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Catholic Muskie Named
BY JOHN MAHER
NC NEWS SERVICE
Sen. Edmund S. Muskie
(D-Maine), chosen by President
Carter to succeed Cyrus R. Vance as
secretary of state, is the first Catholic
to hold that office.
“I’m very pleased with the
appointment,” said Bishop Edward
C. O’Leary of Portland, Maine, in
Chicago, where the U.S. bishops were
meeting. “I think he’ll be a
moderating influence and bring
stability to our foreign policy.”
Archbishop Peter Gerety of
Newark, N.J., formerly bishop in
Maine, said Muskie was a “great
choice.” The archbishop added:
“He’s highly respected and I think
he’s a very fine man.”
Father J. Bryan Hehir, U.S.
Catholic Conference associate
secretary for international justice and
peace, said Muskie has a strong
foreign policy background from his
years on the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee and was an
intelligent participant in hearings on
the ratification of the Salt II arms
limitation treaty with the Soviet
Union.
“He brings a strong mind and a
strong personality to a job that takes
a strong person,” Father Hehir said.
Muskie is “a good substantial
Christian, not just a nominal
Catholic,” said Msgr. Vincent A.
Tatarczuk, vicar for temporalities
and former chancellor of the Diocese
of Portland. Muskie is “a man of
great integrity, who would never
compromise his faith and who has
carefully developed his conscience,”
said Msgr. Tatarczuk, who has known
Muskie since the early 1950s and
who officiated at the weddings of
two of the senator’s children.
The Portland diocesan official was
asked about the senator’s stand on
the abortion issue, which has been
criticized by some members of the
pro-life movement. The senator has
opposed a constitutional amendment
to ban abortions and has also voted
for the use of federal funds to pay
for abortions in certain cases.
Muskie “is personally very much
opposed to abortion,” the priest said,
“but in his voting experience he has
taken his cues from (Jesuit) Father
(Robert F.) Drinan (D-Mass.), an
attorney, a former dean of the
Boston College Law School, a
theologian.”
Muskie “sees it as a matter of
reconciling his conscience with what
his constituency is asking him to do.
He felt he was not in any way
condoning the practice of abortion
Sen. Edmund S. Muskie
but was accomodating the
consciences of others.”
The priest said that during his two
terms as governor of Maine from
1954 to 1958, Muskie had been a
member of the Catholic Lawyers’
Guild in the diocese.
Msgr. Joseph B. Coyne, pastor of
Little Flower Parish in Bethesda,
Md., where the Muskies are
parishioners, said that they are
practicing Catholics, but have not
been active in church organizations.
“I didn’t expect that,” he said
because of other commitments the
senator and his wife have.
“Mrs. Muskie had duties in the
school while the children were here,”
the pastor said. All five Muskie
children attended Little Flower
school and four of them graduated
from the school. Edmund Jr., the
youngest, transferred after the sixth
grade. The three Muskie daughters all
graduated from Holy Child High
School in Potomac, Md.
Muskie’s Senate voting record on
foreign policy issues is that of a
Democrat strongly supportive of a
president belonging to the same
party.
He backed Carter’s decision to try
to rescue the U.S. hostages in Iran.
That decision prompted Vance to
resign.
He has supported most of
President Carter’s foreign policy
decisions, including the Panama
Canal treaties, the decision not to
develop the B-l bomber, the sale of
advanced fighters to Israel, Egypt
and Saudi Arabia and maintaining
economic sanctions against Rhodesia,
which has now become independent
as Zimbabwe.
Although he took no formal
position on the Salt II treaty with
the Soviet Union, the senator has
been a supporter of arms control.
The 66-year-old senator, a native
of Rumford, Maine, is the second of
the six children of Stephen and
Josephine (Czarnecki) Marciszewski.
His father, a tailor, had fled to the
United States in 1903 to escape
czarist tyranny in Poland. An
immigration official in New York,
unable to spell the family name,
shortened it to Muskie.
The senator’s middle name,
Sixtus, was the name of five popes.
A World War II veteran, he was
elected to the Maine House of
Representatives in 1946 and after
re-election in 1948 was made
Democratic floor leader.
In 1954, Muskie became the first
Catholic ever elected governor of
Maine. Another Catholic had held
the office 110 years earlier, but had
been appointed to succeed a
governor who had resigned to
become a member of the U.S.
Senate.
A secretary of state in the 1940s,
the late James F. Byrnes, (1945 to
1947) was baptized a Catholic, but
had renounced Catholicism by the
time he was appointed.
