Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 7—The Georgia Bulletin, July 2,1981
Brazil May Ease Entry
Of Foreign Missionaries
BRASILIA, Brazil (NC) --Justice Minister Ibrahim
Ackel said the government plans to modify the
current immigration law and honor credentials from
church authorities in granting entry and residence
permits to foreign Christian missionaries.
The recent announcement said President Joao
Figueiredo will meet soon with church and
congressional leaders to speed reform of an
immigration law harshly criticized as restrictive of
church personnel.
The government warned, however, that the
missionaries must devote themselves “exclusively to
religious work” and not become involved in domestic
political issues.
Some agreement has been reached between the
government, church leaders and congressmen on
immigration reforms and they are expected to pass
Congress by September.
Meanwhile, the government suspended procedures
against several foreigners facing deportation.
Auxiliary Bishop Luciano Mendes Almeida of Sao
Paulo, secretary of the Brazilian Bishops Conference,
and legal counsel Father Alfonso Hummes,
negotiated for Catholic and Protestant missionaries.
Under the proposed reforms, missionaries would
obtain a temporary permit while their case is being
processed by the government agencies involved.
Should there be any objections, a mixed committee
of church and government officials will review each
case. After several months missionaries can apply for
permanent residence or naturalization.
The law currently requires a government board to
examine a missionary’s application before he can
legally enter the country.
There are close to 500 U.S. Catholic missionaries
in Brazil, a country with 110 million Catholics.
55 Reported Killed
At Ugandan Mission
KAMPALA, Uganda (NC) - Ugandan soldiers
killed 55 people and wounded 100 when they
attacked a Catholic mission station in northwestern
Uganda, according to a Red Cross worker at the scene.
Basic information about the attack, which took
place June 24, came from an International Red Cross
worker at the mission who talked with reporters in
Kampala via radio. The mission is run by the Verona
Fathers, an Italian missionary order.
The Red Cross worker said the attack had been
preceded by shooting in the vicinity between the
troops and guerrillas loyal to deposed dictator Idi
Amin. Because of the recent fighting, about 10,000
people had taken refuge in the mission, the worker
added.
Other officials involved in relief work said all the
victims were Ugandans. They said about 30 relief
workers were at the mission when the attack took
place.
“It’s a mess up there,” one relief official said.
The government had no immediate comment
about the events.
Western diplomats in the capital of Kampala
speculated that the soldiers had suspected the mission
was harboring guerrillas.
Soweto Church Closes Doors
To Future Political Rallies
» SOWETO, South Africa (NC) - Regina Mundi
Catholic Church in the black township of Soveta will
no longer hold political rallies and commemorative
services marking the bloody Soweto race riots of
1976.
The decision was taken by the parish council after
damage caused to the church on June 16 when people
rushed from the church to escape police tear gas.
In a letter sent to parishioners and published June
23, the parish council said material losses had been
severe.
“We are extremely wary of Regina Mundi
becoming more and more the battlefield of divergent
ideological interests,” the council said. “Regina
Mundi has been overtaxed in the past five years.”
Nearly 5,000 people were taking part in the
commemorative meeting June 16 when the tear gas
was fired. Police said they did not fire into the church
but at youths in the vicinity who were stoning buses.
The wind blew the tear gas into the church, police
said.
The meeting marked the anniversary of the
student protest in Soweto of June 16, 1976. That
protest sparked nationwide racial unrest and violence
that resulted in the deaths of about 700 blacks in
seven months.
Vatican To Investigate
LeFebvre, Newspaper Says
ROME (NC) - Pope John Paul II plans to delegate
a cardinal to investigate the activities of Archbishop
Marcel Lefebvre’s St. Pius X Priestly Fraternity, the
Rome daily newspaper, II Tempo, reported June 24.
The report said that the 75-year-old French
archbishop told an interviewer that the pope had
made known his plans before the attempt on the
pope’s life May 13.
