dJ The AKCHOR Vol•. 21, No.9 - Fall River, Mass., Thurs., March 3, 1977
An Anchor of the Soul, Sure and F.irm-St. Paul
Suffering Church of Africa Uganda: The Martyr Church
JOSEPH C. RAYBALL
Catholic Charities App.eal of 1977 Chairman Joseph C. Rayball, prominent Attleboro radio manager, a member of Holy Ghost parish, Attleboro, has been appointed the diocesan lay chairman of the 1977 Catholic Charities Appeal of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fall River. This is the thirtysixth annual Appeal, dating back to 1942. The diocese extends from Provincetown to Attleboro and the campaign will cover the five big areas of the diocese, r.amely, greater Fall River, New Bedford, Taunton, the Attleboros, Cape Cod and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The appointment of Mr. Rayball was announced today by the Most Rev. Daniel A. Cronin, S.T.D., Bishop of Fall River. This Appeal marks the seventh time that Bishop Cronin will serve as honorary chairman.
A native of Lowell, Mass. Rayball attended St. Augustine's School and Punchard High School, both in Andover. He received special training in the radio communication media at Leland Power's School of Radio and Television. He is the general manager of the radio station WARA in Attleboro and executive vice-president of radio station WVNH in Salem, New Hampshire. The 1977 lay chairman of the Appeal is vice-president of the Massachusetts Broadcasters Association and vice-president of the legislative affairs committee of the Attleboro Chamber of Commerce. -He is also a corporator of the Attleboro Savings Bank; on the board of directors of the Attleboro Council of Aging; is active with the Way of Tum to Page Nine
For Ugandan Christians this was to have been a year of celebration, the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Anglican church in the east central African¡ nation. Instead it has turned into a year of bloodletting, with the country's estimated 6 million Christians - including its 3.5 million Catholics - the possible target of a new reign of terror by Uganda's mercurial president, General Idi Amin. Some observers believe that the suspicious death Feb. 17 of Anglican Archbishop Janani Luwum and two government officials, all accused of trying to topple Amin, touched off a frenzied persecution that could add many Christians to the estimated 30,000 to 300,000 Ugandans who have been killed in retaliation for real or imagined threats to Amin. The government said the trio died in an automobile accident on route to questioning about their part in the alleged coup, but others said that Amin executed them. Refugees fleeing the country since then tell of massive arrests and killings among the predominately Christian Acholi and Lango tribes, which number approximately 654,000 in a country of 11 million. Members of those two northern tribes formed the power base of former President Milton Obote, the exiled leader who Amin blames for masterminding the coup that led to the death of Archbishop Luwum .and the others. What makes it difficult to tell, one observer pointed out, is that
Amin is unpredictable. "When you're dealing with Amin," said this observer, a White Father who was a missionary in Uganda from 1971 to 1975, "you're not dealing with anyone who is norma!." One of those who believes that Amin's latest excess has religious as well as political motives is the Rev. David Birney, a staff member of the Anglican Bishop Tucker Theological College in Mukono, Uganda from 1969 to 1972 and now a member of the church's national and world mission division at the Episcopal Church Center in New York.
Mr. Birney said in an interview that Amin's reprisals against the Acholi and Lango tribes were apparently triggered by the mid-February coup attempt and the result of the fierce tribalism that characterizes Ugandan politics. But, he added, the arrests of Church leaders and the death of Archbishop Luwum, spiritual leader of 3 million Anglicans, is notice "on the Christian Churches that he (Amin) means to turn Uganda into a Moslem country." Amin is a follower of Islam. The White Father, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said that when he left the country there was no Turn to Page Seven
Rhodesia: Bishop Expelled LONDON (NC) - The Rhodesian government's decision to deport Bishop Donal Lamont of Umtali is "a cruel blow to the Church in Rhodesia," said a Spokesman for the English and Welsh bishops. News that the government was depriving the 65-year-old Irish-born missionary of his Rhodesian citizenship came Feb. 24 only hours after an appeals court in Rhodesia had lessened the bishop's 10-year jail sen~ tence, imposed last October when he admitted not reporting on guerrillas and inciting others not to report them. Bishop Gerald Mahon, auxiliary of Westminster and president of the Justice and Peace Commission of the IBishop's Conference of England and Wales, and official spokesman for the bishops on this issue, said the
decision to deport Bishop Lamont deprives the Catholic Church of an outstanding champion of human rights and of nonviolence. It takes away his civil rights as a Rhodesian. Earlier the bishops through Bishop Mahon deplored the appellate court's confirmation of a prison sentence for Bishop Lamont. But they welcomed the reduction of the "original harsh sentence" from 10 years to four, three of which were suspended. "Catholics and fair-minded people will deplore any sentence on Bishop Lamont," said this earlier statement. "He has committed no crime. He has acted in union with his fellow bishops in fulfillment of his work for the Gospel. "We share :Bishop Lamont's view that a genuine permanent Turn to 'Page Seven
There People on Other Worlds? Are there people on other worlds? That's the question explored by Father Kenneth Delano of St. Patrick's parish, Fall River, in his book' "Many Worlds, One God," published today, and his answer is "Almost certainly." Our generation, he points out, is the first that must seriously contemplate the possibility of contact with beings from other worlds. "Now is the time," he writes, "for us all to start making the necessary mental preparations for the revelation that we are not alone in the universe. If our minds have not been prepared beforehand for the detection of or encounter with extraterrestrial intelligences, we will suffer the shock of having to adjust too rapidly to a fact about which the world's religions have
had little or nothing to say. The agitations experienced in the past over the theories of Copernicus and Darwin will seem to have been, by comparison, tempests in a teapot." The priest emphasizes that the religious implications of the discovery of intelligent beings in space, as well as the moral principles which should guide us in our attitudes towards such beings are matters which deserve serious consideration. He notes that nowhere in the Bible is there basis for the contention that man is or should be the center of the universe. "As far as the Bible is concerned, the question of whether or not God has peopled other worlds is an open question. We can find no justification for arbitrarily restricting God's creative ability."
In fascinating chapters, Father Delano discusses what otherworldly beings might be like (possessing four feet and two hands? having wheels? intelligent plants? one being covering the entire planet? an intelligent being as vast as a solar system?). Of the latter hypothesis, the priest writes, "If we were able to recognize so vast an intelligent entity . . . how awed we would be and how quickly we would jump to the conclusion that it was God." And in a concluding chapter. on "astrotheology," he explores the type of spiritual life that might be enjoyed by beings from other worlds, noting that ....Earth may not be the only planet that has seen an incarnation of God" and that there Turn to Page Seven
FATHER KENNEm R. DELANO