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PAGE 7—June 5, 1980
Dioceses Open Arms To Cuban Refugees
BY NC NEWS SERVICE
From Wisconsin to Florida
dioceses have opened their arms to
welcome Cubans fleeing from the
Fidel Castro regime.
— In La Crosse, Wis., Bishop
Frederick W. Freking issued a letter
urging the people of his diocese to
welcome and aid the Cuban refugees
expected to be housed at a nearby
military camp. His response came
May 20, only the day after he
learned the refugees would be
sheltered near his See.
— Leaders of the Cuban
community in Philadelphia met May
19 and pledged to sponsor 500
Cuban refugees. They gathered in a
meeting called by the Archdiocese of
Philadelphia’s Spanish-Speaking
Apostolate and the Catholic Social
Services Migration and Refugee
Resettlement program.
— The Diocese of Richmond, Va.,
committed its offices, especially its
Latin American Pastoral Center and
the Refugee Resettlement Program,
to helping Cubans find homes and
jobs in the diocese. It also joined
with two other organizations to
express concern for the Cubans and
to “welcome them with open arms
and hearts.”
— Archbishop Edward A.
McCarthy of Miami personally
greeted refugees and archdiocesan
priests and Religious began
ministering to refugees.
— The U.S. Catholic Conference
has about 40 persons at work in
refugee centers at Fort Chaffee, Ark.;
Indiantown Gap, Pa.; Eglin Air Force
base, Fla., and Miami. It is fostering
resettlement efforts by the
Cuban-American communities
working in conjunction with
diocesan officials.
These and other efforts are part of
the church’s and the nation’s
response to the influx of refugees
fleeing the communist government of
Cuba.
To Bishop Freking, the refugees
represent a “real challenge to our
Christian concern for their safety,
their physical and their spiritual
well-being.
“It will be a challenge for us to
show them that the ‘impossible
dream’ of personal freedom, joy and
peace, and the chance to live a
human existence are not an
impossibility in our beloved land of
opportunity,” he wrote to the people
of the La Crosse Diocese
The meeting of Cuban leaders in
Philadelphia focused on preparations
for resettlement and provision of
clothes and jobs for those who will
remain in the archdiocese. The more
than 70 participants at the meeting
also expressed concern that the
federal government grant the Cubans
full refugee status, Father Thomas
Craven, director of the
Spanish-Speaking Apostolate, said.
Currently, the Cubans are
regarded as “applicants for asylum,”
although that status is subject to
review in 60 days. Officially, they are
not considered to be refugees,
according to the U.S. Catholic
Conference’s Migration and Refugee
Services. If the Cubans are officially
classified as refugees, they will be
eligible for welfare, Medicare, food
stamps and Social Security numbers.
In Philadelphia, Rick Bond, director
of the Migration and Resettlement
office, said it is unclear how many
refugees might be resettled in the
archdiocese.
The 20,000 refugees expected at
the Indiantown Gap Military
Reservation in Pennsylvania probably
will be resettled throughout the
nation. Father Craven estimates there
are almost 5,000 Cuban-Americans
presently in the Philadelphia area.
The archdiocese’s efforts are likely to
be geared toward family
reunification for exiles with relatives
in the United States, added Bond. He
estimated 99 percent of the Cubans
arriving in the United States are
Catholics. In the Philadelphia
archdiocese over the last several
years, the Migration and Refugee
Resettlement office has settled some
1,800 Indochinese.
Bond added that until the federal
government allocates assistance for
the Cubans through the U.S. Catholic
Conference or other agency, the
archdiocese’s efforts will be geared
primarily to “trouble-shooting.”
Meanwhile, at a press conference
in Richmond May 21, Bishop Walter
F. Sullivan; Mario Leon, president of
the Cuban American Club of
Richmond; and Humberto Cardounel
of the Committee of the Spanish
Speaking Community of Virginia,
urged Catholic people and parishes to
“be generous and prompt in
providing adequate opportunities.”
They appealed for assistance in
sponsorship of families, employment
and housing “so our Cuban brothers
and sisters can be resettled and
become an integral part of our
society.”
The three added they wished “to
share this humanitarian concern also
with the other faiths so we all can
give together a clear witness of
ecumenism in action.’
