Newspaper Page Text
Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
Vol. 19 No. 42
Thursday, November 26,1981
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CONSECRATION
Change Omits
The Word “Men”
WASHINGTON (NC) - U.S.
bishops received surprise notice Nov.
17 that Pope John Paul II has
confirmed their request to omit the
word “men” from the words of
Consecration.
The words of Consecration in all
eucharistic prayers used in the Mass
now will read “ ... for you and for all
so that sins may be forgiven ...”
instead of “ ... for you and for all
men ...”
In the midst of discussion on
language in the liturgy during the
second day of the National
Conference of Catholic Bishops
(NCCB) meeting In Washington,
Auxiliary Bishop Anthony G. Bosco
of Pittsburgh asked about language
changes requested at last year’s
meeting.
Bishop James Malone of
Youngstown, Ohio, U.S.
representative to the International
Commission on English in the Liturgy
(ICEL), said the bishops had not
received word from Rome.
By coincidence, NCCB president
Archbishop John R. Roach said the
conference had just received a letter
from the Vatican announcing the
change in the Consecration. The
archbishop said the change would be
implemented immediately in all of the
U.S. dioceses.
The question of language which
refers only to men had been addressed
at last year’s meeting when the
bishops voted a series of changes to
delete what was termed “exclusive
language.”
Archbishop Rembert Weakland of
Milwaukee, chairman of the bishops’
Committee on Liturgy, said other
requests made by the U.S. bishops to
the Vatican apparently are “still under
study.”
At last year’s meeting the
archbishop also said the change in the
Consecration “is the most serious of
all those presented. It causes distress
on the part of so many women and
men around the country. It’s so
symbolic of many larger concerns.”
ICEL had noted that “though the
words ‘man’ or ‘men’ have a
traditional generic usage, many people
have come to experience them as
referring primarily or exclusively to
males and so as including women only
in a secondary way ... or as omitting
them altogether.”
At a press conference Nov. 17
following the announcement of the
change Archbishop Weakland said, “I
am grateful to Pope John Paul for
granting this.”
ANTICIPATION lights up the faces of IHM
first-graders Luke Kalarckal, Jennifer Montellanico
and Michael Hungeling as their teacher, Kathy
Mayberry, demonstrates the candle-lighting
ceremony of Advent wreaths. Beginning this week,
on page four, Dominican Father David K.
O’Rourke will lead an Advent journey in
anticipation of Christmas that sets the words of
Jesus in the towns, roads and churches of the Holy
Land where Father O’Rourke recently visited.
Advent: Will It Slip By Again?
BY JEREMY MILLER, O P.
Repetition seems like a good
strategy for learning languages or
building up sagging muscles, but for
most other endeavours it feels dreary,
monotonous and deadening to any
kind of personal excitement. Such was
the lament of a housewife who once
wept to me that she was ever going
around in the familiar old
house-keeping and meal-fixing circle.
It is the proverbial “rut” of the same
daily trek to work, the same routine
there, and the same traffic jam
heading home. “Is today Tuesday or
Wednesday?” Who cares?
Jacques Brel once sang of life being
a carousel; the music goes faster and
faster, with pounding repetition, until
it all becomes a big blur of melody and
rhythm. Here is the challenge to
anyone who thinks cycles and
repetitions are neat and sweet. We are
basically “straight line” people who
want tomorrow to be a little different,
at least, from today and next year to
have some adventure last year lacked.
Who feels excited about going through
the same old paces?
All of this had to be mentioned if
we want to avoid merely slipping into
Advent the way someone
thoughtlessly and absentmindedly
slides into routines or slides into the
car every morning for work. It is an
easy temptation to slip into Advent
the way someone slips into morning
socks or sheers, because it all seems
like a gigantic cycle. After all, do we
not call the liturgical year a cycle?
Does not Advent, the beginning of
that Christ-mystery year, roll around
as predictably and uniformly as the
hour hand of the kitchen clock hitting
twelve all over again? Does it all
become a liturgical carousel whose ups
and downs are minor variations on
some three hundred sixty degree
swing back to the same point?
I know slipping into Advent and
slipping through it is a real temptation
because I have felt it and others have
shared they did too. And the same
familiar sermon from last year about
John the Baptist does not help the
cause. Unless we extricate ourselves
from a mindless carousel, our restless
minds and excitement-hungry
imaginations will grasp whatever
apparently seems adventurous, like
the whirl of Christmas shopping and
firming up holiday plans. Advent,
with whatever novel possibilities it
had, has slipped by again! The
shopping malls and the Hallmark cards
have won undivided attention again.
