4
Editorial
The Message-- for Catholics of Southwestern Indiana
March 4, 1988
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Some events you try to remember. Some you
try to forget. Some events poke their way into your
consciousness just when you least expect them.
Just such an incident from several years ago pop-
ped into my memory a few days ago.
Our small garden, at our former home, could
accurately be described as less than successful. A
private hedge bordered the east end of the garden;
it was the hedge which marked the boundary line '
between our yard and the neighbor's.
Shade from that hedge, a neighboring maple
tree and a large lilac bush made garden growth dif-
ficult; the morning sunlight could not reach our
plants. Not far away was our garage, blocking the
sun from the west; darkness reached our garden
before night time. Only the noonday sun reached
our plants, some times with enough light to help
them grow, some times with enough heat to help
them die.
The garden we made was built up Of dirt,
walled between railroad ties. Earlier owners of our,
house had used the space not for planting but for
parking. We had raked and scraped the gravel
before starting our garden, but there was much we
missed. Beneath the gravel was hard packed clay.
The dirt we added was mostly clay, hard as a
Tock when dry, sticky and choking when wet.
Little by little each year, we improved the
garden with a little topsoil or peat moss. It was
never a success, but occasionally an early row of
lettuce prospered, a tomato fared well, a bell pep-
per plant produced salad ingredients.
It was a small garden but it required a lot of
effort. It added a little taste to our meals and some
beauty to our yard.
i
The incident that popped into my mind hap-
pened one year when the neighbors in the rented
house on the other side of the hedge did not have
a garden. Their yard was small, with a gravel
driveway creeping into what could have been
lawn. It was a place for a party one night, a hot
summer evening party which continued into the
night.
"Continued" is not the best choice of words
for the party. "Escalated" would be better. There
was a disagreement of some sort between two of
the men at the party. The disagreement grew into
an argument. The argument grew into a fight
If the party noise had been unpleasant, the
noise of the fight was frightening. It was a fight of
words and insults at first, of name-calling and
threatened violence. It moved relentlessly into a
kind of a circling dance, as each man sought an
advantage, a distraction, an opportunity to push
forward and quickly retreat.
Quickly what smouldered between the two
broke out into open flame -- a fist fight of
dramatic and drunken proportions.
The two men crashed heavily through the
separating hedge into our garden; they fought their
way back to the other side before the fight finally
finished.
Daylight brought a chance to examine the
garden, the broken hedge, the trampled tomatoes,
the twisted plants. The fight was over, the new
neighbors soon moved away, but the garden did
not recover that year.
Pope John Paul II is telling the same story this
year, in his encyclical, "On Social Concerns," the
pope condemns the foreign policies of both East
and West. He says the two power blocs are fighting
in the third world garden, where it is already hard
enough to grow food. Tall shadows are cast by East
and West, in lands where soil is poor. The pope
says East and West have used the Third World as a
political battleground for bringing more nations in-
to their areas of influence. "A world which is
divided into blocs," he says, "can only be a world
subject to structures of sin."
The pope says the ideological and political
battle not only causes damage to the garden; it
causes damage within those who are battling. He
condemns the "crass materialism" in the West
which makes people "slaves of possessions."He
criticizes the one-party system of the East and the
suppression of the "right of economic initiative."
He condemns equally "consumer materialism and
theoretical athiesm.
The pope says it is the duty of the church to
scrutinize the signs of the times and to interpret
them in the light of the Gospel. The pope insists
that the most serious duty of the more developed
nations is to help the developing countries, but he
maintains that "development which is merely
economic is incapable of setting man free; on the
contrary it will end by enslaving him further."
It is our duty to read and study this encyclical,
and other social encyclicals. The pope describes
our times as "the eve of the third Christian millen-
nium," an age "characterized by a widespread ex-
pectancy, rather like a new 'advent' which tO some
extent touches everyone."
It is almost spring, and time to notice the im-
pact of our battles on the neighbor's garden.
Washington Letter
The powerful and powerless in Washington, D.C.
By LAURIEHANSEN adults studying English in
NC News Service special classes, and at least
43,000 Hispanic and Asian
WASHINGTON (NC} -- children enrolled in local
Across the street from the White schools.
House, three men huddle overa The greatest numbers of
steam grate to keep warm on a newcomers came from Laos,
cold Februaryafternoon. Cambodia and Vietnam after
Down the block, an elderly the end of the U.S. presence in
Korean street vendor quietly Southeast Asia in the mid
packs away brightly colored 1970s; from Ethiopia after
woolen hats and mittens before Marxists took power from
closing up shop. Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974;
Oblivious to the rest, two and from E1 Salvador as h result
Salvadoran children skip past of the bloody strife which
chattering in Spanish as they escalated inthe 1980s.
slowly make their way home
from school.
