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The Georgia Bulletin
June 4,1981
The Congress
And Abortion
The cries have been shrill, deafening
and fervorously righteous. The media
responders have gathered at the altar of
protest like the newly repentant at a
Billy Graham crusade. "Down with the
Congress,” they scream. “Look what
their support for life has done.”
And we look. And we listen.
As the Congress refuses to fund
abortions they have taken a so-called
unfair advantage of the poor. Not only
that, the Congress has given an equally
unfair advantage to the rich.
The critics go on. By striking down
funding to abort babies in the womb,
these wily old chauvinists in
Washington have dared to deny equal
and fully-fashioned, constitutional
rights to the gentle sex.
They even have a new battle hymn
that is disturbingly interesting.
Congress, by calling the fetus housed in
the woman’s body "life,” is actually
getting into a science most foreign to
that capitol, high-on-hog set - namely,
theology. Defining a fetus as “life” is a
faith concept, they tell us, reserved for
on-the-knees speculation at chapel on
Sunday mornings.
The arguments are rattled out and
placed before us with dedicated zeal.
The outrage is truly there. The steam
from indignant typewriters can be
sensed as these vintage objections are
yelled by crusaders sweeping across our
morning papers.
But as they yell for justice and
equality, there is another persistent
question that will not -- cannot - go
away. Who, tell us, who will yell for the
life of the child? As they talk of
restoring rights to women and justice to
the poor, we still must ask that horrific,
heart-stopping question. Who will
restore this child to life?
We can get out on the streets and
chant our demands for justice and
equality. We did it for another sacred
cause in Selma -- and won. But what can
we do when abortion clinics flush
innocent and defenseless unborn
children down drains or hospitals heave
them into the depths of incinerators?
What protest will heal that infamy?
What demands will bring back that life?
Carole Ashkinaze unwittingly
makes the point in her column
(5-23-81) as she says we should be
outraged at Congress for their disregard
for the poor, "the group least able to
bear the burden and expense of
UNWANTED CHILDREN.”
As a society have we come to this?
Are we really that monstrous? Will we
set aside, forceably, the value of that
ultimate right -- the right to be alive - as
we brand human, breathing, living
children as a burden, expensive and
unwanted? Have we finally found the
answer or are we just imitating a Nazi
tyrant of yesteryear who proclaimed
finding the final solution?
As history shows, the gift of life will
not be mocked. To deny that it exists in
any one of us, for any reason, is,
potentially to deny that it exists in
every one of us.
(This article was written as an editorial response
for The A tlan ta Constitution.)
-NCB
Pentecost (A)
June 7,1981
Language, we assume, has something to do
with communication. But tenants’ leases,
insurance contracts and loan notes defy this
silly notion. Consider the following passage
from the Interim Note of my student loan:
“At any time on or before the day on
which the principal and interest hereof shall
have become due and payable, provided that
at such time there shall exist no default and no
event which but for the passage of time would
constitute a default, the maker shall have the
right to require this Note to be surrendered by
the holder hereof in exchange for a Payout
Note of substantially the same tenor as this
Note, except as hereinafter provided, said
Payout Note to be duly executed by the
maker and by his or her spouse, if any, as
co-maker and delivered to the holder hereof.”
THE
THIS
ORD
WEEKEND
Paul Karnowski
Whatever it means, this is not the language
that we speak. Confusion abounds when we
are confronted with this contemporary
“legalese.”
Yet, if we think we have it bad, consider
the crowd in today’s first reading. Luke tells
us that there were Parthians, Medes and
Elamites, people from Mesopotamia, Phrygia,
Egypt and Rome. We can imagine the
cacophony created by the countless languages
and dialects as they gathered to hear the
disciples speak. But due to the working of the
Spirit, air language barriers were broken.
Every person, Luke recounts, heard the
message in his or her own language. This
indeed was the miracle of Pentecost.
But it’s a waste of our time if we marvel at
Acts 2: 1-11
ICor. 12:3-7,12-13
Jn. 20:19-23
the mechanics of the miracle and miss its
meaning. The message is clear. The spirit of
God, the Holy Spirit, speaks in a universal
language of the heart. The vocabulary is
simple. The nouns are wisdom,
understanding, fortitude, counsel. There is
only one verb: love.
It’s a mistaken notion that good writing is
long, complicated and obscure. To be sure,
language is a mysterious phenomenon; yet, if
used correctly and honestly, it is our best
means of communicating with one another.
On the feast of Pentecost, we acknowledge
that God’s ways are mysterious. But we also
rejoice because the Spirit of God has been
given to us. Best of all, He’s talking our talk;
He’s singing our song.
Rerum Novarum’ And Arthur Miller
Michael Gallagher
NEW YORK (NC) - May 15 marked the
90th anniversary of “Rerum Novarum,” the
50th of “Quadragesimo Anno,” and the 10th
of “Mater et Magistra,” the great social
encyclicals in which three popes - Leo XIII,
Pius XI and John XXIII - took the Gospel
message and applied it to the conditions of
their times.
