WASHINGTON—1998, a year tainted by a president, found hope in a Pope.
President Clinton's misconduct in office fueled debates at every level of public and moral discourse, polarizing the nation and bringing him to the doorstep of impeachment.
Life issues kept in the spotlight, as Congress struggled but failed to override presidential support of partial-birth abortion. While pro-life advocates worked diligently on a number of initiatives at the state and national levels, a major network saw fit to broadcast a videotape of an assisted suicide on prime-time television.
The author of the Gospel of Life, meanwhile, marked the 20th anniversary of his pontificate with a vigor that seems undimmed with time. Pope John Paul II continued his extraordinary pace of pastoral work, making a historic visit to Cuba in January. In October he published his 13th encyclical, Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason).
Yet, at year's end, the media spotlight was not on the accomplishments of the 78-year old pontiff, but on the impeachment process in Washington and the American air assaults on Iraq. Clinton said he ordered the assaults because Iraq refused to let U.N. inspectors determine whether it had destroyed its stocks of biological and chemical weapons. Skeptics, however, believed the timing of the raids was influenced by the imminent impeachment vote.
December's constitutional showdown arose out of a titillating soap opera involving the president and a White House intern that first surfaced in January. Father Richard John Neuhaus, editor in chief of First Things, said of the drama, “Perhaps the remarkable thing was the maddening gyrations of whether character matters.” In an interview with the Register, he likened it to whether “breathing of oxygen matters” to humans.
Pro-Life Efforts
Congress had little to show for its pro-life efforts in 1998. Once again, an effort to override Clinton's veto of a ban on partial-birth abortion failed. It pained and outraged many pro-lifers that 10 Catholic senators—nine Democrats and a Republican—supported this procedure which has been likened to infanticide.
Nevertheless, Helen AlvarÈ of the Office of Pro-Life Activities of the U.S. Catholic Conference, said, “It was a year in which education continued to move the ball on the pro-life effort. We were able to convince more and more members of the House and Senate.”
Father Neuhaus said he believes these efforts will eventually bear fruit: “The pro-abortion forces are on the defensive. That should be taken as encouragement.”
For now, victories are hard to find. Time and again, so-called moderate Senate Republicans helped to bottle up pro-life legislation approved by the House of Representatives. The Child Custody Protection Act, for example, passed the House by 126 votes but was killed by a procedural vote in the Senate.
The House, which had a 19-member Republican margin in the outgoing 105th Congress, also voted to curb federal testing and approval of the abortifacient drug RU-486. The effort died in the Senate. The House held a hearing on the Hyde-Oberstar bill, which would have halted physician-assisted suicide, but neither the full House nor Senate voted on it.
This hearing, which brought attention to the new Oregon law on assisted suicide, showed that end-of-life issues were surging to the forefront of public attention. The debate then grew as three events took place.
The most personal and agonizing for many was the so-called euthanasia death of 44-year-old Hugh Finn in Manassas, Virginia. Finn, badly injured in an automobile accident three years earlier, had a feeding tube removed by his wife while he was in a nursing home.
Finn's case attracted the attention of Virginia's governor as well as vocal advocates on both sides of the question. It prompted sharp dialogue on what means are medically and morally feasible to keep alive people in or near a persistent vegetative state.
Finn died after feeding was withheld, and groups such as Human Life International, the International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force, and Not Dead Yet were enraged.
At the time of Finn's death in early October, an intensified effort was under way in Michigan to defeat a ballot proposal to allow physician-assisted suicide. Acoalition of 32 groups, including the Michigan Catholic Conference, formed the organization Citizens for Compassionate Care.
Michigan is the home state of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a high-profile advocate of assisted suicide. The referendum was a serious effort to overturn a state law which would have prohibited his techniques. The coalition, with strong support from Adam Cardinal Maida of Detroit and other state bishops, helped to defeat the initiative by a 71%-29% vote.
Three weeks after the vote, on Nov. 22, Kevorkian appeared on CBS’ 60 Minutes. Here the suspended medical pathologist was shown giving a lethal injection to a 52-year-old man suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease. Kevorkian's ploy was designed in part to force the issue; he wanted to be charged with murder. And he got his wish.
