Funding for the digitization of this title was provided by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta.
About The Georgia bulletin (Atlanta) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 8, 1987)
PAGE 4 — The Georgia Bulletin, October 8,1987 STATEMENT TO ROLL AGAIN — Workers oil the presses at Nicaragua’s opposition newspaper, La Prensa, in Managua. The Sandinista government closed the paper in June 1986 accusing the publishers of supporting the contra rebels. The paper has been allowed to resume publication under recent peace overtures. (NC photo from UPI-Reuter) RESOUND RESOUND Clouding The Issue To the Editor: In a recent letter to the Bulletin Richard G. Farnsworth took issue with those who would call on Catholics to vote on ly for candidates for public office who actively oppose abor tion. Mr. Farnsworth, and those of his ilk, cloud the abortion issue by placing nuclear disarmament, aid to the contras, capital punishment and aid to private schools in the same basket on equal footing with abortion. The sad fact about this is that the unborn are then sacrificed on the altar of left wing causes such as the nuclear freeze, anti-SDI, anti contra, and anti-capital punishment movements, none of which are demonstrably “Catholic” causes... Abortion is happening now, in this country, in this city. It is not a matter of conjecture. Supporting candidates who are of the ‘personally opposed but won’t do a darn thing about it’ kind, like Cuomo, Kennedy, Ferraro, Biden, and others, under the guise of looking at all the issues, has done far more to legitimize abortion than those who are 100 per cent for abortion, and make no bones about it. What makes it worse is that those who are most eloquent and shrill in the attacks on Judge Bork are Catholics. Perhaps this would be a better topic of a pastoral letter by our American bishops. Finally, Mr. Farnsworth, you said making abortion the single issue is tantamount to poor citizenship. I don’t agree. But even so, Catholics are called to be, first and foremost, good citizens of the City of God, as St. Augustine once wrote, which may and often does conflict with being a good citizen of the City of Man. Steven O’Reilly Atlanta (USPS) 574880 t .uUJk \ii IvIkhvnv AiLiu.i Business Office U S A S12 00 680 West Peachtree, N.W Canada $12 50 Atlanta. Georgia 30308 Foreign $14 00 Phone: 888-7832 Most Rev. Thomas A. Donnellan Publisher Gretchen R. Reiser Editor Rita Mclneritey Associate Editor DEADLINE: All material tor publication must be received by MONDAY NOON for Thursday's paper Postmaster: Send POD Form 3579 to THE GEORGIA BULLETIN 601 East Sixth Street. Waynesboro. Georgia 30830 Send all editorial correspondence to THE GEORGIA BULLETIN 680 West Peachtree Street N.W Atlanta. Georgia 30308 Second Class Postage Paid at Waynesboro. Go 30830 Published Weekly except the second and last weeks In June, July and August and the last week in December at 601 East Sixth St., Waynesboro. Go 30830 Abortion Is Primary To the Editor: One of your correspondents recently saw fit to take issue with Father Ludden’s endorsement of Judge Bork — which endorsement I would hope would be well received by all Catholics. However it is a faulty premise that the correspondent raised that is of prime concern, one that has also been put forth by some clerics and should be dismissed out of hand. That is of equating abortion with capital punishment, in tervention in Nicaragua, wars in general, and probably a host of other so-called failings of our society. All these are issues that can be debated, despite the opinion of the cor respondent and others of like mind, by men of equally good faith. What we need to remember is that there is no room for debate by Catholics on abortion. It is a present-day Holocaust, an issue that should be recognized and singled out for what it is — an overwhelming evil. Our efforts to stop this slaughter should not be diluted by the introduction of moral or political problems that pale in to insignificance in its presence. John Mahoney Atlanta Defending “New Age” To the Editor: I would like to reply to Father John Catoir’s article in the September 24th issue, entitled “The New Age ‘Theology’.” I do not know Shirley MacLaine, but I did read her book, “Out on a Limb,” and I feel I must defend her thinking. The “New Age” people that Father Catoir interviewed are worse than heathens, and I agree that they are deceived by the “Evil One.” To even think that harming another living entity merely because “it’s right for you” is quite disgusting, and a gross misrepresentative statement of the New Age Movement. People have always rationalized for committing evils, and our history books, and jails, give testament. However, being the free thinking humanity God intended us to be, we sometimes look for answers outside the religious beliefs we were born into. The Catholic Church is many things to many people. The ideal is to live as Christ asked us to. He Himself stated that “the Kingdom of God