Can we really believe that in the United States of 1968, in a culture so heavily affluent these things could happen?

1. To provide money for war and a space program, and a thousand other expenditures, federal funds for needy children have been cut back so drastically that an untold number of Georgia children -- the illegitimate children of criminals and deserted homes will go hungry.

2. Chief victims, as usual, will be Negro boys and girls.

3. Congress apparently decided it was better politics and economics to let them go hungry than to cut back the more gaudy items. On the budget of the 7.7 million Americans on welfare roles, the aged, the blind, the disabled and the needy, all but the needy survived the cut.

The children can’t vote or make protests. They just continue to be unnourished and uncared for. (The fact that they become the nameless, desperate under classes of 1972, 1973, so on, seems to escape many of the legislative minds.) Where do they suppose the criminals and hangers-on of the next generation come from?

Not all of our top men see it this way. John W. Gardner, who quit in protest as secretary of the Health, Education and Welfare, said recently:

“I do not believe that children should have to pay for the shortcomings and inequities of the society into which they were born. I do not believe that children should have to pay for real or supposed sins of their parents.”

How can any Christian think otherwise?

Our own State Welfare Director, William H. Burson, angry at the heartless freeze, and the refusal to permit a waiting list vowed he would take the freeze to the United States Supreme Court.

But the opposition was more loud-mouthed. When a group of “welfare mothers” protested the restrictions to Congress, Sen. Russell B. Long, Southern lawmaker, snapped angrily:

“If they can find time to march in the streets, picket and sit all day in committee hearing rooms, they can find time to do some work.”

Does the Senator believe Christ’s words and actions to the poor, the needy, the sinner? Or is he more enamored with the Horatio Alger legend so deep in American lore -- that poverty is synonymous with laziness...the poor are shiftless and unwilling to work.

And guess who suffers the most? Not the white child but the Negro.

Every civilized industrialized nation in the world, especially England, Canada, Sweden, and Belgium, has long records of cash payment to families with children. Only the United States, richest of all, lets them founder by themselves.

The Catholic community must rouse itself to stop these abuses. If unmoved by charity, at least justice should motivate American Christians and Jews.

Exceptional Children?

Have you watched the kids at recess in a school playground lately? Next time you do, look at the fresh faces, the legs that never walk, always run, the little girls exchanging terribly important secrets, the boys heaving a basketball or anything else around, the steady excited scream.

It adds up to a finer picture of the new world than the daily headlines, the silly TV shows, and the bored faces of adults. And the adults of tomorrow are the teen-agers of today, and they in turn are the schoolyard children of today.

All of them? Not quite.

There are thousands of known, and 100,000’s of unknown boys and girls in Georgia who won’t make it. They are called “exceptional” to set them apart from the ugly word “retarded.” But they include dozens of types: emotionally disturbed, trainable, etc.

They will never be able to meet the better problems of today’s society. Something of their innocence is reflected in their dear smiles which savor more of heaven than earth. But what their parents, brothers and sisters suffer!

Because of decades of neglect, a little Georgia girl is being educated in a New Jersey school. She is blind and cannot walk. It costs her parents $12,000 a year because there is no school for her in our state. How many can afford that?

Senator Bobby Rowan, who is emerging as one of our most socially conscious legislators, is leading the fight for funds for the improvement of our day-care centers and the completion of the new children’s home in Atlanta. He speaks right to the point.

“Too long our exceptional children have been mistreated and neglected. This education should have first priority over everything the state does. Stop paving roads; stop raising legislative salaries, and get to the business of educating the exceptional children.”

Our new program to be launched this fall ties in with this imperative. Under Sister Venard, R.S.M., Father James Scherer and Father Richard Kieran, with the help of Our Lady’s Association, we will be ready to take care of hundreds of children, regardless of race. Be generous to this cause; and write your legislator to back the bill. Because of a budget battle, aid has been approved but not financed.

Dependent Children?

Other boys and girls come from families broken by death, desertion and divorce. They have their mental skills, but large holes have been cut out of their lives.

What is behind them? Sadness, a feeling of homelessness, sometimes even brutality and total inability of the remaining parent. For most it’s been a bleak, empty existence.

And ahead? The jarring problem of a world that even for the best of us is hard to take. They feel disjointed and unequipped for jobs, a social life, eventually marriage and a home. Many never really had a home of their own.

The highest form of Christian charity known to man is taking place out on Butner Road, near Ben Hill, in our archdiocese. The Village of St. Joseph, built entirely through the sacrifice of our Catholic people and other friends, is the most exciting place in town.

The principle is to supply what the kids lack most -- stability, love, understanding. The Sisters of St. Joseph and the chaplain, Father Scherer, give these gifts unstintingly. Back of them stands a board of Atlanta’s top citizens, headed by Rawson Haverty, imaginative, skilled and above all, generous men and women. Then there are the appreciated students and trainees in social work, psychology, medical and dental. They serve on a volunteer basis.

The whole thing, which was planned in 1963, is a work of love. The proof is in the faces of the children, and especially the little fellow who is “lector” in the chapel. He uses the cut-down pulpit: he’s four feet tall.

Visit them; meet Sisters and house parents. And you can help in many ways -- funds, bequests, special gifts and so on.

Upon whom are these children dependent?

On all of us.

Paul J. Hallinan

Archbishop of Atlanta