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Area Doctors Gather
To Support Pro-Life
BY LYNNE ANDERSON
On the Ides of March, swallows
traditionally return to Capistrano;
buzzards go back to Ohio. Signs of
spring and new life abound. And as
winter’s final bite shrivels and freezes
for one last week till the vernal
equinox signifies spring’s arrival,
nascent life awaits its day throughout
most of the Northern hemisphere.
New life which never has its
“day” - its birth -- was affirmed by
proponents of life gathered together
on the Ides of March in Atlanta.
Life in a most innocent form,
unborn human life, was the topic of
a seminar last Saturday at
Westminster School Auditorium
sponsored by Human Life Issues.
An abbreviated version of the very
successful “Whatever Happened to
the Human Race?” seminar, the
program featured Dr. Mildred
Jefferson, past president of National
Right to Life.
“Our society is very much like
society in Germany 50 years ago,”
Dr. Jefferson told the 200 people
assembled in Pressly Auditorium to
find out what they could do to
prevent the killing of unborn human
life. “We operate with the
quality-of-life ethic,” she said.
Dr. Jefferson told the crowd,
composed mainly of physcians and
health-related professionals, that she
was particularly pleased to have been
invited to speak by a group of
physicians. She said she believed the
tradition of the Hippocratic Oath has
been forgotten at times and that
doctors often become “simply social
technicians” because they are willing
to kill unborn children.
“The Greeks separated killing and
curing functions,” she said, adding
that she believes her profession
should not be in the business of
killing human life. Dr. Jefferson
traced the historical development of
doctors’ attitudes towards patients,
stating that as time progressed,
various cultures added more love and
concern to the healing process.
The concern for patients was
obstructed by the socio-political
undercurrents of pre-Nazi Germany,
she said, when scientists began to
express the belief that some lives are
not fit to live.
An unsavory union of medicine
and law occurred in Nazi Germany,
she said, which allowed the
(Continued on page 8)
LIFE SUPPORTERS - Pictured above are
youngsters who recently showed their support of
life by participating in a Pro-Life poster contest.
Atlantans opposed to abortion met this past
Saturday in their continuing struggle against
abortion on demand.
Allard Lowenstein
On March 16, 1968 Bobby
Kennedy announced he would be a
candidate for President of the United
States. He was very' happy. But no
one else was.
The following day Jackie
Kennedy called family tattletale and
historian Arthur Schlesinger and said
“they are going to do to Bobby what
they did to Jack. We must talk him
out of it. I am most unhappy.”
Schlesinger heartily agreed. He
was equally
unhappy.
Brother Ted was
unhappy.
Eugene McCar
thy, breaking
his back on a
lonely campaign
trail, was
unhappy.
Washington’s
liberal Senators,
cheering the
brave and brash
McCarthy on, were unhappy.
A1 Lowenstein, that one man
passionate pleader, and world-wide
working whizz for a new society, was
happy. To Al, Bobby Kennedy was
the nation’s leading contender for
the highest office. He krfew the
purpose and the power of
government. He would use it to stop
the Saigon war, heal the wounds it
had caused and bring equality to the
divided communities of America.
Lowenstein in his well known
childlike exuberance, was ecstatic.
Childlikeness was a good and
often used term for Allard
Lowenstein. He had a childlike
excitement about him in every stride.
Nothing was impossible. The world
would know change if proper
leadership was spawned. His job was
service to that leadership. And serve
he did.
He came out of the University of
North Carolina in 1948 at the age of
20. They called the brilliant New
York Jew a youth leader. Forever he
would cherish the name. With ease,
with the knack of a preaching
prophet, he led youth up the path of
dedication and service.
They followed Al Lowenstein to
South Africa where he said the
system was wrong. They followed
him on buses to Southern sit-ins
where he protested other wrongs.
They followed him for Stevenson,
for Humphrey, for peace, against
war, on behalf of every holy,
democratic cause. And when the
legions of the young grew tired,
Lowenstein went on alone - a one
man excitement act wherever he
moved.
The churning motor of
excitement stalled within Allard
Lowenstein that evening in June
1968 when his leader, the man who
innoculated him with a passion for
justice, was shot down in Los
Angeles. “Bobby Kennedy,” he
would say “brought out the best and
the beast in our nation. It was the
beast who waited for him in the
kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel.”
