Michael Gable, editor of NewsNotes from 1980 to 1988, recalls the best and worst of times working for the Maryknoll offices for Peace and Justice to commemorate fifty years of NewsNotes editions.
The following article was published in the January - February 2025 issue of NewsNotes.
It was in 1975 when a dozen of my fellow missioners and peasant labor leaders were violently killed in Olancho, Honduras some months after my return to the United States. Central America was about to blow apart and I badly needed to find an organization to support my calling to end the growing number of slaughters there. I sent my stories to Frank Marovich and Moises Sandoval at the Maryknoll Magazine and was eventually hired to write NewsNotes with Fr. Tom Marti for the Justice and Peace Office in the fall of 1980. Moving my wife Kathy and sons to Ossining was a major move for us that would forever mold and direct us. By 1989, we were accepted into the Maryknoll Lay Missioners to serve in Venezuela.
Looking back now to the early 1980s when I first started at the Justice and Peace Office at Maryknoll, NY, I notice those where indeed the best of times and the worst of times. Orbis Books was taking off, lay missioners were growing in numbers, and collaboration between the Sisters and Fathers and Brothers in the Justice and Peace offices was becoming urgent.
[Editor’s note: the separate Justice and Peace offices would later merge in 1997 to form what is now the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, a cooperative ministry of the Maryknoll family, based in New York and Washington, DC.]
Working also with Fathers Dan Driscoll, Ed Killacky, John Geitner, and Sisters Helene O’Sullivan and Molly Mertens were powerful, inspirational experiences for us all. Liberation giants of that time would walk our halls, i.e. Penny Lernoux, Marie Dennis, Betty Anne Donnelly, Fr. Miguel d’Escoto, Archbishop Dom Helder Camara, Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, Cesar Chavez, Br. Karl Gaspar of the Philippines, and many others.
They were also the worst of times. Archbishop Romero had just been killed in 1980. Brother Marty Shea returned with horrific accounts of Guatemalan villages being slaughtered. Violent crackdowns on South Korean and Filipino social justice leaders and their followers, the terrible crushing of Black South Africans with Nelson Mandela—were sometimes overwhelming. But the profound faith of these followers of Jesus was striking and uplifting. So there was no shortage of compelling issues and real heroes to be covered in NewsNotes. Among the first persons I interviewed for NewsNotes in August of 1980 was Jean Donavan, the lay missioner who was returning to El Salvador. When I ask if she would stay in the United States for her protection, she replied, “I want to remain in solidarity with the people, especially the children who I love there… and so I want to rejoin them.” That vibrant message was repeated by many others I interviewed as they passed through the Knoll in the 1980s. Over time, NewsNotes proved to be a valuable resource for many of our supporters and members of other social justice and peace organizations with whom we collaborated. And in that time frame, it felt like the world was watching us to determine how we would deal with the United States and other governments bent on crushing movements for the oppressed. Some of us believed that our offices’ phone were being tapped.
How did my work on NewsNotes and with the Justice and Peace Office inform what I did after? Having met so many inspiring missioners, it was natural for me, my wife Kathy, and our four sons to join the lay missioners and serve in Venezuela. Upon our return to our hometown of Cincinnati, I worked for a parish to involve parishioners in serving low-income areas. But eventually, Orbis Book author Dr. Paul Knitter invited me to teach theology at Xavier University and lecture in Nicaragua, Ghana, and India. He urged me to complete a doctorate in Missiology that would allow me as an adjunct to teach Liberation Theology, Social Justice, World Religions and Missiology for the past 30 years. Also for the past 25 years, my full time work has been serving as the Director of the Mission Office of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati to promote the Pontifical Mission Societies and lay missionary work. We now have about 40 parishes in twinning relationships in Central and South America, Caribbean, Africa, and rural Kentucky. We may soon build new relationships with parishes in El Paso.
What a Godly gift it was to write for NewsNotes for nine years. It would open amazing doors of compassion and life experiences for me and my family.
May God bless those who carry on the writing of NewsNotes and may it continue to inspire others to walk in the liberating footsteps of our Lord Jesus and go for another 50 years.
Image of the cover of the first issue of NewsNotes from 1976.