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Memories: Hot But
BY GRETCHEN REISER
Seven teenagers from County
Waterford, Ireland, returned home
this month with memories of a hot,
dry Georgia summer, the Scream
Machine at Six Flags and the
friendliness of St. Michael’s parish in
Gainesville.
Participants in an exchange
program shaped by Father David
McGuinness of Waterford, the
teenagers, most on their first trip
from their homeland, spent three
weeks with host families in
Gainesville. It was the last leg of a
trip that gave 10 Gainesville students
an opportunity to stay with families
in Waterford, before bringing the
Irish “home” to Georgia. In between,
the entire group spent three days in
London, a stay that “cemented their
relationships with each other,”
Father McGuinness said.
The program began with a
different type of exchange. Last
summer, Father McGuiness came to
St. Michael’s as a summer
replacement for the pastor, Father
Edward O’Connor. The director of
St. Paul’s Youth Movement in
Waterford, Father McGuinness also
worked with the young people at St.
Michael’s, and the plan emerged.
Funds were raised at both ends over
the past year.
Father McGuinness hopes that the
program will lead to formation of a
youth group in Gainesville, like that
in Waterford, which involves 450
young people.
For the moment, it has given
students like 16-year-old Susan
O’Brien of Waterford, and
15-year-old Megan Phillips of
Gainesville, more to share than their
Irish names.
Susan, who is returning home to
study for her final secondary school
examination, noted that families here
were much more affluent and
dependent on cars. But she was
hoping to convince the airlines that
she was “too dangerous” to send
home.
“I’ll remember how people went
Glorious
out of their way for us,” she said,
“and the church services.”
The contrast between St.
Michael’s parish and the large
Catholic congregations in Ireland,
Susan said, had left her moved by the
“very, very personal” nature of
worship here, and “the community
spirit which you can’t get in Ireland,
where it’s so big.”
Megan remembered the milk
delivered to the door in Ireland that
“still had the cream on top” and the
trains which give Irish young people
a freedom to travel, without having
to depend on an adult for
transportation.
But, like Susan, she had been
particularly impressed by the
friendliness of those she met abroad.
“Everybody wanted to meet us,” she
said.
Her last night in Ireland, two girls
waited outside the door much of the
night, she said, just to make sure
they were there in time to say
goodbye.
FAREWELLS - In a last stop at Archdiocesan
Offices, Irish students exchanged gifts with
Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan. At right,
Susan O’Brien receives an inscription.
Who Will Lead?
Senator Robert A. Taft,
Republican of Ohio, ran for the
Presidential nomination in 1948. He
felt destiny called him to the highest
office. But the voters disagreed.
He probably lost his chance for
historical greatness in 1946 when he
courageously made his famous
statement on the Nuremberg Trials.
Calling his speech “Equal Justice
Under the Law,” Taft challenged the
fairness of the Allied judges meting
out death
penalties to
eleven Nazi war
criminals, to the
applause of a
free world
staggering back
on its feet.
“The trial of
the vanquished
by the victors,”
said the great
mop f rvf IVia
UlUOtCl VSJ. blic
American
Constitution, “cannot be impartial.
About this whole judgement there is
a spirit of vengeance and vengeance is
seldom justice.”
The dark shadows of World War II
had hardly faded, the atrocities were
still starkly fresh, politicians led the
call for revenge. Leaders of both
parties, valuing their positions on the
Potomac, vilified the words of Taft
and made him stand alone as he
courageously protested the rude,
mob style application of American
justice. It was in vain. The Nazis were
hanged. Two years later, the voters
remembered his protest and Taft lost
the nomination.
A courageous display of personal
conscience is rarely seen in the
lifestyle of the politician, especially
the Washington based ones. They
cannot afford it and we refuse to
allow it. We send them to the capitol
to represent our views, to represent
our state and then to represent the
common good of the nation. There is
no square inch left for personal
conscientious, courageous
consideration of any event.
The busy boredom of the Reagan
regalia last week is a good example.
Giving the Oscar performance of a
lifetime, ole Ronnie pledged a
believable “New Beginning” to his
worshipping followers. But when the
dream co-star in the person of Bush -
chief ridiculer of the Reagan
campaign - showed up, and a
believable balance was seen as most
expedient, the Reaganites rose
mightily above principle.
