By Rita McInerney

The Southeast Center for Justice, a non-profit group in operation since Sept. 1, 1986, was "a prayer presence in the midst of social strife," on Saturday, Jan 24 as an estimated 20,000 people marched to protest racism in Forsyth County.

The large white banner with Action -- Reflection -- Spiritual Renewal proclaiming the center's purpose, became an umbrella for people responding to a deep need to be present to protest in the county that has excluded black people since 1912. It was a dramatic debut on an eventful day, a day of bright sunshine clouded by bitter, ingrained hatred, a day when love made a strong reply to racism.

"This friendly community" for people who needed to respond to injustice marched in Forsyth because "there are a number of people beginning to know our ministry, who called us asking 'How can we respond as individuals?'" said Father Gerry Conroy, Glenmary priest who is acting director of the non-profit group.

Working with him is a core committee which includes Sister Marie Sullivan, OP, president; Sister Kathy Tomlin, CSJ, vice president; Mrs. Dolores Maschinot, a member of Sts. Peter and Paul parish in Decatur, treasurer; Craig Massey, an Episcopal laymen, and Kathy McNulty, a member of St. Joseph's in Marietta.

Eventually, around this core committee, responsibility for the day-to-day operation, Father Conroy said, there will be a broader committee of people, religious and laity, who have expertise in the justice ministry in the Southeast and nationally.

Catholics from parishes in the Atlanta metropolitan area and the north Georgia mountains, Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, all walked behind the broad white banner in the long ribbon of marchers. They were surrounded by others from peace and justice groups, some of whom were there because of the center's organizing efforts.

All, Father Conroy said, brought "a loving presence to a hate-filled environment." They participated, he said, "feeling comfortable there were friends they could march with." They needed this company to counteract the naked bigotry that twisted the faces of young and middle-aged men and women screaming and shouting at them from the hillside.

This "moment of honesty in Forsyth County really said what they feel in a way that we can no longer pretend that it's not there," Father Conroy said. "We're offering services of the center to respond to the needs of the local community, by way of The Place and through Father Walter Donovan (pastor of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Cumming). We are committed to making it a priority to respond to requests they might make of us."

"This is not a flash in the pan," the priest continued. "Being there represents a commitment to the suffering that came to the surface. We are both ready and able to respond."

The center is just being born, he said, and as it develops there will be many opportunities for lay participation. The central thing, he added, is that the center wants to be available, to respond to people who are asking the question "How do we work for structural change?" and provide the opportunity for response that most parishes are unable to supply.

The fledgling justice center works out of a plain office at 465 Boulevard, NE, a neighbor to the Christian Council of Metropolitan Atlanta. Incorporated as a regional organization, it functions with the permission of the five bishops of the Atlanta Province headed by Archbishop Thomas Donnellan. Other dioceses in the province are Charlotte and Raleigh, NC, Charleston, SC, and Savannah, GA.

Initial funding came from 16 Religious congregations from all over the country who have members working in the region. Some have committed to three-year pledges, others have made a one-time contribution, ranging from $10,000 by the Glenmary Sisters to $25 from the Benedictine Sisters in St. Leo, FL.

Funding has come also from the Episcopal Charities Foundation in Atlanta. "We are hoping that other churches will also become involved," Father Conroy said. "The center is shaped by Catholic social teaching and committed to ecumenical collaboration in everything we do."

The ministry of justice the center instills has three components: relating to poor peoples' groups and supporting their efforts at organizing; developing lay leadership and promoting action/reflection groups committed to promoting social change on behalf of the poor, and networking or connecting the people in the first group with the people in the second group.

An ecumenical group from two church congregations, one Catholic, is in the process of formation at the present time, a journey of spiritual integration of faith and justice, Father Conroy said. "When we're working with such groups we let the pastors know." The work of the center, he added, complements work in the parishes. "We will nourish them, they will remain independent, but we will be available."

The focus is on the development of spirituality committed to helping empower the poor. "It's what Pope John Paul II is talking about. If the structures are to become more just, it is primarily to be through the work of lay people," Father Conroy said.

