By Msgr. Noel C. Burtenshaw

1968. There was change in the air, in the Church and in Atlanta. The Vatican Council had ended. The bishops had returned to home dioceses with orders to roll up the sleeves of robes and get to work on renewal.

1968 was the women of North Georgia avidly anxious to comply. They, in their dynamic organization called the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women (ACCW), were ready to tackle renewal.

“The women of the Church had been doing great work,” says Agnes Driskell, long a leader in the movement. “They had been, and still are, the backbone of parish life. Altar and Rosary Societies were slick, working handmaids of the parish. In 1968, the Church told us, the women of the Church, to look deeper. In North Georgia, we did.”

Agnes gives most of the credit to Monsignor Michael Manning who, as chaplain to the women’s group, goaded them on to greater heights in the apostolate.

“Instead of simply thinking parish,” says Agnes, presently past-president of the group, “we began to think community and the need for government to hear our voice. We really got into things.”

In 1968, Sheila Mallon was President of the North Georgia women. Sheila was following in the footsteps of giant female workers of the past. The great Gladys Gunning of the Cathedral parish had once led. So had Murphy Faust, Elsie Dennon, Mary Chappel and Mary Lynberg. As these great women had accepted the challenge, so now would Sheila.

Economic Opportunity Atlanta, an organization highlighting the needs of the poor, was contacted. The women wanted to see those needs for themselves. The famous “tours” were initiated. Black and white low income areas invited the ladies to their homes, not as spectators, but as powerful allies ready to vocalize needs.

“It was a matter of working with them for justice,” says Agnes Driskell. “For us it was a new challenge.”

The ladies also organized Women In Community Service (WICS) helping young high school drop-out girls to find their way back to a lost educational opportunity which in many cases worked beautifully.

“Many other things opened to us,” says Agnes, “and we gladly did it. I remember the doctors over at CDC (Center for Disease Control) inviting us to come and speak with them about our work and the needs we saw in the community. It was most rewarding.”

The fine work of the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic women continues and grows each year. “We meet every year as a Council,” says Agnes, “and to be sure the participation has a broad base we take our meetings into the rural areas one year and into the city the next. No one is left out.”

Names of those who work for every aspect of Church service come to mind as Agnes Driskell talks about her favorite arm of Catholicism. “Naomi Horsey has always given a lead, as has Ruth Maguire, Mary Mayer and of course Mary Wells from St. Paul of the Cross parish. Kit Keasler from LaGrange has always been in the thick of things. So has Rochelle Jabeley from Griffin, Connie Smith from Carrollton, Karin Haag from Athens and many others.”

“In bringing our services to bear on the community,” says Agnes, “we are rewarded by getting that feeling of unity in the whole Church and we are a part of that action.”

As renewal was sweeping through the whole Catholic world in 1968, it was also revitalizing the women in the Catholic parishes in North Georgia. The Diocese of Atlanta, founded in 1956, was just 12 years old, growing, renewing and growing some more.