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BY PRISCILLA GREEAR
Staff Writer
MARIETTA--At the 43rd annual AACCW convention, keynote speaker Genevieve
Kineke called all women of the archdiocese to embrace their femininity and
spirit of love, for which the world is yearning, by reflecting the sacramental
life of the church.
“You are born woman. You’re called to bring love to the world --
to take us across the threshold to the new millennium,” said Kineke,
founder and editor of Canticle, the Catholic women’s magazine.
“We are ambassadors of love to the world just as the church is the
ambassador to her spouse, Christ.”
The annual Catholic women’s convention with the theme “We Are
Called to Jubilee, Do as He Asks” was held Sept. 24-26 at the Northwest
Atlanta Hilton and sponsored by the Northwest Deanery. The convention attracted
approximately 150 women from across the archdiocese, including three junior
councils. Father Paul Berny, pastor of St. Joseph’s Church, Marietta, is
the spiritual moderator.
Using the title of “holy mother” for the church, Kineke pointed
out at a luncheon Sept. 25 that the sacraments of the church serve as a
paradigm for women. Baptism, she said, reflects the call of women to be
hospitable and welcoming.
“The sacrament of baptism welcomes. And what women should always be is
a sign of hospitality, which is what the church does. The doors are open. Every
soul is welcome. And your home should be welcoming,” she said. “In
your office do people know they can pass by your desk and get a smile -- just a
smile, just a recognition on a human level of a person? … You use your
means, you use your station in life to be open to the human person that God
puts in front of you and that’s how we mirror the sacrament of
baptism.”
Kineke urged women to confirm others, including children, by building them
up through encouragement. She added that they should forgive those who
don’t confirm them and should associate with affirming women around them.
“Look at the power of our words. We have the power to build up and we
have the power to absolutely destroy people,” she said. “If we live
the sacrament of confirmation, we build up. That doesn’t mean lie. We can
find something about every person to compliment.”
As the church brings reconciliation, healing is another call of women,
Kineke continued. By responding to those hurting around them, women need to be
the bridge of reconciliation from man to man and man to God. She told of a
healing woman who cared for her dying father by praying and being present with
him, gently preparing him for eternal life.
Kineke said all women, including the unmarried and those without children,
are called to motherhood, honoring their dignity and chastity. Referring to the
letter “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women” by Pope John Paul II,
she said that God’s love first comes from the Holy Spirit to women who are
called, not to become doormats, but to bring it to the world.
“There’s that concern for the human person that we all have to
have -- every person who crosses (our) path,” she said. “The world is
thirsting for femininity … The world is desperate for love.”
Morning workshops offered insight and practical advice on how women can live
their vocations. In a session on “Our Community at Work,” Sharon
Stanton, RN, director of Congregational Health Ministries of St. Joseph’s
Hospital, referred to the biblical story of the Samaritan woman at the well.
She reminded women that they, too, must gather at the well to draw
Christ’s water of life to strengthen them for their journeys.
“The well must become the center of our life.”
As women gathered at the well to share their stories and confess their
brokenness, today’s women must also share their faith stories with each
other and their families as they live the Gospel, she said. Stanton said
it’s important for parents to really listen to their children to
understand them and teach them the faith. She added that younger women could
learn a lot from older ones.
“I ask you how you can gather with others to tell your stories -- and
start with your family first. It does go back to who you are as women of faith.
You’ve got to teach the faith. They (children) can’t just get it in
CCD class or in school.”
Sharing the same workshop, Myles McCabe, director of Catholic Social
Services’ Community Connections, said that the Jubilee Year 2000 is a time
of reconciliation. Jubilee is a time “to become reconciled with our
brothers and sisters -- not just going to the sacrament of reconciliation,
(but) to be really reconciled with one another.”
Violence comes in forms other than bloodshed, he pointed out. One form of
violence, he said, comes in the absence of the right kind of relationships,
through things like underpaid workers and corporate job relocations, which hurt
families, and through poor television programming.
He called attendees to create “circles of peace, circles of
jubilee” through things like jubilee workshops, the Institute for Peace
and Justice’s family pledge of nonviolence and by looking at the various
jubilee justice websites. His department’s newsletter suggests ways to
incorporate social justice teachings into educational programs and into the
RENEW 2000 program.
