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PAGE 6—The Georgia Bulletin, March 19,1981
Eastern European Church—
(Continued from page 1)
and scope have expanded,
Sister Gillen said. “We
have gradually broadened
our whole focus to include
not only Jews, but also
Christians, not only the
Soviet Union, but also
Eastern Europe.”
The organization’s
concern is for the basic
rights of believers,
individuals and groups, in
the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe.
Those rights, suppressed
or completely denied,
include the right to
worship, the right to
educate children in the
faith, the right to diversity
of religious traditions, and
the right to evangelize.
Since the task force began,
it has been committed to
the right of Soviet Jews to
emigrate to Israel.
When Sister Gillen talks
about these rights,
however, they tend to spill
out in anecdotes about
towns or people. Like the
April 11 date, she begins
the story of Klaipeda, a
community in Lithuania,
where people labored to
build a church, using their
own funds. “When they
got to the point of having
the altar installed, the
state took it away and
made it a concert hall,”
she said.
On a 1978 trip to the
Soviet Union, her second,
Sister Gillen visited 30
families in five cities. One
was a man attempting to
teach something of the
Jewish faith and heritage.
His only material was a
small book on Judaism
printed more than 10
years ago by the American
Jewish Committee.
Yet, when she talks,
Sister Gillen, who had
been a dean of students at
Rosemont College in
Pennsylvania before her
task force work, exudes a
kind of urgent hope. “The
thing that has made me a
confirmed optimist,” she
says, “is I’ve learned we
can change the course of
history.”
The methods for
change, which radiate
from the task force’s
Chicago office, are prayer
and publicity and political
pressure.
“We believe in the
power of prayer,” she said.
“The power of prayer can
go through prison walls
and sometimes break
down prison walls.” She
welcomes inquiries from
prayer groups who would
like names of individuals
who may be imprisoned,
seeking to leave the Soviet
Union, or who simply have
disappeared from public
view. She sees the power
of prayer groups praying
for these people as
enormous.
Through publicity
about their cause, which
can be channeled back
into the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe, “people
are encouraged to know
there are groups working
for them,” she said.
Political pressure is
exerted through letters
written directly to
individuals, or to Soviet
leaders on behalf of those
individuals.
Her faith in these
efforts is best expressed
through the words of a
Soviet Jew, Vladimir
Slepak. “He said, ‘It’s a
miracle that anybody
leaves the Soviet Union.
And it’s a further miracle
that 100,000 (by 1974)
could leave ... We owe it
all to you in the West,’ ”
she said. In the years since
1974, the number able to
leave the Soviet Union is
now 250,000, Sister Gillen
said.
She envisions Catholic
churches and other
2 Christian churches
° embracing the methods
pioneered in the Jewish
community: for example,
a church here adopting a
couple, or an individual or
a church there, as
synagogues in the United
States have done, and
supporting those who
aren’t free with the
freedoms available here.
“We run the risk of
losing our freedoms if we
don’t use them,” she said.
(Anyone interested in
further information may
contact Sister Gillen at the
Task Force, 1307 South
Wabash, Chicago, Ill.
60605.)
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demonstrating at an Alexandria abortion clinic,
she went into labor. She was released from jail at
7 p.m. and Benjamin was bom at 9:15 p.m. in
Arlington Hospital.
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root-like vegetable which is
plentiful in the region. Fr. Anthony
(below) had to leave the monastery
for a short break when he
contracted malaria and required
medical attention “upriver.”
PHOTO CREDIT FR. ANTHONY DELISI
NIGERIAN CHILDREN in the
village of Awhum use their heads
and native baskets (top left) to
carry bananas, some of which are
eaten by the monks at the Mount
Calvary Monastery where Fr.
Anthony resided. Simple meals (top
right) are made with cassava, a
Father Anthony—
(Continued from page 1)
New York, which took
place on July 2,1978.
Father Anthony Delisi
was one of those “steps.”
“There were only
three priests for a
community of 40 men,”
said Father Anthony,
who supervised the 22
professed monks and
taught scripture, liturgy,
moral theology and
monastic history.
FR. ABRAHAM
OJIFU founder of
the Mount Calvary
Monastery, is
presently a monk at
the Gethserrani
Abbey in Kentucky,
where he has spent
the last two and a
half years.
One of Father
Anthony’s main tasks
was to help the Nigerian
monks put their finances
on a sound footing. This
he did by expanding the
monastery’s poultry
production and
introducing Sicilian
trench irrigation. He also
added the use of a roto-
tiller, imported from the
United States.
“I had to go to Africa
to avoid the hottest
summer in Georgia
history,” he said with a
smile. “In Awhum,
except for the rainy
season, the weather is
ideal - not above 95 or
below 60 degrees.”
The daily schedule at
the monastery, though
rigorous, was not too
different from that
followed by the monks
in Conyers.
“At Mount Calvary we
rose at 2:45 a.m. and
went to bed at 8 p.m.
Here we rise at 3:45 and
go to bed at 8:30,” said
Father Anthony. “But I
didn’t mind it. It’s all
relative to where you are.
They have sunrise at 6
a.m. and sunset at 6 p.m.
year-round.” ,
The Nigerian diet,
though different, offered
no insurmountable
obstacle to the intrepid
Father Anthony. “I
never saw apples or
cheese, but the monks
ate many dishes made
with cassava, a root-like
vegetable that is the main
staple,” he said. “Gurri, a
native dish made with
cassava, had an awful
taste until I learned that
you don’t chew it - you
swallow it whole!”
