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Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
Vol. 18 No. 31
Thursday, September 11,1980
$8.00 per year
TOWER FUNDS
A Tall Order
Within the towers of Georgia’s
oldest Catholic Church, some
expensive work needs to be done.
The Shrine of the Immaculate
Conception, 100 years old in 1969, is
in the midst of a fund-raising drive to
pay for regrouting and repairs to the
interior layers of its brick bell
towers.
While there is no structural
damage to the towers, engineers have
said that the maintenance work must
be done, according to Father Thomas
Giblin, who assumed the post of
pastor at the Shrine following the
departure of Father Anthony
Schneider this summer.
The cost of the work has been
estimated in excess of $30,000. The
parish is waiting for bids to be
returned on the work.
A fund-raiser run by the parish
Altar Society continues until Sept.
14. In addition, Father Giblin said
the parish had received substantial
donations from Atlantans who
learned that the work needed to be
done.
The Shrine is the Mother Church
of all Catholic churches in Georgia,
and the oldest complete building
standing in downtown Atlanta,
according to Atlanta’s historian
Franklin Garrett. Other buildings
which predated the Shrine have been
razed, or damaged and partially
rebuilt in the last century.
The cornerstone was laid in 1869
and the building completed in 1873.
ATHENS PROFESSOR
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Shrine Of The Immaculate Conception
Pope To Visit Great Britain
LONDON (NC) -- Pope John Paul will also nave an ecumenical
II will visit Great Britain, probably
during the summer of 1982,
according to an announcement from
the Information Office of the
Catholic Bishops’ Conference of
England and Wales.
The invitation for the papal visit
came from the bishops of England,
Wales and Scotland.
(At the Vatican, press spokesman,
Father Romeo Panciroli, said Sept.
1: “There was on the part of the
episcopate of England and Wales an
invitation to which the pope showed
himself favorable and available. But
in this regard neither the dates nor
the program have been fixed.”)
The invitation was formally
presented to the pope on Aug. 23,
when Cardinal George Basil Hume of
Westminster, England, and
Archbishop Derek Worlock of
Liverpool, England, met with the
pope.
The visit will be a pastoral one to
the Catholic community. However, it
dimension and the pope is likely to
visit Queen Elizabeth II. Currently
the Vatican and Great Britian do not
have full diplomatic relations.
Therefore, unless the situation
changes, the pope will not be on a
state visit.
A statement from Buckingham
Palace, residence of Britain’s royal
family, said that Queen Elizabeth,
who will be received by the pope at
the Vatican in October, welcomes a
papal visit to Great Britain and
would receive the pope if she is in
England during his stay.
At a press, conference following
the announcement, Cardinal Hume
stressed the pastoral nature of the
papal visit.
“It is a pastoral visit and the
benefit will be spiritual,” said
Cardinal Hume. He added that he
hoped the trip would also be a joyful
one for the 90 percent of the
non-Catholic population of England
and Wales. About 10 percent of the
47 million people in England and
Wales profess Catholicism.
A strong opponent of the planned
visit is the Rev. Ian Paisley, head of
the Free Presbyterian Church in
Northern Ireland.
Mr. Paisley said he had sent a
strong protest to the British
government about the papal visit.
Criticism of the papal visit also
came from seven Protestant
organizations. They said they plan to
urge the government to restrict the
visit to the Catholic community and
to insure that it does not become “a
lever for change in any of the iaws
relating to the Protestant
constitution of the country or the
Church of England.”
Among the seven groups is the
Grand Orange Order of Scotland. Its
secretary, David Bryce, said many
Protestants are angry that the pope
has not excommunicated members of
the Irish Republican Army for
resorting to violence.
Conscience Leads To Jail
BY THEA JARVIS
While students at the University
of Georgia are gearing up for classes
this week, one of their professors,
50-year-old James A. Dinnan, is
washing dishes in a prison kitchen.
Dinnan, sentenced to a
three-month term by a federal judge
for refusing to divulge his vote on the
promotion of a fellow faculty
member, has lost 38 pounds to the
heat of the Florida summer in the
Eglin Air Force Base jail near
Tallahassee.