Another key event in 1998 for life issues was the appointment of ethicist Peter Singer to a chair at Princeton University. Singer, an Australian, champions animal rights, defends abortion and infanticide, and questions the value of physically handicapped people. Singer's presence at Princeton, Father Neuhaus says, will sharpen the battle lines between the cultures of life and death.
Meanwhile, with the support of a coalition of Catholic and Christian activists, voters in Alaska and Hawaii approved ballot initiatives which prohibit so-called same-sex marriages and reinforce traditional marriage.
The Arts and Media
In another area, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and its president, William Donohue, helped to cripple the ABC series Nothing Sacred. More than 37 advertisers opted out of the show as the result of low ratings and pressure from the League and other opponents. Donohue said his was the “first Christian organization to effectively use a web site to accomplish a boycott.”
Also targeted was Corpus Christi, a play whose homosexual protagonist is portrayed as a Christ figure. Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists were among the 2,000 protesters who demonstrated against the play at its Oct. 13 opening night in New York. “An unmistakable message was sent to the theater community,” Donohue said. The play's scheduled run ended in November.
Papal events
Pope John Paul's Fides et Ratio was widely and swiftly hailed as a landmark document. Three months earlier, in July, the Holy Father issued the apostolic letter Dies Domini (The Day of the Lord), on keeping the Lord's day holy.
On March 16 the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews released We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah. Coming after 11 years of discussions and four years of active drafting, the document calls on Catholics to reject antiSemitism, reflect on the horrors of the Holocaust, and repent for not doing more to save Jewish victims.
Rabbi Mordecai Waxman, a prominent adviser on the document, had told the Register: “There has been a fundamental change in Catholic-Jewish relations. But this still has to siphon down in the Catholic and Jewish communities; it is a three-generational matter.”
That slow process might account for the Jewish criticism of the canonization of Blessed Edith Stein on Oct. 11. Some Jewish leaders complained the Vatican was insensitive to Jewish feelings by honoring a woman who converted from Judaism and became a Carmelite nun.
Not so, said Father Neuhaus: “In raising up Edith Stein, the Holy Father has done an exemplary thing, he has done what he should have. The Church has shown an admirable clarity in advancing and elaborating the spirit of Nostra Aetate,” a key 1965 document on relations with Jews.
He added, “A few parties in the world of organized Judaism—particularly the Anti-Defamation League—have tried to throw a wrench in Catholic and Jewish relations. They have failed.”
While also strengthening ties with other religious denominations, notably the Lutheran and Muslim faiths, the Pope continued to interact with U.S. Catholic bishops. He held 13 ad limina meetings with the American hierarchy and discussed a variety of issues with them; one was a restatement of his pro-life views to Western bishops in early October.
As the new millennium approaches, the Vatican continued to announce guidance for the celebration of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000. A papal bull, Incarnationis Mysterium, was announced Nov. 29, and it discusses pilgrimages, the holy door (which opens Dec. 24, 1999), and indulgences.
The Holy Father's most visible role in 1998 continued to be his pastoral travels. He has now visited 119 countries. The year's most significant trip was the several days he spent in Cuba. There he raised the banner of Catholicism and continued his longstanding rebuke of communism.
His January 1999 trip to the Western Hemisphere will include a visit to St. Louis.
The Church at Home
In the United States, bishops were involved in drafting documents with important influence on the direction of the Church. Perhaps the most significant was the adoption of Living the Gospel of Truth: A Challenge to American Catholics, a pro-life manifesto adopted at the bishops’ November meeting in Washington, D.C.
According to Helen AlvarÈ, who was involved in preparing it, “The work on this and the final debate marked a new clarity, a new strength, and a better voice on pro-life matters. It's a document we're really looking forward to implementing in the coming years.”
At that same meeting, Bishop Joseph Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston was elected president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the U.S. Catholic Conference. He replaced Bishop Anthony Pilla of Cleveland, who completed a three-year term.
Bishop Fiorenza was succeed as conference vice president by Bishop Wilton Gregory of Belleville, Ill., the first African-American to be elected to that post.
A few weeks later, the Holy Father named Colombian Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, a veteran diplomat, as the new pro-nuncio, or ambassador, to the United States. He succeeds Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan, who had served in the position since 1990 and will now head the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See.
Meanwhile, other Catholic organizations continued to sprout and grow. Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, editor of Ignatius Press, launched his Catholic Radio Network on Oct. 30. After some delay, radio stations were initiated in Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, Mo., Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia.
Estimating that the new network will reach 50 million people, Father Fessio has said, “This is a momentous opportunity to have an authentic Catholic voice in the major media.”
In May, Catholic Twin Circle became Catholic Faith & Family, a magazine assisting parents in forming true Catholic families. In June, the Catholic Press Association recognized that the National Catholic Register had become “a leading ‘newspaper of record,’” and gave it the top award for “general excellence.”
In December, “Register News Weekly,” a half-hour program of news and commentary, a service of the National Catholic Register, aired for the first time on EWTN shortwave radio.
Also growing was Human Life International, the world's largest pro-life organization, which opened another overseas office, this one in Rome. The Cardinal Newman Society, committed to reinvigorating Catholic higher education, held its annual conference at The Catholic University of America and continued to prosper.
The March for Life marked a milestone by observing its 25th march on Jan. 22, the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Perhaps as many as 200,000 pro-life advocates peacefully called attention to the idea that “the right to life is vested in each human being at fertilization.”
1999 will heighten attention on the new millennium. When the Holy Father issued the apostolic letter Tertio Millennnio Adveniente in 1994, he outlined preparations for the last three years of the millennium. After focusing on Christ in 1997, the faithful were called to center attention on the Holy Spirit in 1998, and finally on the Father in 1999.
In one passage especially appropriate for year's end, the letter says: “The approaching end of the second millennium demands of everyone an examination of conscience. Christians need to place themselves humbly before the Lord and examine themselves on the responsibility which they have for the evils of the day.”
Joseph Esposito writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Esposito ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Bishops Reaffirm: Priests Should Be Men in Black DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:SAN FRANCISCO—Clothes don't make the priest, but they can help him in his ministry.
So declared the U.S. bishops at their meeting last month in Washington, D.C. The bishops approved—in reality, reaffirmed—a dress code for priests by a 210-9 vote.
The decree stated: “A black suit and the Roman collar are the appropriate attire for priests, especially in the exercise of their ministry. The use of a cassock in church or at home is at the discretion of the cleric.” Rules for religious habits they left to the respective religious institute or society.
According to the 1983 Code of Canon Law, “Clerics are to wear suitable ecclesiastical garb in accord with the norms issued by the conference of bishops and in accord with legitimate local custom” (canon 284). Canon 288 qualifies this prescription with respect to permanent deacons, who are clerics but who are not obliged to wear clerical garb (see the Directory for the Ministry and Life of Permanent Deacons, no. 10). Deacons to be ordained to the priesthood, on the other hand, “are bound by the same norm as priests” (see the same Directory, no. 10).
The U.S. bishops’ decree helped them fulfill their canonical responsibility to establish norms for priestly dress. But it also applied the directives of the 1994 Directory for the Life and Ministry of Priests, issued by the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy, which states that priestly attire “must be different from the manner in which the laity dress, and conform to the dignity and sacredness of his ministry. The style and color should be established by the Episcopal Conference, always in agreement with the dispositions of the universal law” (no. 66).
Why should priests wear distinctive clothes? The Directory for the Life and Ministry of Priests explains: “In a secularized and materialistic society, where the external signs of sacred and supernatural realities tend to disappear, it is particularly important that the community be able to recognize the priest, man of God and dispenser of his mysteries, by his attire as well, which is an unequivocal sign of his dedication and his identity as a public minister” (no. 66).
“The priest should be identifiable primarily through his conduct,” the Directory continues, “but also by his manner of dressing, which makes visible to all the faithful, indeed and to all men, his identity and his belonging to God and the Church.” It warns, “Outside of entirely exceptional cases, a cleric's failure to use this proper ecclesiastical attire could manifest a weak sense of his identity as one consecrated to God.”