Archbishop John R. Quinn of San
Francisco, president of the National
Conference of Catholic Bishops, has
called on dioceses to hold special
collections to help resettle Cuban
and Haitian refugees.
Changing Attitude Toward Divorced Persons, Priest Says
BY GERARD E. SHERRY
NC News Service
A major problem in the Catholic
community has been that “many
have felt that to be against divorce,
we had to be against divorced
people,” said Paulist Father James
Young, who has been a counsellor to
divorced Catholics.
“We had to reject them,
stigmatize them and put them out of
the church community,” said Father
Young, chaplain of the North
American Conference of Separated
and Divorced Catholics. “We are
learning to say that when we are seen
as a compassionate community, alert
to people who are hurting,
reconciling and healing towards
them, it makes our traditional values
look better.”
In an interview, Father Young,
39, who is also rector of St. Paul’s
College in Washington, D. C., said:
“The more we talk openly about the
stresses that people are experiencing
in their marriages, the more it may
help the married to deal with them.
It is not unique to have these
stresses. Support groups prevent
hasty remarriage — the rebounding
factor after the breakup. Church
support groups buy people some
time and cushion the transition that
they go through.”
A recent study shows that “one
out of four parishes in the country
now has some kind of support group
or ministry for divorced Catholics,”
Father Young said.
“Divorced people will not be
ministered to unless their parishes are
ready to accept them and make them
feel welcome and part of parish life,”
he said.
“That is where the most
significant gains are occurring — at
the grassroots level where the average
divorced Catholic is experiencing a
kind of attitudinal shift in the
church. It is a big help. Where once
they felt unwelcome, nothing was
ever done or said about them — they
feel a kind of attitudinal shift where
they are hearing this talked about,
preached about, in their parishes.
“I think what it does,” he
continued, “is to deal with the
religious collapse that divorced
people go through. At this time when
a marriage breaks up, they have to
face a lot of probing questions like:
‘What happened to the grace of the
sacrament? Weren’t marriages made
in heaven? Didn’t God wish me to
marry this particular person? Now
that I have messed up this marriage,
SISTER DRIVES A BUS -- Sister Maureen Adrians and Fred, the
bus, both of Notre Dame Elementary School in De Pere, Wis., pose
before heading out to pick up students for released time religion
classes. Sister Adrians shuttles students between the school and the
new De Pere high school for 19 different classes each week in the
16-passenger bus.
can I ever get straight with God
again? I obviously cannot get back
together with this person, so is this
an unforgivable sin? Will I be
punished by God forever?’
“So, there is a whole kind of
religious system collapse,” Father
Young said. “I think the shape of
this ministry in the parish is to offer
people the kind of support and
community they need at this very
vulnerable and difficult time. It helps
them deal with not just the probing
questions, but helps them put
together a kind of spirituality of how
to deal with failure, death and loss
and also how to cope with the single
life.”
Greater attention to what the
experience of divorced Catholics
reveals about contemporary
marriages and the strains upon them
“will help us to develop a more
realistic theology of marriage,”
Father Young said.
Increasing economic difficulties in
society in the 1980s and the stresses
they put upon married life “suggest
that we are going to live with a
significant amount of divorce in the
next decade,” the priest said.
“The Census Bureau says that if
current trends continue, we
anticipate 40 percent of all new
marriages will end in divorce. Of all
second marriages, 45 percent will end
— a third of a!! marriages will be
second marriages. There is no
indication that it is going to go away.
The rising divorce rate points to
“the deficiency on the part of the
whole society,” Father Young said.
“People are still ill-prepared or
ill-informed about what modern
marriage requires. The romantic
illusion that you meet the right
person and that everything will work
out is still enormously tenacious.”
While church marriage preparation
programs are becoming “more
realistically gounded,” Father Young
said, neither the church nor the rest
of society has prepared people well
for marriage because neither has had
an adequate understanding of
contemporary marriage.
The priest said the church has in
no way backed off from “the Lord’s
insight that when two people marry,
they should commit themselves to
each other until death.”
2 But now such a commitment must
° be sustained in marriages in which
greater stress is placed on equality,
he said. “Where in the past, marriage «
was assumed to be male-dominated,
female-submissive; man’s place in the
world, woman’s place to stay home
and rear children, etc., now we say
the marriage is a meeting of
complementary equals, that men and
women have distinctive human
sexuality, but at the same time each
has rights to education, personal
development and so on.”
