South Texas Catholic (Corpus Christi, Tex.), Vol. 29, No. 18, Ed. 1 Friday, September 30, 1994 Page: 4 of 20
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: Texas Gulf Coast Register/South Texas Catholic and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the UNT Libraries.
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4-SEPTEMBER 30, 1994
Fellowship musings
By Patrick G.D. Riley
When some 350 scholars descend on Corpus Christi to
weigh the survival or rather the revival of Western civiliza-
tion, you don’t exactly expect the proceedings to be scintil-
lating. Yet the gravity of the subject and occasional ponder-
ous moments notwithstanding, last weekend's convention
of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars fixed the attention
from beginning (September 23) to end (September 25).
It’s title, “Catholicity and the New Evangelization,” gave
little hint of the breadth and depth of the subject under
scrutiny except to those who know that evangelization, the
bringing of the Gospel, was the making of Western civili-
zation, just as de-Christianization is its unmaking. The
point is that unless the West is evangelized anew it will
continue down the road toward a new civilization.
To judge by results so far, we’ll be lucky if we can call it
a civilization. For the abandonment of the principles that
built our civilization has brought about a society that
scarcely deserves the name. Just ask the citizens who are
afraid to leave their house at night, or are afraid for that
matter to remain in their house at night. You don’t have to
reside in a rest home to remember when this wasn’ t the case.
Alarm about the degradation of society is no longer a
symptom of paranoia, but has become a staple of the
popular press. Rising to the surface along with it is alarm at
the secularization of society, though the media don’t share
it; they are however alarmed at those who are alarmed at it,
and refer to them collectively and pejoratively as the
“religious right.”
In the minds of just about everybody who thinks about it,
the secularization of society and the degradation of society
are connected as cause and effect. Just why those who are
ruthlessly secularizing society don’t see any connection is
a sure symptom of fanaticism, that determination to try all
the harder when your ideas won’t work.
The secularization of society is a modem phenomenon,
stemming from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. In
fact secularization was the essence of Enlightenment. But
such revulsion was aroused by the effects of the Enlighten-
ment, as witnessed in the sanguinary and carnal excesses of
the French Revolution, that a tremendous resistance arose,
and is given the chronologically accurate name of
Victorianism.
The apostles of Enlightenment turned their attention to
the less drastic polarities of education. There they suc-
ceeded, and the products of a thoroughly secularized edu-
cation now are leading the only-too-successful attack on
the sacred in society.
Just what was sacred in society? To answer that, we
might recall that first general meeting of the early Church
known as the Council of Jerusalem. The two characteristics
that should set Christians apart from their pagan fellow-
citizens, it was decided at that first council, were sexual
probity and respect for life.
In the civil society of the time, life was so cheap and little
respected that in major cities newborns were flung on trash
dumps to be collected by those who raised slaves for
prostitution, and the arenas were thronged while men killed
men for the pleasure of spectators. Family life had so
degenerated that the civil authorities were alarmed. The
founder of the Roman Empire, Augustus, tried to ensure the
success of his great project with laws encouraging mar-
riage, and making adultery, along with sodomy, a capital
crime.
But it was only with the arrival of aChristian emperor that
gladiatorial combat was abolished as part of the new public
See "Signs,”page 17
(ISSN 0745-9343)
Published bi-weekly Jan. 1-Dec. 31; except lor the month ol July by the
Diocese ol Corpus Christi lor $10.00 per year. Office address: 1200
Lantana SI.. Corpus Christi, TX 78407-1112. (512)289-1752 Second
class postage paid in Corpus Christi. Texas. POSTMASTER: Send
address changes lo SOUTH TEXAS CATHOLIC, 1200 Lanlana,
Corpus Christi, TX 78407-t 112.
Bishop Rcn£ H. Gracida
Publisher
Father John Vega
Associate Publisher
Anthony J. Riley
Editor
Luz IvO/a
Spanish Editor
~ [ SOUTH TEXAS CATHOLIC
Commentary I ~ ==
Vatican braves cultural forces
at Cairo Population Conference
By .James Hitchcock
Liberals are fond of pointing out that non-Christian
religious groups are growing rapidly in America and that
this fact requires substantial adjustments in our way of life.
Recently a milestone in that process went almost unnoticed,
when the president of the American Catholic bishops and
the head of America’s largest organization of Muslims
issued a joint statement.
This remarkable ecumenical breakthrough was ignored
because the subject was the United Nations Population
Conference in Cairo. Altogether the treatment of that con-
ference by the media was a classic case study of the state of
our culture.
• Feminism. As some supporters of the conference admit-
ted, the real issue was not population control but “women’s
rights,” especially the right to prevent pregnancy by any
means necessary. Numerous people claimed to speak for
“women,” but only for those who see motherhood as an
obstacle to their well-being.
• Multiculturalism. Liberals never tire of reminding us of
the great “diversity” which exists in the world and the need
to accommodate it. But somehow all this diversity ends up
looking the same.
Thus the Muslim-Catholic statement in the United States
was ignored, and the fact that the Vatican made a working
alliance with some Muslin countries in Cairo was treated as
a sinister plot.
Furthermore, “diversity” did not include those who cher-
ish the traditional family and have moral objections to
abortion. Such people were treated as merely obstruction-
ists, and somehow "diversity” would have been served by
having everyone agree.