The message of these encyclicals was that
religious faith must go beyond personal piety,
that it must manifest itself in a regard for
social justice. And whatever these three popes
thought of Karl Marx’s solution, they did not
dispute the reality of the injustice that drove
him to formulate it. On the contrary, they
painted as bleak a picture of exploitation as
did Marx before them, Pius XI in particular
making the trenchant observation that raw
materials came out of the factories ennobled
and human beings came out degraded.
Just as war is too vital a matter to be left to
the generals, so business and industry are too
vital a matter to be left to the businessmen
and industrialists. But this is a message,
unfortunately, that has never been very
popular with a certain kind of Catholic, nor
are you likely to hear it from the pulpit very
frequently.
There’s the story, for example, about
anti-Catholic revolutionaries breaking into a
church in Mexico, bent on desecration. In the
course of it they found an unopened carton
covered with dust. They ripped off its cover,
and what do you think they found - copies of
“Rerum Novarum.” The story is no doubt
apocryphal, but, even so, it’s fraught with
significance.
How about the church in the United
States? How aware is the average Catholic of
the import of Catholic social teachings?
Maybe in a real sense our own church
basements are filled with the same kind of
unopened cartons -- this despite the heroic
work of people like Bishop Bernard Sheil of
Chicago, Father Louis Twomey of New
Orleans, Msgr. John Ryan, and the
incomparable Dorothy Day. We have the right
answers, somewhere, but have they entered
into our awareness, have they entered into our
culture?
As it happened, I thought of Arthur Miller
on the anniversary of “Rerum Novarum.”
Thirty years ago at John Carroll University
in Cleveland, “Rerum Novarum” and
“Quadragesimo Anno” formed the substance
of a course called Social Reforms. It was a
required course, although, sad to say, it hasn’t
been for many years. Unlike many required
courses it was taught by a zealous teacher who
had a real passion for his subject, a young
layman named John J. Connelly.
The same year I took Connelly’s course I
saw a production of Arthur Miller’s “Death of
a Salesman” at the Hanna, with Thomas
Mitchell in the role of the hapless dreamer,
Willy Loman.
“Salesman,” with its insistence on the
dignity of labor and the obligations of
employers, seemed to me to resound with the
spirit of “Rerum Novarum.” That afternoon -
it was a Saturday matinee - Miller’s great play
lent so human a form and such emotional
force to the ideals that Connelly had
conveyed to me in his class that they became a
part of me in a way that they might not
otherwise have done.
Then just a few months ago in Manila, at
the world assembly of the International
Catholic Film Association, I heard the
brilliant and socially committed young
Filipino director, Lino Brocka, quote Miller in
an address to the delegates: “The business, the
business, the goddam business! Is that the
world? Don’t you realize there’s a world of
people outside and that you have an
obligation to them?” The encyclicals again,
and though the lines were not from
“Salesman” but from the earlier “All My
Sons,” I was quite familiar with them because
I had been in a production of it at Carroll
under the direction of another dedicated
young man with a passion for his subject,
Leone Marinello.
Isn’t it ironic that it was a liberal Jewish
writer and not a Catholic whom Brocka chose
to quote to a Catholic group on the subject of
social justice - ironic that I found “Rerum
Novarum” reflected in the work of a liberal
Jewish writer and not in that of a Catholic?
American Catholic novelists and
filmmakers seem to be coming out of the
woodwork these days, but with the exception
of Walter Murphy in “Vicar of Christ,” they
seem content, like Greene and Waugh 30 years
ago, to leave war to the generals and business
to the businessmen.
Greene, it’s quite true, has always showed a
predilection for the victims of upheaval,
reflecting the best of popular Catholicism.
But isn’t it time that popular Catholicism
advanced beyond a theology of picking up the
pieces?
Great ideals count for little if there is no
culture to sustain them.
(Michael Gallagher is a member of the staff of the
U.S. Catholic Conference’s Department of
Communication.)
ARCHDIOCESAN
SUMMER DAY
81 CAMPS
I just had lunch in a secluded place with
one of the interesting men in my life. It was
wonderful, but when we parted, I felt some
pangs of pain because I know we can’t go on
meeting like this much longer.
The man? My twelve year old son, Steve.
The place? A lovely spot of wilderness called
the Highline Canal planted in the middle of
our concrete environment. We’re fortunate in
haviing it less than a block away and it’s
always a nice escape to take an after dinner
walk or a weekend bike ride along the canal
which winds in and around the city like a
ten-mile lariat.
My pain? Steve, our youngest, is leaving
elementary school this month. Now, that
doesn’t exactly call for mourning, but there
are things that are coming to a close in my life,
like picnics along the canal during school
lunch time. These delightful one-on-one
breaks in the spring and autumn began when
our oldest, who is now in college, was in grade
school. We wanted to pick some wild
asparagus, but she had something scheduled
after school, so she suggested instead, ‘Why
don’t you bring a lunch and meet me and we
can eat it on the canal?”
And so we did. It was a wonderful lunch
hour. There were all kinds of little spring
things around - young squirrels, butterflies,
Farewell, Elementary School
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Dolores Curran
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—
wild flowers and baby magpies. It was a nice
break for Beth away from the noise and
numbers in the school lunch room and it was a
wonderful break for me, away from the
tyranny of the typewriter.
