Rabbi at Catholic Education Convention Assails Erosion of Value of Person
The ANCHOR An Anchor 01 the sour, Sure and Flrm-St. pour
Fall River, Mass., Thursday, April 3, 1975 PRICE 15c Vol. 19, No. 14 © 1975 The Anchor $5.00 ,er ye.r
Catholic Health Care Is Gospel Tradition "In the care of the sick, the Catholic Church has an enviable record. To be sure, this history of ministry to the sick merely carries on in time the very sign of the kingdom which the Gospel itself associate with Jesus, the Lord and Master." "Those involved in the Catholic health care facility should assist the Bishop in his duty to preach, by word and action, love of the sick, the dignity of the human person, the duty to care for the sick with strictly moral procedures and methods, love of neighbor, the value of suffering in the Christian meso sage, the virtue of Christian hope in the face of the seeming finality of death, the beauty of God's creation in man even when an individual may be laboring under a physical or mental debility, and above all, the absolute dominion of God over human life." So proclaimed Most Rev. Daniel A. Cronin, S.T.D., Bishop of Fall River, as he addressed the New England Conference of the Catholic Hospital Association in Boston on March 24. During the tenth annual meet-
ing, the Bishop spoke on "The Relationships of the Diocese to the Catholic Health Care Facility." "The sick are cured and the poor have the Gospel preached to them. These are the characteristics of the ministry of Jesus of Galilee," the Bishop went on. "From that beginning, all through succeeding centuries to the present day, ministry to the sick and special care to preach the Good News to the poor have been the hallmark of the Christian endeavor. "In providing for His people, Jesus left us not only the moral and charismatic example of His own concern for the sick; He provided, in the Anointing of the Sick, a sacramental ministration to complement Penance and the' Eucharist and the other sacraments, a special means of Grace for those distressed by illness." History has gloriously recorded that dedicated ministry to the sick "has been consistently num· bered among the principal apostolates engaged in by the believers of Jesus Christ." "Truth to tell," the Bishop Turn to Page Nine
ATLANTIC CITY (NC) - A leading Jewish spokesman for interreligious collaboration, Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum for the American Jewish Committee' (AJC), proposed here that Catholics and Jews "come together to discuss the relevance of life issue." Addressing the opening general session of the nnd annual NaHona. Educat1ional A!jsociation (NCEA) convention, he assailed widespread callousness toward individual human life. He said this was seen in such events as the rise in violent crime, indifference to famine, the killing of Christians in Suo dan, the non-reaction of many Irish Americans to events in Ireland and the lack of accountability shown by largecorporate interests such as oil companies eager to bilk consumers by claiming to sell domestic oil as imported oil. Rabbi Tanenbaum said that interfaith dialogue on the prolife issue would be valuable because nationally and interna· tionally "the issue of life as ex-· pendable, callousness, and our preoccupation with material things has killed something
CCA Special Gift Phase April 21 The Special Gift phase of the Catholic Charities Appeal of the diocese of Fall River begins Monday, April 21 and ends on Saturday, May 3. The house-tohouse campaign will be on Sun· day, May 4, from the hours of 12 noon to 3 p.m. and officially it will end on May 14. The Appeal, now in its thirtyfourth annual call for funds, helps to support the works of charity, mercy, education, social service and other works of the apostolate of the diocese. The Special Gift campaign is made to fraternal, professional, busines,s and industrial organizations throughout the southeastern area of Massachusetts. Since Turn to Page Two
Birthright Gives Alternative In operation one year this month, Birthright of ·Fall River has compiled a report of services it has given pregnant girls and women of the Greater Fall River area. Ninety-three calls .were received on the Birthright "hot line" during the year, said Mrs. Russell Partridge Jr., director of the volunteer organization. The telephone, manned from 7 to 9 p.m. each Monday, Wednesday and Friday by volunteers at Clemence Hall of St. Anne's Hospital, . Fall River, provides a quick, easy means for women and girls to avail themselves of the housing, counseling, medical, legal and financial services Birthright offers in problem pregnancy cases, said Mrs. Partridge.