Dancin’
The groom was a little hot under
the collar as he led his bride of a few
hours back to the table. “I didn’t do
so well, did I? ” he stuttered. “You
were sensational,” I lied. I
immediately asked forgiveness, but I
had to pour on that exaggeration.
The poor man had just bravely
waltzed his new wife around a
shining empty dance floor. The
entire wedding party tearily looked
on. I say “waltzed.” To the strains of
“The Loviliest
Night of the
Year,” he
moved her from
one end of the
floor to other
like a longshore
man moving a
crate of Indian
tea on the New
York docks.
‘‘We have
been taking
lessons,” he said
nervously as the others flocked
towards the strains of the band.
“Lessons?” I asked. “Dance lessons”
he said, “We’re learning how to
dance.”
I could not believe it. They are
starting on a brand new life. College
is over. The challenge of success in
the professions is ahead. They know
how to handle a mortgage. But they
can’t dance. It’s absurd, it’s asinine.
But it’s true.
And there are millions like them.
They are the Beatle-bottle-babies of
the sixties. They are the disciples of
the Beach Boys, the Bee Gee’s and
the rip-roaring rockers of the last 20
years.
They know how to wiggle, waddle
and wag. They see a difference
between the gyrations of rock and
roll and disco that no one else can
possibly untangle. They have the
ability to stand in one place and
move at the same time. Down
through those 20 years they invented
all kinds of tags and taps for their
jungle beat. But they never learned
how to dance.
Now the craft is back. The Fred
Astaire academies of ballroom
instruction are packed.
The craze of the big sound and
the big band fills the air. For 2 hours
each Sunday evening WSB Radio
pours our Woody Herman, Tommy
Dorsey, Vaughan Monroe and Harry
James and listeners are asking for
more. Extend the show one hour
plead the letters.
Over at Colony Square, the
sophisticates pour from swanky
offices each Friday afternoon, not to
get an early jump on the weekend.
No, they crowd the Mall to jump
into the jitter of a Tea Dance. With
the blare of the big band sound of
Ray Bloch they bring back the
forties. Those who remember, fall
easily into those great steps that kept
a nation at war sane. Those, told
about it only at the knee, practice
the steps perfectly and with fresh
exhilaration. Look, Ma, I’m dancin’!
Go to the attic and bring your
college sweaters, penny loafers and
button-down shirts to the garage sale.
They, like the haunting clarinet
sounds of Benny Goodman, are back.
And maybe, if we could find the
price of the gas, someone would
come up with a Studebaker
convertible.
You have all the ingredients again.
Hey, world, you’re dancin’.
Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
Vol. 18 No. 19
Thursday, May 8,1980
$6.00 Per Year
FREEDOM MASS -- Cuban refugees at Fort Walton Beach, Fla.,
embrace Father Todd Hevia during the greeting of peace at the
Cuban’s first Mass in the United States.
Africa Welcomes Pope
KINSHASA, Zaire (NC) - Pope
John Paul II arrived in Africa amid
wildly cheering crowds, dancers on
10-foot stilts and the colorful
pageantry of black Africa.
The pope landed in Zaire, the first
stop of his six-nation tour, on May 2
and promptly turned the welcoming
ceremony into a symbolic gesture
toward all Africa. He kissed the
ground and said: “God bless Zaire.
God bless Africa.”
After several days of activity,
however, the cheers were
interspersed with tragedy and
controversy.
The tragedy occurred when nine
people were trampled by the early
crowds trying to enter a park where
the pope was scheduled to celebrate
Mass. The controversy involved the
speed with which African customs
should be incorporated into church
life in Africa.
The other countries on the
African tour (May 2-12) are the
Congo, Kenya, Ghana, the Ivory
Coast and Upper Volta.
At Kinshasa’s airport, the pope
was greeted by President Mobutu
Sese Seko and Cardinal Joseph
Malula of Kinshasa.
Pope John Paul said he came as a
religious leader to “purify, elevate
and affirm” the religious nature of
the African soul. He also said he was
a messenger of peace and rejoiced
with the independent African nations
who have gained independence thus
taking their destiny in their own
hands.
Yet each African nation has a
struggle to forge its own personality
and culture, he said. For this the
countries need peace, independence
and non-partisan aid, he added.
At the airport hundreds of
thousands of chanting and singing
people greeted the pope.
The presence of Mobutu was seen
as further evidence of the president’s
growing reconciliation with Zaire’s
Catholic Church. On the eve of the
pope’s arrival, Mobutu, a baptized
Catholic, married his companion of
several years, Bobila Dawa, at a Mass
celebrated by Cardinal Malula.
