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BISHOPS 9 MEETING
Death Penalty, Laity’s Role On Agenda
BY LIZ SCHEVTCHUK
WASHINGTON (NC) - The U.S. bishops will be asked to consider the role
of the laity, problems of capital punishment, Catholic higher education, and
Marxism and communism when they hold their annual general meeting in
Washington Nov. 10-13.
In addition to the four proposed major statements on those items, the
meeting agenda, released Oct. 27, also includes another vote on eliminating
“sexist” language in the liturgy, the election of a new president and vice
president for the bishops and a vote on new norms for seminaries in the United
States. Archbishop Thomas Donnellan is one of 10 candidates for president.
In the working document “The American Catholic Laity: 1980,” the
bishops’ Committee on the Laity, chaired by Bishop Albert H. Ottenweller of
Steubenville, states bishops “praise the Lord for what is happening among the
laity and proclaim as best we can what we have been experiencing and learning
from them.” The committee discusses the laity’s own “call to ministry” and
says members “applaud this solidarity between laity and clergy as their most
effective ministry and witness to the World.” The document likewise refers to
Christian families must sometimes “choose a way of life that goes contrary
to modern culture in such matters as sexuality, individual autonomy and
material wealth,” participants in the 1980 world Synod of Bishops said in their
closing message.
The “Message to Christian Families in the Modem World,” read at the
closing synod ceremony Oct. 25 is printed in full on page 7.
the role of women:
“We see the need for an increased role for women in the ministries of the
church to the extent possible,” the statement notes. “We recognize the
tensions and misunderstandings which arise on this question but we wish to
face these as part of a sincere attempt to become true communities of faith.”
Reviewed by lay groups and theologians, the statement has been
unanimously endorsed by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops-U.S.
Catholic Conference advisory council.
The bishops’ discussion of the death penalty follows similar debate in 1974
when the American hierarchy declared opposition to capital punishment. In
the last six years, executions have been resumed in several states.
The bishops’ statement, prepared by the bishops’ Committee on Social
Development and World Peace, chaired by Bishop Edward D. Head of Buffalo,
supports with theological and sociological rationales the call to end capital
punishment.
“We believe that in the conditions of contemporary American society, the
legitimate purposes of punishment do not justify the imposition of the death
penalty,” the document states.
It cites as some reasons for this position “evils that are present in the
practice of capital punishment itself,” and “important values” fostered by
abolishing the death penalty.
“We do believe that the defense of life is strengthened by eliminating
exercise of a judicial authorization to take human life,” the committee writes.
To deal with problems of crime and violence, it proposes a community
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Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
Vol. 18 No. 39
Thursday, November 6,1980
$8.00 per year
Caring Once Again
They gathered to make the plan
work. Determination was their only
muscle. Trust that the city of
Atlanta, always too busy to hate,
would cooperate was uppermost in
their minds. It would all fall into
place.
The venerable Benjamin Mays,
still President of Morehouse was
chairman of that historic group.
Rabbi Rothschild from the Temple
was there. Ralph McGill of many
human rights
battles sat in
and Don
Holliwell, dusty
from the civil
rights road, said
his share. The
Arc hbishop
rounded out the
group.
It was 1965
and Dr. Martin
Luther King, a
black minister’s
son, was returning to his native city
from Oslo. For years he had
orchestrated a symphony of
non-violent change across this land
stirring the world to pause in
admiration. Now, like a conquering
Caesar, he was returning to his home
bedecked with the supreme beatitude
of the Nobel Institute. The Peace
Prize.
This little group of black and
white community fathers were
determined the moment of triumph
would be fittingly marked in the new
city of the new South.
The Dinkier Hotel Ballroom,
Atlanta’s finest at the time, was
chosen. Fifteen hundred seats could
be provided. Thousands of requests
from across the city were received
for tickets, causing immediate grief
and consternation to that little
committee. The requests, almost
without exception, were from black
communities.
With stubborn, righteous, angry
disappointment, the Mays committee
dug in the heels. The moment would
be fittingly marked by an audience
representative of the entire city. It
would be black and white together.
Mays would jealously guard those
tickets until consciences were
awakened to the dignity of this
honorable occasion.
That’s the way it was as the new
Atlanta came to life in the sixties.
The Mays Committee, after weeks of
crucial determined effort and public
example of fraternal solidarity,
splendorously succeeded. And the
evening was a showcase for the
nation.
