10.24.86

Page 1

FAU RIVER DIOCISANNEWSPAPIR,

FOR SOUTHEAST MASSACHUSms CAPE COD & THE ISLANDS

VOL. 30, NO. 42

•

Friday, October 24,1986

FALL RIVER, MASS.

Southeastern

Mass~chusetts' Largest

Weekly

•

58 Per Year

Cape Cod artist's windows grace Irish church By Joseph Motta

SUSAN MACKIN and Father Francis C. Mackin at the dedication in Clogheen.

As the weather turns colder, many year-round Cape Codders will settle down in front of roaring fires, avoiding the chill and dreaming of spring. But not Susan Von Itter-Mackin, an Orleans native and member of that town's St. Joan of Arc parish. She'll be busy in her backyard workshop, creating stained glass windows. One of her windows has been installed in St. Mary's Church, Clogheen, County Tipperary, Ireland, the ancestral home of her husband's family. How did Mrs. Mackin's work get into a church thousands of miles away? The story began over 1300 years ago. The 32-year-old artist, who studied stained glass design in Paris, said that St. Cathal, a seventhcentury abbot of County Tipperary's Shanrahan monastery, was on a pilgrimage to Rethlehem in the year 666 when he was shipwrecked off the coast of Taranto, Italy. Cathal stayed in Taranto, Mrs. Mackin said, became its archbishop and later Southern Italy's patron saint. He is known in Italy as San Cataldo. Skip to 1981. Susan Von Itter marries Wellfleet native Larry Mackin at St. Peter's Church, Provincetown. Since 1963, Larry Mackin's uncle, Father Francis C. Mackin, SJ, pastor of St. Ignatius parish, Chestnut Hill, had been researching

Saint Cathal, a longtime interest because of the geographical closeness of the saint to his ancestors. He commissioned Mrs. Mackin to make a set of windows depicting events in the saint's life, with the intention of presenting them to St. MarY's parish as a memorial to the Mackin clan. Mrs. Mackin spent a year designing the windows, using the information Father Mackin's research had yielded. When he approved her designs, she said, the five month process of actually creating the windows began. "Then Father Frank had the idea of all of us going to Ireland with him for the dedication," Mrs. Mackin said. So over40 Mackin family members, including Mrs. Mackin, her husband and their four-year-old daughter, Bridget, met in Clogheen in June, accompanied by Mrs. Mackin's stained glass, finished just a month before. "I was so happy that the windows arrived safely," Mrs. Mackin said, adding that meeting the Irish, English and Australian Mackins who also made the trip was a wonderful experie~ce. The colorful windows were dedicated on June 15. They portray St. Cathal as Shanrahan's abbot and as Italian archbishop. A circular window depicts a gold cross found in the saint's sarcophagus, opened in the year 1000. Touring Ireland, the Mackins had the opportunity to visit the pillar stone at Tara. Irish legend

says that if a descendant of a High King of Ireland rubs the stone, he or she will immediately become ruler of all of Ireland. Mackin ancestors include Lugaid MacCon, killed at the site of the stone in 225 A.D. after 30 years as High King, so Bridget Mackin, youngest of his descendants, gave the stone a rub. Although she's back in Orleans, it was worth a try. Mrs. Mackin, a co-owner of the Cove Gallery in Orleans for eight years, now teaches stained glass techniques in the Orleans public school system's adult education program. In France, she explained, stained glass is used only for religious purposes, but in this country it is often used as a decorative accent in homes. Much of her work, she said, consists of designing and repairing windows for homes, restaurants and churches. One window, she said, was ordered by a fan as a gift for rock star Eric Clapton. Based on the cover art of one of his albums, it is installed in the singer's London home. Though it abounds in the backyard workshop, there is no stained glass in the Mackin home. Susan Von Itter-Mackin really can't explain why. "It's like being a cobbler," she laughed, " and your kids don't have any shoes."

Additional picture on page 6.

Economy pastoral challenges Catholics WASHINGTON (NC) -Catholic social teaching is demanding because "the Gospel is demanding," says the first draft of a message by the U.S. bishops on the economy. The message is to accompany the forthcoming national pastora-J letter, "Economic Justice for All," which the nation's Catholic bishops are to debate and vote on when they meet in Washington Nov. 10-13. "The challenge of this pastoral letter is not merely to think differently, but also to act differently," says the message. "A renewal of economic life depends on the con-

scious choices and commitments of individual believers." The 3,600-word message w~s made public in Washington Oct. 23, about a week after it was mailed to the bishops of the country. Like the pastoral letter itself, which runs 53,000 words, the message is to be debated, amended and voted on during the bishops' November meeting. It and the letter were prepared by a committee chaired by Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland, OSH. Development of the pastoral letter goes back to 1980, but the decision to issue a shorter message along with it originated with a

meeting of the bishops in Collegeville, Minn., in June 1984. Many ofthe bishops said a shorter, simpler message was needed to reach millions of Americans who would not read the whole pastoral letter or who would find a brief overview a helpful introduction to the longer, more technical document. The message begins with a brief background on the development of the pastoral letter and the reasons the bishops undertook it. "Economic life raises important social and moral questions for each of us and for society as a whole," it says.

"Like family life, economic life is one of the chief areas where we live out our faith, love our neighbor, confront temptation, fulfill God's creative design and achieve our holiness.... As a community of believers, we know that our faith is tested by the quality ofjustice among us. " Without going into the detail of fact and moral argument that characterizes the pastoral letter, the message outlines and summarizes six "basic moral principles"underlying the pastoral: - "Every economic decision and institution must be judged in light of whether it protects or

undermines the dignity of the human person."

Turn to Page Six

ARCHBISHOP WEAKLAND

Economy pastoral architect

Vofe your conscience on November 4


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