Newspaper Page Text
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Vol. 19 No. 35
Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
Thursday, October 8,1981
$8.00 per year
VOCA TIONS WEEK
Priesthood -- “The Sublime Risk”
BACK IN SCHOOL - Father Bruce relaxes with
some smiling kindergarteners on the steps of Sts.
Peter and Paul School in Decatur.
Dear Wall Street Journal
BY FATHER RICHARD LOPEZ
Archdiocesan Vocation Director
The Wall Street Journal has
always been to me a venerable but
inscutable newspaper. You can
imagine my surprise when I was
deluged in the mail with clippings of
the same article from the September
14th issue.
It was about vocation directors in
the Catholic Church! - in the Wail
Street Journal. That was like finding
an article on the mating habits of
sparrows in Mechanics Illustrated!
The article was a combination of
personal experiences of one vocation
director, the inevitable statistics and
a string of deductions from both
sources.
I am always suspicious of
statistics in articles on vocations and
religion. I feel like G. K. Chesterton
who said: “Some people use
statistics like drunks use lampposts -
more for support than
illumination!”
Obviously our vocations are not
what they were 20 years ago.
However, a dedicated reading of
church history shows that vocation
statistics, like Sunday Mass
attendance, like the influence of the
Pope, like the spread of the Faith,
etc. has gone up and down
dramatically over the past 2,000
years.
The amazing thing to me is not
that there has been a drop in
vocations; the amazing thing to me is
that there are vocations at all! In a
society that is crassly materialistic
and hedonistic, in an age in which so
many clergy and religious have been
the victims of cynicism and self
doubt, that there are young men and
women of good caliber presenting
themselves is a miracle! But no more
perhaps than any age.
Do any of you really think
anyone can be recruited by any
salesmanship to celibacy and
obedience? The article refers to the
vocation director as the “Lone
Ranger” because he must bear the
burden of recruiting men to the
priesthood, and is discouraged and
overwhelmed by the task.
Frankly, I am neither discouraged
nor overwhelmed, and, frankly, I
cannot claim “credit” for any of our
seminarians, past, present or future.
I feel rather that my position has
been of someone who was given the
privilege of being the only spectator
at a performance of God’s action in
the lives of some fine men.
The performance is of one of
God’s most mysterious and loving
acts - the call to the priesthood. I
have witnessed God’s work and not
performed it in the lives of some
special men. In the long run what
you and I do is plant a seed - the
right book given at the right time,
the exact amount of encouragement
at the exact time, the polite
suggestion in a polite way -
something said, done or given that
might - as the article says -- captivate
the imagination of man or woman to
consider a vocation. The rest - thank
God - is God’s work.
The only question then is not a
despair about statistics, but rather
one’s own honest efforts to capture
the imaginations of the young with
the notion of a vocation - that job is
yours as well as mine.
‘Working Women” Awarded
$20,000 For Pay Campaign
BY GRETCHEN REISER
Women who work in traditionally
low-paying jobs in the Atlanta area
have been singled out for a $20,000
grant from the national Campaign for
Human Development.
The grant will be given to a year-old
organization, Atlanta Working
Women, which is the first organization
in the Southeast of the often
“invisible” worker in the business
world - the woman who types, files
clerks, keeps the books, works the
bank teller’s cage, and handles the
cash register or counter in retail stores.
Atlanta Working Women, which
operates with a staff of two and a
membership of nearly 100 women
from those offices in retail, banking,
insurance and other fields, has, in the
past year, conducted a survey of
women office workers to gauge pay
scales, raises, job training and
promotion possibilities, and the
attitudes of bosses toward women
working in non-management jobs.
The grant will go toward a further
campaign to research industries which
chronically pay low wages to office
workers and discriminate in hiring and
promotions. The aim, said staff
member Verna Barksdale, is to select
“a specific industry and from that a
target company - a company that we
can bring public pressure on to change
practices that we think, and certainly
their employees think, are unfair.”
“We think it’s a good project and
we believe in it,” said Mary Jo
Shannon, a program officer of the
Campaign for Human Development.
In its eleventh year, the Campaign was
created by the U.S. bishops in 1970 to
fund projects which enable people
living with the effects of poverty to
change the causes.
The Campaign is funded by an
annual collection, three-quarters of
which is distributed to projects
through the national CHD office and
one-quarter of which is distributed
through the archdiocese. Local CHD
awards have already been announced.
In addition to funding Atlanta
Working Women, the CHD is also
giving support this year to the
Pittsburgh chapter of the organization
and to the national umbrella group,
Working Women, National
Association of Office Workers, in
Cleveland.
The Atlanta group, which arose at
the request of some of the estimated
200,000 women office workers in the
city and metropolitan area, has won
quick momentum in its first year,
spreading the word that “you can join
together with other women you work
with or other women in the city and
see accomplishments,” as director
Diane Teichert puts it.