Atlanta has that same need again.
Cries of community complacency are
heard as mysterious attacks on
helpless little children go unsolved.
Blame is being hurled in the air. The
new Right has arisen, polarizing
pockets of our society. Minority
crime goes unchecked in the streets
and in the courts. And dialogue, so
fruitfully time consuming in the past,
is considered a wasteful tool
belonging to yesterday’s patient,
slower generation.
Preaching is not the need. Time is
the need. Time spent in
understanding, listening and learning.
Leadership, reaching across
time-consyming tables of talk, is one
answer that hopefully will produce a
calmness of caring that once healed
obvious wounds.
Make it happen in Atlanta once
again.
Children’s Deaths Prompt
Reconciliation Services
BUFFALO UNITY DAY - Bishop Edward D. Head of Buffalo,
N. Y., joins hands and sings “We Shall Overcome” with Charley
Fisher, left, executive director of BUILD (Build Unity,
Independence, Liberty and Dignity) of Buffalo and state
Assemblyman Arthur O. Eve at the Unity Day Rally. A university
student (below) joins in the song while a newly-made friend clings
to her. About 5,000 Buffalo area residents turned out to show
support for the black community following a series of six murders
of black men in the city.
Catholic School Debate:
High Fervor, Low Funds
BY GRETCHEN REISER
If any new Catholic schools are to be built in the Archdiocese, the impetus
will have to come from a task force involving several parishes, according to
Father Richard Kieran, secretary for education.
“The case for a new school would have to be made by some kind of
interparochial task force,” probably including pastors, members of boards of
education and interested parishioners, Father Kieran said. The group would
have to undertake a “needs and feasibility study” to assess possible enrollment,
possible sites, and possible sources of faculty for a regional school.
Father Kieran’s remarks, underscored by later comments from Archbishop
Thomas Donnellan, came at a workshop last week on the future of Atlanta
Catholic schools. Some 400 parents crowded St. Pius High School Cafeteria, on
the night of the presidential election debate, to argue the case for more
Catholic schools. The workshop was sponsored by the Archdiocesan Parents’
Organization, a four-year-old service organization.
While the meeting opened with reports from Father Kieran and Sister
Valentina Sheridan, former superintendent from 1976 to 1980, on the status
of existing schools, the question and answer period quickly turned to parents’
interest in new schools, or expansion of existing schools.
Specific questions were raised about expanding St. Pius, developing a high
school to serve the southern section of Atlanta, and providing schools for
Gwinnett and Cobb county residents.
On new schools’ construction, Father Kieran said that the Education
Department would “work with any kind of interparochial task force,” but that
the initiative would have to come from parishes. The primary job of the
department is to oversee educational quality in existing schools, he said.
However, several in the audience countered that they couldn’t form a task
force because their pastors were discouraging them. “We don’t get the clergy’s
support. I think we need to talk to some of the clergy,” said one woman. The
audience broke into applause. Another said clergymen had told her
“Archbishop Donnellan would never go along with that “when she raised the
topic of building a school.
“If our pastors are turning us down, where do we go? And how do we
start?” asked Jane Heyer of St. Patrick’s Church in Norcross. “We’re not
educators. This is what we’re asking for - some guidance that’s definite.”
In response to a call by the Reverend Joseph E. Lowery, president of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, about twenty-five Atlanta religious
leaders have met at Central United Methodist Church in a series of meetings
over the past two weeks.
Concerned about the recent murders and disappearances involving fifteen
black children, the group issued a statement, noting “how these tragedies
underscore growing tensions and forces that are undermining the quality of life
in the community as a whole.”
“Although the immediate situation of crimes against children brought this
group of clergy and religious leaders together,” the statement said, “Our
coming together has emphasized for us the need of an on-going interfaith
association within the religious community whose members will work for a
better quality of life in the Atlanta area.”
“As a result of our meetings, steps have been taken to form such a
continuing interfaith organization,” it said.
The statement, whose co-signers included Archbishop Thomas A.
Donnellan, announced Wednesday’s Day of Reconciliation in Atlanta, calling
upon residents to express their concern for those who suffer directly from the
tragedies and “for the unity of our City in addressing basic social needs.”
The day was to center around an Interfaith Service at the Amphitheater in
Central City Park at noon “to express our sorrow for the suffering of our
fellow citizens, to make intercession for a speedy end to these crimes and to
recommit ourselves to the well being of all our citizens.”
