The Catholic News & Herald 1
October 20, 2000
O c t o b e r 2 0 , 2000 Volume 10 t Number 7
Inside Pickle debate
Gathering in Raleigh explores Union issues
...Page 5
Faithful Citizenship:
Civic Responsibility for a New Millennium
...Pages 7-10
Local News St. Benedict Church dedicates parish center ...Page 3
Former justice and peace director takes concerns to national level ...Page 4
Every Week Readings ...Page 11
Editorials & Columns ...Pages 12-13 “In the Catholic tradition, responsible citizenship is a virtue; participation in the political process is a moral obligation.” — from “Faithful Citizenship: Civic Responsibility for a New Millennium”
S e r v i n g C a t h o l i c s in Western North Carolina in the Diocese of Charlotte
‘You are proof that marriage works’
Bishop celebrates Mass for jubilee
By JIMMY ROSTAR Associate Editor CHARLOTTE — Be loving, honest and holy in the vocation of marriage, and God will deny no grace to have a happy life together, Bishop William G. Curlin told a group of silver and golden wedding jubilarians during a weekend the Catholic Church celebrated as the Jubilee for Families. “We come to celebrate your love, your devotion, your dedication to each other all these many years,” Bishop Curlin told some 200 couples at the diocese’s annual Mass honoring couples who are celebrating their 25th and 50th wedding anniversaries. “We ask God to bless you for all that you have witnessed in your life, and to bless you for all the years yet to come in his love.” Bishop Curlin presided at the Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Charlotte on Oct. 15, day two of the Catholic Church’s celebration of family life in the Jubilee Year. The bishop commended the couples for the sacrifice, understanding and sensitivity they have brought to each other in their years together. “You have something to tell our world about,” he said. “You are proof that marriage works. You are proof that marriage is something beautiful, that it is something sacred in God’s eyes.” For JoAnn Last of McLeansville, who celebrates 25 years of married life with husband Raymond this year, that encouragement meant a lot. “That really hit me,” she said of the bishop’s
See ANNIVERSARY, page 15
Photo by Jimmy Rostar
25th and 50th Anniversary Mass Some 200 couples celebrated their silver and golden anniversaries at a special Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas Church Oct. 15. The annual Mass is sponsored by the diocese’s Family Life program.
Pope defends family, human life at Jubilee By Benedicta Cipolla Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY (CNS) — With the sound of rain pattering behind him and thousands of umbrellas shielding mothers, fathers and infants before him, Pope John Paul II urged families to place children first and respect the traditional family. More than 150,000 people thronged St. Peter’s Square despite heavy rain Oct. 15 for an outdoor Mass marking the culmination of the Jubilee for Families. An encounter with the pope the
previous afternoon gathered some 250,000 pilgrims under drier skies. Rain or shine, the theme was the same: Surrounded by the “winter” of societal attacks on the institution of the family, children mark a “springtime” of hope. “They represent the flowering of conjugal love,” said the pope, stressing children’s “message of life” and, with their newborn neediness and dependence on their parents, an “appeal to solidarity.” Deploring a growing modern attitude that views children “more as a threat than a gift,” he said children
were not merely an “accessory in the project of a conjugal life.” “They are not optional,” he said, “but a very precious gift, inscribed in the structure itself of conjugal union.” Calling on the faithful to “reverse this trend” of regarding children as a burden, the pope called the contemporary situation of children a “challenge to all of society.” He criticized the widespread acceptance of divorce, saying many chil-
See FAMILY, page 15