In the mid-1970s, the 49-year-old
Mobutu tried to curb the power of
the church as part of a campaign to
eliminate colonial influence from
Zaire. A key state action was the
Turn To Page 6
nationalization of the Catholic
school system. But the school system
was returned to the church in 1977
and Vatican officials with the pope
said the church-state problems have
been settled.
Zaire, the former Belgian Congo,
was Christianized by European
missionaries and has the largest
Catholic population in terms of
numbers and percentage of the
nations on the papal trip. Over 45
percent of Zaire’s 27.4 million
people profess Catholicism.
During the flight from Rome to
Zaire, the pope talked with
journalists about Africa and alluded
to the recent U.S. effort to rescue
the American hostages in Iran.
“We always need to fear for world
peace, but these last days have been
particularly tense and dangerous,”
said the pope. “We need to eliminate
the causes of war and, in the first
place, terrorism, which is a crime and
a sin.”
Regarding the boycotting of the
summer Olympics in Moscow
because of the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan, the pope said athletes
should act according to their
conscience.
PROPER ROLE OF PRIEST
Political Office Out
BOSTON (NC) - Following is the
r text of a statement issued May 5 by
Jesuit Father Edward M. O’Flaherty,
provincial of the Society of Jesus of
New England, regarding the order
prohibiting Jesuit Father Robert
Drinan from running for reelection
to the House of Representatives.
Congressman Robert F. Drinan,
S.J., announced today that he will
not be a candidate for reelection to
the United States House of
Representatives this fall.
Congressman Drinan, who is a Jesuit
priest, is withdrawing from the race
in deference to an order from his
Roman superiors.
As provincial of the Society of
Jesus in New England, I am Father
Drinan’s religious superior. At this
time I would like to share with you
the senquence of events leading to
today’s announcement as well as
what I take to be the reasons for the
superior’s order.
On Sunday, April 27, 1980, I
received a telephone call from the
Rome headquarters of the Jesuit
order communicating this order. I
informed Father Drinan
immediately.
Over the course of the next few
days I pursued several avenues of
appeal, stressing with the Roman
authorities the fact that such an
order would almost certainly seem in
the eyes of many people to be an
improper intrusion by the church
into American political affairs. I also
pointed out the serious
inconvenience to the election process
itself since the filing deadline for
candidates is May 6.
On Saturday, May 3, I was told
that these concerns expressed had
been personally conveyed to the
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discussion it became clear that the
decision would be final.
This information was
communicated on the same day, I
believe, to the 'Vatican’s
representative in Washington,
Archbishop Jean Jadot.
Father Drinan and I met in
Boston on Saturday afternoon. At
that meeting, convinced that the
decision was final, Father Drinan
agreed to announce his withdrawal
from the race.
It has been stressed to me that
Vatican and Jesuit authorities m
Rome wish to underline the point
that the principle reason for the
order was the pope’s convictions
about the proper role of the priest.
Indeed, one highly placed Vatican
official privately expressed the hope
that it might be possible to persuade
people that the pope was acting
exclusively out of principle. There
was no intention of singling out
Father Drinan for criticism.
(Continued on page 7)
Sister Mayor Surprised
“The whole incident came as a surprise.”
These were the words of Sister Carolyn Farrell, reflecting on the
Papal directive prohibiting Father Robert F. Drinan, S.J. from serving
in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Sister Carolyn, mayor of Dubuque, Iowa, a city of 67,000 people,
doesn’t feel her own political future is threatened: “The wording
seems to indicate that only the clergy is involved.”
Her larger concern is for the Church, which has, in the past, been
assisted by dedicated clergy who were unafraid to wrangle in the
political arena.
“Father Drinan was a valuable part of the Washington scene,” feels
Sister Carolyn speaking to the Georgia Bulletin from Dubuque. “The
clergy in Latin America, too, are performing valuable service. I can’t
see the harm of their involvement and I’m not sure what’s prompting
the order from the Vatican.”
The mayor of Dubuque sees political involvement as a means of
service to the community. “Not everyone is attracted to politics or is
even able to serve. In my position I can help meet local needs.”
As for what the future will hold, Sister Carolyn is taking a “wait
and see” attitude: “The Pope is in Africa.” The questions will have to
wait. -TKJ
UPLIFTING MOMENT - Pope John Paul II
lifts up an African child during his visit to
Kinshasa, Zaire, during the second day of his
African visit.
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