Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 4 — The Georgia Bulletin. November 12,1987
STATEMENT
National Debate Or Gossip?
The unceasing disclosure this year of the
moral indiscretions of public figures has become
a very disturbing trend in its own right.
At first glance, it seems encouraging that
tnose who seek high office, or aspire to judge
others, are required to demonstrate and defend
their own integrity.
However, watching one public figure after
another be attacked, and one candidate after
another be dispatched to political oblivion, it is
increasingly hard to believe that this fervor is
fueled by newfound public morality or that it is
raising the level of public debate.
It seems to be sustained by the kind of zest for
personal tidbits and public gossip about private
lives that keeps us reading supermarket tabloids
and People magazine. The most depressing
evidence is the way the photos and details of in
discretions have immediately become
marketable commodities among competing
magazines and networks, once the public
figure’s name has been lampooned from coast to
coast. Apparently we are not ashamed of the
The Campaign for Human Development has now been in
existence for more than 18 years. In that time more than
$130 million has gone to nearly 2800 self-help projects across
the nation. Virtually all this money came from annual col
ections on the Sunday before Thanksgiving — a collection
to which the nation’s 52 million Catholics contribute an
average of less than 25 cents per year.
One hundred thirty million dollars isn’t very much as na
tional poverty programs go, but with it CHD has been able
to achieve far more than other programs with more money.
The reason is that CHD treats people with financial prob
lems as people with talents rather than as problems which
need to be taken care of by somebody else.
CHD does not initiate projects. “That’s critically impor
tant,” says Father Alfred LoPinto, who heads CHD,
“because the projects have to belong to the local communi
ty to be successful. We don’t think that you can organize
solutions outside the community.”
From the 2800 projects funded to date here are three ex
amples of how CHD works:
— The Zuni tribe in New Mexico subsists economically
by making high quality silver and turquoise jewelry, but in
the 1%0’s they were being pushed out of business by inex
pensive imitations from abroad.
They formed a cooperative to market their products, and
to buy supplies at better prices. CHD gave them a $50,000
loan to get started, and today sales are up 60 percent, their
jewelry is being sold at the Smithsonian Institution
(USPS) 574880 L atMu \n lilmvv of Atlanta
Business Office U S A $12.00
680 West Peachfree. N W Canada $12 50
Atlanta. Georgia 30308 foreign $14 00
Phone: 888-7832
Published By The Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
, Gretchen R. Reiser Editor
Rita Mclnerney Associate Editor
DEADLINE: All material for publication must be received by
MONDAY NOON for Thursday's paper
Postmaster: Sena POD Form 3579 to THE GEORGIA BULLETIN
601 East Sixth Street. Waynesboro, Georgia 30830
Send all editorial correspondence to i HE GEORGIA
BULLETIN 680 West Peachtree Street N W
Atlanta, Georgia 30308
Second Class Postage Paid at Waynesporo. Ga. 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, Ga. 30830
behavior, but eager to “read all about it.”
The victims of moral indiscretion revealed in
1987 are too numerous to list. The seriousness of
the charges has swung widely from actions that
raised profound questions about the honesty
and integrity of the individual and his current
conduct, to questions about the past that would
raise a note of compassion in most people who
could remember “let he who is without sin cast
the first stone.”
One of the most disturbing aspects of this
trend is that the individuals have been publicly
skewered regardless of the severity of the ac
cusation being made. Questions and distinc
tions have been raised after the fact, but they
have not seemed to stop the momentum of this
steamroller as it moved along to flatten the next
person foolish enough to step forward.
Another disturbing aspect is that it claims to
have a moral basis, while its consequence seems
to be to trivialize sin and to trivialize the moral
seriousness, both for voters and candidates, of fill
ing our highest public offices. -grk
museums in Washington, and instead of being forced onto
welfare members of the tribe are self-supporting.
— In Iowa where thousands of farm families are being
pushed off the land, a group of small farm owners formed a
self-help organization called Prairiefire to deal with the
emotional and financial crises they faced. CHD provided
start-up funding.
“Prairiefire showed us how to keep our self-esteem and
pride,” says one Iowa farmwife. “It taught us how to
educate ourselves instead of depending on others to fight
our battles.”
— In New York a group of black and Hispanic women in
the South Bronx formed a cooperative to provide in-home
health care to the elderly and handicapped in their com
munity. A no-interest, five year, $50,000 loan from CHD put
them in business in 1983. It is now self-sustaining.
In only four years this employee-owned cooperative
created nearly 100 jobs in an exceptionally poor community
by providing a badly needed service to the community. By
the end of this year it expects to double its staff.
The fact that poverty still exists in the United States is
bad news. It’s an ugly fact most of us would prefer to ig
nore. It makes us feel uncomfortable knowing people are
doing without the things we take for granted — and it should.
When we no longer care what happens to our neighbors we
lose an important element in what makes us human.
But the fact that we as U.S. Catholics will have an oppor
tunity to contribute to the Campaign for Human Develop
ment this month is good news. It’s a unique opportunity
Catholics have, a chance to support something we can
rightfully be proud of.
