features Battalion/Page 5B February 24, 1982 Religious violence raises questions across country United Press International With the recent deaths of reli gious clergy in west Texas and the general increase of violence against religious figures and churches nationwide, experts are wondering what is causing the brutality and how it can be stopped. “There is a lot of thought on this, everybody is asking, why are these people being mur dered, but who to follow, I don’t know,” said Father Joseph Tabone, vicar of the diocese of Amarillo. Recent violence against reli gious figures in west Texas has been chilling. Sister Tadea Benz, 76, was found dead in her room at an Amarillo convent late last Octo ber. She had been raped, strang led and beaten. An Amarillo teenager was charged with mur der in the case and is currently awaiting trial. The Rev. Patrick Ryan, 49, priest of a Denver City Catholic church, was missing for Christ mas Mass last December. Police found his nude body in an Odes sa motel room. He had been bound, gagged and beaten to death. Ryan’s replacement, Father Thomas Vazheparampil, told police he had been threatened by a telephone call in Lamesa, where he lived before moving to Denver City. After his arrival in Denver City, Vazheparampil re ceived threatening mail. In addition to those acts of violence, it is not unusual to have churches broken into for the purpose of robbery and vandal ism — not only in Texas, but around the country. Ministers attempting to protect church Beauty pageant bilks contestants icrosurgery giving patients helping hand g juiced k ppingjef Waterrai storage f« ■ picking; I Onions,»! en youdrt>; of all.ap ilied Biontii essly oven] g.'‘itexj 3WS, e season, l# ady nts and it is to {, smooth, United Press International simply ci* BALT l MORE ~ Factory oickvouro worker Jimmy Mims had given s torn ed U P hope for the index and long and ll» f" m g er °f his right hand. A meat ” W ocess i n g machine had just sliced them off. ■ “I thought that was the end of it ” Mims, reflecting on the trauma of six years ago. 1 But Mims benefittecl from re cent breakthroughs in the intri cate process of microsurgery. | Today, the truck driver en- Jys 75 percent use of both fin gers and has regained enough Hrength in his right hand to Handle tractortrailers. I Last September, 5-year-old Jonathan Angst got his left arm too close to a corn sillage blower l,|while tagging along with his father at their McVeytown, Pa., farm. Jonathan’s mother, Susan Angst, explained: “Our little boy 1 was watching to see what his dad ’was doing, and my husband didn’t realize he was around, ams I The next thing he knew ' Jonathan came around the side of the (corn-blower) and said: ‘Baddy, I lost my arm.’” | Two months later, following 16 hours of surgery and the pas sing of a series of infections, young Angst is working toward Recovering full use of his sewn- on arm. ram Mims and Angst were treated at the Raymond M. Curtis Hand Center in Baltimore’s Union Memorial Hospital — a place in the vanguard of the science of sewing appendages back into place. There are similar facilities in San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, Louisville and Durham, N.C. Dr. Raymond Curtis is the founder and head of the center, which has performed about 1,200 operations each year since 1975. Special emphasis is placed on restoring the “pinching grip” of a patient’s hand, Curtis said, even it means amputating a pa tient’s toe and replanting it on the hand. The theory is that a person can do without a toe, but not without a “thumb.” Curtis learned the technique of tying micro-sutures, drilling holes in bones and other ex acting tasks involved in the re planting process from Dr. Sterl ing Bunnell. It was Bunnell who established the Army’s hand centers during World War II. In Bunnell’s day, the chances of “replanting” a finger or hand were 10 percent. Today they are 75 percent, chiefly because of the work of Curtis and other doctors like him in the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Contemporary micro surgeons know enough to get rid of badly damaged tissue and bone before trying to put appen dages back on. They know the importance of “packing” se vered members in sterile gauze and then ice so they keep until they may be replanted. Those breakthroughs pro vide new hope for the thousands of Americans whose appen dages are cut off each year. Yet problems persist. Too often, for example, the veins and arteries are properly reattached and blood flows nor mally only to stop once it reaches the capillary network. United Press International HOUSTON — All the contes tants in the Miss Texas Princess Pageant lost. And the man who promised fame to the 11 potential beauties has been indicted for felony theft for taking $50 from each of the women, officials said Monday. Frank John Baptist Bagley, 28, of Corono Del Mar, Calif., was indicted by a grand jury Monday for receiving the pageant fees in January, but fail ing to stage the Feb. 7 contest as promised. According to the indictment, Bagley did not produce a photo graphic portfolio of each en trant in return for the $50 they paid him. Assistant District Attorney Harvey Hudson said 11 contes tants filed complaints, but many other young women were bilked in the deal. The woman had re sponded to Bagley’s newspaper advertisement for the statewide contest. The ads said the contest was sanctioned by the Miss America Princess Pageant, which turned out to be a one-man operation staffed by Bagley, the prosecu tor said. The responding females, who ranged in age from infancy to the early 20s, were put through photo sessions in January. Up to 75 females were photographed in one day in three different sets of clothing, officials said. But, Hudson said, the man left town before the pageant was to begin. Many of the entrants’ mothers have dealt with legiti mate pageants and did not be come suspicious until they real ized the contest would not be staged, Hudson said. property frequently are beaten up by the assailents. A Dallas psychiatrist says attackers of religious figures can be motivated by a host of psychological reasons, but peo ple who make unprovoked attacks generally feel helpless. “There are a lot of religious figures who are attacked be cause they dare to say things that people don’t want to hear ab out,” said Dr. Myron Weiner, professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas. “But we’re probably not talking about that motivation in these cases. “I think a person who would beat up a priest would not pick a fight in a bar. They’re not going to pick on someone who’s a big, burly cop. Generally a person who makes an unprovoked attack feels very helpless and is trying to assert that he or she is potent, that he or she can have some strong influence on some one or something. When you attack someone who doesn’t fight back, you feel very potent while taking a very minimal risk.” Weiner said the fact that these people are readily identifiable as religious figures makes them more vulnerable. And Father Tabone agrees. “Any people who become a kind of group or clan get atten tion, whether it’s positive di- negative,” Tabone said. “Any one who lumps himself in a group receives it.” There are several other possi ble psychological motivation? for attacks on clergymen, Wein er said. “Priests and nuns and other religious folks frequently sym bolize parents,” he said. “The common denominator here is a person who would want to strike out against a very harsh reli gious upbringing. It may not have been really harsh, it may have just been interpreted that way.” In addition, Weiner said attackers of clergymen may feel oppressed by their particular re ligion. “There could be people who feel their religion has crushed their individuality, their oppor tunity, their capacity for joy ih life,” he said. “And the people attack someone who symbolizes the religion,” he said. “I imagine this would happe^ in religions which emphasize a great deal of self-denial and selfw control, where there’s a lot of shoulds and musts and nots. Itj those circumstances the people might get pretty intense an