Newspaper Page Text
I
Vol. 20 No. 3
Thursday, January 21,1982
$8.00 Per Year
Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
Week Of
BY THEA JARVIS
WGST’s Tom Houck dubbed it
“Snow Jam ’82.” Commuters caught
in metro traffic called it the South’s
biggest parking lot. Housebound
mommas with young ones home
from school called it cabin fever.
And sledding children frolicking on
whitened hills and empty roadways
said it was the greatest adventure
since “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
Most agreed it was a change of
pace from the usual run of January
ho-hums that follow a madcap
holiday season.
Midst the snow, the sleds, the
stalled cars and stranded travelers,
people discovered - and rediscovered
-- the unmatched power of a winter
o storm.
o *****
h An in-depth theological dialogue
o was overhead in the Thriftown food
g store on Chamblee-Tucker Road
* Tuesday afternoon of “snow week.”
|5 Fearful shoppers were spied hoarding
£ groceries against the imminent
blizzard.
Week Of Grief And Courage
BY STEPHENIE OVERMAN
WASHINGTON (NC) - “We will
never forget what happened
yesterday. May we never forget as
well God’s presence in our lives, not
only in the moments that life is
created and that life is changed, but
in every moment of our existences.”
the plane and bridge had been taken
and later to the Crystal City Marriott
Hotel in Arlington, where about 80
relatives of people who had been
aboard Air Florida Flight 90 began
to gather.
“The people came in gradually,
stunned, not knowing what to
expect,” he said. “Everyone in that
room said, ‘my relative must be the
Kathy Burke, 24,
Among Crash Victims
. BY THEA JARVIS
Miss Kathy Burke, daughter of St. Joseph’s parishioners Mr. and Mrs.
John D. Burke of Athens, was among the 74 passengers and
crew members who died in the crash of the Air Florida Boeing 737 out
of Washington, D.C. January 13. She was 24 years old.
Miss Burke was the oldest of the six Burke children, whose family has
lived in the Athens area for 14 years. She was born in Washington, D.C.
A graduate of St. Joseph’s elementary school, it was her acquaintance
with the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary who taught there
which influenced Miss Burke’s decision to attend Immaculata College in
Philadelphia, staffed by the same order of teaching nuns.
Miss Burke was living in Philadelphia and was employed by a real
estate firm in that city at the time of her death.
In an interview with the Athens Banner-Herald, Paula Burke, the
victim’s mother, recalled that her daughter was “a very social minded
person, always for justice.” Mrs. Burke described the young woman as
“very compassionate” and “an activist,” one who wanted to put her deep
faith into action for others.
She had spent one summer working in Guatemala, using her fluency in
Spanish to help teach the poor of that country.
Father William Calhoun, pastor of St. Joseph’s, characterized the
Burke family as “very devout, exceptionally devoted to the parish and
the Church in general.”
Mr. Burke is the Vice-President for Services at the University of
Georgia. The two youngest Burke children are students at the parish
school and altar boys at St. Joseph’s Church.
On several occasions, when Kathy Burke was in Athens visiting her
family, Father Calhoun met her at Mass. He remembered her as “a very
reverent person” and noted that the Burkes “always come to Mass as a
family.”
Miss Burke’s body was flown to Athens from Washington Monday and
was accompanied by her fiance, who was from the Philadelphia area.
They had planned to marry this April.
A rosary and the Litany of the Sacred Heart had been specially
requested by the Burke family during a wake service Tuesday evening.
Father Calhoun celebrated the Mass of the Resurrection on Wednesday
norning at 11 a.m.
Archbishop James Hickey of
Washington issued that statement
Jan. 14 after a day of disaster in the
city. A jetliner from National Airport
plunged into the Potomac River after
killing motorists on a bridge and a
subway derailed at rush hour killing
three passengers, both amidst the
worst snowstorm in several years.
The archbishop’s words were part
of Catholic Church efforts to aid
survivors and comfort families of
victims.
Father Charles Gerloff, pastor of
Our Lady of Lourdes in Arlington,
Va., a Washington suburb and Msgr.
Justin D. McClunn, vicar general of
the Arlington Diocese and a resident
at Our Lady of Lourdes, hurried to
help those involved.
The two priests rushed to the 14th
Street Bridge, a major commuter link
between Arlington and Washington,
but were unable to get through the
rush hour traffic, which was snarled
by the snow and the accident.
They went to Arlington’s National
Orthopaedic and Rehabilitation
Hospital, where seven survivors from
one alive.’”
In the waiting area, “it was vague,
nobody knew anything. There were
tears, but no hysterics, the people
were very quiet, seriously somber
and sad. They were very brave in the
way they conducted themselves,”
Father Gerloff said.
