners, your contagious, infectious spirit warms the cockles of our heart. Sunday next is the annual “winners day” in North Georgia. Every parish sets out to win the battle of want for all kinds of Catholic need. Every t penny pledged and put into the pot goes for our own instigated charitable ideas, solid winning ideas. Mountainous mission parishes are helped to meet big budgets in small places. Homeless refugees are housed. Breaking families are mended, orphans are given loving parents and young minds are challenged with horizons of glorious knowledge. It’s all attempted in that communal effort of our Archdiocese, next Sunday, that we call the Charities Drive, a wonderful winning day for us all. The Winter Olympics are past history. We glide away from snowy mountains on wings of memories filled with wondrous winning athletes. After Charities Drive Sunday, and our sacrificial efforts for others, we can toast the Winners that all of us can be. Rite Of Initiation Welcomes New Candidates They call it the Rite of Initiation. We haven’t seen it performed ever before. But it is an ancient rite of the Christian Community and on Sunday, February 24, it was historically revised in the Cathedral of Christ the King. The early Christians did it with pomp and splendor. They would have been thrilled with the display at the Cathedral on Sunday. There were 140 candidates. They presented themselves to the person of Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan to be considered for total acceptance into full communion. Turning to their sponsors the Archbishop - presiding father of the Christian Church - asked cautiously “Have they faithfully listened to God’s Word proclaimed by the Church?” With one confident voice they answered back “Yes - yes they have.” The presiding Archbishop turned to the entire congregation and asked for their assent in accepting the candidates for consideration. They responded enthusiastically “We believe that they should be called to the Easter Sacraments and for this RITE RESTORED -- Father Bob Poandl presents the names of candidates to Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan during the new Rite of Initiation held at the Cathedral Sunday, February 24. Lenten Living BY MSGR. JERRY HARDY God Choosing The Father chooses Jesus, who (as our Advent sheets noted) was a great relief for God. Last week Jesus wrestled with his options and chose his Father’s way. Now his Father says, “This is my son -- my chosen one.” The Father was taking a chance. He could have done it differently. But he didn’t. He chose Jesus as his messenger. He chose a poor, simple, open, good and willing man, called him “My Son” and risked having the message of centuries ignored because his Messiah wasn’t what people expected. On the strength of that vote of confidence, Jesus is empowered to come down from the mountain, back to the valley where he’ll eventually die. We’re chosen the same way, by God. We’re given the same empowering to choose as Jesus did. The truth is the Father’s choice of Jesus was going on last week as Jesus wrestled with himself and the popular expectations. And only because God’s “choosing grace” was in him could he respond so faithfully. That grace is in us too. It is the fruit of our baptism. The Implications For Us: 1. If he has chosen each of us in baptism and eucharist, then how can we refuse to pass on that choice to others? How can we exclude others from love or justice or work or good housing or food or a kind word or our concern? Each of them is equally chosen by God. Doesn’t that throw a different responsibility on us, since we are then his similar sons and daughters? 2. If we, as a church, are supposed to be a group of “chosens,” we should be able to pick off the signs of it. List three things about YOUR experience here at the Parish that support the idea that we are chosen and three things that deny it. we thank God.” Now it’s onward to Easter and full communion with the Body of Christ. Fifteen parishes in the Archdiocese participated in the revised rite. Priests from many parishes attended, and a spirit of joyful renewal permeated the Cathedral. Archbishop Donnellan was assisted by Monsignor John McDonough, Vicar General of the Archdiocese and Father James Miceli, Assistant Chancellor. The magnificent Cathedral choir, under PRO-LIFERS the direction of Hamilton Smith, along with the solemn setting of Lent added beauty to the occasion. In his homily, Archbishop Donnellan stressed the beauty and significance of the Christian Vocation. The candidates had heard the call, they answered and were novices, preparing for the moment of acceptance, rising with Jesus at Easter, he said. After the priests offered their names for enrollment and the names were accepted by the Archbishop, the 140 new candidates were accepted as members of the elect. The sponsors came forward, placed their hands on the shoulders of the accepted ones and the congregation thundered “The Church’s one Foundation.” It was an emotional moment to be remembered. The newly shared happiness was further enjoyed at a reception held in the Hyland Center following the Liturgy of Initiation. Archdiocesan Liturgy Director, Father Louis Naughton expressed his delight that the ceremony was so perfectly performed. “It was a wonderful day, to be enjoyed by all. The Church is richer for this day.” Court Decision Protested NC NEWS SERVICE The will of the American people has once again been thwarted, one pro-life leader said, while another called for public trials of the six Supreme Court justices who allowed resumption of federal funding of abortion. Others joined in protesting the Supreme Court’s Feb. 19 decision ordering the federal government to pay for all medically necessary abortions until the court determines the constitutionality of federal abortion funding restrictions. Life Amendment Political Action Committee (LAPAC) is calling for a “new brand of hit list” -- the six Supreme Court justices “who rule time and again against the weakest member of the human family - the preborn child.” Paul Brown, LAP AC director, said his organization will work for a “human rights hearing” and wants to GAINESVILLE hold a “peoples’ court” to try Justices Thurgood Marshall, John Paul Stevens, William J. Brennan, Potter Stewart, Byron R. White and Harry A. Blackmun. He gave no time or location for such a trial. “If this court is now going to rule against the poor, the small and the defenseless - then the people must stand up for their God and their country and do