By ordination, priests are “set apart” from the laity. Not that they cease to be part of the Church; they remain members of the Church by Baptism. But through the sacrament of holy orders, they have been sacramentally conformed to Christ, the Head and Bridegroom of the Church. Priests, therefore, while remaining in the Church are also set in the forefront of the Church, as Pope John Paul II put it in his apostolic exhortation, Pastores Dabo Vobis (no. 16). They act in the Person of Christ in relation to the rest of the Church. Consequently, it is appropriate that a priest's attire distinguish him in this priestly ministry.
According to the U.S. bishops, the traditional black suit and Roman collar ‘are the appropriate attire for priests, especially in the exercise of their ministry.’
After Vatican II, some priests dropped their clerical dress—or “clerics” as such clothes are colloqui-ally referred to—sometimes even while engaged in priestly ministry. The argument was that special dress made priests uncomfortable and unduly separated them from lay people. Some observers contended that confusion over priestly identity and the role of the laity was really behind abandoning priestly attire. In recent years, that trend appears to have reversed, with priests seeming both clearer about their ministry and more comfortable about witnessing to it through their dress, including even the traditional cassock.
“I know of priests who argue that they don't wear clerics because they want to ‘feel closer to the people’,” says Father Jerry Pokorsky of the Diocese of Arlington, Va. “But when I visit people in hospitals, I find that a Roman collar is a ticket to friendly conversations and, in many cases, good sacramental confessions.” One archdiocese, he notes, advertises the priesthood using billboards. “But it seems to me that the best public advertisements for the priesthood are genuinely happy priests in clerics.”
Father Richard Perozich agrees. “The black clothing is a reminder to me that while I share priesthood in common with other Christians, I am their servant, their teacher, their guide, their leader in the liturgy by virtue of my call to the ministerial priesthood,” says the pastor of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart parish in San Diego. “The black trousers, black shirt, white collar, and black cassock are a sign to those who seek me as a priest that I am set apart for them, to teach, guide, and sanctify in the spiritual realm. It signals to others that I am here for them in their spiritual needs.”
According to the U.S. bishops, the traditional black suit and Roman collar “are the appropriate attire for priests, especially in the exercise of their ministry.” At least two things stand out there. First, that it is inappropriate for a priest ordinarily to engage in ministry without clerical attire. Second, that wearing clerical attire isn't limited to when a priest engages in ministry—the decree says it is “especially appropriate” then, not that that's the only appropriate time.
The U.S. bishops’ reaffirmation of a priestly dress code reflects Catholic teaching that the ministerial priest-hood is a vocation and a witness, not merely a job. In that sense, it is one more way the Church proclaims to Catholic and non-Catholic alike that the “men in black” continue Christ's work in the Church and in the world.
Mark Brumley writes from San Francisco.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mark Brumley ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Church Tries to Heal the Wounds Reopened by the Pinochet Case DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:As a British jury made a bid to force Augusto Pinochet's extradition to Spain, the man of the moment in Chile, half a world away, was Archbishop Francisco Javier Errazuriz.
There, in Santiago, the press gathered, awaiting an interview with the prelate. But they waited in vain.
Archbishop Errazuriz, who aides say is not afraid to speak out about the national turmoil sparked by the arrest of Pinochet in England, has nevertheless been refusing to grant interviews to the media.
He prefers a more cautious approach to media relations: giving out public statements or issuing brief documents.
President of the Chilean Bishops’ Conference, he is committed to retaining the credibility of the Catholic Church, the only institution in Chile which has remained above the fray in the fighting between supporters and opponents of former dictator Pinochet.
“The situation is now so volatile,” said a source close to Archbishop Errazuriz, “that everything you do or do not do, is read in terms of taking a position for or against (Pinochet).”
Archbishop Errazuriz and other Catholic bishops have repeatedly issued a message that stresses the need for Chileans to overcome their conflicted emotions and concentrate on the national process of reconciliation that started eight years ago, when democracy was restored.
On Dec. 9, at the funeral of his predecessor, Carlos Cardinal Oviedo Cabada, Archbishop Errazuriz issued a new call for national reconciliation.
