South Texas Catholic (Corpus Christi, Tex.), Vol. 19, No. 18, Ed. 1 Friday, October 28, 1983 Page: 5 of 16
sixteen pages : ill. ; page 19 x 14 in.View a full description of this newspaper.
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Opinion
Page 5
Entre Nos/Between Us
Where are the children?
By the Most Rev. Rene H. Gracida
On Thursday, 12 October, I had the great pleasure
of giving the invocation, at the invitation of Nueces
County Sheriff James T. Hickey, at the ceremonies of
dedication for the new missing children’s center in the
sheriff s office in Corpus Christi. It was a pleasure for
me to participate in those ceremonies of dedication
because of the promise for the future which the in-
auguration of that center holds for all parents whose
children may be missing.
There are few situations more frustrating for all
priests than that of having no comfort and try to assist
parents whose child has just disappeared. In the past
the experience throughout the nation was that little
could be done beyond sending a description of the child
via teletype or printed circular to law enforcement
agencies throughout the nation. The frustration of law
enforcement officers as they struggled to cope with the
flood of paper wmrk inevitably produced frustration
and frequent bitterness on the part of the priest and
parents.
One has only to consider the statistics. Over one
million five hundred people disappear from their
homes every year. Many of these are children who
return home eventually on their own. but many do
not. Every year the number of children who are still
missing grows and grows. Some 2,000 children are
buried every year by public officials in unmarked
graves because their bodies have not been identified.
The anguish of parents is almost more than man can
bear.
St. Luke describes for us in the second chapter of his
Gospel the anguish of Mary and Joseph as they search-
ed for the lost child Jesus. The poignancy of that situa-
tion is beautifully illustrated for us by St. Luke in the
question he recorded which Mary asked her Son: “My
child, why have you done this to us? See how worried
your father and I have been, looking for you.,1,*Those
words of Mary must literally burn in the minds and
hearts of all parents who have a missing child as they
listen to that Gospel in our churches each year.
The newly installed computer system in the sheriffs
office in Corpus Christi is the fifth of fifteen such
systems which will be installed across the United States
to be used exclusively on missing person investiga-
tions. We are indeed fortunate in Southwest Texas to
have the computer which serves the entire
Southwestern area in the United States located here in
Corpus Christi
One of the ways in which the computer will make it
possible to identify missing children more easily will be
through the fingerpriru data. In these days, sad to say,
just as it has become necessary for us to lock our
automobiles and our homes when we leave them, it has
also become necessary for the parents of every child to
have in their possession a full set of finger prints of
their child so that in the event, God forbid, that their
child would ever become missing they would be able to
turn over their child’s fingerprint record to their local
law enforcement agency which would in turn transmit
the essential fingerprint data to the computer center.
Last spring, all of our Catholic schools in Nueces
County cooperated with Sheriff Hickey in providing
for the taking of children’s fingerprints in our schools.
The fingerprint record was in each case given to the
parents of each child for safe keeping. I have directed
Sister Camelia Herlihy, Superintendent of Schools, to
make the Catholic schools in Nueces County again
available to the Sheriffs Department so that children
whose fingerprints were not taken last spring may have
them taken this fall. I have also directed Sister Herlihy
to arrange for our schools in all of the counties of our
diocese to cooperate with the local sheriffs office for
the same purpose. It should be understood that par-
ticipation by each family s entirely voluntarily, but
given the frightening statistics, I would urge every
parent to avail themselves of this opportunity and to
have a fingerprint record made of their children and to
safeguard that record as they do the child’s birth cer-
tificate.
Importance of women
Editor:
In her letter of response to Dolores Curran’s October article on
the participation of girls as altar servers, Mrs. Pat Cosgrove
stresses loyalty to our churcf leadership in the person of the popes,
Peter through John Paul 11. Because of the importance of the role
of women, I think it’s important to identify the direction ofleader-
ship our recent popes have given to this issue.