The most difficult
adjustment for Father
Anthony was neither
food, nor climate, nor
language (English is the
official tongue), nor the
malaria he contracted
while in Nigeria.
“The hardest part of
my life in Africa was
adjusting to the
mentality of the Ibo
people. They are very
traditional, and not
readily open to change,”
he said.
Father Anthony, who
holds a masters degree in
liturgy from Notre Dame
University, noted that
the Ibo see the changes
flowing from the Second
Vatican Council as
primarily “due to the
influence of the Western
world.” They are entirely
comfortable with the old
devotions and the
Roman rite introduced in
the early 1900’s by Irish
missionaries who brought
Catholicism to the Ibo
territory.
“They generally don’t
want to include
ceremonial dance or
traditional African music
in their liturgies,
although some churches
are beginning to
introduce native
instruments and the
vernacular is coming
slowly,” said Father
Anthony.
The Nigerian
population, which is 50
to 60 percent Catholic, is
a “booming source of
vocations,” according to
Father Anthony, but the
neighboring African
country of Cameroon is
liturgically far ahead of
Nigeria.
“In the early 1900’s,
Catholics in the
Cameroons were
receiving communion in
the hand,” he said,
noting the absence of
this custom as well as the
lack of a permanent
diaconate and the rare
use of extraordinary
ministers of the
Eucharist in Nigeria.
For Father Anthony,
however, the most
outstanding attribute of
the Ibo people is their
simple and enduring
faith.
“They are people of a
living faith and possess a
sense of something
beyond. Even those who
continue to practice the
centuries-old pagan
traditions were friendly
and honest and very
open to me as a white
man.”
Perhaps this was
because, in the love that
Father Anthony brought
with him to Africa, they
sensed a heart that knew
no color.
PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS:
A Place For The Handicapped
BY
STEPHENIE OVERMAN
WASHINGTON (NC) -
By educating mentally and
physically handicapped
students in regular
parochial classrooms “we
will be training ourselves
to look at the value of
each human being,” said
Notre Dame Sister
Suzanne Hall, talking
about an issue which will
be discussed at the
National Catholic
Educational Association
convention April 20-23.
Sister Hall, executive
director of the NCEA
Department of Special
Education, said “normal
kids” can benefit from an
integrated education that
is more cooperative and
less competitive.
Sister Hall said that
Catholic special education
is geared toward the “least
restrictive environment”
for students. Handicapped
children are placed in
regular classrooms, special
schools or are
institutionalized,
depending on which best
meets their needs.
Special schools for the
handicapped with
vocational training and job
placement were pioneered
by the Catholic school
system in the 1950s when
state schools were
practicing a kind of
“benign neglect - just
the “Role of the Educator
in the Prevention of Child
Maltreatment” and
programs on gifted
students, behavior
d isorders, the changing
role of parents in the
education of handicapped
children and integrating
the handicapped person
into parish life.
There’s still a place for
Catholic special education
schools, Sister Hall said,
but many of the
non-Catholic students who
were once there have been
“Cost is not a major
deterrent to having
handicapped students
in parochial schools,
it’s an attitudinal
question. But
parochial schools have
to look at their
responsibility to take
in some mildly
handicapped
children. ”
“mainstreamed” in local
public schools. The special
education schools, both
day schools and residential
ones, provide training for
moderately and severely
handicapped children.
But if the moderately
handicapped student
would be better
challenged, he should be in
a regular school, Sister
Hall said.
Cost is not a major
deterrent to having
handicapped students in
parochial schools, Sister
Hall commented, it’s an
attitudinal question. But,
“parochial schools have to
look at their responsibility
to take in some mildly
handicapped children.
“We’ve been trained to
perceive handicapped
people as different, so we
think they should be in
special schools, special
church services and so
on,” she said. She referred
to the 1978 U.S. bishops’
pastoral statement on
handicapped people which
says there should not be a
separate church for the
handicapped.
Some dioceses may have
made a conscious decision
not to i n t e grate
handicapped students in
regular schools, she said,
but, “I would hope if they
are going to continue
Catholic schools they
would stay in touch with
the bishops’ pastoral.”
On the other hand, 15
dioceses have begun
programs which have
special education
superintendents to
integrate handicapped
students into the school
system and other dioceses
are moving in that
direction.
“In Atlanta,’’
commented Sister Patricia
Geary, Assistant
S u perintendent of
Schools, “we have had
handicapped children in
the past and we have them
now too. In some
instances school programs
and classroom sites have
been altered to
accomodate the
handicapped child.”
Sister Suzanne said she
hopes that trend will
continue, in spite of
President Reagan’s
planned budget cuts in
education. Catholic special
education students have
received services through
the Education of All
Handicapped Act.
“This could damage us
terribly,” Sister Hall
continued. “It depends
upon the level of
awareness, the political
savvy of the Catholic
sector to negotiate with
the public to have the
money spread equitably so
that the beginning
programs we struggled for
are not stopped.”
“There’s too much
brainwashing against the
handicapped. Look at the
ads -- it says that only
beautiful is good. That
says something about the
value of handicapped kids.
“The whole school
system has been elitist,”
she said and her hope for
the future is that “we’ll
break down additional
barriers against the
handicapped in the next
generation.”
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potholders,” she said.
However, there was a
move in the late 1970s,
following the 1975
Education of All
Handicapped Act, to
‘ ‘ mainstream’’
handicapped students - to
place them in regular
classrooms.
At the NCEA
convention there will be a
balance of programs on
both Catholic special
education schools and
‘ ‘ mainstream ” programs,
Sister Hall said.
The special education
segment of the convention
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