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PAGE 7—The Georgia Bulletin, August 23,1984
FANCY FOOTWORK - Franciscan Brother
Anthony Vetrano leads cautious youngsters on a
log across a mud pool at the Franciscan summer
camp in Garrison, N.Y. The Franciscans invite
children from poor parishes throughout the
Archdiocese of New York to spend a week at the
camp, about 40 miles north of New York City.
(NC photo by Chris Sheridan)
Pope Cites Danger
Of Nuclear Winter
By John Thavis
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope John Paul II on Aug. 19
urged an international meeting of scientists to help free
the world from the grave risks of new nuclear weapons
and the catastrophic “nuclear winter” their use could
bring.
The papal message, signed by Vatican Secretary of
State Cardinal Agostino Casaroli “in the pope’s name,”
called on the experts to help build the mutual trust and
respect which would lead to peace. The scientists,
including representatives from the United States, the
Soviet Union and China, began their week-long seminar on
nuclear war in Erice, Sicily, on Aug. 20.
“The theme of nuclear winter and the new defense
systems calls attention once again to the many grave
consequences to which the use of nuclear weapons
exposes all humanity,” said the message to Antonio
Zichichi, president of the seminar.
“It is his (Pope John Paul’s) hope that this gathering
will further the mutual respect and confidence between
peoples, upon which peace must be built,” the message
said.
The message said the Erice conference, which has met
every year since 1981, offered a chance to consider the
impact of the nuclear arms build-up on food production,
social development and culture.
“May this experience of active collaboration likewise
contribute to a deeper understanding of the
interconnections between the problems which confront
humanity today,” the message said, “and help awaken
within the community of nations a lively sense of man’s
dignity, his common future and spiritual destiny.”
In the past, the Erice conference has resulted in
commitments by participating scientists to conduct
experiments which would gauge the effects of nuclear
warfare. Last year, the scientists agreed to collaborate on
a computerized study of such effects.
The “nuclear winter” to which the pope referred is one
such possible effect being studied by the Erice conference.
The position by some experts is that the rapid cooling of
the earth’s temperature following nuclear warfare would
have catastrophic results.
The U.S. delegation to the conference is headed by
Joseph Knox, a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore
Laboratory in California.
Speaking at his noon Angelus blessing Aug. 19, the
pope did not speak specifically of the Erice meeting, but
he offered a prayer that humanity would be guided down
“the road of salvation.”
“The church asks for the divine mercy of providence
for the nations and for all humanity so that, protected
from the many-formed evil that threatens them, they may
find the road of salvation: the road of justice and peace,”
the pope told several thousand people gathered at the
papal summer residence at Castelgandolfo, 15 miles south
of Rpme.
Catholic Groups Repudiate "Ecumenical Diocese"
BY JERRY FILTEAU
NC News service
An attempt by former Maryknoll priest Ray Kelly to
create a national diocese of change-minded Catholics
disrupted a Federation of Christian Ministries
convention in Chicago Aug. 17-19, participants said.
Representatives of three organizations Kelly had
linked to the plan repudiated it.
Maureen Reiff of Woman Church Speaks cancelled
her scheduled address to the FCM convention Aug. 17.
She said that stories about the proposal ahead of the
meeting had made it impossible for her to speak
without giving credence to false claims that her group
was involved in an effort to form the “Ecumenical
Catholic Diocese of America.”
Paul Schlesinger, FCM co-president, issued a brief
statement that FCM “is not associated with the
proposal for the Ecumenical Catholic Diocese of
America. The issue will not be discussed at this
convention, either by way of a press conference or as
an item on the agenda.”
Barat College, a Catholic college for women in the
Chicago suburb of Lake Forest where the meeting was
held, issued a similar statement, saying the FCM
meeting it was hosting had nothing to do with the
ecumenical diocese plan.
FCM is an association of Catholics, many of them
resigned priests, who are engaged in various formal or
informal ministries in the church and are seeking
church acceptance of a greater variety of ministerial
forms.
Frank Bonnike, president of CORPUS, an
organization of resigned priests seeking return to active
ministry, repudiated Kelly’s linkage of CORPUS with
the plan. “We would not be part of that,” he said.
Kelly’s plan envisions a national diocese that
accepts women priests, married priests, Communion
for divorced-remarried Catholics, democratic
governance, and closer bonds with non-Catholic
churches.