everything within their power to see that the justice of God is served on these six men,” Brown said. “The will of the American people, as expressed through their legislature, has once again been thwarted,” Dr. Carolyn F. Gerster, president of the National Right to Life said of the court decision. “For the past four years the U.S. House of Representatives, the congressional body most responsive - by reason of the two-year term - to the voter, has by an overwhelming majority restricted tax-funding of abortion to those cases in which the life of the mother was endangered,” she said. “Each year there has been a slow but steady weakening of Senate opposition to the restrictive language.” As a result of the Supreme Court decision to let stand New York Judge John Dooling’s order to resume federal funding of abortions while the high court deliberates the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment, “a serious question has been raised as to the balance of legislative and judicial power,” said Ms. Gerster. “The National Abortion Rights Action League has described this most recent court action as ‘only a temporary victory.’ They added, ‘We know that this will fire the passions (Continued on page 3) Sisters From Peru Find Home Ed. Note: See page two for related story on the work of Atlanta Archdiocesan priest. Father Bill Hoffman. BY LYNNE ANDERSON The three little sisters stood side by side, wide-eyed. Clothed in identical bright dresses they looked like they could have been posing for o a magazine cover; they even had an o audience of sorts. But the audience 5 wasn’t really an audience, and the m girls weren’t posing for photographs. Two of the sisters, Elizabeth Anne Edmonds and Mary Virginia Edmonds, were about to receive the sacrament of baptism, and the “audience” was comprised of other children who were there to welcome them into the Christian community at Saint Michael’s Church in Gainesville. Betsy and Ginger Edmonds, ages 7 and 4, have only been in Gainesville since last summer when they were re-united with their younger sister Emily, 2. The three Peruvian sisters found their way to Gainesville through Linda and Tony Edmonds, but also with the guiding hand of the priest who baptized them Sunday, February 17. Father Bill Hoffman, a priest of Atlanta, and a member of the Saint James Society, which does missionary work in Latin America, and the man behind it all, explains. “Two summers ago, in 1977, I was home visiting my parents. I spoke with the Edmonds, and they asked me if I knew of any orphans in need of a home because they were looking to adopt a child. At that time, I didn’t know of any children and didn’t think I would, but I told them I would keep my ears open.” Father returned to Peru that summer. Within a few days, the nuns in the village, where he works, Andahuaylas, told him of a woman who was dying. They asked him to come to the hospital to administer the last rites, and upon arriving at the room of the dying woman, Father discovered a sad situation. Lying next to the woman on her hospital cot was a tiny two-month-old girl. An older sister was “taking care of her,” giving her a bottle of sugar and water. The distraught husband of the woman told Father he didn’t know what he was going to do with his infant daughter: he had six other children to take care of in addition to farming his farm. If only he knew what to do Betsy Edmonds with his infant daughter, he told Father Hoffman.. “I know what to do with the little baby,” Father says he thought to himself when the man came back to him in two days with the news of his wife’s death. The grieving man had no way to take care of the infant, and he was going to put her up for adoption, Father says. For the next few weeks, letters were flying between Gainesville, Georgia, and Andahuaylas, Peru as quickly as the mail could carry them. There was an infant who was going to have to be put up for adoption, Father Bill wrote Linda and Tony Edmonds, and were they interested, he asked. Their answer wasn’t long in coming, and it was an unhesitated “yes.” Adoption papers had to be filed, the usual home-study investigation made, and even F.B.I. clearance on the Edmonds conducted before Linda and Tony flew to Peru to meet their new daughter. “I don’t think Father Bill knew how much paper work he was getting himself into,” says Linda Edmonds, shaking her head. “He’s done so much for us.” Baby Emily stayed with a family in Peru until the proper adoption procedures had been met. Once everything was finalized, the adoption process was completed in Peru, and the Edmonds, along with their daughter Emily flew home to Gainesville. Father Hoffman dropped by to visit the Edmonds home when he was visiting his parents in 1978 to see how everyone was. “They were delighted and elated with Emily,” he says with a smile. “They said they wanted another child, and asked if I knew of any other orphans. Of course I didn’t; I don’t really run across that many normally, but I told them again I would keep my ears open.” He did keep his ears open, so open in fact that he heard of an amazing circumstance. A few days after arriving in Peru, Father was walking home from a cemetery and whom should he meet but Emily’s natural Father. Father Hoffman mentioned that he had seen Emily, that she was doing well, and the family was very happy. The widowed man’s home wasn’t so happy, Father says the man told him that day. As a matter of fact, he had had to place his two youngest daughters in an orphanage because he was unable to care for them. He just hoped those two would be placed in a home as happy as the one where Emily was, he told Father. It was now an elated Father Hoffman who quickly wrote the (Continued on page 3) Charities Drive “The first results are excellent,” so says Monsignor Jerry E. Hardy, Chancellor of the Archdiocese speaking about the Archdiocesan Charities Drive. “The samples we have taken show us that the great generosity of our people continues this year with the same outpourings as in other years.” The annual cash Drive which takes place on Sunday next, March 2, has a goal of $550,000. The money finances many needy projects and many outreach programs along with Archdiocesan Agencies. Every family and each wage earner is asked, through their parish, to support the annual Charities Drive. “This is the first year we have set the goal in excess of a half a million,” said the hopeful Chancellor. “We place a lot of trust in the fine work of our priests and the generous response of our people.” I I t