Acting on the message, one group
of women working for a perimeter
area insurance company got together
at lunch with 17 co-workers and
convinced the company to institute a
job-posting program, she said. One of
the founders of Baltimore Working
Women, Ms. Teighert says part of the
organization’s work is letting women
workers here know that they can
accomplish change following others’
footsteps -- “that there are tried
methods that others have used before
them - they don’t have to break new
ground.”
A jobs survey, distributed at
MARTA stops, on street corners and
through volunteers willing to circulate
it within their companies, revealed a
host of complaints that the 800
women responding have about their
jobs and workplaces.
Over 78 percent of those who filled
out the survey believed that women
were discriminated against in their
(Continued on page 3)
BYTHEA JARVIS
When Father Bruce Wilkinson was
growing up on the windy streets of his
native Chicago, his two greatest loves
were classical piano and architecture.
“For as long as I can remember, I
wanted to be an architect,” said
Father Bruce, who at age 26 is
assistant pastor at Sts. Peter and Paul
Church in Decatur.
“I even fantasized about becoming
a concert pianist. The priesthood was
a big decision for me.”
Indeed, Father Bruce Wilkinson’s
convoluted journey to the priesthood
is the stuff vocation directors’ dreams
are made of.
Bom to a strong family of
practicing Baptists, Father Bruce was
nevertheless not baptized in his
parents’ church. He declares that his
lack of enthusiasm was more a
concern about the deficiencies of
organized religion than a rejection of
God.
“God was always present to me. I
knew he was there,” Father Bruce
reflected. “I was just struggling to
come to terms with my relationship to
him.”
In Chicago, most of his friends
were Catholic, so he was not
unfamiliar with that religion. “We
lived in a predominantly Catholic
neighborhood - about eight out of
eleven of my close friends were
Catholic,” he said.
But the real move toward the
Catholic Church came at Morehouse
College in Atlanta, where Father
Bruce, then a student of architecture,
took turns visiting the churches and
synagogues of his friends. St.
Anthony’s Church in the southwest
part of the city was last on his list.
At St. Anthony’s, Father Bruce
“felt very close to God. It was
friendly, but mysterious. It amazed
me to see the ritual. After going to all
those churches, I knew I was
interested.” It seemed to the searching
student that in this church “God was
the center.”
After being received into the
Catholic Church at St. Anthony’s,
where Bishop Eusebius Beltran was
then pastor, the step to the priesthood
was a short, though memorable one.
“I talked to Bishop Beltran once
the first thought came. It was a big
question at first,” remembered Father
Bruce, “but everything else fell to the
side once I started thinking about it.”
Two models helped the young
priest reach his decision - Bishop
Beltran and the Catholic pastor of his
neighborhood church in Chicago.
“I tried to see myself in terms of
what they did, what they talked
about. Their gospel values, living the
gospel, the way their faith was
communicated in the celebration of
Mass,” all combined to convince
Father Bruce that the priesthood was
his calling.
Such a conviction had been
reached on his own. When he
informed his parents that “I’ve
thought about this for a year and this
is what I want to do,” they were
understandably taken by surprise.
“My parents’ initial reaction was
‘what did we do wrong?’ But then
they became very excited and happy
for me,” he smiled.
This past summer, the Wilkinsons
joined their son in Atlanta for his
ordination to the priesthood at the
Cathedral of Chirst the King. It was a
proud moment for the entire family.
At Sts. Peter and Paul Church,
Father Bruce’s first official
assignment, he has found his
community “very supportive, more
concerned about me than I expected.”
Being treated as an “authority figure”
has taken a little getting used to, as has
“being called ‘Father,’” he said.
On the other side of the ledger,
Father Bruce noted that “not many
Catholics have seen any black priests.
This is an expectation that most white
priests haven’t encountered.”
No stranger to discrimination - in
the seminary he was the only black
and was sometimes the butt of cruel
racial jokes - Father Bruce feels that
you can’t run away after you have
encountered prejudice.
“You have to attempt to work with
the situation. You can express anger
over it, but you must help people
understand that it’s not Christian.
Jesus calls all of us to do that, whether
black or white.”
Daily celebration of Mass for this
newly ordained priest is a
strengthening experience in which
“you take time from your normal
routine and bring yourself before God
with others who share your beliefs.”
Not one to be somber about his
relationship with God, Father Bruce
sees the liturgy as a “time to worship
God and have a good time doing it!”
It’s an awesome feeling. God is
present before you on the altar,
inviting you to come to him. It’s
wonderful to know that God is using
(Continued on page 2)
Letter From
The Seminary
Seminaries all over the world have changed most drastically in
the last 25 years. For this Vocation edition, Monsignor
Burtenshaw, tongue in cheek, remembers the trials and joys of
the hidden life as it existed a quarter of a century ago.
All Hallows Seminary
Dublin, Ireland
Oct. 1,1956
Dear Mom,
Please, please do not send any more packages. I have dashed to my room
to get this message to you. I would have used the phone except permission
is granted for phone calls only in the event of sudden death or atomic
threat. Hoping you are still alive and the world has not gone up in smoke. I
am sending this emergency note by next mail. PLEASE no more packages.
