FALL RIVER DIOCESAN NEWSPAPER FOR SOUTHEAST MASSACHUSEm CAPE COD & THE ISLANDS
t eanc 0 VOL. 28, NO. 10
FALL RIVER, MASS., FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 1984
$8 Per Year
With high court's kind permission
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Christ back In Cllristmas
By Liz Armstrong WASHNGTON (NC) - The First Amendment does not man date "complete separation of church and state" and thus the sponsorship of a Christmas na tivity scene by the city of Paw tucket, R.I., is not unconstitu tional, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision March 5. The case, Lynch vs. Donnelly, involved a nativity scene includ ed in a display of Christmas symbols sponsored by Pawtucket in a park owned by a non-profit group. Chief Justice Warren E. Bur ger wrote for the majority that the court has not considered it possible or desirable to enforce a regime of total separation of church and state. "Nor does the Constitution re quire complete separation of church ,and state; it affirmative ly maridates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions and forbids hostility toward any," he wrote.
Tracing the history of U.S. involvement with religions related 'activity, Burger said members of the first Congress, approving the First Amendment, also approved the practice of having paid congressional chap lains. Congress and presidents also have proclaimed Christmas and Thanksgiving as national holidays with religious over tones. Pawtucket by setting up the Christmas display, "has princi pally taken note of a significant historical religious event long celebrated in the Western world," Burger wrote. "The display is sponsored by the ci,ty to cele brate the holiday and to depict the origins of that holiday. These are legitimate secular pur poses." Joining with Burger in the majority opinion were Justices Byron R. White, Lewis F. Powell, William H. Rehnquist and San dra Day O'Connor. Justice O' Connor also filed a separate, con curring opinion.
Dissenting were Justices Wil liam J. Brennan, ThurgM(f Mar shall, Harry A. Blackmun and John P. Stevens. In the main dissenting opinion Brennan said that precedents "compeJ the holding that Paw tucket's inclusion of a life-sized display depicting the 'biblical description of the birth of Christ as part of its annual Christmas celebration is unconstitutional." TIle action "amounts to an im permissible governmental en dorsemlmt of a: particular faith," he said. "To suggest, as the court does, that such a symbol is merely 'traditional' and therefore no different from Santa's house or reindeer is not only offensive to those for whom the creche has profound significance but in sulting to those who insist for religious or personal reasons that the story of Christ is in no sense a part of 'history' nor an un avoidable element of our nation al 'heritage," Brennan added.
Oops- fasting age FATHER KASZYNSKI with a wooden statue of con centration camp victim St. Maximilian Kolbe. The statue', carved by a blind 22-year-old man, is one of a large col lection of Polish art works at St. Stanislaus parish. (Gau dette Photo)
Prayer is the fuel
By Pat' McGowan
He travels far and near to conduct missions, retreats and days of recollection. He will be heard at the April convention of the National Cath olic Educational Association in Boston and at the New England General Conference for the Cath olic Charismatic Renewal in Providence In August. He's pastor of a powerhouse parish with so much going on that simply belonging to it has been described as a fulltime oc cupation. He's diocesan liaison to the charismatic renewal and teacher for the diocesan permanent dia conate training ~rp~ram. Action characterlz'es his days. But each begins at 4:30 a.m. with af) hour and a half of con templative prayer. "No rosary or reading," said Father Robert S. Kaszynski, 50.
"Just being with the Lord." The New Bedford-born Polish American, ordained in 1960, has been pastor of Fall River's St. Stanislaus Polish parish since 1966, following four years first as its associate pastor and then as administrator. He didn't come easily to his present spirituaHty, he said. It followed a crisis of faith early in his priesthood,only resolved when he visited the shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa at Jasna Gara in Poland. There, like Pope John Paul II, he found re freshment and guidance. "I had been simply too busy during my first six years as a priest," he said. "I'd subscribed to the heresy that my life was my prayer." He began his new approach to spirituality by meditating three minutes a day, he said, a practice, Tum to Page Six
WASHINGTON (NC) A new church., law requiring Cath olics to begin fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday at age 18 escaped the notice of quite a few U.S. bishops when they published Lenten' fast and abstinence regulations this year. Of the first 30 diocesan papers that reached NC News in Wash ington from the weekend before Ash Wednesday, 10 - including four from archdioceses - car ried announcements which mis takenly said that the law of fast ing on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday begins binding Catholics at age 21. The confusion arose because Canon 97 of the new Code of Canon Law, which went into ef fect 'last November as the gen eral law of the church, redefined the age of majority, or adult hood, in the church. Before that, people were considered adults under church law when they reached their 21st birthday, but now they are considered adults from their 18th birthday on. Some 200 pages later in the ne~law book, Canon 1252 tells who is bound by the church laws governing abstinence from meat and fasting. Abstinence, it says, is bind ing' on all those who have reach
ed their 14th birthday. Fasting it adds, "binds those who have attained their majority, until the beginning of their 60th year." The fact that 18-year-olds are considered adults under the new code simply slipped by the na tion's bishops last November when they voted to reaffirm U.S. fast and abstinence rules in light of the new code, said Father Donald Heintschel, associate
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general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. He said the NCCB secretariat sent a letter to bishops during the week before Ash Wednes day advising them that the new age cited in the code takes pre cedence and modifies the U.S. rules on the Lenten fast. Some bishops apparently missed the letter, however, or Turn to Page Six
Kids, here '8 new excuse for not doing homework VATICAN CITY (NC) - Father Paul Tschang had never been a teacher, so he felt a bit uncomfortable when- his first student was Pope John Paul U. :Father Tschang, 33, a Korean priest studying in Rome, was given the job of teaching the pope 'the Korean language in preparation for the pontiff's visit to South Korea May 3-7. "I felt that it was a great honor, but I also felt ill at ease" during the first hour with the pope, Father Tschang told NC News. "But the pope helped me to relax. He's very friendly, and soon I felt okay." The priest, who gave the pontiff 10 one-hour lessons dur ing October and November, called the pope "a good student who is eager to learn." But the pontiffs schedule did not allow homework. "I asked him once whether he had time to repeat some exercises before the next class," said the priest, "but he told me that he was ·too busy to do that."