He failed to say the beast still stalked
from dark recesses of our society.
One week ago Allard Lowenstein
became the latest victim. A cheap
handgun, America’s modern chamber
of horrors, took him as the adrenelin
still flowed and his insatiable thirst
for justice searched the horizon for
new campaigns. He was 52.
Allard Lowenstein, another all too
brief shining moment.
Vol. 18 No. 12
Thursday, March 20,1980
$6.00 Per Year
PRESS CONFERENCE - Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan
meets the Press in Atlanta as he and five other Southern Bishops
endorse the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union
boycott of the J. P, Stevens Company. The Bishops’ support of the
Union action took place to promote the worker’s right to bargain
collectively.
Lenten Living
BY MSGR. JERRY HARDY
Choosing The Risky Good
The crowd is the focus for us today; they can teach us a lot and
help us. The crowd chooses to confront Jesus with a question of the
law. After hearing Jesus, they choose not to follow the law. Jesus
doesn’t overpower them with wordy arguments. He simply lays out
for them a choice based on their fidelity to the law (“it says she
must be stoned”) and their own experience of themselves
(“whoever is without sin may cast the first stone”).
The first ones to leave from the crowd chose not to condemn
and risked (a) criticism for not upholding the law; (b) for giving
poor example; and (c) for choosing the GOOD over the RIGHT.
Clearly the law said “stone her,” that was the “right” thing to
do. Would it have been the “good” thing, the “best” thing? Clearly
not in Jesus’ view of things which is supposed to be our view. The
message here is multiple. Jesus and the crowd chose the larger
“good” thing over the evident “right” thing to do. He could have
stuck rigidly with the law and if he had we would never have had
such an example of compassion. He literally risks “suffering with”
(compassion, com-patior, to suffer with) in order to teach us that
there are higher goods than law.
And what about the crowd? They’re easily put down as a blood
thirsty mob th^it began to drift away (beginning with the elders') in
guilt. Think of them rather as us, a group of well intentioned if
somewhat overly enthusiastic people who try to do the right thing.
Think of them as having to struggle to choose a higher good after
they had committed themselves to a lower one.
Implications For Us:
1. Are we quicker to condemn someone or stand up in their
defense, risking being condemned with them?
2. How do we respond to Jesus’ call to look at our own sins
before looking at other folks?
3. Are we afraid of new ideas that might challenge tradition?
4. How are we on trusting our own prayerful, conscientious
insights and choices?
5. Do we trust the Lord to support us even if no one else does?
6. Which adjective would you use to describe your general
manner of choosing: rigid and “letter of the law-ish?” or flexible in
a conscientious and reflective way? To which does Jesus appear to
challenge us today?
Pope Pleads For End
To Terrorist Violence
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope
John Paul II centered his attention
March 16 on victims of terrorism and
violence, especially a 15-year-old
deaf-mute and a slain political leader.
In a noon Angelus address, the
pope appealed for the release of
Annabelle Schild, an English
deaf-mute teen-ager who was
kidnapped with her parents Aug. 21
during a vacation on the Italian
island of Sardinia.
He also revealed for the first time
that Daphne Schild, the child’s
mother, had been released by the
kidnappers eight weeks ago. Rolf
Schild, a 55-year-old German-bom
electronics engineer, was freed Sept.
5 to raise a still undisclosed ransom.
Pope John Paul’s appeal came on
the second anniversary of the
abduction of Aldo Moro, former
Italian premier who was later killed
by the leftist Red Brigades.
The pope said terrorist violence
increased in the past two years. Four
people were killed in recent days in
Rome alone.
“What can one do to put a stop to
this expanding wave of mad
murder?” Pope John Paul asked.
“The Christian has an answer: to
pray and to love,” he said. “Hate
generates death; only from love can
life come.”
Pope John Paul then immediately
went to the Paul VI Audience Hall to
address 10,000 members of
Communione e Liberazione
(Communion and Liberty), an Italian
youth-group.
“The spiral of violence, cynically
continues to provoke and to sow
hate and death,” he said.
