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Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta Voi. 22 No. 26 Thursday, July 19, 1984 $10.00 Per Year Camp Promise Keeps Kids On The Go In Two Parishes IN AND OUT - Summer pastimes take place on the basketball court at St. Anthony’s and a classroom at Our Lady of Lourdes. BY MARY BETH MARINO In 1981 a plea was issued to all neighborhoods, schools and churches on behalf of the needs of Atlanta children who would roam the streets when school was out. This cry was in response to a city-wide crisis of missing and murdered children. Coalitions were formed and barriers of religious differences dropped in a united effort to elicit support for the children. The result of this effort was the birth of the “Help the Children” project which originated when 105 congregations of all denominations, and twenty-nine (Continued on page 14) STATEMENT Letter To Geraldine Ferraro Dear Mrs. Ferraro: First of all, you are the first-chosen. That is always exciting . . . exciting for you, for us and, in this particular case, for the nation. As the first woman to run for a presidential office, you have broken new ground and are to be congratulated. We are also proud that this pioneering position has been given to a Catholic who, by the way, is an Italian-American Catholic. That is another first. Never before has an American of Italian descent had the honor of running for presidential office. So, there is excitement afoot as new political ground has been courageously broken and opportunity has at last been given where previously it had been denied. Having communicated that fervent feeling, let me now offer this picture to you. Last week in Atlanta I sat across the table having coffee with a young woman who is slowly dying because she is abusing hard drugs. This woman has abandoned her husband and her young family. She has been treated over and over again, and last year courageously put many clean exhilarating months together. But now she is back to her cocaine, morphine, speed and whatever mood-changing hard drugs she can get. I wish you could have looked, as I did, at her scar-ridden arms and her glassy eyes. We talked about her fading hopes. “You don’t know what I have to carry around,” she said. “You don’t know the pain I have endured and the pain I have caused. What about all the guilt and the shame, will it ever go? What about the babies I have killed?” I asked what she meant about killing babies. "I've had two abortions,” she said. "They were my babies and I’ll never know what they were like.” I wish you had been there as that woman, who was raised far from Catholic doctrine or teaching, wept over a guilt that has been imposed on her, not by any church affiliation, but by the natural human instinct that goes with being a woman or a mother. As I looked at her, and I have listened to many like her, I had once more to ask myself, “Was the taking of human life, those two abortions, the real cause of her present journey to self-destruction?” You, Mrs. Ferraro, are a devout Catholic. Your pastor speaks highly of you and your family. You are personally against abortion but publicly, in your dealing with others and in your legislative acts, you are pro-choice. You handle the destruction of human life like it was merely a religious issue to believe in or not. Your statement is as follows, "I have no right to impose my beliefs (on others).” You certainly do not have to get into a faith argument with my addicted friend. When it came to the destruction of her unborn fetuses, she believed without question that children had been killed. If privately you believe that abortion is the actual destruction of human life, then publicly how can you support legislation that eliminates that life on a daily basis, leaving us death on the record and broken lives on our streets? We liberals (there are still a few around) are just like all the other interest groups ... we pick and choose our absolute beliefs. Would we have told Wallace or Barnett in 1965 that his transportation system or his public accommodation facilities did not have to be integrated? Absolutely not. We wanted civil rights for everyone, even though it was the imposition of our minority views on a dissenting majority in geographic regions. There was no question we demanded our way; others would accept what we believed. Let me say, thank God they did. We have a similar dilemma now. The courage that was needed then by public people, legislators, senators, presidents, vice-presidents, is needed now. We do not need a nation where leaders will believe one thing and do another. We need leaders who tell us who they are and walk that difficult ethical road carrying their convictions openly, unchangingly for all to solidly see. Again, you are the first. May your pioneering role glitter as history seeks to give you a notable place on its pages. Monsignor Noel C. Burtenshaw