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Vol. 19 No. 8 Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta Thursday, February 19,1981 $8.00 per year PAKISTAN STOPOVER In Moslem Country, Pope Calls For Unity BY NANCY FRAZIER KARACHI, Pakistan (NC) -- Pope John Paul II stressed the problem of world hunger, the need for Christian unity and the bonds between Islam and Christianity as he began a 12-day trip to East Asia Feb. 16 with a stop in Karachi. The papal plane, an Alitalia airlines DC-10 called the “Luigi Pirandello,” arrived in Karachi at 6:20 p.m. (8:20 a.m. EST) after a more than seven-hour flight from Rome. The three-and-a-half-hour visit was marred, however, by a bomb explosion at the National Stadium, site of the papal Mass. The explosion happened about 20 minutes before the pope’s arrival at the stadium. According to Pakistani police, a man was killed when a grenade in his pocket exploded as he entered the stadium. Police said the explosion occurred after the man was challenged at the entrance to the section reserved for diplo mats and VIPs. Two other men and a security agent were wounded in the blast, police said. The pope was not told of the explosion while he was in Pakistan. The pope was greeted at the airport by Pakistani president, Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, and Cardinal Joseph Cordeiro of Karachi. “Christ is the only one who can satisfy the deepest hunger of the human heart,” he said in an English-language homily before more than 70,000 people. But, Pope John Paul said, Christians cannot “try to ignore the need for bread, the great need for food suffered by so many throughout the world, even in our own lands.” The Eucharist “unites us to one another, to all the other members of the church, to all the baptized of every age and every land,” he said. “Because the mystery of the Eucharist is so closely linked to the mystery of the church, we cannot but feel a sadness at the divisions which still affect the one body of Christ,” the pope added. “May this sadness prompt us to action.” Pope John Paul praised Pakistani Catholics for their, “efforts to bring the message of salvation, in a spirit of dialogue and respect, to those in your own country who do not know Christ.” About 96 percent of the 80 million Pakistanis are Moslems and about two percent are Christians. During his arrival and departure speeches, the pope stressed the ties between 0 Moslems and Christians. He emphasized “the common concerns which are z shared by all men and women of good will.” These concerns, he said in his departure speech, include those “for the spiritual dimension of the human person, for the freedom and dignity of every man, woman and child, and for true justice and lasting peace.” “The church, without forgetting that her primary mission is a spiritual one, always seeks to collaborate with individual nations and people of good will in promoting the dignity and advancement of the human person,” he said in his (Continued on page 6) POPE JOHN PAUL BECKONS. In this poster distributed by a Tokyo department store which is sponsoring a Vatican exhibition, the Holy Father raises his hands in salutation. During his current journey the Pope will visit Japan, the Philippines, Guam, Pakistan and Alaska. TV 5 Shows Abortion Ad BY MSGR. NOEL BURTENSHAW The Phil Donahue Show is a popular part of Atlanta’s morning television audience. The show appears on Channel 5, WAGA Television, a CBS affiliate. If you watch Donahue, you will note that a new element has been added to your viewing. In fact, it is a brand new page in the history of Atlanta television. Channel 5 is now showing a commercial for an Atlanta abortion clinic on many mornings during this show. No other television outlet in Atlanta is presently accepting commercials of this nature. Mr. Paul Raymon, general manager of Channel 5 stated, “The commercial is perfectly acceptable under the code set down by the Storer Broadcasting Company (parent company of Channel 5) and the code set down by the Federal Communications Commission.” When asked why the decision had been made by the station to accept this kind of advertising, Mr. Raymon responded, “We are not in a position to turn it down because an advertiser who meets all of the standards, theoretically, could take legal recourse because we are inhibiting his access to the media.” According to FCC regulations, there is no legal requirement to accept such advertising nor is there any impediment to its acceptance either. Mr. Raymon further stated that the word “abortion” was not mentioned in the ad. “In fact,” said Raymon, “you are the only one mentioning abortion in this connection.” “As far as we are concerned,” said Mr. Raymon, “this is a medical center. It has registered nurses, properly accredited doctors and qualified personnel.” The facility in question advertises in the Atlanta Constitution and features “Abortion Services” as the main purpose of the clinic. The commercial, which even ran during Donahue’s sensitive show on Atlanta’s missing and murdered children, shows the interior of a modem, pleasant doctor’s office with an attractive young woman offering another woman counsel on her “problem pregnancy.” “There is nothing illegal about the commercial,” said Mr. Raymon although when asked about its appearance on the children’s show said “that was a mistake - a human error.” No other commercial television station in Atlanta runs this kind of advertisement. Sidney Pike, Station Manager for Ted Turner’s Superstation, Channel 17 said, “We were asked about running that kind of commercial about a month ago and I turned it down. I felt that in this case we should have both sides of the issue on.” A.R. Van Cantfort, Program Director for WSB, Channel 2 said, “We have not accepted this kind of advertisement nor right now do we intend to, but we will evaluate each individual case as it is presented.” Jack Lease, Vice President, Program Operations for WXIA Television, Channel 11 said, “We do not accept commercials for abortion clinics at present. If requested, we would have to consider it at that time. ” According to Paul Raymon of Channel 5, the commercial was sold to the station direct and no advertising agency was involved. U.S. Bishops Named In Abortion Rights Suit BY JIM LACKEY WASHINGTON (NC) - An abortion rights group has named the U.S. bishops as co-defendants in a four-month-old lawsuit urging revocation of the tax-exempt status of certain Catholic churches and organizations in the United States. The group, the Abortion Rights Mobilization, originally had filed suit last Oct. 2 in federal court in New York against the Internal Revenue Service for “continuing to accord tax-exempt status” to Catholic organizations which allegedly have engaged in partisan political activity on the abortion issue. But in an amended complaint filed with the same federal court Jan. 30, the suit specifically named the bishops’ twin