But the show is not over. Carter
and Kennedy are preparing to dump
their smiling compromises on a well
picked New York audience in
August. The play acting continues as
the show drifts along.
Only 54 per cent of the eligible
voters even bothered to exercise their
constitutional right in 1976. That
figure is a disaster. But worse is the
drama of 1980. One third of those
brave, few, patriotic souls who took
the time to participate in the
primaries, simply wrote “none of the
above” when asked to pick the best
of the bunch running to lead the free
world.
It is enough to send one candidate
back to packing peanuts and the
other to his home where the buffalo
roam.
It is more than enough to make us
realize that as long as we ask
politicians to be mere rubber stamps
of our personal ambitions,
mechanical robots is all we can
expect. Courageous leadership, like a
Taft of Ohio, a first when history
profiles political courage, shall
indeed choose to be last in
considering the burdens of the White
House.
And we are left with John
Morley’s dreadful definition of
politics” a field where action is one
long, second best.”
Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
Vol. 18 No. 27 Thursday, July 24,1980
MASS IN MOSCOW - Athletes from Ireland Moscow. An unidentified priest celebrates Sunday
sit on benches in the Catholic chapel set up for Mass for the athletes,
the Olympic games in the Olympic Village in
Cardinal Dearden Retires
WASHINGTON (NC) - Pope John
Paul II has accepted the resignation
of Cardinal John F. Dearden as
archbishop of Detroit and has
appointed him apostolic
administrator of the archdiocese
pending the appointment of a
successor.
Cardinal Dearden, 72, is three
years under the age at which Pope
Paul VI ordered bishops who are
heads of dioceses to submit their
resignations.
He has headed the Detroit
Archdiocese, seventh largest Catholic
Church jurisdiction in the United
States, since J.yb8.
Archbishop Jean Jadot, apostolic
delegate in the United States,
announced the resignation.
At a news conference in Detroit
on the day the announcement was
made, Cardinal Dearden said:
“Impaired health has limited my
ability to be involved in many of
those pastoral activities that are my
responsibility. I feel a sense of
frustration in not being able to
shoulder my share of the burdens of
pastoral service to our people.”
The cardinal, who suffered a heart
attack in 1977 and has been
forbidden to take on evening
assignments, added that he did not
“intend to buy a rocking chair.”
He noted that his more than 21
years as head of the Detroit
Archdiocese had spanned the periods
before and after the Second Vatican
Council. What he had found most
challenging, he said, was trying to
bring into the life of the church the
insights of the council. He said he
thought he had “brought a greater
sense of unity and community” to
the people of the archdiocese.
The cardinal, whose statements
and actions during the Second
Vatican Council, won him the
nickname, “the unobtrusive liberal,”
a label he particularly favored, was
the first president of the National
Conference of Catholic Bishops from
its establishment in 1966 until 1971.
During those years of tension in the
church between Catholics in
disagreement over the council’s
meaning, Cardinal Dearden
repeatedly stressed the importance of
communication and reconciliation.
The work of developing
community “begins through
communication,” he said in a talk to
the National Council of Catholic
Women’s convention in 1966. “After
all, the crisis of communication, of
which we speak so much these days,
is basically a problem of community.
One of the first evidences of a truly
living community is a readiness on
the part of all who constitute it to be
open to one another. There must be
a free movement of ideas in every
direction.”
CARDINAL DEARDEN
And the following year, at the
convention of the National Catholic
Conference for Interracial Justice,
Cardinal Dearden said: “Precisely
because we are Christian, we must be
a community of reconciliation. Our
commitment to mankind should
move us unceasingly to attempt to
unite people, to heal wounds on
every side, to help people
understand, accept, share with and
love one another.”
John Francis Dearden was born
Oct. 15, 1907, in Valley Falls, R.I.,
the eldest of five children of John
and Agnes Dearden. When he was 11
the family moved to Cleveland,
where he attended St. Philomena
Elementary School, Cathedral Latin
School and St. Mary’s Seminary.
In 1929 he went to study at the
North American College in Rome,
where he was ordained to the
priesthood on Dec. 8, 1932. He then
earned a doctorate in theology at the
Gregorian University in Rome.
