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A Christmas Breakthrough
BY GRETCHEN REISER
In the weeks before Christmas, a bassinet sat under the tree in a Dunwoody
home, filled with the clothes, blankets, diapers and bottles that a new baby
needs.
The two little girls in the family, eight and 10 years old, helped their
mother pick out the presents. They chose tiny pairs of booties, and a blanket
with a puppy’s face on it. Their parents added some of the practical items: a
bottle sterilizer, diapers, pins, lotions, a snowsuit, shirts and blankets.
Piled into the new white bassinet, the gifts nearly overflowed, for a
mother-to-be the family doesn’t know and her baby to be born. For the family,
a couple in their thirties, and their daughters, and the grandparents and
relations, this anonymous gift was to be the only one under the tree at
Christmas. When they carried the bassinet into Sister Mary Jacobs’ office at the
Catholic Center, they celebrated an alternative to Christmas commercialism.
It began with a talk to the religious education faculty at St. Jude’s, the
family’s parish, on alternative celebrations. The family “never went overboard
on Christmas anyway,” the wife said, but had never done without the
gift-giving entirely to “reach out to the body of Christ instead.”
The talk highlighted the many people in need - and the $10 billion that is
spent every year at Christmas. It raised the question: “Whose birthday is it
anyway?”
The wife was moved to go home and talk about it with the family, including
her daughters. During the first week in Advent, they made the decision to give
Christmas to someone in need, choosing a mother-to-be sponsored by Crisis
Pregnancy Services because of “the new birth that we celebrate at Christmas”
and because the girls were delighted with the idea of picking out baby gifts.
Instead of shopping for the immediate family, cards were sent out to
relatives, explaining that they were spending the money on gifts for a single
mother. The girls shopped and picked presents, and the wife found herself
chuckling as she bypassed the long lines at the post office, and in the stores. “I
just didn’t have the anxiety I usually have,” she said.
As Christmas neared, and the children began hearing stories in school about
all the presents their friends were getting, she became a bit worried. And other
adults worried that the children would have no gifts on Christmas Day.
But, she said, the concerns settled after the girls helped carry the bassinet to
the office and talked to Sister Mary Jacobs, the program director. “Each of the
girls showed me what they picked out and why they had chosen it,” Sister
Mary Jacobs said. “I gave them each an ornament to hang on the tree as a
remembrance of their gift to someone else in need. Each year they could see
that ornament and remember what they did for someone else.”
The baby is due any day, and the young motheir had nothing, Sister Mary
(Continued on page 3)
Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
Vol. 19 No. 3
Thursday, January 15,1981
$8.00 per year
PASTORAL MINISTRY to Cuban refugees housed in detention
centers around the country is a pressing need. In the Archdiocese of
Atlanta, tutoring, prayer, catechesis and support are offered to the
men at the federal penitentiary who await clearance for
resettlement.
NEW QUESTIONS RAISED
Vatican Clears
Schillebeeckx
ROME (NC) - The Vatican’s doctrinal congregation has cleared a prominent
European theologian, Father Edward Schillebeeckx, on nine points of church
doctrine but has asked him to clarify his teachings on four new points.
In a telephone interview with the Rome bureau of the National Catholic
News Service from his office at the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands,
the Dominican priest said he had received a letter Nov. 20 from the
congregation. It said the congregation was satisfied with the clarifications he
offered when he met with a congregation committee in December 1979 and
considers the nine points at issue in that meeting settled.
“But they found another four points that I have to clarify,” he added. He
said these all evolved around “my attitude toward the church magisterium
(teaching authority.)”
Asked if there were any specific church teachings at issue in the new
questions, he said the letter asked him to clarify if “I accept the last word of
the teaching office of the church” as it is contained in “the formulations by
the councils.”
(Continued on page 3)
A Challenge To Keep
King’s Dream Alive
ATLANTA PENITENTIARY
Expanded Ministry
To Cuban Refugees
King
Martin Luther King, Jr. was
heading back to Montgomery. This
time he would host the victory
celebration.
It was 1957. December. One year
earlier, a wearied old black woman
had said no to the State of Alabama.
