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PAGE 7—The Georgia Bulletin, December 24,1981
Vatican Delegates
Visit Reagan
WASHINGTON (NC) -- A nuclear attack would
wreak such devastation that the medical profession
would be unable to help the survivors, four scientists
representing Pope John Paul II warned President
Ronald Reagan during a White House meeting Dec. 14.
They said later the president seemed aware of the
dangers and to agree with them that nuclear war must
be prevented.
The scientists, accompanied by Archbishop Pio
Laghi, apostolic delegate in the United States, and
William Wilson, the president’s personal representative
to the Vatican, presented Reagan with a copy of a
Pontifical Academy of Sciences study on nuclear war
and told the president that the only hope for the world
is preventing nuclear war. The pope also is sending
teams to Moscow, London, Paris and the United
Nations to present the study to top world leaders.
“The conditions of life following a nuclear attack
would be so severe that the only hope for humanity is
preventing any form of nuclear war,” Victor
Weisskopf, professor of physics at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, said to Reagan. “Universal
dissemination and acceptance of this knowledge would
make it apparent that nuclear weapons must not be
actually used in warfare and that their number should
be progressively reduced in a balanced way,” he said.
Milwaukee Sets 16
As Minimum Age
For Confirmation
MILWAUKEE (NC) -- New official guidelines on the
sacrament of confirmation issued by the Archdiocese
of Milwaukee set the minimum age for receiving the
sacrament at 16 or the junior year of high school.
The new 59-page policy, developed from temporary
guidelines initiated in 1979, was approved by
Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee and is
effective immediately.
“By leaving confirmation near to an adult age, it
seems to me one is coming closer to the original intent of
the whole process of the rites that accompanied the
initiation of adults in the early church, even though the
order has been disturbed by the now established
traditions of infant baptism and early first
Communion,” Archbishop Weakland stated.
Lynn Neu, director of the youth ministry office in
the archdiocese, said the new guidelines are intended to
reflect a stronger theological base, focus on the
historical significance of the sacrament, provide a
better means of determining readiness of candidates,
and emphasize and amplify the role of parents,
sponsors and parishes.
The guidelines include three models of training >
programs, which last one or two years.
Under the guidelines, a pastor or the person he
designates is to interview the candidate for
confirmation to help determine his readiness.
Candidates are to engage in service projects to aid the
poor, needy and disadvantaged as well and parents are
to participate by assisting children.
Sponsors also must be “sufficiently mature,” belong
to the Catholic Church and be initiated into the
sacraments of baptism, confirmation and the
Eucharist.
The guidelines specify that sensitivity should be
given to the special needs of the developmentally
disabled, Hispanic migrant workers and adult
candidates.
The practices of holding joint confirmation
ceremonies for two or more parishes is expected to
continue under the guidelines.
Prison Ministry
Launched In Fla.
ORLANDO, Fla. (NC) - A group of Florida
businessmen launched an ecumenical prison ministry in
late November. The ministry, five years in preparation,
is called Kairos (“God’s time” in Greek).
Kairos began in Miami in 1976 when attorney Tom
Johnson, now president of the ministry, and a team of
Christian businessmen and women took a Cursillo
weekend into the Union Correctional Institution in
Raiford, Fla. Cursillo is a personal renewal group
started in Spain in 1947.
For three days the group talked, sang and prayed
with the prisoners. The men and women became
convinced that a prison ministry could change
professional criminals into Christians.
But the Cursillo language and methods were not
suited to the walls and bars of the prison.
Between 1976 and 1981, the Cursillo group
developed words and techniques that inmates could
understand and a methodology that prison
administrators would accept.
Kairos became an ecumenical Christian prison
ministry, made up of teams of men and women. They
conduct ongoing programs, offering an alternate way
of life for the prisoners.
Kairos cites that 96 percent of the inmates will
return to the streets and 60 percent will be back in
prison within four years in Florida. Because of the grim
statistics the group has formed five objectives:
- To achieve the conversion of inmates within the
prison walls so they might become useful citizens when
freed.
-- To promote the continued healing and
strengthening of prisoners.
- To tranquilize the prison environment.
- To assist chaplains as head pastors in prisons.
-- To give meaning and hope to inmates by
encouraging them to live as Christians in a prison
environment.
At one prison, inmates embraced the warden after a
Kairos weekend.
“What has happened here is not man’s doing, it is the
work of God,” said Chaplain Eldon Cornett of Union
Correctional Institute in Starke, Fla. after observing a
Kairos weekend.
William E. Counselman, chief of chaplains for
Florida Department of Corrections, writing Bishop
Thomas J. Grady of Orlando, said “The program
became a time for them to become participants rather
than spectators. They are having a ‘salt of the earth and
light of the world’ effect on the whole compound.”
The majority of the inmates in Raiford involved in
Kairos weekends are sharing in groups and about 30 are
fasting during their noon meal to meet and pray in the
chapel.
Kairos has received support from Bishop Grady,
Archbishop Edward R. McCarthy of Miami and
Bishops W. Thomas Larkin of St. Petersburg and John
J. Snyder of St. Augustine. Leaders of other churches
have also backed the ministry.
Nuclear Weapons Issue
Stirs Bishops’ Debate
M
INTERFAITH GIFT - Albert
Rosen of Milwaukee gets instruction
from Wisconsin Telephone Co.
supervisor Donna Heishman on the
operation of a message accounting
machine. He will fill in as a telephone
CARDINAL COOKE
0
operator for Barbara McCaskill so she
can spend Christmas Eve with her
family. It will be the 12th consecutive
Christmas Eve that the Jewish man
has worked so that a Christian could
have the evening off.
