Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 5 — The Georgia Bulletin, June 6, 1985
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Dolores Curran
Pressure Messages
If we view and read com
mercials enough, we soon
deduct that the ideal hus
band brings flowers, buys
lots of insurance, drives a
prestige car, and goes for a
5 o’clock beer with his bud
dies daily.
The ideal wife looks the
way she did on the day she
was married, adores
housework, juggles work
and family easily, and
feeds her kids Twinkies.
The ideal family owns a
camper, uses soap filled
with bath oil, has a
nutritiously-fed dog, and
eats jello-brand chocolate
pudding.
We could laughingly add
a dozen characteristics to
each category, but the pro
blem is that the ideal im
ages fostered by adver
tisers affect us deeply. The
message gets firmly
planted that to be ideal we
must own or use certain
commercial products.
I recall the mother who
told me their family wasn’t
getting along very well so
they were thinking of buy
ing a family camper. I
discovered they had bought
into the image of the camp
ing family portrayed on TV
and in magazine ads.
Let’s examine that fami
ly. The children are always
clean and smiling, the
weather sunny, the lake
blue and the grass green. It
isn’t raining. There are no
mosquitos. Mom isn’t try
ing to scour a greasy
frypan with sand.
Indeed, the mother ad
mitted to the influence of
the image when she said,
“I figure if we had a
camper, we might be more
like those families on TV.”
Father John Catoir
Jesus, A Friend
Of Women
To understand the at
titude of Jesus toward
women, one must go back
in time. The ancient prac
tice of divorce reveals a
great deal about the
culture in which He lived.
According to the Old
Testament, and Jewish
tradition, only the husband
had the right to a divorce.
If a wife displeased her
husband, for whatever
reason, he could dismiss
her from the house. (Cf,
Deut. 24:1) The phe
nomenon of the discarded
wife was commonplace in
Jesus’ times.
The Hebrew concept of
adultery rested on the
primitive idea that the wife
was the property of her
husband. This meant that
only his rights could be
violated; the wife had no
rights which the husband
could violate. According to
the custom, he could have
an affair with an unmar
ried woman and it would
not be adultery since he
was violating no one else’s
property rights. However,
illicit sexual intercourse
committed by the wife was
always considered adul
tery, and the penalty for it
was death by stoning. (Ez.
16:40)
Jesus opposed this dou
ble standard. Do you
remember the story of the
woman taken in adultery?
(Jn. 8:3) They were about
to stone her when Jesus
spoke up, “Let him who is
without sin throw the first
stone.” One by one, they
dropped their stones and
walked away. He turned to
the frightened woman and
said, “Has no one con
demned you? Neither will I
condemn you. Go, and sin
no more.” Jesus stood
against the hypocrites who
were about to kill her.
Jesus’ gentleness toward
the woman at the well in
Sichem is another example
of His compassion. The law
forbade a Jewish male
from talking to a married
woman in a public place,
and she had been married
six times. Jesus not only
talked to her, He affirmed
her dignity and sent her to
announce that He was the
Messiah.
His most loyal followers
were women, three of them
stood by Him at the
crucifixion, while the men
ran away. Women were
special to Jesus. He loved
them and He rejected
many of the customs which
made their lives miserable.
Most of those who were
caught up in prostitution
were more sinned against,
than sinners.
It’s not difficult to
speculate on how Jesus
would deal with the many
forms of sexism that are
still going on in the world
today. Many men still con
tinue to treat their women
as property. Jesus would
oppose the abuse of
women’s rights in any form
and He would expect us to
lead the way in promoting
the true dignity of all
women.
That’s exactly what the
promoters have in mind. A
two-minute image like
theirs doesn’t reveal that
the family who is
fragmented is going to re
main fragmented, camper
or not, until they deal with
the issues dividing them.
So pervasive is the power
of advertising on couples
and families that we need
to use advertising to ex
amine family values. The
commercial, for example,
that talks about the wife
who remains looking and
acting as she did the day
they were married ends
with her husband’s state
ment, “I think I’ll keep
her.”
Who wants him? The
sense of security he offers
her goes contrary to good
mental health. His value
system says clearly,
“What you look like and
how much energy you re
tain are the basis of our
secure relationship. If you
TH€ LORD f€OS US
WITH-FINEST WHG4T
CORPUS CHRISTI
JUNE 9, 1985
The Lord is merciful; he
gives food to those who fear
him to make them
remember his wonders. The
Lord has established peace
for his Church, he feeds us
with finest wheat. Truly I say
to you, it was not Moses
who gave you bread from
heaven; it was my Father
who gives you the true
bread from heaven, alleluia.
age or slow down, watch
out. I may not keep you.”