At the end of a long day’s labor,
Rosa Parks disobeyed when the bus
driver ordered her to vacate her seat.
She had been obeying that order,
that man and the State of Alabama
too long. No
more. She
would not
move.
The stubborn
decision of Rosa
Parks exploded
into a move-
ment that
eventually
rattled the
doors of every
injustice
worldwide. For
now, it took her city by storm. A
young black minister from Atlanta
caught this moment of her challenge
and dared the black population of
Montgomery to follow.
They did. Martin Luther King
looked at the buses from his
Montgomery home on that first day
of the boycott. They were empty.
For 12 months, as threats were
leveled, and as insults were hurled,
they stayed empty. As maids and
janitors rose to meet a new day
needing transportation, they stayed
empty. The months wore on and
black feet never grew tired. Fifty
thousand strong, they walked rather
than break the boycott. They walked
and they won. Jim Crow was dead.
Rosa was the match. Martin was
the fire. There was no mistaking the
flame of his words. This was the
moment and they grasped it. Since
Booker T. Washington, no black man
had convinced as this one did.
Nonviolent protest was his way. He
preached it from his little pulpit,
from the soap boxes of the crowds
and from the jail cells of
intimidation. And it worked. The
walking, determined, black people of
Montgomery watched it work.
So now Martin was heading back
for the victory celebration. As he
arrived at the old Atlanta Airport he
painfully noticed the signs over both
men’s rooms. One read “Men”, the
other “Colored.” Not one of the
white men paid any heed as this
young well-dressed < minister went
into the first. But the black
attendant was alarmed and upset.
“You can’t come in here. Go into
the colored room across the hall,” he
said. “Do you mean to tell me,”
asked King, “that each time you
need to go to the bathroom you
leave here and go across the hall?”
“Yes, I sure do. Because that’s the
place for us colored.”
As he continued for his plane,
Martin Luther King knew the
enormity of his sworn mission.
Simple organization and determined
leadership had forced the segregation
establishment of Montgomery to
yield. Other cities would yield as his
undying message was spoken. But it
was the healing of the human spirit,
robbed of its dignity and cut off
from a relationship of simple
equality, that needed the greatest
ministrations.
As he walked the difficult path,
ever believing that hope was alive and
well, he often repeated the prayer of
the old slaves:
“Lord, we ain’t what we could be,
And Lord we ain’t what we
should be,
And Lord we ain’t what we ought
to be.
But Lord God, we ain’t what we
was.”
BY GRETCHEN REISER
The greatest threat to the dream
of Martin Luther King, Jr., “might be
us, who claim to be disciples of the
movement, but we have chosen to be
alumni,” said the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss,
Jr.
His question to the interfaith
audience -- “Are we keepers of the
dream or killers of the dream?”
opened a five-day commemoration
of the 52nd birthday of the slain civil
rights leader and the 13th
anniversary of the King Center for
Nonviolent Social Change.
Dr. Moss, pastor of the Olivet
Institutional Baptist Church in
Cleveland and a member of the board
of directors of the King Center, said
King’s dream of peace based on
justice and justice based on love
begins “in the living room of your
own household,” in the way family
members communicate with each
other, and the way children are
taught.
“Nonviolence does not begin
when Miami explodes. Nonviolence
does not begin when 16 children are
missing or dead in Atlanta.
.. Nonviolence is not something you
import to town when the explosion
occurs,” he told the audience at the
King Chapel of Morehouse College,
Sunday.
“ .. .Those who are committed to
non-violence are pilgrims for peace,
pilgrims for justice,” he said. K
Those who inherited the u
“exacting responsibility” of keeping jj
the dream of nonviolence alive have *
fallen over the last decade into the
categories of empty admirers, “who
sit down every once in awhile and
remember what it was like to be in
Birmingham,” blind rejectionists who
(Continued on page 6)
BY THEA JARVIS
The stage was set for another
“end of an era” event in Atlanta
history.
To the chagrin of some and the
joy of others, the U.S. Congress
ordered the closing of the Atlanta
Federal Penitentiary by September
of 1984. The shutdown was begun
last year.