The priest said he was struck by
the variety of ages. One man’s
84-year-old mother had been aboard
the plane. Another man, about 25,
waited for word of his 21-year-old
wife, who was headed for Florida to
visit her sick grandmother.
Msgr. McClunn said they prayed
with the families if they were asked
to but most of them “were too much
in shock . . . Most just wanted to
speak about their relatives. We just
wanted to be a ready ear, to be
available to them.”
Archbishop Hickey said in his
statement, “Early yesterday
afternoon, our city Was a mass of
snarling, unmanagable traffic,
everyone trying to get home in the
midst of the snowstorm.
“And then, at the first news of the
plane crash, and then again at the
bulletin of the train derailment, we
became a community. Wherever we
were, each of us offered a prayer in
our own ways that all would survive.
“We rejoiced at the heroic efforts
of the emergency crews, dramatically
rescuing the survivors, as happy and
as thankful as if it had been one of
our own relatives or friends who had
been rescued,” the archbishop said.
“In so many ways, God was
especially present to our city
yesterday. He was present in the
tragic events on both the bridge and
in the subway. He was present in the
many acts of courage and charity --
some of which we all saw on
television - and some known only to
the Lord.”
“Of course, we’ll buy all this food
and the storm will pass us right by,”
said the knowing Holy Cross
parishioner.
“The last time this happened,”
concurred her fellow church
member, “I stocked up and there
wasn’t a flake.”
Humility is alive and well in the
Archdiocese of Atlanta.
*****
Father John Henley was keeping
things calm at St. Luke’s in
Dahlonega. Father Bob Poandl, the
Glenmary pastor, sat out the storm
in Blairsville where he has been fixing
up the old violin repair shop that will
be his new home come the spring.
“We didn’t get hit as hard as in
Atlanta,” Father John commented,
although some emergency calls did
come in. A family of five were
burned out of their home the Sunday
before the storm and sought
assistance.
“It happens frequently,” the priest
Christian Unity Prayer
Has Episcopalian Roots
GRAYMOOR, N.Y. (NC) - As
millions of Catholics participate in
the 75th annual observance of the
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity,
Jan. 18 to 25, only a relatively few
appear to be familiar with how it
began in 1908 and with the work of
the Franciscan Friars of the
Atonement who promote it.
Graymoor is synonymous with the
Society of the Atonement, begun by
Episcopal Father Paul James Francis
Wattson. In 1898, he teamed up with
Lurana White, a novice of the
Episcopal Sisters of the Holy Child
Jesus, to found a religious
community of friars and sisters
dedicated to reunion with Rome and,
eventually, union of the shattered
Christian world.
The move was unpopular among
Episcopalians, who suspected any
kind of religious order as Romish and
peculiar. But the Wattson group
persisted. Their headquarters were a
“howling wilderness” on a
mountaintop at Garrison, near
Peekskill, N.Y., almost 300 acres of
granite-lined woods purchased from a
farmer for $300. The early friars
there could match the hardships of
the American pioneers point for
point on some elementary living
problems, such as obtaining water,
heat, money and thickwalled
buildings.
For a year, Father Wattson lived in
a paint shed he called his “palace of
Lady Poverty.” It still stands at the
base of the mountain and is as
bitterly cold in winter now as it was
then.
The first suggestion of a special
prayer for Christian unity came in a
letter in the fall of 1907 from an
Anglican rector, Father Spencer
Jones, a member of the Society of
St. Thomas of Canterbury.
Applauding the idea, Father Wattson
replied, “Let’s put it in motion at
once” and inaugurated the first
church unity week. It was called the
Chair of Unity Octave, beginning
with the feast of St. Peter’s Chair in
Rome, Jan. 18, and ending with the
feast of St. Paul, Jan. 25.
A year later, Father Wattson and
his Episcopal society joined the
Catholic Church.
Today the ecumenical atmosphere £
has changed much from the o
bitterness of that time. Whenever z
Episcopal Suffragan Bishop J. Stuart o
Wetmore of New York, an honorary
member of Graymoor, visits the
friars, he jokes with them about
finding out “what you’re doing with
our real estate.”
Today, the Society of the
Atonement has missionaries in more
than half a dozen countries. Its 200
friars and sisters have programs for
alcoholics, teen-age girls with drug
problems, and the elderly. Graymoor
is a popular shrine complete with
picnic tables and a gift shop and the
friars give overnight hospitality to
thousands of backpackers on the
Appalachian Trail, which runs
through the property. The Graymoor
Ecumenical Institute also runs
numerous conferences on church
unity.
Ecumenism remains the principal
work and church unity the principal
goal, prayed for at every Mass and
Ceremony. The friars speak
realistically about it.