Of the 93 calls, 68 were "pregnancy-related," she noted and the remainder were inquiries for information of various sorts. Of the expectant mothers who contacted Birthright, many needed only referral s'ervices to other agencies, reported the director, but 16 were followed to delivery. Reflecting changing attitudes towards "single parents," only one baby born to a Birthright mother was made available for adoption, said Mrs. Partridge. All other mothers elected to keep their infants and many have continued th.eir contact with the Birthright volunteers who counseled them during pregnancy. During the year, continued Mrs. Partridge, four girls were placed in "Birthright homes"
during their pregnancies. At present nine expectant mothers are in various parts of th.e Birthright program. In a new project, she noted, special prenatal classes for ·Birthright mothers are being offered at St. Anne's Hospital by Mrs. Mariette Eaton, R.N., a member of the organization's board of directors. A new session of the five-class series will begin tonight. Birthright members have spoken about the organization to nine groups during the past year, said Mrs. Partridge, and invitations from .civic, social or religious groups to explain the program are welcome. Birthright, she said, is nonTurn to Page Three
spiritual inside us." He is believed to be the first rabbi to deliver a major address to the NCEA. He complimented the Amer. ican Catholic bishops' .strong anti-abortion stand as "11 fundamental contribution· to halting the erosion of the dignity of huBut, he added, man life." "Frankly I am troubled by the way the barricades are mounted and the battle is fought." Thoughtful and' scholarly dialogue on the issue across faith lines, he suggested, would be valuable, in part because "the Jewish community needs to be awar.e that we have an identical interest to that of the Catholic Church in preserving the sanctity of life, and in viewing human life as so precious that even as a fetus it must be preserved." Events of the past few years, said Rabbi Tanenbaum, who is national interreligious affairs director of the AJC, have pro-
duced such widespread rootlessness, disorientation and malaise inside and outside the religious community that a time for reassessment of values is at hand. He cited world hunger, the arms race and the changing technol· ogy of war as immediate problems. "Religious educators are in a unique role to help educate and motivate a whole generation of young Americans to their profound spiritual and moral obligations in helping avert human tragedy," he maintained. The kinds of help outlined by Rabbi Tanenbaum as means for young people to help sort out their ethical values in the midst of "suffering materialism, hedonism and even forms of paganism" were two-fold. "First, he said, "they will need from us a form of moralpolitical help. Of all the groups in American society, our people -the consumers-are the least Turn to Page Five
Pope's 'Easter Message VATICAN CITY (NC)-As the largest crowd within recent memory flooded St. Peter's Square, Pope Paul VI proclaimed in his Easter "Urbi et Orbi" message that Jesus' Resurrection has infused "new, original and inexhaustible life" into a world of dashed hopes. Speaking from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica following an open-air Mass, the Pope told about 400,000 people standing in the sun-soaked square: "It does not matter, brethren, if the experience of the frailty of human powers daily disappoints our fragile hopes for a
stable ordering of human society. "Nor does it matter if from the very progress generated by modern development and from the sovereign exploitation of the useful secrets of nature there seems to derive for man not fullness or certainty of life, but rather the torment of unsatisfied aspiration. It does not matter. "For a new, original and in· exhaustible source of life has been infused into the world by the risen Christ." As street vendors and balloon sellers passed through the fringe of the crowd, the Pope in hfs message "to the city and to the world" called the Resurrection Turn to Page Three
Organize Charismatic Groups Within Diocese Tbe Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement has been organized on a diocesan basis in the Fall River Diocese, following a period during which area charismatic groups worked with groups in the Providence diocese. With the apryroval of Bishop Daniel A. Cronin, two lay coordinators have been named to aid in development of diocesan charismatic activities. They are James Collard, 4 Masson St., Westport, telephone 674-9885, who will serve the Fall River, New Bedford and Cape Cod areas; and Robert Pelland, 106. Knight Ave., Attleboro, telephone 222-5081, appointed for the Attleboro and Taunton areas. Rev. Cornelius J. O'Neill, pastor of St. John the Baptist parish, Westport, is Bishop Cronin's liaison with diocesan groups. He has issued the following list of charismatic groups to his knowl· edge now in existence, and asks that any not included contact one of the lay coordinators. Groups in New Bedford are at Our Lady's Chapel and St. Lawrence, St. Kilian and Our Lady
of the Assumption parishes; in Fall River at St. Patrick's parish and St. Anne's Hospital. Groups are also at La Salette Shrine, Attleboro; Sacred Hearts Academy, Fairhaven; St. Francis Xavier parish, Hyannis; Holy Trinity parish. Harwich; St. AnTurn to Page Four
FR. CORNELIUS O'NEILL