agencies, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the U.S. Catholic Conference, as defendants with the IRS rather than simply as third parties. Citing the bishops’ Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities, approved in 1975, the suit charges that the church’s political efforts to secure passage of a human life amendment constitute a violation of the tax code, which prohibits tax-exempt groups from participating or (Continued on page 6) Archbishop’s Statement On Atlanta’s Children (The following statement was issued by Archbishop Thomas Donnellan on Monday, the day before the funeral at St. Anthony s Church for 11-year-old Patrick Baltazar.) The murders and disappearances continue. The pain, the sorrow, the anger, the fear, the frustration - all of these continue as well. Words will not stop them. At best, our words can only let the families of these children know that we are still with them and will not leave them. To all of them we say, “your pain is our pain, because your children are our children.” We ask our Almighty and Loving Father to send consolation and healing to the Baltazar family and to all these stricken families, perseverance and wise judgment to our police, and strength and courage to our citizens to come forward with information to help stop these terrible murders. May His blessing come to our community in new abundance. May we all stand together as a sign that we are indeed His children. CHARITIES DRIVE Helping Tomorrow’s Priests BY GRETCHEN REISER Like most people, Father Richard Lopez sometimes feels swamped with work and unable to do all that he wants to do and all that he thinks should be done. But he has a unique consolation: a group of young men studying for the priesthood, who will one day be serving the Archdiocese of Atlanta. “I’m really proud of my seminarians,” he said, a remark that’s almost unnecessary after the smile that lights up when he’s asked to talk about them. Father Lopez has been Vocations Director for the Archdiocese for the last three years. In addition to his work at St. Jude’s parish, he is responsible for interviewing applicants, and helping them understand whether or not they have a vocation to the priesthood. A team of three other priests help with this screening process, and then Father Lopez serves as a liaison to the Archdiocese for seminarians. Happily, he said, the Archdiocese has been attracting “vocations in good numbers ... and not just good numbers, but good quality.” This is not just his paternal pride, Father Lopez said, but “the seminary tells me that our men, for the most part, are fine men.” Largely, candidates for the priesthood are attracted to the Archdiocese by the example they see in the priests who are working in North Georgia now, Father Lopez said. Once that interest is sparked, and if an applicant is accepted by the screening committee, the Archdiocese comits its support, financial, moral and emotional, to the young man. That support can include tuition, room and board at the seminary, a cost which runs several thousand dollars a year per student. The (Continued on page 6) Origins Of The New Testament BY FATHER JEREMY MILLER, O P. The stories about Jesus in the Gospels, and the accounts of the missionary activities of Peter and Paul in Acts, have such a lively and immediate character to them that we feel ourselves drawn into the very events themselves. We feel like eyewitnesses to the miracles and intimate listeners to what Jesus was saying. Yet, we know that these stories are not just reports of dealings long ago, filling us in about Him whom we love, like archive documents. These stories are meant to penetrate our world today, illuminating our pilgrimage and speaking to us in our struggles. We all feel, or should feel, that the Scriptures are “words of life” today and not just early Christian history. If the Scriptures are meant to illuminate our contemporary lives and to guide our modern pilgrimages, then we are or of that event (e.g., when He touches the leper or charges into the Temple), or even questions which urge themselves today (e.g., the “If the Scriptures are meant to illuminate our contemporary lives and to guide our modem pilgrimages then we are brought face to face with the question of interpretation, the question of the meaning of passages.” brought face to face with the question of interpretation, the question of the meaning of passages. If we are seeking God’s word for us, then we would certainly want to avoid reading into the passages our own meanings, superimposing quite possibly our prejudices and risking not seeing what the evangelists were transmitting to us. We would want to know what the meaning is of this particular teaching of Jesus, role of women in the Church or the status of Christians in second marriages.) Of the many things we need to do to get inside the meaning of the Scriptures, a very helpful one is to have a clear idea of how the Scriptures came to be. Let me mention a few reasons why this is important. Suppose we had the idea that the New Testament writings are nothing but the exact accounts of eyewitness reporters who accomplished by their strong memories what a modern reporter does today with a tape recorder, later transcribing it into print. First of all, we would run into many inconsistencies. In John’s Gospel, Jesus visits Jerusalem at least three times; in Luke’s Gospel, he goes but once. In Matthew’s Gospel, the Holy Family leaves Bethlehem for Egypt, in Luke’s Gospel, they depart fundamentalist who reads the Scriptures as if they were modern-day reporting would soon be caught in this web of strict literalism, leading to insuperable difficulties of interpretation. Another reason to have a clear idea of how the Scriptures came to be would be the danger of “too quick answers.” In Mark’s Gospel, for example, Jesus says, “he who believes and is baptized will be saved” (16:8). Does “ . . . the Catholic Church has been wary of private interpretations of the Bible and especially of a fundamentalists orientation, an approach which thinks it is getting to the bottom, but is actually only at the surface level.” for Nazareth. And if someone thinks these can be harmonized easily enough, try to tackle the “when” and “where” of the resurrection appearances. A biblical this mean that Jesus writes off four-fifths of the planet, who are, as yet, unbaptized? Such would give us a very unloving picture of God. However, if we have an idea of how the New Testament came to be, we can get at the real truth of Revelation and avoid these fundamentalist paradoxes. A very important teaching of Pope Paul VI, and repeated by a document of Vatican II, is of immense help to us. Let me simplify it by describing three time periods. PERIOD ONE represents the life of Jesus of Galilee. This was the period of his teachings and activities, of his passion and death and resurrection. This was the period when the disciples followed Him, heard His (Continued on page 6)