So, as so often happens, a tradition is born.
We never went every day or it would have
been boring, but we usually managed lunch
once a week on the canal during nice spring
and fall weather. A real bonus was that it gave
us a chance to be alone without other family
members around, particularly younger
siblings.
When Beth left for junior high, Mike was
ready to meet me for lunch on the canal, and,
three and a half years later when he departed,
Steve took his place. Now, with Steve’s last
year of elementary school, it marks the end of
our intimate lunches.
Today we didn’t find any asparagus, but
that’s not important. (He loves to hunt it but
can’t stand the thought of eating it.) As we sat
on the old terry towel reserved for canal
lunches, he told me about Orion and how it is
both a star and a mythical hunter and why.
Without pausing for a change of subject, he
pointed to a crevice in the aged cottonwood
tree under which we were sitting and said that
he and his friend had stored some com nuts
there for the squirrels and he would have to
check if they found them. Without a break, he
went on to tell who was winning in
Foursquare, and then on to how astronauts
are chosen.
I would have heard none of the above
without our canal lunch. He wouldn’t have
stopped to tell me all that after school. So, it’s
with regret I see elementary school end in our
family. Steve will go on to junior high where
they have a 13 or so minute lunch and where a
boy wouldn’t be caught lunching with his
mother on pain of humiliation.
There are lots of things I won’t mind
leaving behind in elementary school; field
days, carnivals, safety patrol and lost books.
Nor will I miss car pools, pack meetings or
searches for overdue library books. But I will
miss our picnics and conversations along the
canal. And that’s cause for pain.
Resound ...
HP
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Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
Most Rev. Thomas A. Donnellan - Publisher
Rev. Monsignor Noel C. Burtenshaw — Editor
Gretchen R. Reiser — Associate Editor
Thea K. Jarvis - Contributing Editor
Member of the Catholic Press Association
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Postmaster: Send POD Form 3579 to THE GEORGIA BULLETIN
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Send all editorial correspondence to: THE GEORGIA BULLETIN
680 West Peachtree Street N.W.
Atlanta, Georgia 30308
Second Class Postage Paid at Waynesboro, Ga. 30830
Published Weekly except the second and last weeks
in June, July and A&gust and the last week in December
at 601 East Sixth St., Waynesboro, Ga. 30830
To the Editor:
Please find enclosed a check for $100.00,
collected by the residents of Federal
Correctional Institution in Lexington, and
sponsored by the Transylvania Jaycees.
Our best wishes and prayers follow you in
your endeavours for the children of Atlanta.
John B. Calandrella, President
Transylvania Jaycees
Lexington, Ky.
To the Editor:
On Saturday, May 23, WAGA-TV
(Channel 5) carried the film “Foul Play.”
The so-called “comic” premise of this film
is the attempted assassination of a Pope while
on a visit to the United States. To air such a
film in the wake of the recent attacks on Pope
John Paul II and President Reagan was an act
of unconscionable cynicism and callousness
and was deeply insulting to all who abhor
terrorism and violence at any level.
I urge all readers of the GEORGIA
BULLETIN who object to such programming
to write their comments to the General
Manager. WAGA-TV, 1551 Briarcliff Road,
N.E., Atlanta, Georgia 30306.
Rev. James H. Sexstone
Holy Trinity Catholic Church
Atlanta
Camp Promise
OPPORTUNITIES
FOR
CARING PEOPLE
I feel I can best use my talents by:
Arts and crafts
Recreation
NAME
ADDRESS
PHONE Home:
Business:
Music/Drama
Religion
Reading
Math
Story Telling
Food preparation
As a teacher
Aide
Helper
I want to help the children of Atlanta and I can donate my
time, talent and/or resources for the Summer Day Camps.
Programs will be developed in two week modules but we can use
people on a day/week, weekly, two, four, six, eight or ten weeks
at a time. For planning purposes, please indicate when you
would be available.
One day per week
The week(s) of
June 15
July 6 July 13
Time: 9:00-12:00
June 8
July 20 July 27 Aug. 3 Aug 10
12:00-3:00 3:00-6:00
June 22 June 2d
Aug. 3
At:
St. Anthony, 928 Gordon St. SW, Atlanta
(West End, Gordon and Ashby Sts.)
St. Paul of the Cross, 551 Harwell Rd, NW, Atlanta
(1-20 West and 285)
Sts. Peter and Paul, 2560 Tilson Rd, Decatur
(1-20 East and 285, South DeKalb)
Age: Our children will be ages 5-14. What age would you like
to work with in the Camp?
Materials will be needed for arts and crafts, reading, math and
sports activities. I can help provide materials/eguipment for
Arts and crafts___
Reading & Math
Sports
I )*ould be able to house Sisters, seminarians, college students
from out of the state and arrange transportation to and from the
1 4* . (ii - :
Camp. One person Two people Three people
Please return to
Catholic Summer Day Camp
680 West Peachtree St., N.W.
Atlanta, GA. 30308
To Contact Sister Margaret McAnoy Call (404) 881-1419