The day began like a rainy Monday. I was called on the carpet by the
Senior Dean. Being called on the carpet means simply standing to strict
attention at his desk for the duration of his monologue. This morning the
duration was, like eternity, without end.
The contents of your package littered his desk. I believe it is fair to say
you have given up your right to them. In fact, neither of us will ever see
them again. Anyway, as I looked at the spread, it was clear that each article
you sent was strictly forbidden by the rules of this solemn institution. And
that’s for sure.
The warm gold and green plaid pants might have put a little color in our
days, but you forget here your son wears a black cassock over black pants.
And he wears it all the time. He wears it to chapel, to breakfast, to class, to
recreation. He even wears the cassock over his football uniform until he gets
to the field. Forget the pants of brilliant plaid, I need leather patches for
this well-worn cassock.
The transistor radio was a real blunder. When would I use it? With the
exception of a daily hour of afternoon bedlam on the football field, this is a
life of silence. The rule is not to speak and definitely not to listen to others
speak on the radio. All corridors are silent, all stairways are silent, all rooms
are totally silent, all meals are silent, going to class is silent and to top it off
the time from 9:30 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. is called the Great Silence. I think
someone misnamed it. (Snoring, by the way, is against the rule).
The newspapers were a bad mistake. When the British and the French
invaded Egypt, the Dean announced it. If the missing link shows up or the
lost chord is found, we’ll hear. If Russia is converted, it will be posted
beside the choir notices. We are really not completely incommunicado. We
regularly get the Far East along with Africa Calls. But, believe me, your
collection of newspapers will not get to first base. Mother, they were a bad
mistake.
It was with deep tearful reluctance that I gave up the chocolate cake.
Bashed and bruised it might have been; delicious it certainly looked. The
food is really not that bad. But after going to the dining room in cassock
and silence, sitting in the same spot, beside the same (sloppy) guy, at every
meal, for a few months, the reason for the rule of silence at meals becomes
obvious. And besides all that, porridge every morning gets to be a drag. And
while I’m complaining let me say they don’t boil the water before they
make the tea. Also the nearest thing we get to chocolate cake is the
matron’s own version of stale bread pudding.
So the care package was a nice try, but better not do it again or I’ll need
bus fare home. And to really level with you, I would not want that. You
know, this is where I belong.
- Love, Noel
P.S. I must add that to be really truthful all these somber rules of the
seminary are kept by most of the students only imperfectly!
Anwar Sadat - Herald Of Peace
BY JERRY FILTEAU
NC News Service
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, shot by a group dressed in uniforms of his
own soldiers in Cairo Oct. 6, was both admired and hated for his peacemaking
efforts in the Middle East.
The 62-year-old Egyptian president had been the leading figure in peace
negotations with Israel since 1977, when he made his historic pilgrimage to
Jerusalem to start a peace process after 30 years of hostilities.
His initative led Time Magazine to hail him as “Man of The Year,” and in
1978 he and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin were jointly awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize.
Often called America’s best friend in the Middle East, Sadat angered most of
his Arab neighbors by making peace with Israel.
He also faced serious domestic troubles from Islamic fundamentalists who
wanted the Egyptian state to be run on more strictly religious principles.
In September he engaged in a large-scale crackdown on Coptic Christians and
Moslem fundamentalists in Egypt, arresting more than 1,500 persons and
dethroning Coptic Pope Shenouda III, who had frequently protested Moslem
attacks on Egypt’s Christian minority. The extent of the crackdown surprised
many observers.
Sadat had visited Pope Paul VI in 1976 and 1978 and was viewed favorably
by the Vatican as a statesman and peacemaker.
Born Dec. 24,1918, Sadat was the son of a poor military clerk in the small
Egyptian village of Mit Abul Kum.He joined the army and rose through its ranks
to become an officer.
He was close to Gamal Abdel Nasser when Nasser overthrew the monarchy
in Egypt in 1952, and was his vice president when Nasser died suddenly in 1970.
He was considered a weak leader and was chosen as a compromise president
to avoid the danger of a Right-Left rift posed by apparently stronger candidates.
But Sadat surprised the world several times in the next decade.
In 1972 he expelled some 20,000 Soviet military advisers that Nasser had
brought in after Egypt’s humiliating defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War with Isreal.
The next year he attacked Israel. Although Egypt was again defeated in the
1973 war, its early military successes salved the wounds of the 1967 defeat and
made Sadat a hero in Egypt, silencing many of his domestic critics. It was the
anniversary of this event he was observing when he was shot.
In 1975 he again astounded the international community by reopening the
Suez Canal before Israeli troops had pulled back into the Sinai. The move was
seen as an act of statecraft which brought Egypt a strong measure of
international goodwill, strengthening the position of Egypt and the Arab world
as a whole for a Middle East peace settlement.
His bold initiative of traveling to Jerusalem in November 1977 dramatically
heightened his image as a peacemaker and visionary statesman in many quarters.
That move led to the 1978 Camp David peace accords between Sadat and
Begin under the mediation of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and the formal
signing of a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel the following year.