The commercials that
tout family computers as
the panacea for bad report
cards imply — no, insist —
that parents who don’t fur
nish children with com
puters are not giving them
the tools they need to do a
decent job in school.
When these commercials
appear we need to make
moral judgements and
statements about them to
show another side of the
implied value. A wise
parent might comment,
“How is a computer going
to help the kid who already
refuses to spend time on
homework? It can be just
one more time waster.”
(The same claim was made
of television in its early
days. Has it improved
children’s school achieve
ment or hampered it?)
When the husband says,
“I think I’ll keep her”,
parents can say, “I’m glad
you’re not like that,” or
murmur in pity, “His poor
wife.”
One way churches can
help families deal with the
pressures of the free
marketplace is to video
Ivan J. Kauffman
them and share feelings
and thoughts about them.
I’ve done this and found it
immensely effective. Even
children can be perceptive
and vocal when it comes to
pressure messages.
Anything we can do to
offset the constant
message that “products
create happiness” helps
families. And families need
support in this area. Other
wise we can take on the
religion of middle-class
hedonism and suffer the
emptiness that results
when we try to find hap
piness and bonding in
possessions.
Rich Church, Poor Church
“The one People of God is accordingly present in all
the nations of the earth, since its citizens, who are taken
from all nations, are of a kingdom whose nature is not
earthly but heavenly. All the faithful scattered
throughout the world are in communion with each other
in the Holy Spirit...”
—Vatican II
“On the Church”
The two parishes have names somewhat alike — Im-
aculate Heart of Mary and Our Lady of Mercy — but there
the similarities end. Immaculate Heart of Mary is located
in Matotaka, Sierra Leone, a small West African village
where people raise their own food. Our Lady of Mercy is
located in Potomoc, Maryland, a suburb of Washington,
D.C. where most people are well paid professionals.
But even though they’re located on different continents
4,500 miles apart, and economically they exist in two dif
ferent worlds, their paths crossed last year when Our Lady
of Mercy raised the money to build a new church building
for Immaculate Heart of Mary. It’s a story about the
Church sharing its resources across national and economic
boundaries.
What brought the two parishes together was a young
Peace Corps volunteer from Our Lady of Mercy who went
to Sierra Leone to do agricultural development work. Don
Mooers grew up in Our Lady of Mercy, went to Duke
University, and volunteered for the Peace Corps after his
first year in law school.
When he got to his assignment in Sierra Leone he found
the Xaverian Fathers from Italy had already started a
grade school in Matotoka with about 130 students, but the
nearest parish church was 8 miles away by foot. That
spring a small group began celebrating Mass in the school,
and in August Don wrote to his pastor at Our Lady of Mercy
asking if the parish would be interested in helping build a
church in Matotoka.
“Members of the parish want to construct a church of
their own,” he wrote, but though “the interest is high,
capital for construction of a church is lacking. The villagers
are rich in spirit though poor in wealth. They are, for the
most part, farmers who grow crops on a subsistence level,
selling any surplus food for essentials like soap and
clothes.”
“They live in mud houses with thatch or zinc pan roofs.
People prepare their meals over three-stone fires, get their
water from several taps located throughout the village (a
water system constructed by a previous Peace Corps
volunteer), and walk the one, two, three or four miles to
their farms each day. Few people are rich enough to wear
shoes.”
Our Lady of Mercy’s pastor, Father Joseph Byron, sent a
copy to everyone in the parish and asked them to respond
by giving to a special Christmas collection. The result was
$3,500, enough to finance basic construction of an octagonal
cement block building seating 450 people.
The first Mass in the new building was held July 1,1984.
Father Gabrielli, the Xaverian missionary pastor of Im
maculate Heart of Mary wrote, “Six months ago we were
not even thinking about building a church in Matotoka, but
the Divine providence has showed us how mysterious are
his ways. We really say thanks to all the members of the
Christian community of Our Lady of Mercy.”
Father Michael Mellone, Associate Pastor of Our Lady of
Mercy, says “It was a sharing of faith even more than
material resources. It made us realize there are other
Catholics, other Christians, around the world and we’re in
union with them.”
Catholic Relief Services has a program for linking
parishes in the U.S. with specific needs elsewhere in the
world. There are numerous projects available which any
parish can take on, some at very little cost, which would
make a big difference to another parish somewhere else in
the world.
To be Catholic is to believe every part of the Church is
connected to every other part. What better way to show that
than sharing our money?