Cardinal Oviedo, who died at 71 of the neurological disorder that forced him to resign as archbishop of Santiago last year, played a key role in the process of national reconciliation by involving the Catholic Church in the investigation of human rights abuses and in the pastoral assistance of relatives of “the disappeared.”
“The best homage we can offer our beloved cardinal is to keep up the good work he started,” said Archbishop Errazuriz during the funeral, which was broadcast nationally. “If we really value what he did, then we have to commit to creating means for achieving national reconciliation.”
On Dec. 11, Pinochet's diplomatic immunity was revoked by a British jury in the House of Lords—though the hearing itself was later invalidated due to a conflict of interest on the part of Lord Hoffmann, one of the judges and a longtime affiliate of Amnesty International.
After this tribunal, at which the retired general appeared in person for the first time, Archbishop Errazuriz launched a new, stronger appeal: “On the occasion of Christmas, let us all contribute to creating a moment of social truce, which should not only be about the absence of aggression, but should reflect a true effort toward peace and reconciliation in the country.”
Archbishop Errazuriz acknowledged that “the situation generated by the arrest of General Pinochet in London has affected the whole country, and has had a traumatic effect on the democratic process.” But he insisted that “Advent is the best time to calm down, think more, and look to the message of humility, peace, and generosity given to us by God.”
Meanwhile, the situation in Chile seems to grow more explosive by the day.
According to Catholic intellectual Fernando Moreno, “the problem is not only that tensions have divided the people fighting in the streets of Santiago and even in London, but that they threaten to divide the fragile consensus built among all the social and political powers [of Chile] in the last few years.”
In fact, while the army is seriously considering asking the government to break diplomatic ties with England and Spain, militants in the Socialist Party are demanding that their leaders dissolve the coalition with the Christian Democrats—a coalition which actually gives stability to Chile's democratic process.
No wonder the Permanent Council of the Chilean Bishops’ Conference issued an urgent statement reminding Chileans that “our transition to democracy has been a complex and fragile process.” It also called “all sectors to moderation and serenity,” and urged them to “look to reconcile positions and to respect the pain of all those who are suffering due to this situation.”
A few weeks before, the General Assembly of the Chilean Bishops’ Conference that elected Archbishop Errazuriz as its new president, issued a document entitled Hope and Reconciliation, in which they advocated the release of Pinochet “for humanitarian reasons,” but reminded all that social peace “requires us to search for the truth, for justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation.”
Several bishops have joined Archbishop Errazuriz in his call for a Christmas truce. But according to Bishop Javier Prado, secretary general of the Chilean episcopate, “we have cast our eyes on the future, in a consistent program to regain the pace lost in the process of reconciliation, no matter what happens at the end [with Pinochet].”
The General Assembly of the Chilean Bishops’ Conference that elected Archbishop Errazuriz as its new president, issued a document entitled Hope and Reconciliation, in which they advocated the release of Pinochet ‘for humanitarian reasons,’ but reminded all that social peace ‘requires us to search for the truth, for justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation.’
Bishop Prado agrees that this effort goes beyond the reach of the bishops, but noted that, without the voice of the episcopacy, finding a workable solution would probably be impossible.
For now, the bishops have rejected the possibility of heading a new version of the Committee of Truth and Reconciliation, created by President Patricio Aylwin in 1991, and known as the Rettig Commission.
The commission, which took its name from Judge Raul Rettig, whom Aylwin named to head it, probed human rights violations and issued a final statement in mid-1992. The commission released figures and other findings concerning human rights violations, which led to judicial action against several members of the military.
As an immediate consequence of the Rettig Commission, two secret mass graveyards were discovered, and one general, two colonels, and several other officers were convicted and sentenced to jail terms.
Nevertheless, the commission was never able to put Pinochet on trial; at that time he was still commander in chief of the joint military forces and thus immune to prosecution.
The Rettig Commission did provide the material for 18 cases now pending against Pinochet. Before his travails in England, the retired general did not face prosecution, since his status as senator-for-life grants him immunity—yet Chilean authorities have suggested lifting Pinochet's immunity as a bargaining chip with the British in obtaining his release.