RESOUND
Appalled Over Jackson
To The Editor:
I am appalled and incensed that the Rev. Jesse Jackson
was invited to preach at a Mass at Transfiguration Church.
First and most important, it is contrary to the norms of
the Church for anyone but a priest or deacon to give the
homily. Second, Jackson is a hypocrite who, for the sake of
polit : cal expediency, reversed his former pro-life stance
when he decided to seek political office. He now not only
supports abortion but believes that we taxpayers should be
forced to pay for them. . .
It is an absolute outrage that anyone, let alone this man,
was allowed to use the pulpit in a Catholic church to pro
pound his political views. Should we now expect the Rev.
Pat Robertson to be invited to give his views on the issues
which Mr. Jackson addressed? Nora Sullivan
Atlanta
The Week In Review
NAMES AND PLACES - Father Bruce Ritter’s Cov
enant House ministry for runaways has established a hot line
for help from anywhere in the United States. A toll-free
number known as the 9-line, it has the easily memorized
number 800-999-9999. The Franciscan priest said he an
nounced it on the Ted Koppel “Nightline” show and it
brought 2,500 calls the first day. He said about half a dozen
staff members and volunteers were answering the
telephones, but the staff can be expanded to 20. Many young
people were calling from bus stations, airport terminals
and other places asking for help, Father Ritter said. He also
said that Covenant House has public service an
nouncements for radio and television to make the service
more widely known.
AROUND THE NATION — A national pastoral plan for
church ministry to Hispanics is among the items the U.S.
bishops will vote on during their annual fall general
meeting in Washington Nov. 16-19. Other subjects for voting
include: A statement on Central America policy updating a
statement approved by the bishops in 1981; a proposed new
annual collection in parishes nationwide to help ease the
retirement crisis facing many U.S. religious orders, par
ticularly nuns; guidelines for relations between bishops and
theologians and for resolving doctrinal disputes, and a state
ment critical of school-based health clinics which provide
students with contraceptives and abortion services.
A CATHOLIC PRIEST kidnapped by U.S.-backed rebel
forces in October has accused them of persecuting the
Catholic Church in Nicaragua. “The contras kidnap priests.
They kill humble campesinos. They threaten our delegates
of the Word. Who do you say is persecuting the church in
Nicaragua?” asked Father Enrique Blandon, a pastor in
Waslala within the Apostolic Vicariate of Bluefields,
Nicaragua. The priest was interviewed by National
Catholic News Service in Washington Nov. 4, the first inter
view he had granted since his release Oct. 21. He was in
Washington to participate in a Nov. 4 demonstration at the
Capitol to protest U.S. financing of the contras which was
organized by Days of Decision, a national effort to end war-
related aid to Central America. The priest and a Seventh-Day
Adventist minister, the Rev. Gustavo Adolfo Tiffer, were held
by the contras for 11 days after they responded to a call from
contra forces to discuss a cease-fire and amnesty for rebels in
the area. They were members of a local peace commission
established by the government following the signing of a five-
nation Central American peace pact proposed by President
Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica.
INTERNATIONALLY - Pope John Paul II strongly
defended the church’s recent teachings on genetic
engineering and artificial procreation, and appealed to
scientists to defend the individual and work for peace in a
talk Nov. 9 at the Vatican. Addressing members of Nova
Spes, a foundation of international experts meeting in
Rome, he said the church has a duty to make known its
“moral reservations” about some forms of procreative or
genetic techniques. Its purpose is “not to limit or stop scien
tific research, but to orientate the enormous scientific ef
fort and discoveries of today toward personal dignity, the
nobility of love and the defense of human life.” He praised
the new scientific discoveries that have aided humanity,
but said that despite today’s “technological marvels,”
much of the world faces worsened poverty, hunger,
endemic disease and the threat of war. “All the creative
energies of researchers” should be mobilized to solve these
problems, he said.
ARCHBISHOP Denis Hurley of Durban joined two other
leading South African clergymen in urging rival black
groups to stop their bloody conflict. The Council of Churches
in Pietermaritzburg, capital of Natal province, called
a special service Nov. 1 to pray for peace in nearby Enen-
dale township, site of recent violence between the groups.
Presiding with Archbishop Hurley were Anglican Arch
bishop Desmond Tutu, 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner,
and the Rev. Khoza Mgojo, president of the Methodist
Church of South Africa. More than 130 people have died this
year in townships around Pietermaritzburg in violence pit
ting supporters of Zulu Chief Magosuthu Buthelezi’s conser
vative Inkatha political-cultural group against the racially
integrated United Democratic Front and the Congress of
South Africa Trade Unions. Buthelezi is regarded as too
cooperative with the country’s white minority government.
Archbishop Hurley called upon blacks to “reflect on the ter
rible contradictions between what they are preaching and
what they are practicing, between their proclamation of
commitment to liberation and their practical denial to
others of those very liberties that are sacred to the cause of
liberation.” Archbishop Tutu said that blacks fighting
blacks “entertained their enemies” and urged an end to
deaths and destruction.
Ivan J. Kauffman
CHD Funds Empower The Poor