From 1934 to 1937 he was
assistant pastor at St. Mary’s Parish
in Painesville, Ohio. He then taught
philosophy at St. Mary’s Seminary
from 1937 to 1944 and was the
rector of the seminary from 1944 to
1948.
Named coadjutor bishop of
Pittsburgh in 1948, he became
bishop of that diocese in 1950. He
was named archbishop of Detroit on
Dec. 17, 1958.
Pope Paul VI named him a
cardinal in 1969. He participated in
sessions of the world Synod of
Bishops in Rome in 1967, 1969,
1971 and 1974 and in the two
r> conclaves of 1978, which elected
Popes John Paul I and John Paul II.
$8 Per Year
GOP POSITIONS
U.S. Bishops,
Reagan Differ
BY JIM LACKEY
WASHINGTON (NC) - Areas of
both strong agreement as well as
some serious disagreements can be
found in a comparison of the
campaign statements of Ronald
Reagan and the positions on various
political issues taken by the
American bishops.
Reagan and the bishops agree on
such issues as abortion, tuition tax
credits and the need to eliminate
world hunger.
But they disagree on issues such as
the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty
(SALT II), national health insurance,
the death penalty and the
presidential candidate Ellen
McCormack has been skeptical of
Reagan’s pronouncements and has
contended Reagan still has not
proven his loyalty to pro-life goals.
It also is unclear exactly what
kind of a constitutional amendment
on abortion Reagan favors. In the
early months of the primary season,
Reagan said he favored an
amendment prohibiting abortion
except to save the life of the mother.
But more recently, according to
Dominican Father Charles C. Fiore,
chairman of the National Pro-Life
Political Action Committee, Reagan
said he favored the “paramount”
approach which, as proposed,
- Catholic* Vote - See Pg. 3 -
advisability of a balanced federal
budget.
Reagan, the Republican nominee
for president, has spoken several
times on issues which the bishops
outlined in their statement, “Political
Responsibility: Choices for the
1980s.” The statement, issued last
fall, includes a compilation of
political issues on which the bishops
have taken stands over the past
several years.
Probably the strongest area of
agreement is on abortion, where
Reagan - like the bishops - favors an
amendment to the Constitution
banning abortion. Reagan also
opposes spending federal funds to
pay for abortion and promises that
the judges he appoints will reflect a
pro-life attitude.
Reagan’s abortion stance, though,
has been a source of controversy
within the pro-life movement. While
many pro-life groups have endorsed
the ex-California governor because of
his anti-abortion stance, a small
segment of the movement led by
appears to outlaw abortion even in
life-of-the-mother cases.
Another area of agreement
between Reagan and the bishops is
on tuition tax credits. Asked by
Catholic legislative coordinators
before the Iowa caucuses and the
Massachusetts primary last winter
whether he supported such tax
credits, Reagan said the credits were
an example of his support for
“developing new means to improve
parents’ ability to send their children
to the school of their choice.”
The bishops and the candidate
also would appear to agree generally
on the problems of world hunger,
though their responses might be
different. Asked whether he agreed
with a statement by the bishops
supporting “a national policy aimed
at securing the right to eat to all the
world’s people,” Reagan remarked
that the United States should use its
agricultural resources and
technological advances to help solve
world hunger.
(Continued on page 8)
Fight The Heat
THE ST. VINCENT DE PAUL SOCIETY at 304 Parkway Drive is
in need of additional donations of non-perishable food, light summer
clothing, and powder or baking soda for children suffering from heat
rash. The Society serves families in Atlanta and anyone wishing to
donate items may contact them at 523-1541.
RURAL SOCIAL SERVICES at 119 Pirkle Ferry Road in
Cumming, serving the people of Forsyth County and parts of Dawson
and Hall counties, needs fans to distribute to rural families during the
heat wave. Please contact Sister June Raeicot at 1-887-1098 if you
wish to make a donation.
IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY PARISH is in need of up to
four fans to donate to Cuban refugees who have been resettled in the
parish. Please contact Max Munoz at 325-4818.
CATHOLIC SOCIAL SERVICES in its ministry to the elderly poor
in the metropolitan area is in need of fans and of donations to enable
the sisters to buy small household items for those they visit. Please
contact Sister Theresa Termini at 881-6571.
Requests for fans have been outrunning donations at the city’s fan
collection program known as Operation Breeze.