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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.