In his 1963 encyclical, Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII cited
the growth of the role of women in public life as one of the three
distinctive characteristics of our age. “This (more active part) is
happening more rapidly perhaps in nations with a Christian tradi-
tion, and more slowly, but broadly, among peoples who have in-
herited other traditions or cultures. Since women are becoming
even more conscious of their human dignity, they will not tolerate
be*>.g treated as inanimate objects or mere instruments, but claim,
both in domestic and in public life, the rights and duties that befit a
human person.” (#41)
To the Editor
More recently Pope John Paul II has shown a sensitivity to the
role of women in his method of listening to the Bishops and asking
their assistance as was shown in the South Texas Catholic’s recent
coverage of the ad limina visits and of his request of American
bishops to visit with women religious. This past January, Pope
John Paul promulgated the new Code of Canon Law, which
“deletes the reference to women having the same status as children
and imbeciles—a status bestowed as a measure of protection but
seen now as an assertion of inferiority.” (Caller-Times, 10/16/83,
p. 12A)
Any issue which is taken so seriously by our Popes can scarcely
be put on ajevel with NOW-ERA rhetoric. Mrs. Curran’s article
represents an attempt to reflect responsibly on the Church’s
legislation in a controversial area. Our struggle to understand
what God wants for us as women and men touches us at a deep
le\ z\ where our reflections are vulnerable to misunderstanding.
We cannot afford to trivialize such reflections but rather must let
them challenge our own, rooted in prayer and our love for the
Church.
Sincerely,
Sister Maureen Abbott, SP
The Human Side
Daffy priests and nuns
By Father Eugene Hemrick
NC News Service
Could the image of the daffy priests and nuns
portrayed on television and in the movies be a
reason we have fewer religious vocations today?
After the Bing Crosby, Pat O’Brien and
Spencer Tracy era of priests, is there now a
backlash that discredits the religious vocation?
These questions were raised in a conversation
I had with a vocation director who has been stu-
dying the image of priests and nuns in recent
films. “Most movies,” he told me, “degrade
religious and make priests and nuns look
ridiculous.”
It was his feeling that vocation directors are
finding it difficult to attract young people to the
religious life because of the poor representation
vocations are getting from the film industry.
Think about the advertisements in which
priests and nuns are portrayed as witless idiots
dressed in full clerical garb promoting some new
product. 1 think most of us would agree that
religious vocations are not aided by these depic-
tions.
And yet, how often does something similar
happen with the way other occupations are por-
trayed in films and on television?
How many times do the police look ridiculous
in a car chase with a James Bond type outwitting
them? How many movies have we sat through in
which military generals came off as egotisitcal
lamebrains incapable of leading a Boy Scout
troop, let alone an army?
The medical and legal professions frequently
are represented by fun-loving characters who use
their career more for their own personal fun than
service. Nor do parents fare well. Most often
they never seem to be with it.
One has to wonder why the world of entertain-
ment thinks idiots are entertaining. No doubt
there is some deep psychological reason. Can it
perhaps be justified as an effective way of
countering the increasing tensions of our times?
Would the church attract more vocations if
priests once again were portrayed as crooners, or
tough, forward-speaking men capable of winning
over the roughest kid on the block?
1 think not. The times have changed and so
has the need for new images of the religious life.
Perhaps the best way to attract vocations is to
show our youth a documentary on some of our
unsung heroes in the religious life. How about a
walk through a hospital filming sisters in the role
of nurse, counselor and chaplain ministering to
the terminally ill, comforting the bereaved and
whispering words of encouragement to the sick
The documentary might focus on the hap-
piness a religious brother, sister or priest ex-
periences in teaching religion; or that a priest
receives in delivering a homily or hearing confes-
sions; or that a sister gets when she counsels a
person in need.
I he possibility oi so many beautiful scenarios
leads me to doubt whether it is adverse images of
religious life that is hindering religious vocations.
Could it rather be that priests, sisters and
religious brothers are.not defining their rdles well
enough?
(Copyright (c) 1983 by NC News Service)
Father Eugene Hemrick is director of
research for the National Conference of
Catholic Bishops.
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Feist, Joe Michael. South Texas Catholic (Corpus Christi, Tex.), Vol. 19, No. 18, Ed. 1 Friday, October 28, 1983, newspaper, October 28, 1983; Corpus Christi, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth840331/m1/5/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .