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50 years ago — Feb. 17, 1967
A Lenten editorial cartoon from the Feb. 17, 1967, Hawaii Catholic Herald issue.
25 years ago — Feb. 28, 1992
Father Damien’s example speaks to age of AIDS in new TV documentary
When Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen spoke in Hawaii at the Red Mass Jan. 16, he compared Hawaii’s past victims of Hansen’s disease, shunned and abandoned on Kalaupapa, with today’s victims of AIDS often shunned and abandoned in our society. …
A one-hour TV documentary film produced in Hawaii makes the connection again. Written and produced by former Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter Stephanie Castillo, “Simple Courage” uses Father Damien de Veuster as the model for a compassionate response to today’s cruel epidemic. …
“If Father Damien were alive today, I believe with all my heart that he would be in the middle of the AIDS situation,” says Honolulu actor Terrence Knapp in Castillo’s documentary that retells the story of Hawaii’s tragic leprosy epidemic in the late 1890s.
10 years ago — Feb. 23, 2007
Identity strong, commitment weak
Young adult Catholics have a strong Catholic identity but do not feel much of a commitment to the institutional church or its moral teachings, two sociologists said Feb. 6 in Washington.
The seemingly paradoxical assessment came from James A. Davidson of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., and Dean R. Hoge of The Catholic University of America in Washington at a Woodstock Forum on the campus of Georgetown University. …
“There’s a disconnect between them and the institutional church,” said Davidson. “And when they get older, they are not going to be like the Catholics of previous generations. They are going to be the Catholics they are now.” …
Young adult Catholics see the church as having “no credibility, no plausibility, no authority,” he added. “They practice their faith by caring for other people.”