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About The Georgia bulletin (Atlanta) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 26, 1987)
iMMte Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta Vol. 25 No. 42 Thursday, November 26,1987 $12.00 Per Year Alternative Ways To Celebrate Simplicity, Quiet Are Advent Themes BY PAULA DAY The lighting of the first of the four Advent candles this Sunday will be a quiet statement in opposition to the Oc tober lighting of department store Christmas tree lights. Inside On Advent: Family Projects, Parish Homecoming While the liturgical calendar says “Advent,” commercial calendars insist on saying “Christmas.” Advent, the four weeks before Christmas that represent the period of humankind’s waiting for a divine promise to be fulfilled, has all but been lost in the modern world’s pre- Christmas activities. Once a season of penance and self-denial similar to Lent, the four weeks have become a season of frantic shopping and frenetic socializing for many. The practice of having the Christmas Cantata “three weeks before Christmas ‘to get it out of the way’ ” expresses the loss of perspective in the Prayer Vigil At Penitentiary Concern both for hostages and for Cuban detainees inside the Atlanta federal penitentiary touched Catholics this week, who had friends and relatives working there, and who went to the prison weekly to visit and pray with the de tainees. A special Mass Tuesday night at Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in Atlanta for all those endangered led a number of people from the Hispanic Catholic community, who regularly go inside the prison, to travel to the tense, frustrated gathering outside penitentiary walls. They prayed with the wives and children gathered outside the grim, gray building. Monsignor McDonough: "Grateful To God For Life, Health" Monsignor John McDonough, administrator of the arch diocese, made a personal Thanksgiving statement from Piedmont Hospital this week where he is continuing to recover from cancer surgery. “At this season of Thanksgiving it is incumbent on all of us to pause and give thanks to the Lord for all the gifts he has given to us. At this time I am most grateful to God for the gifts of life and health,” Monsignor McDonough said. “I am grateful to all who wished me well with cards of hope and inspiration and prayer. Also I am thankful to all who (Continued on page 12) modern celebration of Christmas, according to Milo Thorn- berry, director of Alternatives. Alternatives is a 14-year-old, non-profit organization based in Ellenwood, Georgia, that works to change the way holidays are celebrated, particularly the central Christian holy days of Christmas and Easter. The group creates, col lects and publishes resource materials that help people to celebrate without falling prey to the cultural equation that “celebration equals consumption.” Alternatives began 14 years ago by finding less commercial and non-commercial ways to celebrate Christ’s birth, and its director has a number of suggestions to bring more joy and simplicity to Advent and Christmas. His first suggestion is to “let Advent be Advent.” He maintains that people must do something to get away from the brainwashing of modern advertising that reaches fever pitch the last six weeks of the year. He suggests avoiding the shopping malls and watching less television. Instead, he suggests using the four weeks as a preparation period similar to Lent — a kind of retreat. Thornberry noted that Catholics, who have the church’s (Continued on page 7) Among the approximately 90 people held hostage inside the penitentiary were the Catholic chaplain, Father Ray mond G. Dowling, 57, who began working there in May; the Presbyterian chaplain Russ Mabry; a teacher, Manuel Echevarria, from Corpus Christi parish in Stone Mountain, who worked at the prison; and a young guard, Julio Torres- Rivera, 26, from St. Philip Benizi parish in Jonesboro. Father Dowling, a priest of the diocese of Green Bay, Wise., was appointed Catholic Chaplain in May. A Wiscon sin native, bilingual in Spanish, he worked in parishes in Mexico in the early 1980s, and “loves the Mexican people,” said Sister Pilar Dalmau, A.C.J., who saw him regularly during her visits to the detainees at the penitentiary each Thursday night. Father Dowling also works with the sisters in the Grant Park area of Atlanta where some families of detainees have come to live, and where other poor Hispanics live. Julio Torres-Rivera began working at the penitentiary a few months ago, according to his father, after coming out of the Army. Reported to be one of those barricaded at the prison hospital, he was able to call out to another guard to “call home and tell my family I’m okay,” early in the siege. Prayers for detainees and hostages were said at both the Mass, celebrated by Father Carlos Riofrio, and at the candlelight vigil outside the prison. Sister Pilar, head of the Hispanic Apostolate of the arch diocese, was outside the prison for several hours Tuesday during the period when several hundred inmates, Cuban and American, were taken away in buses after surrender ing to authorities. Shortly after the arrival of the Catholic group Tuesday night, two more busloads left the prison. She moved to a spot closer to McDonough Boulevard, so as to be seen in case any of the men she prays with weekly happened to be in the buses. (Continued on page 12) Lord Make Us Turn To You, Let Us See Your Face And We Shall Be Saved. Psalm 80 First Sunday Of Advent Catholic Chaplain Among Hostages