“He washes dishes from 10 in the
morning until 5:30 at night,” says
Louise Dinnan, the professor’s wife
of 33 year’s who lives in Athens with
two of their five children.
“There’s nothing wrong with
washing dishes, and he certainly
needed to lose some weight, but he
could be out helping people, doing
the job he was trained to do.”
Louise Dinnan makes the six-hour
drive to Tallahassee once a week to
see her husband, taking a tent and
some camping gear that she uses at a
campsite just three miles from the
minimum security prison where
Dinnan is held.
His midsummer move from the
Bibb County jail to Eglin came as a
surprise and a disappointment for the
whole family.
“I really don’t know why they
took him there,” says Mrs. Dinnan.
“What he had really hoped for was
the Atlanta Penitentiary. He had
been going out there to work with
the prisoners before his own
incarceration, and he thought he
could do some good with the men if
he were sent there.”
The Dinnans, who attend Mass at
the Catholic Center on the Athens
campus, began their ordeal when
faculty member Maija Blaubergs
charged the university with sex
discrimination after being denied
tenure and a promotion.
Dinnan, who teaches adult
education and reading at Georgia, sat
on the committee that ousted Ms.
Blaubergs with a 6-3 vote.
“The university encouraged secret
balloting for the sake of fairness,”
remembers Louise Dinnan. “The
committee followed official
guidelines when voting their
recommendation.”
“Jim has always said that the
courts have a right to evaluate the
guidelines and the proceedings to
determine if discrimination was
practiced, but his own vote as a
committee member remains private.”
Interestingly enough, out of the
nine people who voted on the
Blaubergs issue, four have not
indicated the nature of their vote.
Only one of these four, Professor
Dinnan, refused to comply with a
court request to reveal his vote and
was held in contempt. The remaining
three committee members were not
asked how they voted.
Andrew Marshall, Ms. Blaubergs’
attorney, says, “We didn’t have the
time or the money to include every
person. We tried to get a
representative sampling of those who
had served on the tenure committee
for the last three years.”
Most recently. Professor Dinnan’s
contempt citation was deemed a civil
rather than a criminal charge by the
5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
New Orleans.
While this does not alter the
length of his prison term, it might
change the future status of his
contempt of court charge.
If, through appeal, it is
James A. Dinnan
determined that the court acted
incorrectly in requesting the nature
of Dinnan’s vote, then he can be
exonerated.
“Although you can be held in
criminal contempt of an invalid
order,” says John Larkins, Dinnan’s
attorney in Athens, “you cannot be
held in civil attempt of an invalid
order. This is a point of considerable
importance.”
On the University of Georgia
campus, James Dinnan has had
substantial support. J Ralph Beaird,
dean of the law school and Walter
Ray Phillips, associate dean, have
filed a “friend of the court” brief on
(Continued on page 2)
Ga. Bishop’s Views On Anglican Decision
For some years, Savannah’s Bishop
Raymond Lessard has been closely
involved in the ecumenical dialogue with
the Episcopal Church in the United States.
As one of the two bishops appointed to
provide liaison, he was asked to provide
help in the recent decision of the Holy See
to consider admission of Episcopalian
clergy to priesthood in the Catholic
Church.
Last week Frank Rossiter, member of
the Savannah Diocese’s Communication
Commission, discussedwith the Bishop the
background to Rome’s decision, and the
impications it may have for the Church in
the United States today.
Bishop, since you played a part in
this historic and precedent-setting
decision, can you give us some
background on events leading up to
it?
Editorial On Page 4
I can begin by noting, and this is
rather important, that the decision
from the Vatican was in fact a
response to inquiries that were made
by a number of Episcopal priests,
into the possibility of their being
received into the Catholic Church
but retaining some elements of their
Anglican identity. So the first step
that led up to the decision in that
series of events would have been
made by the Episcopal priests.
The matter came to the attention
of our Episcopal Conference and the
Bishops gathered together,
discussed the matter and what might
be done with these inquiries. It was
decided that it had to be referred to
the Holy See for consideration and
possible decision.
Included in the inquiry was the
question of the married status of
some of these Episcopal priests.
Now, note that all of them are not
(Continued on page 6)
Church In Central America
Guatemala
(NC) - Bishop Mario Rios
Mont of Escuintla asked the
military government for the
release of 17 labor leaders arrested
while attending a meeting in
Escuintla.