• The Sexual Revolution. This too was a barely hidden
agendaat the conference. I am not sure about the final paper,
but the original draft for the conference in effect proclaimed
a right to untrammeled sexual activity. Governments were
urged to mount massive propaganda campaigns on behalf
of “safe sex.”
• Blurring the issues. For weeks the media echoed the
conference organizers’ claims that the Vatican was para-
noid in thinking that phrases like “safe abortions” and
“reproductive rights” meant what the Holy See said they
did. This was despite the fact that such language has long
been consecrated to exactly the meanings the Vatican saw
there.
• Secularism. Every religious voice was automatically
deemed invalid, despite the fact that between them Catho-
lics and Muslims are close to a majority of the world’s
population.
• Cultural imperialism. Liberals are quick to discern this
in other situations. But as everyone knows, the population-
control movement is a Western invention avidly pushed by
Western agencies of various kinds, including governments.
Some Third World people now accept that agenda., but
probably most do not. Governments (India) which have
tried massive programs have experienced popular back-
lash.
The most bizarre episode at Cairo was the prime minister
of Norway’s lecturing to Third World delegates. The Scan-
dinavian countries have fallen below population replace-
ment, to the point where the institution of marriage is itself
an endangered species. What rational people would want to
introduce the same patterns into their own countries?
• Approved thinking. Population control has become an
unchallengable dogma, those opposed to it literally en-
emies of the human race. But there are other views.
Thus as the Cairo conference was going on, the liberal
New York Review of Books, which has no problems with
abortion, much less with contraception, published an analy-
sis by the Harvard economist Amantaya Sen, calling into
question many of those assumption. Sen did not take any
sides over the Cairo conference, but pointed out the ambi-
guities of the evidence concerning population pressures,
the exaggerated claims made by many alarmists, and the
consistant record of failure of precisely the kind of massive
programs which Cairo advocates.
• Political Power. Those who did not know better might
conclude from media accounts of Cairo that plucky del-
egates were being intimidated by a bullying Vatican, when
in fact that reverse was closer to true. The population-
control people had the United Nations, most world govern-
ments, and almost all the media on their side. But nothing
less than total unanimity will satisfy them.
Quiet places where
priests are “born”
By Rome D. Smyth
There are quiet places where Serrans go. But anyone
can go there. There are no entrance fees—day or night.
Some folks pay a lot of money for solitude at trendy get-
aways where phones don’t ring, strident
bosses can’t find them, and pesky
kids don’t tug at their moms.
Serrans believe that priest are
“bom” in these quiet places. They
can’t really prove it although they’ve
got a pretty good hunch it’s hue. Yankees call it meditat-
ing—South Texans call it ponderin’. These are places
where Serrans “hide out” and do a little “askin’” Anyone,
Serrans and non-Serrans alike, can do as the late Jesuit
retreat master, Fr. Anthony de Mello, advocates. In his
book, Contact with God, de Mello suggests we “Just sit
like a beggar in the presence of the Lord and keep rattling
ourbegging bowl until He fills it.” An astonishing notion!
Where better can we linger with Christ in His hour of
absolute misery and ponder noble things? Or dream of a
Church where every parish has a whole passel of priests
and a batch of nuns to glue the whole thing together?
Sereans take Jesus at his word when He said, “Had you not
the strength to keep awake one hour?” This astounding
reproach of His disciples, coming from the Hallmark of
compassion and patience, bounces off the ages. And even
now He pursues our company. Catholic poet, Francis
Thompson, captured the essence of Jesus’ rebuke in his
Hound of Heaven, one of the greatest odes in the English
language. In part he wrote:
I fled Him, down the nights and and down the days; I
fled Him, down the arches of the years; 1 fled Him, down
the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the midst
of tears I hid from Him, and underrunning laughter.
Jesus’ lament in the Garden was not a command—
merely a simple request. We needn't search for subtle
meaning. Jesus was a man about to die violently, who
wanted a little company and promised
His friends much in return—not a bad
bargain as it turned out. Instead, His
friends opted for their
own priorities. Sounds
familiar? Nowadays our
relentless quest to some-
how make a difference in this
world, to find our place in relevance, as trendy
jargon would have it, seems rather selfish. It wasn’t the
response Jesus was looking for then, nor is it now.
Serrans are determined to make amends for this lapse in
fidelity. How? Living metaphors of that ancient Gar-
den, known as Chapels of Perpetual Adoration, have
been instituted in several parishes in the Diocese. In
these chapels, two or more ordinary folks gather for an
hour, once each week, and “rattle their begging bowls"
before the Eucharist. There, Serrans are likely to “beg”
for more priests and religious. In many chapels, some-
one is always there, assuring perpetual coverage 24
hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year.
They are there for one hour, either before work, during
their lunch breaks, in the afternoon, at night or early
rear of one chapel read: Thank you for the monetary
favors that will help our church. Thank you Blessed
Sacrament for making my wife come through surgery
safely. Thank you for a recent promotion at work. Jesus
has shown me how to detach from others and feel a new
“See Champions,”page 20
i .
mDi
morning hours. Many are there to offer petitionary
prayers—some just to give thanks. Reasons vary; each
one's different. Just a few of the comments found in the
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Riley, Anthony J. South Texas Catholic (Corpus Christi, Tex.), Vol. 29, No. 18, Ed. 1 Friday, September 30, 1994, newspaper, September 30, 1994; Corpus Christi, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth856098/m1/4/?q=virtual+music+rare+book: accessed June 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .