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Archbishop Jean Jadot, the departing apostolic delegate in the United States, foresees a wider and more important role for the laity in church affairs in the future. In a speech to the 98th annual meeting of the Supreme Council of the Knights of Columbus in Atlanta Tuesday, Archbishop Jadot quoted Vatican II pronouncements and recent papal statements on the laity to underscore his predictions on the laity’s role. “The specific identity,” he said, “as well as the indispensable role of the lay person is coming into ever sharper focus.” He added that, because of expanding needs, “professional ministers have evolved who engage full time in this pursuit. More often, however, ministry is a service rendered in addition to one’s secular activities.” Archbishop Jadot praised the trend, calling it “a participation in the ongoing responsibility for proclaiming the Word of God.” He also predicted that the Catholic Church is on the threshold of a positive and fruitful era, basing his “optimistic assessment on several converging factors which manifest Providence’s guiding hand.” “The Second Vatican Council has provided an immense reservoir of teaching and direction. Pope Paul VI courageously implemented the council with the necessary reformation, changes and development. Pope John Paul II has brought the implementation to a second stage -- that of clarity and consolidation.” The Belgian-born prelate, who has served as the Pope’s representative to the United States for the past seven years, was making one of his last public addresses in the country before assuming a new position as pro-president of the Vatican Secretariat for Non-Christians. He also issued a call to the laity to enter the area of political activity. “The laity,” he said, “must take on renewal of the temporal order as their own special obligation.” “One area especially ripe for Christian influence is that of politics. I speak of politics in its most noble meaning: the building up of civic community whether it be on the local, regional, national or international level.” Archbishop Jadot pressed this point with particular regard to American Catholic life. “In my judgment, the impact of the Catholic layman on American public life is not at all proportionate to numerical strength or qualification. At the end of the 20th century, Catholics are far better educated than at any previous time in this period. Surely there is ample room for greater presence in the political ambient.” He exhorted the Knights of Columbus convention to work for justice and peace in the political order and to take heed of the sufferings of the poor. Concerning the improvement of the political order, he said, “The Christian approach to public needs will always be guided by respect for the human person . . . Politicians and citizens alike must reject self-serving appeals to base human instincts. These essentially are a discredit to us, isolate us from one another, while generating fears and mistrust on a global scale.” On solidarity with the poor, the archbishop urged his listeners to be “more conscious of the basic interdependence that exists among all people throughout (Continued on page 2) Vol. 18 No. 29 Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta Thursday, August 21,1980 $8.00 per year Tin Pan Alley Tin Pan Alley came into life on 28th Street in New York City. You can well imagine how the Alley got its name. Songs were written along that street and from a hundred open windows, from 200 upright pianos, the din of merging bars of music sounded like the wail of pans clashing in mid-air. Fats Waller would sell five bars of music in the Alley for $10 - cheaper if he really needed the money. Jolson found his glittering hit - Suwannee-in the hands of a brand new song writer called George Gersh win down there in the alley. And when Americans marched into the Great War in 1917 it was not to the tune of Sousa. Of course not. George M. Cohan wrote the marches. He called them Yankee Doodle and Grand Old Flag. And he was from the Alley. But music moved uptown. The Alley went from 28th at the turn of the century to 42nd and Broadway and the glittering theatre district in the thirties. A Second World War swept it all away and the music making from those clanging uprights was no more. Tin Pan Alley passed into history. In its place we got marble and concrete. We got buildings reaching to the sky and sports arenas that became world famous. Madison Square Garden around 31st Street is a prime example. It still makes music. But now it’s the music of the boxing ring and the sounds of the dashing, flashing New York Knicks. Last week The Garden made another kind of music. The Democratic Party presented its four-year theatrical extravaganza, featuring a Carter-Kennedy 10 rounder. When the inevitable knockout happened the convention got down to four days of solid promises sweetly sung to the people of America. It promised more value for the dollar and more jobs to the long lines of the jobless. It promised fairer taxes, fairer distribution of energy and fairer equality for women. It promised peace in the deserts of the Middle East, peace in the slums of the South Bronx and peace of mind to the growing - gracefully old. It also held out the promise of non-protection for the life of the unborn. While the Supreme Court says most emphatically that public funds may not be used for abortion, the Democratic Convention promised to try and use them. To his credit, while accepting the platform like a true-blue politician, the President clearly stated that he is personally opposed to that sordid use of public funds. We'll wait and watch. From the floor of that famous Garden, the songs will now be taken into the streets of the nation until curtain time in November. It remains to be seen which Party will produce the smash hit. They tell me songs are now written by computer. The stylish, individualistic genius of the Alley- men is no more. Like the glamour of Broadway, opening night on the Great White Way and truly Democratic Politicians, it has all faded into the past. PRO-LIFE DELEGATE from Minnesota takes a stand at the Democratic convention. (Photo by Msgr Noel Burtenshaw) Democrats Approve Pro - Abortion Plank BY MSGR. NOEL BURTENSHAW NEW YORK (NC) -- An amendment to the party platform calling on Democrats to oppose government efforts to limit abortion funding was approved overwhelmingly Aug. 12 at the Democratic National Convention in New York. According to the final official tally, the amendment was approved on a margin of 2,005 to 956. Originally, the party platform steered clear of the abortion funding issue, saying only that the party opposed a consitutional amendment to fworfnrn tho Qimromo W V V V4VM1A1 V11V UUMiVlUV VOUll iJ 1973 abortion decision. But the new amendment cites “reproductive freedom as a fundamental human right.” It continues, “We therefore oppose government interference in the reproductive decisions of Americans, especially those government programs or legislative restrictions that deny poor Americans their right to privacy by funding or advocating one or a limited number of reproductive choices only.” The amendment was approved despite the Carter administration’s lack of support for it. “The president’s position is very clear,” said Carter spokesman Jody Powell after the vote. “He does not believe that federal funds should be used for abortion. The convention felt to the contrary.” In a statement on the party platform delivered to the convention the next day, President Carter reiterated his personal opposition to federal abortion funding. “I am sworn to uphold the laws passed by Congress and the Constitution of the United States as interpreted by the federal courts, but my personal view remains unchanged,” Carter wrote to the delegates. President Carter’s response to the abortion plank of the Democratic platform was not strong enough for a pro-life delegate. Father Leo Tibesar. Father Tibesar, the only priest voting in the convention, was a delegate from Minnesota. The 38-year-old priest from the Archdiocese of St. Paul got into politics four years ago to fight for pro-life issues. After seeing Carter’s response Father Tibesar, a theological librarian from the St. Paul Seminary, said, “President Carter’s public dissent from the Democratic Party’s position is gratifying but it is not enough. His equally public position supporting the platform’s opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision will prevent many Democrats from supporting him in November.” The priest, ordained in 1968, went on to comment on the convention turnabout. “From a position of non-support of a human (Continued on page 3) ST. OLIVER PLUNKETT A Study In Caring BY GRETCHEN KEISER Betty and David Newton lost everything they owned two years ago. They might have lost that, and much more, this year, but the arms of an extended family are closing protectively around them. The Newtons came back to Georgia in 1978, after a fire in their Texas home left nothing but “the boards you start building a house with,” Mrs. Newton said. They and their three children escaped the 2:30 a.m. fire when a family dog started barking and jolted Betty Newton out of a bedroom filled with smoke. She ran to pull her daughters, Jamie Lynn and Janis, out of the house and “the ceiling started to cave in.” David Newton woke up their son, Joey. Their house, their belongings, and even the dog who saved their lives, were gone. Two years later, they were living in Gwinnett County, active in St. Oliver Plunkett parish in Snellville. The family moved an old house onto an acre of property next to the home of Betty’s parents, Joe and Betty Lyuch, and began restoring it. A mortgage had been approved with a stipulation that the Newtons, who had been working on the house on weekends and evenings, complete the work within 30 days. Three days later, Joey, 12 years old, was out bike riding with his sisters in the afternoon. There is dispute over the way it happened, but in a collision between a car and the bike, Joey was critically injured. At the time, Betty and David Newton were at a hospital in Tucker, where Mr. Newton, who works repairing medical equipment, was undergoing tests. When they received word of the accident, he left the hospital in his pajamas, and headed for Gwinnett Community Hospital where Joey had been taken. “The doctors kept saying they didn’t know if Joey was going to make it,” Mrs. Newton said. He was rushed into surgery. Within an hour and a half, friends began to arrive at the hospital. That was a night in June, and the support which began then, from the parish men’s and women’s clubs, from friends and strangers, has carried the family, and, according to those in Snellville, drawn together the parish and the community. The first night’s wait lasted until 4 a.m., when the Newtons were sent home by the doctors for a few hours, still unsure whether Joey would live. Betty remembers praying with her husband and then opening the Bible in search of an answer to their prayers. She opened to the story of Lazarus. “I knew from that point on that he wasn’t going to die. The doctors didn’t know for a couple of days, but I was sure. I had my answer.” While the Newtons stayed at the hospital’s intensive care unit, parish families and friends brought meals to the Lynch household, where Jamie Lynn and Janis were staying. The parish Women’s Club brought food, cake and coffee to the intensive care unit waiting room, for the Newtons and other families with relatives in the hospital. Members of the Men’s Club went out and painted the house. A friend of the family took two days off from work and installed a furnace. Even then, Mrs. Newton said, the mortgage was nearly lost when a last minute inspection showed some painting needed to be redone. “I called the Men’s Club. They came out and painted the trim on ladders with flashlights so it could pass inspection the next morning,” she said. “As far as the house goes, we would have lost it without them. They came through like saints.” In the new 350-family parish, which will see its first church built this fall, Joey’s survival and fight for recovery has been inspiring. The accident crushed his left leg, breaking a bone above his ankle and leaving three and a half inches of bone missing above the knee. His shattered elbow had to be reconstructed in one of five operations he has had since June. His collarbone was broken, some of his teeth were lost and he received deep gashes on his back and right leg. “Joey has really been courageous,” said Father Terence Kane, pastor of the parish, who says that the 12-year-old keeps him posted on world news these days, because of the many (Continued on page 3) JOEY NEWTON is cheered by a kiss from Mom as he recuperates at Gwinnett Community Hospital. (Photo by Ken Dunlap of the Gwinnett Daily News.) —