Referring to the increasing
incidents of violence between leftist
and rightist youth groups, the pope
added, “Dominated by deviant
ideologies, some young people
delude themselves by thinking that
only by causing death can they
transform society.”
“Be now and always the
spokesmen and transmitters of
Christian joy,” he told members of
Communione e Liberazione. “To
blind violence and inhuman hate
respond, dear young people, with the
transcendent force of love.”
INFLATION PROPOSALS
Religious Groups Voice Concern
WASHINGTON (NC) - President
Carter’s long-awaited announcement
of a new anti-inflation program
March 14 came amid, concern by
religious groups over its possible
impact on the poor and hungry.
Immediate reaction to Carter’s
announcement was muted by the
fact that the administration revealed
few specifics on what programs
might be trimmed in the effort to
balance the federal budget.
But in the days leading up to the
announcement, several religious
leaders urged the president not to cut
programs vital to the poor.
“We’re disappointed that we don’t
know what the budget cuts will be,”
Francis Butler, associate secretary for
domestic social development at the
U.S. Catholic Conference, said about
the president’s decision to delay
announcing details of federal
spending reductions until the end of
the month.
Butler noted that federal jobs,
food stamp and welfare reform
programs appear to be areas in which
cuts will be proposed. “But the
administration is keeping this thing
under wraps,” he said.
Matthew Ahmann, associate
director for government relations at
the National Conference of Catholic
Charities, also had little to say about
the administration’s budget balancing
efforts until more is known about
the proposed cuts.
But he was highly critical of
Carter’s decision to impose an import
fee on oil and raise gasoline taxes by
10 cents per gallon to reduce energy
consumption.
“The administration is proceeding
to try to cut and limit the use of gas
by price. That’s discriminatory
against poor people,” said Ahmann.
He remarked that while the
overall effect of the administration’s
efforts might be to reduce inflation,
those efforts also will increase
unemployment and the reliance of
the poor on such programs as food
stamps and welfare.
The day before Carter announced
his anti-inflation program, five
religious leaders, including Holy
Cross Father Theodore M. Hesburgh
and Auxiliary Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton of Detroit, sent Carter a
telegram urging him not to cut
funding for programs “which are
vital in reducing hunger and
deprivation.”
The five said they applauded
efforts to reduce inflation, but also
expressed “strenuous opposition” to
cutbacks for food and development
aid abroad and in domestic hunger
programs.
Pointing to estimates that a
balanced budget would reduce
inflation by only three-tenths of one
percent, they told Carter, “We think
you will agree that to sacrifice the
needs of hungry people for an
extremely marginal reduction in the
Consumer Price Index would be
unacceptable.”
They also urged cuts in defense
appropriations, saying that “national
security may be better served by less
hunger here and abroad than by
more arms spending.”
The telegram was signed by
Father Hesburgh, president of the
University of Notre Dame; Bishop
Gumbleton, president of Bread for
the World, a Christian citizens’
lobbying group on hunger issues; the
Rev. M. William Howard, president
of the National Council of Churches;
Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum,
interreligious affairs director,
American Jewish Committee, and
Bishop John H. Adams of Waco,
Texas, an African Methodist
Episcopal Church clergyman.
Expressing a similar concern, this
time about aid to Indochinese
refugees, was Father Robert L.
(Continued on page 2)
Airline Victims Mourned
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope John Paul II expressed his “deep-felt
sorrow” over the Polish Airlines crash which killed 87 people March
14, including a 22-member U.S. amateur boxing team.
The Soviet-built Polish airlines 11-62 jetliner crashed near Okecie
Airport in Warsaw, Poland, after a flight from New York.
The plane nosedived into a 19th-century fortress about five miles
from the airport, killing everyone aboard.
The pope sent a telegram of condolence to the Polish primate,
Cardinal Stefan Wysyznski of Warsaw, on March 15.
“I beg God to give eternal peace to those who died a tragic death
and console the families stricken with pain,” said the pope in his
telegram, written in Polish.
Polish Transport Ministry sources said the plane had trouble
lowering its landing gear on its approach to the airport.
The Polish government declared March 15 and March 16 as official
days of mourning.
President Carter also sent a message of condolence.
The U.S. amateur boxing team was scheduled to compete against
the Polish national team.