All citizens were to observe a minute of silent prayer at noon in respect for
the dead and missing children, in concern for the justice and peace of the city,
and as a statement against all violence.
All Atlanta area churches that have bells were to ring them at noon as a
symbol of their congregations’ concern for all people.
MARTA was asked to halt all buses for one minute in cooperation with the
city-wide gesture.
COBB COUNTY residents Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Carbonara discuss
school issue with Archbishop Donnellan after recent forum.
Archbishop Donnellan, who was the last to speak, told the audience, “I’m
not really going to give you the answers you’re eagerly awaiting to hear.”
“I don’t mind confrontations, but I’m not much for making commitments
under pressure that I can’t keep,” he said.
He underscored national and archdiocesan support for Catholic schools,
noting parish subsidies of schools, and archdiocesan financial support for St.
Pius. However, he placed the debate over new schools in the context of other
building commitments in the archdiocese.
To the comment that there are no schools in Gwinnett County, he noted,
“Twelve years ago my first Mass in Gwinnett County was in a laundromat.
Now there are five parishes in Gwinnett County.”
As a result of the need to build churches for new parishes quickly in recent
years, the present debt of the Archdiocese is $6.4 million with new
construction of $4.4 million waiting to be placed in the long-term borrowing
market. The projected 1982-83 debt is $12.6 million, he said.
With many parishes struggling to meet initial construction payments, and
two or three unable to meet expenses he said, it is understandable that there is
not unanimous support for building new schools. In addition, there is the
question of finding faculty, and paying a decent wage, he said.
“All of you have a personal and family interest in Catholic education,” he
said. “There are plenty of people in your parishes who don’t share your
enthusiasm.”
But, he said, “You know the parish in which you live. You know the
(Continued on page 6)
£ >
St. Anthony’s
BY THEA JARVIS
With news of yet another child’s
death fresh in their ears, Atlantans
gathered Nov. 2 at St. Anthony’s
Catholic Church on Gordon Street to
remember their dead.
The feast of All Souls, the
Church’s traditional day of
commemoration for the deceased,
was the setting for the ecumenical
evening prayer service. It was the
culmination of a day of prayer
planned by the inner-city parish to
“make explicit the connection
between the grief shared by the
community and the way in which
our faith should fit into the whole
picture,” according to Father John
Adamski, pastor of St. Anthony’s.
The day began with an overflow
crowd at the 11:30 a.m. Mass.
Throughout the afternoon,
parishioners kept a vigil before the
Blessed Sacrament.
Over 150 people attended the
evening service, which opened with
an invocation by Father Isaac Miller,
Episcopal Chaplain at the Atlanta
University Center.
Grace Davis, president of Atlanta
Women Concerned Against Crime,
led the response to the Old
Testament reading, praying with the
psalmist, “The Lord is close to the
broken-hearted; and those who are
crushed in spirit he saves.”
The New Testament selection was
read by Archbishop Thomas A.
Donnellan, followed by Rev. Walter
Kimbrough, pastor of Cascade
United Methodist Church, who
delivered the sermon.
Rev. Kimbrough reminded those
gathered at St. Anthony’s that
“something good can happen in our
community,” urging people to reach
out to those around them.
Speaking about the relatives of
the children who have disappeared or
been murdered in the city, Rev.
Kimbrough said, “All those families
are my kindred” and focused on the
need to be concerned with more than
just the safety of one’s own
immediate family group.
A free-will offering was taken up
to help support the activities of the
Committee to Stop Our Children’s
Murders. Venus- Taylor, secretary-
treasurer of STOP, expressed her
personal grief over the news, coming
just before the evening service, that
another black child had been found
slain in the city.
Following the recitation of the
Beatitudes, led by St. Anthony’s
parishioner Karen Clemons, the
congregation joined in the Lord’s
Prayer. Atlanta city policemen,
families of missing and dead children,
(Continued on page 6)
Forum On Draft
How young people formulate
their views on registration for the
draft is examined in “For Our
Times,” a program to be shown
Sunday, Nov. 9, at 10:30 a.m. on
WAGA-TV Channel 5. In Atlanta,
Marist High School students are seen
in a classroom discussion of the
American Catholic Bishops’
statement on registration and college
students at Emory University discuss
with their school chaplains how to
register as a conscientious objector.
Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) speaks of
the necessity for the draft, while
Rev. Barry Lynn raises the moral
questions for Christians.