Bonnike said Aug. 20 that advance publicity by
Kelly, which made the FCM convention sound like a
founding convention for Kelly’s ecumenical diocese,
had turned the FCM meeting into “a disaster.”
In a telephone interview Kelly defended an advance
news release he had given to the Associated Press which
linked FCM, Woman Church Speaks and CORPUS with
his plan. He said the furor was a result of a
misunderstanding.
Kelly said that in contacts with various FCM
members beforehand he had asked them to meet with
him during the convention to discuss and critique the
idea of the national ecumenical diocese. Several of
them - including people who are also affiliated with
ON TOUR -- Archbishop John O’Connor of
New York hoists 2-year-old Zulaika Barral during
his tour of La Playa do Ponce, Puerto Rico. The
archbishop has been studying the Spanish
language and culture this summer. (NC photo
from UPI)
CORPUS and Woman Church Speaks - had agreed to
do so, he said. A fourth organization cited in the
advance publicity was Maryknoll-in-Diaspora, an
organization of former Maryknoll priests which Kelly
founded and heads.
Kelly said that in his mind linking representatives of
those groups to a meeting to discuss the ecumenical
diocese idea “in no way implied an endorsement” of
the idea by them.
Shortly before she cancelled her speech, Ms. Reiff in
a telephone interview said of the national ecumenical
diocese idea, “That’s Ray Kelly and Peter Brennan and
nobody else.”
Brennan, a co-founder with Kelly of the ecumenical
diocese proposal, said in a telephone interview that he
trained in Catholic seminaries but was ordained in
1978 in the African Orthodox Church, which was
founded in the early 1900 and traces its continuity in
apostolic succession through the ordination of its first
bishop by a bishop of the Syrian Jacobite (Orthodox)
Church.
Schlesinger said the purpose of the FCM meeting,
which drew more than 40 people from around the
country, was to discuss “emerging models of ministry,”
with special emphasis on the role of women in
ministry. The chief speaker and discussion leader was
theologian Anthony Padovano.
Misrepresentation of the nature of the convention
by Kelly “created a different convention,” Schlesinger
said.
Kelly said he had applied several months ago for
organizational membership of his diocese in FCM,
although he said that the plan is still in its seminal
stages and needs refinement.
Schlesinger said he understood leaders of the
ecumenical diocese had intended to seek consideration
of their application at a business meeting of the FCM
executive board during the convention. The matter was
not brought up, he said.
Kelly said he understood before the convention that
the application of the diocese had already been
accepted.
Kelly said the active organizing group for his
ecumenical Catholic Diocese of America currently
consists of six people, but he hopes to expand that
group soon.
Bonnike described the ecumenical diocese plan as
“just another church without people” which was
starting with plans to unite all churches but would end
up as another small sect.
Kelly said the way Barat College, FCM and the
others distanced themselves from his plan indicated
their fear of “tremendous repression coming down
from Catholic authority.”
Abbot—
(Continued from page 1)
than a group, from outside the native community to help
with the foundation, so that the formation could take
place strongly shaped by the African culture rather than
the culture of those sent to help.
“I personally believe very much in that approach, to
give basic help to some local groups and let them focus
their own identity - to make a really African form of
monasticisim,” he said.
The experience of living, working and praying with the
Ghana community led to a deep involvement with the
development of Cistercian and Benedictine monasteries in
the Third World. He has traveled throughout Africa and to
Japan, the Philippines and India teaching in monasteries.
Coming south to Georgia brought him to a community
he had visited in the past and which opened its doors to
him as temporary superior. “I love the community and it
clicked,” he said.
His election as abbot is “not a radical new beginning,”
he said, particularly since he does not think the role of
abbot is to make plans, but “to be the agent of
communion, to help the community listen as a group to
the way of God.”
“I believe very much in that collective discernment,” he
said. “I invest a lot of time in listening to people.”
An area he is most concerned with is maintaining the
strong relationship between the monastery and the local
church in the archdiocese. He is also drawn to “this
attraction” the monastery has for some lay people who
would like to share in the prayer life of the community in
a deeper way. There is a need to “discern what God is
trying to tell us” in the aspirations of these lay people, he
said, and a need to examine whether the relationship can
be deepened while maintaining the monks’ commitment
to a life of solitude for God.