is Within you.” Some of us Christians might interpret that to mean that we are not merely His subjects, coming together to adore Him once a week in a Church, to socialize. He died for us, and we have to assume His responsibility. Being a New Age thinker is no more blasphemous than the person who calls himself a Christian because he sits in a Church once a week and gives from his surplus and not from his substance.... The New Age Movement takes the “burden” from the Church, and rests it where it belongs — into the lap of the “Christian.” Dolores Mastanduno Carrollton New Appointment Reverend Monsignor John F. McDonough, V.G., Diocesan Administrator of the Archdiocese of Atlan ta, has announced the following priestly appoint ment, effective Thursday, October 8, 1987. Reverend Juan de la Cruz from parochial vicar at the Cathedral of Christ the King, to pastoral minister to the Hispanic community of the Parish of Saint Joseph in Dalton. The Week In Review NAMES AND PLACES — The National Conference of Catholic Bishops have appointed Divine Word Father Gary Riebe-Estrella of Los Angeles as director of a U.S. bishops’ project to promote and support vocations among Hispanics. The project, a joint effort of the NCCB vocations and priest ly formation committees, is titled “Hispanic Vocations and Formations: Project 13.” Two of the 13 components of the effort are a training program for laypersons to increase their involvement in recruiting and compiling a directory of Hispanic priests, sisters, brothers and laypeople with ad vanced degrees who might take positions on seminary faculties or in religious formation programs. Components already completed include “Called By Name,” a plan for encouraging parish-based vocational recruitment being published by the NCCB in Spanish and English, and a na tional vocations conference held in Miami last January for 200 vocations personnel interested in reaching Hispanics. Father Riebe-Estrella, a Los Angeles native of Mexican- American heritage, in 1976 founded one of the first college level formation programs in the barrio (Hispanic neighborhood). Called Casa Guadalupe and located in East Los Angeles, the seminary is operated by the Divine Word Fathers. AROUND THE NATION - Archbishop Paul C. Mar- cinkus, the American prelate who heads the Vatican bank, has sued in a New York court to stop sales of a newly- released novel that fictitiously portrays him instigating the murder of Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov, who died in 1984. The novel, “In The Name Of The Father,” was written by A.J. Quinnell, identified by the publisher, New American Library, as the pseudonym of a “European author.” The suit was filed in the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan and argued Sept. 22 before Judge Ethel B. Dan zig. No immediate decision was made. The novel, published in September, is on sale in bookstores throughout the United States. Alan M. Gelb, attorney for the archbishop, said that making Archbishop Marcinkus a principal character in the novel was a “commercially calculated” in vasion of his privacy. The attorney for the publishers, Mar tin S. Gar bus, claimed First Amendment protections for the book and said use of real people in fiction has become com mon in recent years. In the novel, the archbishop serves as Vatican ringleader of a conspiracy to forestall a Soviet plot to kill Pope John Paul II by getting an assassin posing as a physician into Andropov’s presence. INTERNATIONALLY - The archdiocese of Durban worked to get food and supplies to stranded victims of heavy flooding in South Africa’s Natal province after five days of downpour. With the death toll over 200, hundreds of families who lost homes and possessions in the flooding, described as the country’s worst natural disaster, took refuge in a Catholic mission in the Shongweni area. The area was reached only by helicopter. The downpour began Sept. 25 and caused major rivers to flood. The province was declared a disaster area and the government prepared to reimburse people who lost property or income. Archbishop Dennis Hurley of Durban said he visited two outstations by helicopter the weekend of Oct. 3 and found the people hungry and short of food. AT THE VATICAN — Pope John Paul II urged an inter national gathering of mayors and other local officials to seek solutions to a worldwide lack of adequate housing which contributes to the “breakdown of the family.” In an address on Sept. 29 to the World Congress of the Interna tional Union of Local Authorities meeting in Rome, the pon tiff said population growth, fed by an exodus from rural areas, has prompted a “grave housing situation affecting thousands of families in most of the world’s big cities.” Widespread lack of proper shelter is “a social reality of the utmost seriousness” that “disturbs the conscience of all those who are genuinely sensitive to the aspirations and the rights of every human person,” he told the nearly 1,000 con gress participants.
