Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 3 — The Georgia Bulletin, June 20, 1985
July Conventions
ME, Deaf Ministry, Black Catholics Gather
BY RITA McINERNEY
Three ministries within the Catholic Church; World Wide
Marriage Encounter, the National Catholic Office for the
Deaf, and the National Office for Black Catholics, will hold
meetings expected to draw almost one thousand people to
Atlanta in July.
The regional convention
of the Catholic Expression
of Marriage Encounter will
take place at the World
Congress Center from July
5 to 7. Couples from 11
states and the District of
Columbia will celebrate
their sacrament of mar
riage and seek new ways to
make the marriage better.
Theme of the convention
will be “The Journey and
the Dream - Celebration
’85.”
Deaf Catholics, parents and advocates will gather at Cor
pus Christi Church, Stone Mountain, from July 11 to 13 for
the regional workshop of NCOD.
The 15th annual workshop on Afro-American Culture and
Worship sponsored by the NOBC and co-sponsored by the
Archdiocese of Atlanta Commission for Black Catholics will
meet from July 21 through 26 at the Atlantan Hotel. Theme
will be “Becoming and Sharing: Evangelization Through
Liturgy.”
An ecumenical service Friday, July 5 at 8 p.m. will open
the ME convention. Bishop Charles J. Child, Jr., Bishop of
the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, will give the address.
Also taking part in the ceremony will be Father William G.
Hoffman, coordinating priest for Marriage Encounter in
the Archdiocese of Atlanta; Father Henry C. Gracz, pastor
of the Church of the Transfiguration in Marietta, and Mary
Ellen and Jim Macke, program chairmen, from
Transfiguration. Father Gracz is coordinating priest for the
convention.
A broad range of topics will be discussed at the workshops
to be held from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. Saturday, July 6. Joe and
Juanita Altschuler of St. John Neumann parish in Lilburn
and Father Hoffman will coordinate the workshop on
prayer. Other subjects include sexuality, two-career
families, meeting needs in relationships, and consumerism
and family values.
Principal celebrant for the Mass at 5:30 p.m. Saturday
will be Father Conrad Kimbrough of the Diocese of
Charlotte, N.C., and coordinating priest for Section Four of
ME which extends from Washington, D.C. to South
Carolina. Homilist will be Father Phil Halstead of the
diocese of Tallahassee-Pensacola, Fla. and coordinating
priest for Section Five, which covers Georgia, Florida,
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee.
After dinner Saturday night, family reunion celebration
will be held. Couples from each diocese will demonstrate, in
songs and skits, how their community is living the dream of
the Marriage Encounter Weekend: renewing the Church
through the sacrament of matrimony.
Father Bill Bilgen, coordinating priest at the U.S.
Secretariat of Worldwide Marriage Encounter, will present
a program on Sunday morning, July 7, and celebrate the
closing liturgy at 1 p.m. Father Gracz will give the homily.
Along with the hundreds of Catholic couples and priests
attending the Reunion, ME couples and clergymen from
Baptist, Episcopal, Jewish, Lutheran, Methodist and
Presbyterian congregations will attend.
*****
“The Church’s Responsiblity to the Deaf” will be discuss
ed by Father Ray Fleming at the opening session of the
three-day workshop being sponsored by the NCOD. Father
Fleming, the second deaf priest to be ordained in the
United States, is pastor of a church for the deaf in
Rochester, N.Y.
Other programs scheduled for Thursday, July 11, will in
clude a brainstorming session on“Needs and Goals” led by
Christine McDonald, pastoral worker at Corpus Christi;
“Theology of Signs,” by Sister Alverna Hollis, O.P., ex
ecutive director of the NCOD office in Silver Springs, M.D.;
“Do’s and Don’t of Religious Signing “by Brother Rene
Robert O.F.M. Conv., chaplain at Florida School for the
Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, and director for the South
Atlantic Seaboard Region, NCOD, and Jane Goodwin,
pastoral worker with Mrs. McDonald.
A social hour Thursday at 9 p.m. will feature the Signs of
Praise choir from Corpus Christi as well as mime and
magic presentations.
Friday programs will include “Signing and Interpreting
Scripture” by Father Fleming and “Signing and Inter
preting the Mass.” Dinner and the laser show at Stone
Mountain or a tour of Atlanta are choices for Friday even
ing.
Father Fleming will celebrate the signed Mass at 7 p.m.
Saturday. A reception to follow will conclude the three-day
event.
Mrs. McDonald expects people from 11 states and from as
far north as Pennsylvania and New Jersey to be present.
The Atlanta area was selected, she says, because of the
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large number of deaf, 30,000, in metro Atlanta. There are
two schools in the state, Georgia School for the Deaf in
Rome with about 400 students enrolled and Atlanta School
for the Deaf in Stone Mountain with more than 200 students.
Goal of the NCOD, she says, is “to bring the Catholic deaf
into the church as full participants, not as spectators. We’re
losing them.” Areas where the need is great, she points
out, are the Sacrament of Reconciliation and in counseling
where the deaf must use interpreters.
Mrs. McDonald, whose ministry to the deaf extends well
beyond her parish, Corpus Christi, says, “We would like to
have established a full-time ministry for the deaf. The
number indicates a need for full-time priests to sign
Masses, hear confessions and to do all the wonderful things
for the deaf that the hearing have. We do not have any of
these.”
*****
Father Bruce Wilkinson, assistant pastor at St. Anthony's
parish in southwest Atlanta, is chairman of the archdiocese
commission which is co-sponsoring the NOBC workshop.
He says the workshop will help local black Catholic groups
gain better exposure to the national movement and will be a
resource for the local group. He believes it will strengthen
what is happening here among black Catholics.
Father Wilkinson expects about 50 people from the city to
participate and between 200 and 250 to attend from out of
town. Most sessions will be held at the Atlantan, 111 Luckie
St., NW.
Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan will take part in the
welcome program on Sunday, July 21 at 7:30 p.m. The
keynote address will be given by Bishop James Lyke, aux
iliary bishop of Cleveland, Ohio.
Bishop Lyke, the seventh black bishop in the U.S., will
discuss “What We Have Seen and Heard,” the black
bishops’ pastoral on evangelization which was issued Sept.
9, 1984, and for which he was convenor.
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