But Archbishop Lefebvre, suspended from all
priestly functions in 1976 by Pope Paul VI because he
refused to obey papal orders not to ordain priests,
said he did not expect a cardinal-investigator to be
appointed until Pope John Paul is fully recovered
from the assassination attempt.
The archbishop said he planned to proceed with
the ordination of new priests before the end of June.
Archbishop Lefebvre’s troubles with the Vatican
began after the Second Vatican Council because the
archbishop publicly refused to accept the council
positions on liturgical reform and religious freedom.
Stowaway, 11, Fails
In Third Try For Rome
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Vatican Radio has urged
an 11-year-old Colombian boy who wants to meet
Pope John Paul II to stop running away from home.
The Jesuit-run radio station said Oscar Mario del
Valle Ceballos of Medelin, Colombia, was caught
trying to board a plane for Rome in Panama City June
18.
Two other attempts by the boy to stow away on
flights to Rome ended in Mexico City and Miami,
Vatican Radio said.
“While we record with certain emotion this
manifestation of affection for the pope by little
Oscar, may we be permitted to urge him not to run
away from home anymore,” Vatican Radio said.
“We are sure in fact that one day he may fulfill this
great desire, perhaps even within a few years, and
without having to throw his parents into alarm,” it
added.
PERMANENT DIACONATE
The Church’s Bridge Between Secular And Spiritual
BY STEPHENIE OVERMAN
WASHINGTON (NC) - Permanent deacons add
desirable features to the life of the church, their own lives
and those of their families and communities, forming a
bridge between the secular and the spiritual, according to a
new study.
“A National Study of the Permanent Diaconate in the
United States” was commissioned by the U.S. bishops’
Committee on the Permanent Diaconate.
The study concludes that it is the “special fact of being
‘on location,’ implanted in the secular world, yet marked
with the character of orders which impels them (permanent
deacons) to connect the secular with the world of faith that
seems to make deacons unique.”
“Basically, it’s very good news, but some areas need
attention,” Msgr. Ernest J. Fiedler, executive director of the
bishops’ committee, said of the findings of the study, the
first comprehensive one made since the permanent
diaconate was restored in 1968.
The results, which focused on the deacons themselves
and on their wives, superiors and bishops, will be used to
help revise the guidelines on the formation and ministry of
deacons. The original guidelines were published in 1971
before deacons had been ordained, Msgr. Fiedler said.
Questionnaires were sent to 2,338 deacons, of whom 64
percent responded, as did 54 percent of the wives surveyed,
49 percent of the supervisors and 69 percent of the bishops.
Bishop John J. Snyder of St. Augustine, Fla., chairman
of the permanent diaconate committee, said he hopes the
study “will assign an agenda for the future and provide a
vehicle Ipr the continued growth in realizing a vision born
SUMMER TREAT - Hobson Powell, 2, of
Smithfield, Va., partakes in a good old American
summertime tradition'-a slice of cold watermelon.
from the great event of ecclesial renewal in our time, the
Second Vatican Council.”
The survey is especially important to theologians, who
have been asking for data on the present experience of
deacons, Msgr. Fiedler said. “Since, for some reason, the
United States is in a position of leadership, everyone is
looking to us. I get letters from all over the world,” he said,
asking about the U.S. diaconate program.
The survey found that deacons spend an average of 14
hours per week in ministry. Supervisors of Deacons
reported that, without a special calling to the diaconate, this
time probably would not be devoted to diaconal services
nor would the special services provided by deacons be
provided as well by lay people.
The study also found that deacons are perceived as
having their greatest potential in the ministry of charity, but
much of a deacon’s time seems to be spent in the ministry of
liturgy.
The wives of deacons have extensive involvement in their
husbands’ ministries, Msgr. Fiedler said, and those most
SAN ANTONIO, Texas (NC) - The grassroots church, in
the form of “basic ecclesial communities” (BEC), is slowing
emerging in the United States, according to participants in a
study week at the Mexican American Cultural Center in San
Antonio.