Current research shows that
“there has been no diminishment of
our people’s desire for lasting
New Prison Ministry Transforms
BY RAY ARMSTRONG
STARKE, Fla. (NC) - “God put
me here so that he can deal with
me,” a huge black man with pebbly
skin told 150 inmates and visitors to
Union Correctional Institute in
Starke.
His voice choked with emotion,
tears streaming from his eyes, the
inmate continued: “I try now to
encounter Christ in everyone.”
Regaining his composure, “the
meanest man in the yard,” as he
described himself, said it was
important for his survival that he
“try to act as Christ would each
day.”
Three weeks earlier, the big man
in the faded blue prison garb had
confronted three inmates preparing
to gang rape a young white inmate.
Cooly but firmly, he warned them
that anyone who touched the youth
would have to contend with him.
The would-be rapists left.
The occasion for the inmate’s
testimony was an Ultreya, an
afternoon follow-up to a prison
ministry program called Kairos
(meaning “God’s precise time”),
Kairos, which involves three intensive
days of sharing basic Christian
teaching, has begun to take hold in
both state and federal prisons in
Florida.
Among the prisoners who have
been affected by Kairos is Jack
“Murph the Surf” Murphy, the
handsome, voluble former gem thief.
Another, a former Mafia “hit
man” said after a recent Ultreya, “I
no longer kill people; I no longer
hurt people.” He added: “The past
five years since I accepted Christ
have been the best of my life, even
though it’s been in the joint.”
Started by Miami attorney Tom
Johnson in 1978, Kairos is a spin-off
of the Cursillo movement. Cursillo,
properly called Cursillo de
Christianidad, or “short course in
Christianity,” which began in Spain
in 1947, is a high-powered
retreat-type operation consisting of
14 talks on Christ and his church.
Participants share their views of life
and Christianity.
Kairos separated from the Cursillo
movement because the movement
has a policy of not supporting parish,
diocesan or national programs.
Moreover, the Cursillo format had to
be adapted to the prison
environment.
The 14 Cursillo talks, aimed at
people outside of prisons, had to be
adapted to the prison environment
where thoughts of home, family and
personal relationships only add to
the pain of separation experienced
by convicts.
Cursillo also selects goals for the
year, selects an area or occupation in
society that needs Christian apostles,
and selects potential leaders as
candidates for its program.
Kairos is ecumenical and
interdiocesan, with members from
various parts of Florida. To meet the
challenge of ministry in a highly
restricted environment, a board
consisting of judges, prison officials,
businessmen, attorneys, prison
chaplains, priests, ministers and
volunteers has been elected. Board
members represent most of the major
churches in the state.
The Kairos program, as the board
envisions it, includes:
— Kairos weekends at every
federal and state prison in Florida;
— Follow-up Ultreyas on a
monthly basis;
— Follow-up three-day spiritual
retreats semi-annually;
— Kairos communities throughout
the state to provide a spiritual
support system when an inmate is
released;
— Kairos experiences for members
of Kairos inmates’ families so that
when the inmate is released the
whole family will be able to live a
Christian life; and
— The sharing of this form of
prison ministry with every other
state in the country.
Five Kairos weekends have been
held in federal and state prisons in
Florida. The Rev. L. E. Cornett,
chaplain at Union Correctional
Institute, said wardens and state
corrections department officials
agree that Kairos is the most
effective program ever offered in
their institutions to change inmate
behavior and attitude.
marriages,” Father Young said. “But
we are finding that people are having
a hard time pulling off the lasting
marriages they want. You might say
there is a skills gap, and they might
not have the skills necessary on one
level to be really sensitive to each
other over a longer period of time.”
Father Young recommended that
parishes support people in making
marriages permanent. There is a
need, he said, “for the parish to
gather groups of young marrieds,
where they can openly talk about the
adjustments they are going through
and see some modeling from others.”
BIG MAN ON CAMPUS - When Franciscan
Father Alonso DeBlas moves about the St Mary’s
High School campus in Phoenix, Ariz., one might
guess that he is guard, tackle or end for the
school’s football team. Actually, the 6-foot-7 inch
priest is the school’s assistant principal. He looks
even bigger next to first graders Frank Vega and
Requel Campa at nearby St. Mary’s Elementary
School.
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