The center for justice was in the talking stage for several years, going back to a time when some priests serving on the priests' council, reported their parishioners were coming to them after reading the peace pastoral, encyclicals on labor, and hearing teachings on structural change. What should their next step be, the people were asking their priests. The priests felt there should be a resource, Father Conroy said.

"At the same time, other priests and sisters in pastoral ministry in other parts of the South were asking the same questions. That's how the center came to have a regional character," he said.

The Southeast Center for Justice is canonically sponsored by the Glenmary Missioners, who are committed to the pilot project for five years. "We're not experimenting, we're dealing with peoples' lives. Maybe at the end of five years, we won't have succeeded. On the other hand, we'll have demonstrated how we meet explicit needs in the dioceses," Father Conroy said with optimism.

"This funding is our hope, since it's the suffering of the poor in the Southeast that is the fundamental motive for bringing us together, as well as the Church's teaching on the preferential option for the poor."

"Our job as a Church is to find creative and constructive ways to empower the voice" of the suffering poor and vulnerable people in the South. "They are the ones who show us the face of God in the world today. This is the reflection of the bishops of Appalachia who said 'the cry of the poor is the voice of God in our midst' in their 1975 Pastoral 'This Land Is Home To Me.'"

Father Conroy cited as one example of poor people dealing with issues of local justice in the South today, a group in Holmes, MS, where the structure was intensively racist. "A small handful of people began to resist and because they were connected with a church organization today they are a thriving group promoting justice."

Father Conroy, a former pastor at St. Mark's Church in Clarkesville, was commissioned to start the Glenmary Justice Ministry almost 10 years ago because his order, dedicated to working in the rural South, saw the need to respond to the pope's requests to work with the poorest and most alienated. He moved to Atlanta to do this work from Shelbyville, TN, since many groups, ecumenical and otherwise, had regional and national offices here.

At present, the center is searching for two full-time staff members and the money to pay them. The co-directors, the priest said, need to be lay people and from a minority.

The vision of the center is very clear, he said. "Enthusiasm is generated every place we talk about it. We are just beginning to make it available and we're getting invitations from all over the region."

Core committee member and part-time staff person Kathy McNulty met the Glenmary priest and heard about the hopes for a center at a time when she was "looking for something that would use my own beliefs in social justice." She already knew Sister Kathy Tomlin who had spoken on the bishops' pastorals at the Cursillo leaders' school.

"I believe this is the work I'm being called to," Kathy McNulty said. Because of her work in adult education in the diocese and her strong involvement in the Cursillo she is aware "there are many people who need the direction the center can give in working toward a spirituality of social justice."

She marched Jan. 24 in Cumming "because of the issue of the deprivation of the black people in that county." During the march, she admitted, she had "never experienced such power of hatred -- collective -- as displayed that day."

Sister Marie Sullivan, director of Christian emergency shelters for the Christian Council, said because of her work which involves direct service to the poor, she is "very much interested in getting people to be their own advocates."

She was founder and director of a social service agency in Kansas City, MO, for eight years, and served in that city for 20 years, including the 1960s. She has experienced rioting outside the house where she lived and the march brought back a lot of memories for her.

Racism, she said, is the basis for a lot of injustice prevalent today, and she believes there is as much separation between whites and blacks as there was in the sixties.

But there are more issues today. Her work with the shelters had made her see the great number of teenagers with babies who are on the streets. All this, the problems of the poor and the homeless, tie in with the question of peace and justice. "If we could get more church people to see some of these things. Charity and justice are two sides of the same coin," she believes.

Sister Kathy Tomlin was another who saw the need to address the issues of peace and justice several years ago. In her job as associate for justice ministries at the Christian Council, she found an ecumenical dimension, which provides a group from every denomination that she can call upon. These were among people contacted when the center began organizing for the march a few days before it took place. Telephone calls were made and flyers distributed giving information on where to meet and how to get there.

She has been working at the council for four years basically doing peace and justice education, lately becoming more involved in public policy issues. For her "the most important thing is the networking of the whole human family, the poor and their advocates to come together and proceed as one people instead of a lot of different groups. A lot of Catholic social teaching is important, is significant, as far as direction."