Isabel Ramos, a speaker at the study week who was
forced to leave her work with basic ecclesial communities in
her native El Salvador, became involved in the forming of
two new communities in San Francisco. She now works as
assistant coordinator of eight communities in the San
Francisco Archdiocese.
Basic ecclesial communities, also called basic Christian
communities, are seen by their advocates as a new model for
the church, which has been supported by the Latin
American bishops and by Pope Paul VI in his apostolic
exhortation “Evangelii Nuntiandi.”
Ms. Ramos said she finds a number of differences
between Latin American communities and those emerging
in the United States.
“Here the people move so much slower in developing
BECs because injustices against the poor (insufficent wages,
poor housing, inadequate health care) are covered over with
paint. If you have a problem, you can write to your
senator,” she said.
In El Salvador there is no one to write to, no public
access to television, radio, newspapers, Ms. Ramos said.
Traditionally, she said, it has been out of such oppression
that basic ecclesial communities have prospered, those
relatively small basic communities of Catholics, integrated
for secular and religious life, that act to meet needs in all
spheres - economic, political, cultural and religious -- in the
light of the Gospel message.
Yet in the United States the communities are also
growing, she said.
“When we discover what Jesus says to us in the Gospels,
to know your brother and sister, as we see Jesus calling us to
integrated, interpersonal relationship with other Christians,
involved reported the most satisfaction.
“Wives report a deeper appreciation of the church and
ministry within it due to their husbands’ added vocation,”
he said. “Love is enriched and wives and children feel a deep
sense of pride.”
One problem area indicated by the survey is the
screening process for candidates to the diaconate, Msgr.
Fiedler said. However, he added, he believes much of the
difficulty comes from the 1968-73 period when deacons
first began being ordained.
“Everyone was starting from ground zero and some of
the earliest programs weren’t as aware of the need for
screening,” he said, adding that to a large extent the
situation has been corrected.
Another problem uncovered by the survey, according to
Msgr. Fielder, is that “deacons experience certain tension in
relationships with priests.” Catechesis for priests and better
definition of the role of deacons is indicated, he said.
The majority of those surveyed believe that the role of
the permanent deacon will grow over the next five years.
Msgr. Fiedler agreed with that assessment.
then slowly, little by little, BECs are beginning to evolve
here,” Ms. Ramos said.
The study week was led by Brazilian Father Jose Marins,
who called basic ecclesial communities an important
pastoral option to renew the church from the grassroots
level through small communities of 15-40 adults with their
families, united to the pastors in solidarity with other
communities of the area, the diocese and the universal
church.
“In the church ... we are well-organized, have built
many churches, but sometimes without necessarily forming
the community of the believers,” according to Father
Marins.
“Many times ... in each parish, there are thousands of
Christians who do not know each other and maintain no
type of relationship with one another. With such a lifestyle,
it becomes impossible to visualize a human community as
an intelligible, tangible sign of fraternal love,” he added.
The basic ecclesial community is not another movement,
another discussion group, prayer group or service club,
although these groups can very well develop into a BEC,
Father Marins said. “The BEC is not a specialized group that
exists for the execution of some concrete activities. It exists
to be church,” he continued.
Founded first in Latin America in the 1950s, BECs
sprang up rapidly in the Third World but not in First World
countries such as the United States.
“In the United States we’re so sucked in by the system of
the present church structure, we’re not even aware of other
ways for church to happen,” said Hector Rodriguez, a
member of the Santa Fe, N.M., archdiocesan staff for
evangelization, working with basic ecclesial communities.
“We’re still very heavily dependent on the hierarchy for
everything, and will continue to be until more of the
hierarchy go to the grassroots and help them develop their
own expressions of church,” he added.
“In Latin America BECs are accepted as part of the
church because the hierarchy there have discovered the
people of God and they serve the people,” Rodriguez said.
Latin America Speakers Explore
U.S. Version Of Basic Communities
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