The Chilean bishops believe that another Rettig Commission would be useless, merely casting doubt on the results of the former one. Instead, they seem more sympathetic to the proposal of some moderate politicians, such as Enrique Krauss, leader of the Christian Democratic party, and Andres Zaldivar, president of the Senate, who propose the creation of a “Peace Committee,” aimed at fostering the process of reconciliation by means of the law.
This committee, most likely made up of a board appointed by the Chilean Bishops’ Conference and including representatives of the Protestant community, would be focused on bringing new information about “the disappeared” to light on a case-by-case basis.
“The most critical step toward reconciliation should be the effort to find the remains of the disappeared,” said Bishop Prado, “and to punish at least the most brutal cases of human rights violations.”
In the same spirit, Archbishop Errazuriz recently said that “to give suffering relatives the opportunity to provide Christian burial to the remains of their loved ones must be a priority.”
Both he and Archbishop Antonio Moreno Casamitjana of Concepcion have already offered Catholic parishes as places in which retired or active military personnel could offer information on a confidential basis as to the location of the bodies of “the disappeared.”
“We Chileans may feel that we are being used as guinea pigs for a new world judiciary order,” said Archbishop Errazuriz recently in reference to Pinochet's arrest. “Nevertheless, we cannot let this situation jeopardize the process of social peace we have been painstakingly crafting these past years.”
Alejandro Bermudez writes from Lima, Peru.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Power of Prayer Helps Irish Nun Rescue Addicts DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:DUBLIN, Ireland—Sister Consillio has her believers.
“She is a saint, there is no doubt about it,” said one Dublin man of the 61-year-old Sister of Mercy who founded Ireland's most effective program for treating alcoholism and drug addiction. “She got me back my son.”
His son had been a heroin addict at the age of 14. Now, nine years later, after having completed Sister Consillio's program, the boy is heroin-and methadone-free. And the family is celebrating its first happy Christmas in almost a decade.
The family's problems were by no means unique. Behind Ireland's friendly tourist image, there is a dark secret: The country's inner-cities drug problem is one of the worst in the world.
A report in the 1980s found that 10% of those aged 15 to 24 in Dublin's north inner city were heroin addicts—a higher rate than New York City's at the height of its heroin epidemic in the Vietnam War era.
In one class of 30 pupils who attended a north Dublin school 10 years ago, 15 are now dead from consequences of drug abuse and another 11 are drug addicts.
The Dublin man who asked to remain anonymous recalled how he and his wife were close to despair over their young son's addiction. They had to keep their bedroom door permanently locked with all their valuables inside. The addiction was affecting them too: The boy's mother wasn't eating and the father was taking to drink.
But after completing a program at Cuan Mhuire (Our Lady's Harbor) in Athy, County Kildare, the boy has been off heroin and methadone for over two months. In that time he gained 28 pounds and once again appeared fit and healthy. Today it seems hard to believe he was once a scrawny heroin addict, ready to rob and steal for his next fix.
This kind of transformation isn't unusual among those who complete Sister Consillio's program. Addicts often leave Cuan Mhuire healthier and full of self-esteem. Even more striking is their willingness to talk about God and how he gives them a purpose in life.
One reason is that Sister Consillio's programs do not just treat addicts on a medical, physical, and psychological basis; spiritual formation is a key element.
During their treatment, addicts rise at 6:30 a.m., have breakfast, and then meditate for an hour, repeating the mantra “Marana tha” which means “Come, Lord.” They are then given physical work to do, and after dinner they meditate for an hour again. Before bed at 10 p.m., everyone is expected to join in reciting the rosary.
Participants undergo a period of detoxification, followed by a recovery which may take a week. During this time, participants are fed and cared for. Costs are partially covered by whatever social welfare payments they receive. The Cuan Mhuire program is voluntary, and enrollees have to take urine tests to prove they are making efforts to overcome their addiction.
Participants receive counseling and are asked to share in group discussions—activities designed to help them love themselves and love others.