His petition was supported by
labor organizations, including the
National Confederation of Labor
(CNT, after its Spanish initials).
Bishop Rios Mont received a
death threat from a paramilitary
group shortly after his request.
In demanding freedom for the
labor leaders, the bishop and the
unions gave details of their arrest.
They said it occurred Aug. 24.
Other details they listed included
the names of the 17 labor leaders,
the name of the officer in charge,
a detective, Alfonso Ortiz, and the
license plate numbers of the
police vehicles which took the
leaders away.
The arrested leaders were held
without charges and taken to
National Police headquarters in
Guatemala City on Aug. 25.
(In Costa Rica, Guatemalan
exiles said they had received
reports that the labor leaders “are
being tortured during
interrogation by security men
under the chief of detectives,
Pedro Arredondo.”)
The Guatemalan government
of Gen. Romeo Lucas Garcia said
it had no part in the arrests. The
CNT said that “this is the same
story given for the capture in June
of 27 leaders at our
headquarters.” Some of these
leaders are still missing.
In May Bishop Rios Mont
appealed to the courts to
investigate the kidnapping and
disappearance of Missionhurst
Father Conrado de la Cruz and a
catechist, Herlindo Cifuentes, of
the town of Tiquisate.
In recent months other church
people have been involved in the
escalating violence in Guatemala.
Another Missionhurst priest,
Father Walter Voordeckers, was
gunned down by unknown
assailants.
Violence forced church
personnel to abandon Santa Cruz
del Quiche, a diocese in the
highlands, after the assassination
of two Spanish missionaries and
several lay people. Bishop Juan
Gerardi of Santa Cruz, who
escaped an assassination attempt,
went to Rome to inform Vatican
authorities on the escalation of
violence.
On three recent occasions the
bishops of Guatemala denounced
a campaign of defamation by
rightwing groups and government
officials, and said that “a true
persecution of the church” was
making pastoral work impossible.
Nicaragua
(NC) -- Close to 500,000
Nicaraguans, mostly in rural areas,
were taught the basics of reading
and writing in six months during
campaign as one of the
outstanding achievements of the
government following the
overthrow in 1979 of the Somoza
family dynasty.
The crusade met very nearly all
of its goals, said Jesuit Father
Fernando Cardenal, its director.
When the campaign was
announced earlier in the year its
goals included teaching 750,000
people over 10 how to write a
letter and to read at the first grade
level.
campaign.
As the instructors returned to
their own schools in Managua and
other cities during the first days
of September, the government
and the Sandinista Liberation
Front announced the
establishment of a Department of
Adult Education to continue the
literacy work.
About 42,000 Indians and
racially mixed people (blacks,
whites and Indians) living on the
.. h
THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY of the overthrow of Anastasio Somoza’s regime in
Nicaragua.
the government’s massive National
Literacy Crusade.
Churchmen hailed the massive
Many high school and college
students left home to become
volunteer teachers in the
Atlantic coast could not be
reached by the massive campaign
because of language barriers.
Costa Rica
(NC) -- President Rodrigo
Carazo of Costa Rica declined an
offer by Archbishop Roman
Arrieta of San Jose to mediate in
a strike by banana plantation
workers that resulted in at least
one death, several persons
wounded and $12 million in loses.
About 5,000 workers are on
strike against the United Brands
Co., a U.S. corporation with large
interests in this Central American
country of 2.4 million people.
President Carazo said in answer
to the Democratic Confederation
of Workers, which had asked for
help from the archbishop, that the
laws prevented him from
relinquishing any of his
responsibilities toward labor and
management. The government
took over the plantations and
ordered workers to return, but
few complied.
Finally, on Aug. 26, the strike
ended after 46 days when the
government issued a decree
guaranteeing that no reprisals
would be taken against the
workers. It announced talks on a
wage increase of 12 percent tied
to the cost of living, as requested
by the unions.
‘‘This is proof that
industry-labor problems can be
solved through dialogue within
the law,” said Labor Minister
German Serrano.
The decree is binding legally on
United Brands. A company
spokesman, however, said the
company was not ready for the
new financial commitments
implied in the government moves.