But fate - and the Cuban boatlift -
intervened. Waves of
Spanish-speaking refugees whom
Fidel Castro had, however
impolitely, asked to leave, hurried to
American shores.
Space for the new arrivals was,
and continues to be, at a premium.
The Atlanta Penitentiary became a
viable option for housing hundreds
2 of mostly young adult male Cubans
whose status as offender or settler
was still to be determined.
“Since we were closing,” says Bill
Noonan at the penitentiary’s Office
of Public Information, “it seemed
economically and administratively
feasible to move these people here
from facilities all over the country.”
Thus, by the end of February,
1981, the Atlanta Penitentiary will
have changed its status from prison
to detention center, housing a
maximum of 1700 Cuban refugees
and maintaining a work staff of
approximately 200 Anglo inmates.
Pastoral ministry to these Cuban
exiles began almost as soon as the
refugee population of the
penitentiary began to climb. The
formidable team of ministers to the
Spanish-speaking community in the
Archdiocese of Atlanta, headed by
Father Richard Kieran and including
Sister Theresa Ahern, Fathers
Raimundo Solano, O.F.M., Juan de
la Cruz, Jose Femandez-Solis, Jorge
Cristancho, and Mauro Murlot,
jumped heart-first into a situation
which was, at best, a challenge.
“All of us realized that there was
a need here. We had to make some
response to this influx of refugees,”
says Father Kieran. “We are now
doing the best we can with limited
resources.”
Though the resources are limited,
the pastoral commitment is virtually
without bounds.
“This past week, I talked with a
man who tried to commit suicide,”
recalls Father Jorge Cristancho, who
with Father Mauro Murlot visits the
“For I was in prison
refugees two and three times a week
for counseling, prayer, and
catechizing.
“He was just a young man, about
20 or 21 years old, and he had been
abused by some of the other men. As
I talked to him, I realized that he had
some mental problems that had gone
unnoticed. I wrote a memorandum
First In A Series
to the officials at the institution,
telling them of his difficulty. It is in
cases like this that I feel we can be
helpful.”
Basic catechesis is another need
(Continued on page 3)
Latest Chapter
In 80-Year History
BY MSGR. NOEL C. BURTENSHAW
The Atlanta Federal Penitentiary was given birth on its present site
almost as the 20th century began. The original United States Prison for
Federal Offenders was opened in 1901. However, it was still only
partially completed at that stage.
Prisoners were brought to Atlanta from around the nation to begin
serving sentences and it was these prisoners who eventually completed
the present complex with its gigantic cell blocks. The completion date
was 1917.
The potential capacity of the Penitentiary was 1500 men. Down
through the years the old prison saw that capacity continually surpassed.
As late as 1975 over 2,300 men were housed within its walls. Presently,
there are 650 federal prisoners in the Penitentiary along with 775 Cuban
emigrants who are being detained pending the outcome of federal
investigations.
The great old goyernmental institution has seen the very famous and
notorious pass through its bars and none have ever escaped. A1
“Scarface” Capone, lord and master of Chicago crime in the twenties
spent some of his 11-year sentence for income tax evasion in the Atlanta
Pen. He went on to finish in Leavenworth but he would die in his
mansion in Florida.
Perhaps even more famous was Eugene Debs, who in 1918 as a pacifist
was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for denouncing the
government’s prosecution of pacifists. In 1920, from his cell in Atlanta’s
Penitentiary, Debs ran as the Socialist candidate for President of the
United States and got almost one million votes. Harding won the election
and ordered Eugene Debs released in 1921.
In recent years, this outmoded prison of the federal system has been
plagued by prisoner riots, inmate murders and other violence caused by
overcrowded conditions.
By September 1, 1984, the institution of federal incarceration will
have been phased out and as a prison, the Atlanta Penitentiary, will be no
more.
■MOMMHNW
INTERFAITH SERVICE - At the opening of
an interfaith service Sunday at Morehouse College
are the Rev. Dr. Joseph Roberts, Jr., Pastor of
Ebenezer Baptist Church, and the Rev. Dr. Melvin
H. Watson, who presided. To the right are Mrs.
Coretta Scott King, the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss, Jr.,
Keynote speaker, and Monsignor John
McDonough.