I think we have to approach
Advent, the beginning of the Church’s
year of feasts, like we approach a
birthday. I do not mean what we think
about birthdays but how we feel and
experience ourselves to be at those
times. Birthdays are cyclic too; they
predictably occur on annual demand.
We, however, are different each and
every time. Perhaps I was married, or
widowed, or began college, this past
year. My birthday is different from
last year’s echo because I am different.
Birthdays are an intriging mesh of
straight line and circle, the only place I
know where the two coincide. Not
even geometry’s helix carries it off. I
return pn cycle to my birthday, but
my life has been surging forward with
its new joys, new disappointments,
new hopes, with a different me in a
sense. It is never returning to the same
(Continued on page 6)
THANKSGIVING
Lourdes Keeps The Spirit All Year Long
BY THEA JARVIS
Thanksgiving morning will
dawn a little brighter this year for
some 30 families in downtown
Atlanta given holiday help by
parishioners at Our Lady of
Lourdes Church.
Food baskets, prepared in
conjunction with the church’s
Food for the Neighborhood
program, brought turkeys, canned
goods and some fresh produce to
homes whose Thanksgiving tables
might otherwise have been bare.
“This year St. Pius X High
School donated canned goods and
money for fresh fruit and
vegetables,” said Sister Linda
Maser, CSJ, pastoral assistant at
Our Lady of Lourdes who
coordinates the program. “St.
Theresa’s Circle at Christ the King
is also helping.”
Recipients of the holiday
packages included Lourdes
parishioners, but most were people
living in the vicinity of the church '
who needed assistance in making
ends meet. Some had called the
parish requesting help while others
were referred by sensitive
parishioners attuned to
neighborhood need.
The Food for the Neighborhood
program was begun last
Thanksgiving through a financial
contribution by an anonymous
donor. It gradually grew into a
year-round effort that is a parish
expression of deep concern for
their community, according to
Sister Linda.
“The food is usually distributed
on the third Sunday of every
month,” she explained. “We
always ask at church if anyone
would like to help. About 10
parishioners deliver the food each
month and for the holiday we can
extend the program to more
families because of the outside
donations.”
For this Thanksgiving - and
most third Sundays -- Our Lady of
Lourdes Parishioner Freda
Lipscomb fills her van with
groceries for those on the church’s
Food for the Neighborhood list.
“I just put some extra gas in my
car and start delivering,” she said
with enthusiasm. “If I can help
somebody, I enjoy it.”
Ms. Lipscomb’s deliveries are
made to a number of senior
citizens, including an elderly lady
who is deaf and suffers with
cataracts. Another delivery stop
resulted from a chance meeting in
the local post office.
“This lady looked so weary that
I said ‘Ma’am, do you need a ride?’
On the way home she asked if we
could stop at the store - she had
had no bread in the house for four
days,” Ms. Lipscomb related.
Eddie Anderson, Our Lady of
Lourdes’ hard-working parish
council chairman, joins Freda
Lipscomb and the other volunteers
each month to deliver food. This
Thanksgiving, he is pleased to be a
part of the neighborhood outreach,
and cited the proliferation of reason for the enormous need he
public housing projects as the main (Continued on page 6)
Pacifist Bishop
Speaks His Mind
WASHINGTON (NC) - Bishop
Leroy T. Matthiesen of Amarillo,
Tex., opposes nuclear bombs.
Up until this year, he says, he had
never spoken out on the issue. Then
his conscience was touched by a
worker who helped manufacture the
bombs. The worker and his wife were
troubled over the morality of the job
the husband was performing.
Now Bishop Matthiesen has
become one of the most prominent
anti-nuclear spokesmen among the
U.S. bishops.
Earlier this year he testified against
placing the MX missile anywhere in
the United States. He called on
Catholics working at the Pantex plant
in his diocese, final assembly point for
the whole U.S. arsenal of nuclear
weapons, to ask themselves whether in
“My world began in 1921 on a
cotton farm in Central West Texas. My
grandfather had left Germany in 1870
to seek a farm and a wife and to escape
from the interminable wars of his day.
In the words of my Aunt Hattie, he
‘did not like war.’
“My father turned out to be
something of a pacifist, too, though he
seems to have readily acceded when at
the age of 12 I suggested that it would
be nice if Santa Claus gave me a rifle
for Christmas. It was Stevens .22
caliber single shot rifle and it was
precious to me ...
