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About The Georgia bulletin (Atlanta) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 12, 1987)
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
