Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 5—The Georgia Bulletin. May 30, 1985
Father Gerald Peterson
"Tomorrow Together”
m
RESOUND
Did you know that your
source of food is disappear
ing and rapidly? Prime
farmland, necessary for
the production of many
foods we eat, is disappear
ing at the rate of a million
acres each year in the
United States. To get a
visual picture of a million
acres, think about a half-
mile strip of land from New
York to California; that is a
million acres!
But the loss of land to
agricultural use doesn’t
stop there. In addition to
prime farm land, another
two million acres of land of
lesser quality is converted
to other uses each year, ac
cording to U.S. Depart
ment of Agriculture
statistics.
During May, the citizens
of Georgia join people all
across the United States in
the observance of Soil
Stewardship Week. Each
year there is a theme which
is relevant to rural life and
work. This year the theme
is “Tomorrow Together.”
To me “Tomorrow
Together” implies an
awareness of a healthy in
terdependence of all of us,
whether we live in the city
or the country. No matter
what any political or social
or ethnic group believes,
we all face tomorrow
together.
An adequate food supply
depends on proper care of
the soil. History has shown
that we are all allowed
some big mistakes as a
society. At the same time
one of the mistakes which
no society can make is to
allow the loss or the deple
tion of the soil. If this hap
pens and our farms are
fallow and our families
hungry, then “Tomorrow
Together” takes on a new
and ominous meaning.
Soil Stewardship Week
reminds us that we can
have a good tomorrow
together but that depends
on how well we protect and
care for the soil.
Why bring up such an
issue in The Georgia
Bulletin? As I see it, the
loss or depletion of farm
land is as much of a moral
issue as is the limited
Father John Catoir
Dear Graduate
An open letter to a recent high school graduate:
Dear Graduate:
Congratulations! At 18, you’ve just completed the first
quarter of your life. I’ll be 54 in September. Since our life-
expectancy is about 72, I’m just finishing the third quadrant
of my life. Looking back, I consider my faith to be the
greatest gift I have, the one that made all my other gifts
spring to life. At 18,1 realized that God had created me for
some purpose. I didn’t know for what, but I knew I had a
mission in life. It took me six more years to put it all
together. I wasn’t sure how it would work out, and I was
afraid.
You know what I mean; you have some confusion and
worry about the future, too, and about nuclear war. In my
time, we had the Second World War and all of us knew that
entire cities were destroyed by saturation bombings. The
possibility of annihilation was not an abstract idea. Some of
my friends couldn’t handle the pain of life. I knew a young
man who committed suicide. It shattered all of us. What a
terrible waste. He had so much to give; if only he had the
faith to see his life in larger terms, as an opportunity to do
good, a divine gift, a calling.
I don’t understand the excuses I hear from some young
people today: “What’s the use of getting a degree or raising
a family? We’re all going to be blown up anyway.” If you
carry that kind of thinking out of your first 18 years into the
next, you’ll be a basketcase before you’re 30. Block this
kind of fear out of your mind or you’ll self-destruct without
one bomb going off.
Anxiety is a normal part of life. It’s to be expected, but
despair is killing; guard against it. To do so, you’ll need
God’s grace. Pray, and learn to trust God.
It doesn’t really matter if you pick the wrong major or the
wrong college, or even the wrong profession for that mat
ter. Mistakes are part of growing and learning. There’s lots
of time to adjust. There is always grace, new beginnings -
are made every day. Hang in there when you’re tempted to
despair. Pray for the grace to weather the storms of life.
Grace is a free gift and God gives it lavishly.
Choose your companions carefully. Avoid drugs like the
plague; drugs are the forerunners of despair. If you make a
sensible effort to be good and look after your spiritual life,
I’m certain that all your happinesses will be major and all
your unhappinesses will be minor. Read the words of Jesus
over and over again. He not only shows the way, He is the.
Way.
energy resources in the
world and their proper
distribution. The farm land
issue doesn’t seem as evi
dent, at least, not yet.
One reason I am a strong
advocate for the family-
size farm versus agri
business is that experience
shows the family farmer
takes better care of the
soil. He is more interested
in passing on the farm to
his children, whereas the
temptation in agri-business
is immediate short-term
profits.
Pope John Paul II in his
visit to rural America urg
ed that “land be conserved
with care since it is intend
ed to be fruitful for genera
tion upon generation.” It
seems to me that it is just
as much an issue of con
science to conserve the
land as it is to conserve
other resources for future
generations.
“Ten years from now,
Americans could be as con
cerned over the loss of the
nation’s prime and impor
tant farm lands as they are
today over shortages of oil
and gasoline,” said Nor
man Berg, administrator
of the USDA Soil Conserva
tion Service in 1980.
One way to conserve
good soil for food produc
tion is land-use planning. I
know that such a program
is not very popular in most
rural counties. But it seems
necessary if we are to plan
properly for the expanding
rural population of north
Georgia and at the same
time protect prime land
used for the production of
food.
In our decisions today
join me in considering our
“Tomorrow Together.”
Then our country, so richly
blessed with good soil, pro
per climate and adequate
rainfall, can continue to
produce sufficient food for
our needs and extend a
helping hand to those
whose very lives are
threatened by starvation.
Weighing “The Pill”
To the Editor:
A recently published report on “the pill” indicated that,
after 25 years, “researchers now say benefits outweigh
risks.”
Let’s look at the records! It is obvious that reliance on
“the pill” encouraged the reckless abandonment of
premarital abstinence. Children were a particularly easy
mark and their lawless behavior has resulted in the debacle
which the press recently described as “children having
children.”
We submit that no amount of research will ever uncover
“benefits” that will outweigh that kind of risk!
H.J. Cosgrove
Atlanta
TRINITY SUNDAY
JUNE 2, 1985
Let us bless the Father
and the Son together with
the Fioly Spirit. Let us
praise and exalt them
above all for ever. Blessed
be God in the firmament
of heaven, to be praised
and glorified for ever. You
are our hope, our salva
tion and our glory, O
Blessed Trinity.
Dolores Curran
Too Busy Being Angry
Three years ago when I was invited to speak in a distant
diocese, I received a letter from a woman there who begged
me to set aside some time to talk with her alone. Her letter
indicated deep disturbance so I agreed to meet her.
She ended up driving me to the airport and we talked dur
ing that long drive and while waiting for my flight. She was
having some marital and faith problems, most of which she
blamed on her church upbringing.
She was hurting badly and my heart went out to her. Her
husband, a driving sort of success-oriented professional,
was a neglectful spouse and father who made it clear that
she was responsible for any family problems. When she
failed, he called God in on his side.
It seems that in his eyes she couldn’t do anything right
and he invoked acerbic remarks to improve her. She had
tried every way she could think of to save the marriage. By
the time she talked with me she was ready to abandon her
marriage and her faith because she blamed the church for
making her husband the kind of man he was: dogmatic,
critical, inflexible, and righteous.
He had come from a rigid authoritarian kind of family
and had spent time in a seminary as a young adult. His
family was deeply disappointed and blamed her for his
leaving the seminary. Later, as normal family and work
stresses emerged, he also blamed her, telling her fre
quently that he wished he had remained in the seminary
and become a priest.
Not being a marriage counselor, all I could do was listen
and suggest counselling. Unfortunately, her husband refus
ed to see anyone except a priest who, according to her,
counselleu piayer and sacrifice to save their marriage.
This they did but it didn’t change the underlying problems
which emerged in ever greater intensity.
I asked her to keep in touch but I never heard from her
again. I suspect the marriage didn’t last. The most troub
ling aspect of my meeting with her, aside from my
helplessness, lay in her overwhelming anger toward the
church.
She evidenced an attitude I see more and more in Catho
lic adults today — a tendency to blame the church of their
childhood for their personal and marital problems.
She focused her energy on this anger to such an extent
that she was incapable of dealing with her present situation
rationally. Everything came back to the church. It was the
church’s fault because of its attitude toward women, sex
uality, and marriage. She personalized this attitude by dis
trusting all priests, sisters, and bishops.
Such anger is not only counter-productive but it is also de
bilitating. At a time she most needed prayer and faith, she
was denied it. She was allowing her youthful experience of
church to get in the way of her relationship with God.
It is so sad to find this attitude in adults. Last winter I
wrote a column on forgiving our parents for being human
and making mistakes. I wrote that until we forgive them,
we cannot mature into healthy adults.
So must we be able to forgive the church for being human
and acting in ways we may now question. I’m not implying
that we can’t be angry over injustice — I am frequently —
but that anger alone is not enough. To be useful, anger must
move one to action. We can’t allow it to consume us to the
degree this woman did.
She was so busy feeding her anger that she had no energy
left to deal with her situation. Gently, I tried to say this but
she was too angry to hear it. She and others like her need
our prayers.