The third co-presenter, Amy Antoniades, volunteer coordinator for CSS’s
Multicultural Services, described how archdiocesan women can help refugees and
immigrants adapt to Georgia. She explained that, while immigrants come for a
variety of reasons, refugees have fled their homeland because of fear of
persecution based on religion, political belief or war. CSS resettles
approximately 900 refugees yearly.
Individuals and groups can help newcomers with things like paying for
housing and utilities, picking up families at the airport, paying for medical
screenings, and attending school registration with the youth who may not have
been to school in years. Volunteers can also help by teaching English or
grocery shopping, making welcome packets of needed goods or serving as a family
friend. She thanked AACCW members from 15 parishes who made over 200 welcome
packets this year.
Parishes can offer the friendship which CSS staff may not have time to
develop, she said. “What helps refugees the most they always say really
(is) making friends. Children say having friends is just pivotal. These
children need friends.”
Antoniades said five churches recently have committed to sponsoring refugee
families, where they become responsible for a set time for all aspects of a
family’s resettlement.
“Those families are going to come here and have the whole church
community involved. It’s been a wonderful experience. They’ll have a
lot more friends” and people working to help them. “We just
can’t do this on our own. We need help from the community.”
Antoniades added that volunteers should bring an interpreter when first
visiting families, but that eventually they will learn to communicate without
knowing a common language through things like acting and exaggeration. Stanton
added that foreign culture is a much greater barrier than language and that
persons must have an openness to experiencing different ways of living.
In a separate workshop on reaching goals within one’s organization,
Dona Anderson, AACCW parliamentarian for five years, shared advice on effective
leadership for women’s guild leaders and for other settings, including
motherhood.
“We’re all leaders in different ways, in different areas in our
lives and they’re all important,” she said. Anderson said leaders
should be enthusiastic, flexible and gather all needed tools to perform well,
such as an organization’s publication or “Robert’s Rules of
Order.” Women leaders should fully understand their positions and
responsibilities, be familiar with organization by-laws, communicate with
fellow workers and express appreciation to others often.
Newly elected women’s guild presidents, she added, should delegate
authority and soon meet with committee chairpersons to begin organizing and
planning strategy together, giving them a voice in forming the agenda.
She noted that often people don’t feel qualified to begin certain
tasks, but that “God doesn’t pick qualified people. He qualifies the
people he picks.”
Mary Lang, a parishioner at St. Ann’s Church, Marietta, is a leader
with a RENEW faith-sharing group in which she has participated for about 10
years and where she has drawn strength through community. “I think
it’s a wonderful experience … It’s a great means to grow in your
faith and to get a different perspective from what you are thinking or
believing. When you get other people’s views I think, in that sense, it is
very beneficial.”
Norma Matthews, a parishioner at Holy Cross Church, Atlanta, said she wants
to know those of other cultures in her parish. She considered how her parish
women’s guild could take action to bridge the gap among the parish’s
Hispanic, Vietnamese and Anglo communities.
Matthews was inspired by Kineke’s message that women have the first
responsibility to bring love to the world and by the convention’s message,
“Do what he tells you.” She liked “how (Kineke) told us how we
need to take back our family and bring love to the world … It tells me
that I have to do more work than just my own family since we have been sent by
God to bring the love to the world. We have to share it a lot more because of
the things that are going wrong in the world.”
Incoming president Jo Ann Rieger said that in the Jubilee Year 2000 the
AACCW will focus even more on educating “all Catholic women in
spirituality, leadership and service.” She hopes participation in service
projects will increase, particularly participation in the CSS refugee project,
which is an ideal way to serve God with the large influx of refugees to the
area.
Rieger hopes that the conference also unifies those in the archdiocesan
council of Catholic women. “I’m hoping that (participants) took away
that camaraderie and that (knowledge) that we are all one and that we are
striving for the same goals as Catholic women.”
In addition to Rieger, of St. Andrew’s Church, Roswell, the new
officers of the AACCW are: Betty Pothier of Sts. Peter and Paul Church,
Decatur, executive vice president; Bessie Moore of St. Paul of the Cross
Church, Atlanta, first vice president; Ann Marie Mullen of Sts. Peter and Paul
Church, second vice president; Celeste Ganey of Christ Our Hope Church,
Lithonia, third vice president; Nina Payne of Sts. Peter and Paul Church,
recording secretary; Bertha Rucker of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception,
Atlanta, treasurer; and Dona Anderson, of All Saints Church, Dunwoody,
parliamentarian.
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