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Halloween - How It All Began
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa (NC) -- What the Christian calendar marks as the eve
of the feast of All Hallows, or All Saints, popularly called Halloween, originated
in the church’s effort to replace Celtic ancestor worship on Nov. 1 with the
commemoration of the saints, said a professor at Pennsylvania State University.
Robert Lima, professor of Spanish and comparative literature at Pennsylvania
State University, recalled in an article on the origins of Halloween that the feast of
All Saints, instituted in the seventh century, was first celebrated on May 13.
“But the date was changed in short course, due in part to the pagan traditions
associated with the coming of spring,” Lima said. “The church found it
inappropriate to risk tainting its celebration of sainthood with the remnants of
rituals which extolled the fertility of nature, often with human acts of sexuality
meant to induce productivity in the soil and among animals through sympathetic
magic.”
Transferring the feast of All Saints to Nov. 1, a date with long-established
religious significance in pre-Christian Europe, the church “sought to supplant
Celtic ancestor worship, which that day highlighted, with the appreciative
commemoration of saints, the ancestors of the Christian church,” Lima said. “To
this end it tampered with the basic beliefs which the day represented.
“Nov. 1 was sacred to the Celts as the day of death,” he continued. “It was the
beginning of their winter.”
The Celtic year ended on Oct. 31, the eve of Samhain, Lima noted.
“An important aspect of this crucial night was the momentary visitation by
the dead,” he said. “The souls of ancestors fled from their cold, defoliated forest
abodes to seek shelter and the relative warmth of hearths where kinsfolk
welcomed them as beneficent spirits, extending them every hospitality. Other
souls, less fortunate in not having kinsmen, were attended to as well by offerings
of food and drink placed at crossroads, where spirits were believed to wander, and
near the large bonfires, which might attract good spirits with the promise of
warmth against the piercing cold of the northern European night.”
Lima continued: “Sacred fires were lit atop high places at sunset to detain the
departure of the sun’s light, the life-giving force, and to attempt to arrest the
subsequent death of nature, which winter was about to embody. The Celts knew
that their efforts were futile, but they believed in miraculous events, as their
mythology attests.”
Lima said the feast of Samhain “recognized the death of nature and of man
through homage to the powers that make such an end inevitable. The sun, god of
life, was dead; thereafter the powers of death and darkness had to be appeased.”
Imposing Christian theology on Celtic beliefs, the church intentionally
muddled the concepts and practices of Samhain, Lima said. The church, he said,
celebrated eternal life instead of Samhain’s celebration of physical death.
“Christianity’s position effectively squelched the beneficent image of the dead
in Celtic religion,” Lima said. “What remained was popular superstition which, no
longer rooted in a living faith, forgot the positive image of ancestor worship and
remembered only the evil spirits which had been but a peripheral element in
Celtic tradition.”
The professor concluded: “The giving of fruit and candy to the little monsters
who come knocking at one’s door is but a faint reminder of ancestral visitors
being feted in the Celtic festival of Samhain.”
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Georgia
Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
Vol. 19 No. 38
Thursday, October 29,1981
$8.00 per year
Scripture Is Topic
For Evangelization
BY LARRY MELEAR
The focus will be on parish-based
programs for group Scripture study as
the Archdiocese of Atlanta
Committee on Evangelization hosts
“Evangelization Through Scripture,”
10 a.m., October 31, at Sts. Peter and
Paul Church in Decatur.
“With an increasing interest in
Scripture study among our lay
Catholics, it is vital that quality
Scripture programs be made available
through our parishes,” says
evangelization committee chairman
George Clements. “The conference
will afford pastors and parish leaders
the opportunity to review various
models on which to build a parish
program.”
1
The day-long conference will begin
with a keynote address by Father
Timothy Tighe, C.S.P., a Scripture
education specialist from the National
Office for Evangelization in
Washington, D. C. As the day
continues, conference participants
may select from any of a dozen
workshops where they will review
details of the Scripture study models.
Scripture programs from other
dioceses will be presented in
workshops by Father Tighe, Father
Mario Vizcaino of Miami, Rev. Dr.
Glenn C. Smith from the Diocese of
Rockford, Illinois, Mary C. Graham
representing the Word of God
Institute in Washington, D. C., and
Donald McCrabb from Springfield,
Ohio. Participants may also evaluate
programs currently used by
Atlanta-area parishes. These will be
presented by workshop leaders Father
Paul Bemy, Sister Marie Leonard, Pam
Crayton, John Dearie, Joyce Handley
and Mrs. Burton Harding.
“Evangelization Through
Scripture” has been in planning since
last April, and it is offered by the
evangelization committee in response
to parish-requests for more
information on Scripture-based study
programs. Nearly 200 pastors and
parish leaders are expected to attend
the conference.
Participants will enjoy a luncheon
prepared by parishioners of Sts. Peter
and Paul. There is no registration fee,
but a modest donation of $2.50 is
requested to help the parish cover
luncheon costs.
Catholic Educators Welcome
OCTOBER 31, 1981
10:00 a.m.
Sts. PETER & PAUL CHURCH
ARCHDIOCESE OF ATLANTA
EVANGELIZATION
THROUGH
SCRIPTURE
CONFERENCE ON PARISH
SCRIPTURE STUDY
Reagan’s Tax Credit Support
ANAHEIM, Calif. (NC) - Catholic
educators praised President Reagan’s
statement of support for tuition tax
credits at a meeting of the Chief
Administrators of Catholic Education
(CACE) in Anaheim Oct. 19.
The CACE members applauded
when a telegram from Reagan was
read by Father John P. Hanley, CACE
president and superintendent of
education for the Milwaukee
Archdiocese.
“I think all of us should be very
pleased with President Reagan’s
telegram,” Father Hanley said. “He
promised support for tuition tax
credit legislation as a candidate in
October 1980 and is now promising
leadership in obtaining that legislation
as president in October 1981. He is
promising a thrust for enactment
during the 97th Congress.
“We applaud his emphasis on
parental rights in education and his
support in achieving realistic
expression of those rights,” Father
Hanley continued.
“We, the chief administrators of
Catholic education, must work with
the president and the Congress to
obtain this tax relief. Hopefully, our
next annual meeting in October 1982
will be one at which we can thank the
president and the Congress for their
enactment of a tuition tax credit law.”
Msgr. Francis X. Barrett, executive
director of CACE, said Reagan’s
telegram was a response to an
invitation sent by CACE to the
president to attend the meeting.
Reagan addressed the CACE meeting
October 1980 in Cincinnati and at
that time strongly supported the role
of non-public schools.
‘‘Let there be no
misunderstanding, this administration
will keep its pledge to work with this
Congress to fashion the kind of
legislation which provides tax relief to
the families which pay tuition in
addition to supporting their public
schools,” Reagan said in his telegram,
which was received Oct. 18.
“This form of educational
assistance to parents is consistent with
the role I envisioned for government
in the educational process and is
reflective of the importance this
administration attaches to the rights
and responsibilities of parents in the
education of our children. ”
Saying that he endorses the basis of
Catholic education, which holds that
it is the responsibility of the family to
teach children, Reagan stated:
“But what, then, is the role of
government in the field of education?
As I see it, it is the responsibility of
government to assist parents, to make
their burden easier, not to interfere
with them.
“Government can and must ensure
that all parents have the freedom to
select for their children the formal
education which they deem most
beneficial,” he said, and that is the
freedom to choose to send their
children to schools which reflect the
parents’ moral and cultural values.
“Keeping these factors in mind,”
he said, “I want to take this occasion
to reassure you as well as the other
sectors of the non-public school
community that I remain as strongly
committed to tuition tax credits now
as when I spoke to you in Cincinnati.
“I also am determined to see to it
that the program of economic
recovery I pledged in the campaign
succeeds in bringing down inflation,
creating more jobs and getting the
country moving again.
“There can be no higher priority
for the nation at this time than
achieving the goal of economic
recovery. Due to the difficult budget
pressures we will face in the months to
come and given our determination to
address the immediate and severe
problems facing the nation’s
economy, my commitment to work
with Congress to construct a tuition
tax credit bill will necessarily require
that we initiate our efforts later in the
97th Congress. Further, in recognition
of the present economic situation and
to minimize the budget impact of any
tuition tax credit legislation an
acceptable bill will have to be phased
in gradually.”
Pope Says Work
Unites Family
BY NANCY FRAZIER
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Stressing the link between work and the family, Pope
John Paul II announced the coming publication of a papal document on the
family and resumed his visits to Roman parishes with a stop at Jesus the Divine
Worker Church in the suburbs of the city.
During both his public appearances Oct. 25 the pope emphasized “that
particular link which exists between human work and family life.”
“Work cannot break up the family, but must rather unite it, help to reinforce
it,” he told 50,000 people present in St. Peter’s Square for his noontime Angelus
talk.
“May the family not become, because of work, a superficial encounter of
human beings, a transitory hotel only for meals and rest,” the pope added.
Pope John Paul noted that the October 1980 world Synod of Bishops was
dedicated to the theme of the Christian family and he said he would publish an
apostolic exhortation on the topic.
He gave no indication of when the document would be published, but said that
“circumstances known by all caused the publication of that exhortation to
undergo a certain delay.” The pope was referring to the attempt on his life in St.
Peter’s square on May 13.
The pope urged the crowd to pray that, through the intercession of Mary, “the
fundamental link which exists between work and the life of every family may find
its proper reflection in the entire social and juridical order and also in the daily life
of each person and each family.”
Cancun Summit Achieves
Only Limited Progress
NC NEWS SERVICE
The recent world summit on
economic problems at Cancun,
Mexico, brought limited progress in
the form of an apparently improved
atmosphere for dialogue and an
agreement in principle to carry out
global negotiations within the United
Nations for cooperation between rich
and poor countries.
The Oct. 22-23 meeting of 22
heads of government -- 14 from
developing countries and eight,
including U.S, President Ronald
Reagan, from aid-giving industrial
countries - was otherwise notable
chiefly for its lack of open rancor and
for the acceptance by Third World
countries of Reagan’s tough
conditions for U.N. negotiations.
But the kind of global structural
changes urged by Catholic social
teachings in recent years found little if
any concrete advance at the summit.
As the meeting was opening,
Vatican Radio editorially urged
translation of the long-discussed “new
international economic order” into “a
working program” that “would open
to humanity less dark and less
worrisome horizons.”
“For many years and from many
quarters, a ‘new international
economic order’ has been hoped for,
but the idea, impressive and
promising, has remained up to now
within the realm of good intentions,”
the Jesuit-run radio station said. “The
meeting at Cancun could be the
occasion for relaunching it more
realistically and concretely than in the
past.”
In a similar vein Archbishop John
R. Roach of St. Paul-Minneapolis,
president of the National Conference
of Catholic Bishops, declared that
numerous proposals to fight world
poverty “within the structure of
nations and in the framework of the
international economic order” have
been developed in the past decade, but
many of them “remain an unfulfilled
challenge to the international
community.”
He said that the “political will” by
industrialized nations to meet this
challenge “must come from several
nations, but none is more crucial than
the United States.”
“I urge President Reagan, even
though confronted with domestic
issues of the economy, to face
courageously and creatively the role
the United States must play in any
effective approach to world poverty,”
Archbishop Roach said as the summit
was opening.
But the United States, instead of
opening major new paths for
structural reforms in the global
economy, demanded continuation of
certain basic power structures as a
basis for further negotiations.
Midway through the summit
Reagan agreed to enter some form of
global negotiations on economic
structures and systems if what he
called certain “essential
understandings” were accepted.
These were:
- The United States rejects Third
World demands for a “new
international economic order,” an
effort to make basic changes in
current international economic
structures in order to close the gap
between rich and poor countries, and
favors instead additional help from
rich nations to improve the current
system.
- The specialized international aid
agencies for the Third World, such as
the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund, will not be
restructured to end their control by
the major donor countries.
- The United States under current
(Continued on page 6)
“Midway through the summit Reagan agreed to enter some form
of global negotiations on economic structures and systems if what he
called certain “essential understandings” were accepted.”
Creating A Parish Agenda
THE PARISH ASSEMBLY brought together community and proposed a series of steps the
more than 70 people who, in a day-long session, parish could take to respond,
itemized problems facing the elderly in the
A one-day assembly, focusing on
the needs of the elderly in the West
End community surrounding St.
Anthony’s parish, in Atlanta
produced a series of proposals,
outlining concrete ways the parish and
parishioners can respond.
The proposals, part of a document
drawn up during the Oct. 17 assembly,
touch upon specific problems the
elderly face, such as isolation, lack of
transportation, illness, and a lack of
self-esteem.
The parish will next review the
proposals that emerged from the
assembly of some 70 people and begin
to set priorities and decide how to set
the proposals in motion. The assembly
was directed by a team from Catholic
Social Services including Steve
Brazen, Sister Theresa Termini and
Jane Wood working with parish staff
and parishioners.
Among the proposals that emerged
from the assembly were:
- Organizing a network involving
the parish and the business
community to help the elderly.
Among the steps necessary to
accomplish this were a survey of the
parish to determine the resources it
contains and a human services
directory of the church;
- Setting up a resource bank that
might help the elderly to earn extra
income, by matching their talents up
with the needs of the parish and
parishioners;
- Providing transportation and
visitation services by developing a list
of volunteers willing to help,
implementing a telephone hot line and
organizing young people willing to do
chores for the elderly;
- Organizing an advocacy group for
the elderly;
-- Developing an “adoption”
program, linking the elderly with a
family or families for mutual care and
love;
- Working to make the parish a
focal point for information and a
gathering place;
- Assisting in the area of health
care by creating volunteer car pools
for doctor and hospital visits;
- And, establishing a resource
directory at the parish that would
centralize pertinent information on
the needs of the elderly, the resources
of the parish, and the sources to be
drawn on outside the parish and in the
metropolitan Atlanta-area.