While the nation's capital
may be thought of most often as
the place where the rich and
politically powerful con-
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gregate, the reality is that the
Washington metropolitan area
has become home to an
economically and ethnically
diverse population.
"Living and working in the
city that most would agree is
the capital of the free world are
some of the poorest, most out-
cast and powerless people,"
said Washington Auxiliary
Bishop Eugene A. Marine in a
Feb. 25 interview.
While Washington is 65 per-
cent black, has elected a black
mayor and a predominantly
black city council, "the white
minority has control of the
pursestrings, control of con-
struction, of borrowing and
lending, of jobs and unions,"
commented Bishop Marine,
one of the nation's 12 black
bishops.
In addition to the large U.S.
black population, the D.C.
metropolitan area is home to
the nation's third-largest con-
centration of Central American
immigrants, fourth-largest
group of Koreans and largest
group of Ethiopians outside of
Africa.
In addition, the Afghan
population is growing. Its
presence became especially ap-
parent during the U.S.-Soviet
summit in December when
Afghan residents marched
down Pennsylvania Avenue to
show Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev their opposition to
Soviet involvement in their
homeland.
The area has an estimated 85
Ethiopian-owned businesses,
21,000 Hispanic and Asian
LIKE OTHER U.S. urban
areas where poverty and
underemployment flourish, the
city where the president lives
and the nation's laws are made
is increasingly riddled with
drug-related crime.
Execution-style murders
committed Feb. 20 in North-
west Washington brought the
number of homicides in the
District this year to 49, twice
the number at the same time
last year.
Especially hard hit have been
the D.C. area's black
neighborhoods where often
both killers and victims caught
up in local drug wars are under
18 years of age. PCP and crack
consistently claim lives in the
same town whore the Drug En-
forcement Administration has
its headquarters.
As a church leader working
in the shadow of the U.S.
Capitol, Bishop Marine said he
feels a responsibility to both the
powerful and powerless.
I
I
To the poor, he said in the in-
terview, the church must
preach the Gospel message, and
provide material assistance, ad-
vocacy and education.
"But we must also call upon
the powerful -- those who con-
trol the institutions of our socie-
ty, who speak with the authori-
ty of the masses because of their
elected offices -- to recognize
their responsibilities to the
poor. They must be reminded
that the value of a civilization is
measured by the way it deals
with its powerless," Bishop
Marine said.
Addressing the Senate'
Agriculture Commitee in 1981
on the importance of continu-
ing the food stamp program,
Bishop Marine reminded the
senators of the "many human
beings within earshot of these
hallowed halls who do not
receive a nutritionally adequate
diet and who go to bed with the
pains and tears of hunger."
In the interview, he said liv-
ing and working in a city
fraught with poverty does not
always have the impact it
should on legislators and top
administration officials.
"People can live very close to.
poverty and violence, but block
them out because they are too
disturbing,", said Bishop
Marine.
He said he regularly sees
homeless people in the city's
alleys "because of where I
drive, walk and park ... but I'm
sure there are people who com-
mute to Capitol Hill from the
suburbs each day that don't see
them."
Robert T. Hennemeyer,
former ambassador to Gambia
who now works in the USCC's
Office of International Justice
and Peace as a specialist on
Europe and the Far East, said he
always carries a pocketful of ":
quarters because of frequent en-
counters in downtown D.C.-
with homeless people asking
for change.
A native of Chicago's ethnic
neighborhoods, Hennemeyer
said he is pleased to find his
once all-white suburban
Bethesda, Md., community
now has "a strong Spanish
flavor, and there are blacks and
Orientals moving in."
Most outsiders think of,
Washington as "parades going
by, flags flying and limousines
pulling up at the White
House," said Sister Mary Oliver
Hudon, a School Sister of Notre
Dame who is project director of
the Tri-Conference Retirement
Project and works at the USCC.
On the contrary, she said in a
Feb. 25 interview, "you can't
walk by "the White House
without being confronted by,
the homeless and the poor.
"It's a real moral cry," said
Sister Hudon, who lives in a.
-all-black neighborhood in "
Washington's Anacostia, just
around the corner from whore
the victim of 1988's murder
number 45 was found.
"The poor am crying for
justice at the seat of justice,"
she said.