“I had chance encounters with
guns through the years. Once, in a
pickup, a rifle in my hands went off
accidentally. The bullet sped within
inches of a friend’s head. I said,
limply, ‘I didn’t know the gun was
Seattle Archbishop
Gives The Order
SEATTLE (NC) - Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle
has directed the archdiocesan Office of Business and Finance to sell
stocks of companies involved in the development and production of
nuclear arms.
Although these investments comprise less than one percent of total
archdiocesan investments, “even this level is unacceptable,” Archbishop
Hunthausen said in a statement. “It has never been our intention to
support such enterprises.”
In a speech last June to the Pacific Northwest Synod convention of
the Lutheran Church in America, Archbishop Hunthausen denounced
the nuclear arms race, called for unilateral U.S. nuclear disarmament and
suggested that Christians refuse to pay 50 percent of their federal
income taxes as non-violent resistance “to nuclear murder and suicide.”
Since then 16 leaders of nine denominations in Washington state have
backed his stand.
conscience they could justify the
work they were doing.
A number of other U.S. bishops
who have spoken out against
American nuclear policy since then
have cited Bishop Matthiesen’s stand
in their arguments.
As the U.S. bishops were meeting
in Washington Nov. 16-19, Bishop
Matthiesen attended most of the
meeting but flew to New York the
evening of Nov. 16 to speak at the
Riverside Church Disarmament
Conference on how he came to oppose
nuclear weapons.
Here, excerpted from his speech, is
a profile of a bishop who became a
pacifist.
loaded.’
“After I released the statement
about the assembling of the neutron
bomb at Pantex (final assembly point
for all U.S. nuclear warheads, 15 miles
from Amarillo) a member of the staff
of our church paper polled 50
students at West Texas State
University at Canyon, 35 miles from
Pantex. The majority of the
students either had never heard of
Pantex or, if they had, did not know
what it was for. They literally did not
know that thermonuclear warheads
capable of incredible destruction are
being loaded out there.
“A former employee at Pantex
(Continued on page 6)
Adoptive Parents
Come In All Sizes
BY GRETCHEN REISER
Set aside the pre-Christmas catalogues for a moment and imagine: a book with
pictures on every page of kids, little, big, some shyly looking at the camera, others
hamming it up with wide grins.
Underneath are their names and an age and a hint at the fullness of the child
posed in black and white: Donald, white, 13, but more important, first place
drummer in the band and in an accelerated program for the gifted; Francine, 12,
great dimples and bursting with energy; Theodore and Jesse, seven and
six-year-old brothers, black, cute and well-behaved and healthy; Stephanie, four
years old, a child with cerebral palsy who is now making progress and beginning to
walk with help.
You know, opening the book, that the kids inside have had a struggle, so far,in
life. What surprises isn’t the details laid out honestly about each of them, but how
the data pales alongside the pictures. They are beautiful kids.
You hear, now and then, that there aren’t very many kids available for
adoption anymore; or you might hear that the kids who are available are older
children or have physical handicaps. The remarks don’t do justice to the kids who
are pictured. They make it sound as if it would be difficult to love these children.
It is, perhaps, the first of many ideas about adoption that stop people from
taking the step.
Another, if people get beyond the first, is the notion that they must appear to
be “ideal” - in family structure, income, and a host of other ways to be approved
as an adoptive family.
“There are all different types of children, so we need all different types of
parents,” said Ellen Cliburn, an adoption caseworker at Child Service and Family
Counseling Center on West Peachtree Street in Atlanta. The agency, which is a
private United Way agency, is involved in a number of family and counseling
services, including working with people who want to adopt children. At any time
there are several hundred children available for adoption, Ms. Cliburn said.
In addition to working With young couples, who are traditionally viewed as
those seeking to adopt children, staff workers at the Center have helped single
people, both men and women, who wanted to adopt a child, and older couples,
who sought to adopt a child after their own family had grown up and moved out.
All those people brought different strengths to the new family, whether or not
they seemed to fit the traditional mold, Ms. Cliburn said. Older couples, for
example, are “experienced parents and they have a support network” around
them in their children and grandchildren. And, as testimony to the importance
and power of love beyond all else in adoptive families, she mentioned a couple
who this year adopted through the agency a child born with Down’s Syndrome.
In about four months time, the child’s vocabulary had grown eight fold from 10
(Continued on page 6) \