VOL. 32, NO. 15
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Friday, April 8, 1988
FALL RIVER, MASS.
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$10 Per Year
Just society needs input of poor
Doctor attacks euthanasia proposal ROME(NC) - Supporters ofa California proposal to allow doctors to give fatal injections to terminally ill patients see it as a "wedge" to gain greater acceptance for euthanasia on demand, an opponent said. Dr. D. Alan Shewmon, a California physician and professor of pediatric neurology at the University of California Medical Center in Los Angeles, compared the campaign to put the Humane and Dignified Death Act on the November ballot to early efforts to legalize abortion, in which laws allowing abortion only in the "hard cases" of rape or incest paved the way for laws allowing abortion on demand. Shewmon has written and lectured widely against the California proposal. He was in Rome to speak on euthanasia to an Opus Dei-sponsored international congress for university students. Opponents of the California initiative call it "the death act," Shewmon said. The measure, needing 450,000 signatures to get on the November ballot, would exempt doctors from criminal liability for giving a lethal injection to a terminallyill adult patient who requested it. A terminally ill patient could authorize a proxy to make the request. The proposal says a patient would be judged terminally ill if in the opinion of two certifying doctors his or her condition would lead to death within six months. The proposal is opposed by the Californai Catholic Conference, which has said it would "open the Turn to Page Six
Southeastern Massachusetts' Largest Weekly
But tough times seen for nation
A PANAMANIAN mother and child wait outside an emergency food distribution center administered by the Catholic Church in a Panama City suburb. Church agencies have aided hundreds of poor and working-class Panamanians suffering food and cash shortages during the Central American nation's current unrest. (NC/UPI-Reuter photo)
WASHINGTON (NC) - The participation of the poor in church and society is essential to their human dignity and to the building of a community of justice and peace, said Seattle Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen. The archbishop told diocesan directors ofthe U.S. bishops' Campaign for Human Development, an anti-poverty program, that the campaign works against the "bankrupt vision" of individualism which has characterized U.S. society for the past eight years. The deliberate and systematic alienation of the poor from the rest of society, the gutting of social programs, spending $2 trillion on weapons and the Iran-contra scandal are all indications that "we are locked in a struggle for the soul of this country," Archbishop Hunthausen said. The archbishop, Bishop Arthur N. Tafoya of Pueblo, Colo., chairman of the bishops' CH D committee, and Notre Dame de Namur Sister Marie Augusta Neal, professor of sociology at Emmanuel College in Boston, spoke to the diocesan directors at their annual meeting held last month in Albuquerque, N.M. The campaign has made large strides in building power among the poor, Archbishop Hunthausen said, "but the fact that poverty is increasing amidst the affluence of these United States tells us we need to make even greater efforts
in the movements toward the conversion of our church and the penetration of our society." In recent years, "the radical individualism that has gripped our country has been exposed by its inevitable results and inherent contradictions - insider-trading scandals and influence peddling, arms dealing to terrorists and protection to drug runners," he said. But the country is approaching a time when change will be possible, he said. And in order to bring Gospel values to that change, the poor need to claim a share of the political power and all citizens must accept political responsibility, the archbishop added. For years people asslimed that being poor "legitimated exclusion from community," Sister Neal said. "Discovery of the full humanity of poor people is an experience of our times. Associating it with the right to share in the wealth and power is our challenge." The Campaign for Human Development and other programs which provide a biblical context for education and spiritual reflection on poverty and social justice are readily accepted by lay people and religious in the church, Sister Neal said. Current social problems "should not be interpreted as a failure of past efforts," Bishop Tafoya said. "For one can, I think, safely say Turn to Page Six
Kerner report remains valid after 20 years WASHINGTON (NC) - Detroit, New York and other major northern U. S. cities were still smoldering from the rioting, looting and burning of racial unrest when, in July 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a commission to study the causes of the violence. A 400-page report released March I, 1968, by that body, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, issued a stark warning that the nation, fueled by racism, was rapidly "moving toward two societies, one black, one white - separate and unequal." The commission, called the Kerner Commission after its chairman, Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner, called for a change in attitudes and a major public commitment to housing and job programs, higher
standards of pay and improvements in education. Twenty years later "the Kerner report is coming true. . . . The country isn't as different as it should be," said a statement from experts on race and urban affairs who met in Racine, Wis., recently to review the work of the Kerner CommISSIOn.
Catholic officials agree. The report "was absolutely correct in its prophetic statements," said Auxiliary Bishop Joseph A. Francis of Newark, N.J., one of the nation's 12 black bishops. In a telephone interview he said he has spoken extensively on racism over the years, using the Kerner report over and over. "Education, employment and 'housing remain the greatest sources of irritation and injustice for
blacks," he said, adding that he believed racial motivations were behind diminishing quality of education for minorities, continuing segregation in housing, and misunderstanding of affirmative action. In Wisconsin, the experts said blacks have made strides in the emergence of a black middle class with better jobs, better education, better housing than before. More than 7,000 blacks hold elected office, while police departments, newsrooms and corporate offices have become more integrated. But left behind is an increasing black "underclass" of2.5 million, almost tri pIe in size since the 1970s. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 1986 one in three blacks, compared to one in to whites, lived below the poverty line, now
at $11,203 for a family offour, and that the median black inc;ome was only 57 percent of that of whites. "I'd say racism is pretty much alive" along with a feeling by whites that "blacks have been given enough," said Bishop Francis. "Churches on the whole have made some efforts to combat racism in the public sector, but I'm not sure churches, including the Catholic Church, have done anything to deal with it in church institutions," he said. Nor has the Catholic Church included many blacks in leadership roles, he said. Eleanor J osaitis, associate d irector and cofounder of Focus: HOPE a 'oetroit food and job-training program, said that as a Catholic she agreed the church had an agenda of "unfinished business" in¡ the black community, an agenda
much like that outlined by the U.S. bishops in a 1968 statement responding to the Kerner report. The bishops called for totally eliminating racism in church institutions, aiding the poor, building bridges of understanding and a sense of justice, providing quality education for the poor, pushing for fair employment practices and helping provide low-income housing. Bl!t "we still don't pray together;" said Mrs. Josaitis, referring to the separation of whites in Detroit's suburban parishes and blacks in urban ones. Her nonprofit organization was founded in 1968 as a way to get blacks and whites together and began with training for Detroit Turn to Page Six