BY CHARLES E. MAHON
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.
(NC) - Two Catholic
bishops and the Richmond
diocesan priests’ council
have engaged in a public
debate over the morality of
production and possession
of nuclear weapons.
After Bishop Walter
Sullivan of Richmond, Va.,
told a predominantly
military audience in
Virginia Beach that it is
“immoral to be associated
with the production or
use” of such weapons,
Bishop John J. O’Connor,
vicar general of the U.S.
military vicariate, wrote a
seven-page letter to the
Norfolk Ledger-Star
disagreeing with the
Richmond bishop.
“1 know of nothing in
official church teaching
that suggests our military
people are engaged in
immoral activities in
carrying out their
responsibilities,” he wrote.
“In fact,” he added, “as
I read current church
teaching, it could be
immoral for government
officials to disarm a nation
unilaterally if such were to
make the nation vulnerable
to unjust aggression.”
Bishop O’Connor’s
letter was a response to
inquiries addressed to him
by Jeff South, Virginia
Beach city editor of the
Ledger-Star. His comments
were reported in the paper
Dec. 8.
The Richmond diocesan
council of p r ie sts
responded, at a meeting in
Virginia Beach Dec. 9, with
a statement defending its
bishop.
“The teaching of the
church is clear: nuclear
arms and the arms race are
immoral,” the council said.
“Hence, the production
and the possession of the
means of nuclear war are
also immoral.”
Bishop Sullivan’s
speech, delivered in
September in Virginia
Beach and subsequently
given elsewhere in his
diocese in substantially the
same form, challenged the
supposition that any use of
nuclear weapons or threat
to use them can ever be
morally justified. He
argued that therefore their
production and possession
are immoral.
Bishop O’Connor, a
Navy chaplain since 1952,
was ordained a bishop in
19 79 and made vicar
general for the military
vicariate, a quasi-diocese
which is responsible for the
pastoral care of personnel
in the U.S. armed forces
around the world.
In his answer to Bishop
Sullivan’s comments he
wrote that “The only
weapons condemned by
the church, to my
knowledge, are weapons of
massive and indiscriminate
destruction ... In no
instance that I recall has the
church stated categori
cally: ‘All nuclear weapons
are condemned.’”
He said it was not
possible to say definitely
whether a limited nuclear
war could be fought.
“Some people believe
that the firing of a single
nuclear weapon would
necessarily result in the
famous chain reaction that
would end only after every
nuclear nation had fired all
or most of its weapons,
with the world in ruins,”
Bishop O'Connor wrote.
“Some people, on the
contrary, believe that
tactical nuclear weapons,
capable of a ‘surgical strike’
directed against combat
troops or military targets,
such as ships at sea, could
be used without necessarily
provoking retaliatory use
of strategic nuclear
weapons resulting in
massive destruction,” he
continued. “It is my
personal conviction that we
simply don’t know enough
about nuclear weapons to
make infallible
statements.”
He said he was
impressed with Bishop
Sullivan’s “straightfor
wardness and willingness to
say or do what he believes
to be right,” but, he added,
the military vicariate
disagrees with his blanket
condemnation of nuclear
weapons.
The priests’ council
rejected Bishop O’Connor’s
suggestion that a just
nuclear war is possible.
“Nuclear weapons are
not simply conventional
weapons on a larger scale,”
the council said. “Nuclear
weapons are qualitatively
of a whole different level of
destructiveness, and so we
must conclude that a just
nuclear war is a
contradiction in terms.”
Nuclear Deterrence May Be ‘Morally Tolerable’
NEW YORK (NC) - A strategy of nuclear deterrence
may be “morally tolerable,” said Cardinal Terence Cooke of
New York in a five-page letter to the nation’s Catholic
military chaplains.
He called for effective international disarmament
agreements, but said, “As long as our nation is sincerely
trying to work with other nations to find a better way (to
maintain peace), the church considers the strategy of
nuclear deterrence morally tolerable; not satisfactory, but
tolerable.”
The letter dated Dec. 7 and released Dec. 14, responded
to questions raised by several widely publicized attacks on
the morality of U.S. nuclear policy by churchmen in recent
months.
Cardinal Cooke is U.S. military vicar, a post which makes
him responsible for the pastoral care of Catholics in the
American armed forces.
“The church does condemn the use of any weapons;,
nuclear or conventional, that would indiscriminately
destroy huge numbers of innocent people, such as an entire
city, or weapons that would ‘blow up the world,”’ wrote
Cardinal Cooke.
“Every nation,” he continued, “has a grave moral
obligation to reduce and finally get rid of such weapons
altogether, but the church points out that this must be done
gradually, with all nations cooperating and with prudence.
“The church does not require, nor have the popes of the
nuclear age or the Second Vatican Council recommended,
unilateral disarmament.”
Responding to frequently heard criticisms that U.S.
military expenditures rob the poor of funds that should be
used to meet their human needs, Cardinal Cooke said that
the issue of how much to spend “is a matter of balance.”
“The people at large and their elected representatives
have the right and duty to question all aspects of the
national budget, including allocations for defense . . . We
must be gravely concerned at all times about the needs of
the poor and assure that •appropriate provision is made for
those needs,” he wrote.
“At the same time, we must be very careful about
assuming that reductions in defense spending would
automatically or completely solve such problems as
poverty, hunger and disease in our nation or the world.
These issues are tremendously complex and require many
other changes in society before they can be adequately
resolved . . . There would be little point in a nation’s
spending all its resources on feeding, clothing, housing and
educating the poor and on other needs, only to leave all its
people defenseless if attacked,” he said.
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