“Let’s face it,” said Father Charles
V. LaFontaine, co-director of the
Graymoor Ecumenical Institute and
editor of Ecumenical Trends, a
monthly publication. “We’re on a
plateau in church unity talks. We’re
consolidating our gains. The message
of Vatican II is seeping into parishes,
and people are realizing it’s not just a
hobby. We have a whole new
generation of pastors and bishops
who have known nothing except the
Vatican Council in their outlook.”
Father LaFontaine cited several
recent developments in ecumenism:
- It involves less talk and more
action at the level of daily life.
- Efforts to reach the goals of
prayer are being aided by a new
interest in spirituality, which he
called the “soul” of the ecumenical
movement.
- The rise in conservatism has
made Catholics allies of somewhat
unexpected groups. For instance, in
the suit in Arkansas over the teaching
of “creation science,” the church
found itself on the side of the
(Continued on page 6)
Snowy Disruption
explained. “There were four
burnouts in the past month” due to
poor wiring or wood-burning stoves
packed into undersized trailers.
Parish secretary Frances Boerner,
who has readied the combined
church bulletin for St. Luke’s, St.
Francis of Assisi in Blairsville and St.
Paul the Apostle in Cleveland
faithfully for the past five years,
never made it to the church office
from her home on Lake Lanier.
But Father John was betting that
Frances would show up Saturday and
put the bulletin together, not wishing
to mar her perfect record.
Devil-may-care world traveler
Father Ed O’Connor missed most of
the snow, since he had flown to New
Y ork earlier in the week for a
funeral.
“I left Atlanta in a blizzard and
New York was gorgeous,” he blithely
reported.
But he did return to Hartsfield in
time to find roads impassable and
shored up in a nearby hotel for a
night before beginning his long trek
back to St. Michael’s in Gainesville.
The following morning, Father Ed
chipped away at the ice block that
enveloped his little Toyota and
readied himself for his trip home.
“Fortunately,” remarked the
ever-ready Father Ed, whose days of
Irish footballing must have prepared
him for the worst, “I got a new
battery the day I left (for New
York).”
No joke - he really did ...
When the coldest weather of the
century hit Cumming, the Dominican
sisters at “The Place” found their
pipes had frozen and their normally
chilly buildings had grown frigid.
Emergency calls came in Tuesday
from neighbors checking their
eligibility for federal fuel assistance
(Continued on page 3)
Teaching A Yankee To Slide
In Margaret Mitchell Square
BY GRETCHEN KEISER
I arose early last Wednesday morning, pushing back the curtain to see a gray
cast on the day. My radio was already saying that no one with half a lick of
sense was going outside. Anyone with the fortitude and fortune to get home
Tuesday night was staying there.
But it didn’t set right with me. For one, I’m a short walk from the MARTA
train in Decatur, which I knew, from years in Boston and New York, would
run regardless of the weather.
For another, let’s be honest, it didn’t look like very much snow. Five years
of working for a newspaper outside New York City had taught me that roads
were often not quite as impassable as they would have you think. And it’s
amazing what you can drive through when an' editor sweetly points out that
your co-workers have made it to the office, and gets the four people who made
it to type up a storm in the background so it sounds like everyone’s there.
I’m afraid, Wednesday morning, that I succumbed to a moment of
Yankeeism and that, if anyone had been around to see, I actually sprang out
the front door with more enthusiasm than on a gorgeous Georgia day.
The first sign of something amiss was the sidewalks to the station - a bit
icier than I’d thought. But dressed for the weather, I stomped along, or skated
over the more treacherous sections., On the train I met two PeKalb Hospital
workers who had made it to MARTA after a long, long night. They were quite
dumbfounded that I was heading downtown on purpose and, feeling a little bit
sheepish, I gave them my excuse - at the Greyhound station a package was
waiting that held the page proofs for The Georgia Bulletin.
Normally proofreading is done both at our Publication Office near Augusta,
and in Atlanta, Wednesday before the paper is printed and mailed. And press
deadlines are immovable.
“It must be a pretty important package,” one of the hospital workers said,
casting a dubious glance toward her friend and moving just slightly away from
me.
A tiny note of worry began to insinuate itself into my thoughts as we
reached the Five Points MARTA station. Suddenly disoriented in downtown
Atlanta, I emerged, looking for landmarks to guide me and quickly was out of
hollering range of my hospital acquaintance, who inched her way, shrieking
and sliding, toward a bus. It was a half a block away. It looked like miles.
As far as the eye could see, there was ice, from the bridge railing on the
overpass, across Peachtree Street and right up to the MARTA shelter. Each step
looked momentous. The Greyhound station seemed as remote as Greenland.
But I had found my direction, and the sidelong glance of a MARTA worker,
spreading salt and questioning my sense, spurred me on.
I skated across Peachtree Street and, clinging to the bridge railing, got a little
(Continued on page 2)