Sister Consillio believes the work aspect is essential too: “If someone came back to Dublin without knowing how to do a day's work, there is no point in the curriculum. When they come back from the program, none of them have any difficulty in getting jobs.”
Sister Consillio started working with alcoholics 34 years ago, after she came into contact with homeless men who would call to her convent's kitchen in Athy, about 25 miles southwest of Dublin. “At first I thought that if they went to a doctor and found a home, their problems would go away,” she said. “Then I realized their problem was a lack of love, especially a lack of love for themselves.”
She started by helping these hard-drinking men to realize the love of God and the love within them and was soon achieving remarkable results. But the convent, so close to schools and to pubs, was no place to treat recovering alcoholics. An auction of land outside Athy was advertised and Sister Consillio asked for permission to attend the sale.
“I bought the land with no money, but the owner said I could move in before he had been paid,” she recalled. “He then died, so that was another year before I had to pay. I also got two years’ credit from Harrington's builders-providers in Naas and that is what started us off.
“Over the years the program has been revealed to us. It's about dignity and the value of every person. Cuan Mhuire is a place where people come and they ask themselves who they are, what their lives are about, where they are going, and what is their purpose in life.” Participants are taught to do things out of love, without expecting a reward.
“We use the rosary because our Lady works through it in a big way and it helps people to discover that they have all they need within them,” Sister Consillio added. “People who are not Catholics take to it more quickly; I think they are delighted to discover that form of prayer, whereas some Catholics have been indoctrinated against the rosary.
“Many of the young people from Dublin would not have been to the sacraments since their Confirmation. They don't understand about the Blessed Sacrament, but they take to it like ducks to water. It is they who keep adding prayers to the end of the rosary, though I wouldn't be in favor of making it any longer.”
The Sister of Mercy said other drug programs are not as successful as hers because they do not have a spiritual element. Her followers claim a 90% success rate, but it is a figure she does not use, pointing out that an alcoholic or a drug addict can relapse in a moment of weakness.
The Coolmine Drug Treatment Center, the main drug treatment center in Ireland, did not think it appropriate to comment on other programs. But Tony Geoghegan of the Merchant Quay Project, which runs a drop-in center for addicts in Dublin, said: “Certainly, Sister Consillio's program provides a spiritual dimension that people need. But her program does not suit everyone. You have to be able to go away for a long period to take part in her residential programs, and not everyone is able to do that. For example if you have children, you can't just pack your bags and go.
“Her program uses the disease model and says that total abstinence is required—that also doesn't suit everyone. Not everyone can cope with total abstinence.”
Yet, of the 50,000 people who have come into contact with Cuan Mhuire and her other treatment centers, Sister Consillio said, “It is impossible to spend any time in our houses without being affected for the good.”
She said the true extent of the drug problem is being hidden from the public. “A few nights ago, I asked the boys how many of them knew someone who had died on the streets—they all knew at least two people, some knew as many as 10 who were dead.”
Asked why she believes young people take to drugs, Sister Consillio said: “I think the main reason is poor self-image. An awful lot come from unhappy homes were there are breakups in marriages. Another important reason is materialism—life is meaningless in the materialistic world. Another reason is that the young people have no faith and the faith is not being passed on.”
Cian Molloy writes from Dublin, Ireland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cian Molloy ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Shepherd to More Than a Million DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:The challenges of the archbishop of Military Services
The Archdiocese for the Military Serices is the most far-flung jurisdiction of the U.S. Catholic Church. It ministers to 1.2 million Catholics in uniform and their families, Reserve and National Guard members, residents in Veterans Administration hospitals, and those in government service overseas. Archbishop Edwin O'Brien, a former Army chaplain, has headed the archdiocese since 1997. He recently spoke to the Register's Washington Bureau Chief, Joseph Esposito.
Esposito: Please explain: What is the Archdiocese of Military Services?
Archbishop O'Brien: Another name for it is the military ordinariate. As the result of a 1986 papal document, Spirituali Militum Curae, the Holy See gave the status of a diocese to 3,500 military vicariates all over the world.
In this document, we find the Church has special solicitude for those who are serving their nation in uniform. Because of their particular situation—mainly their distance from home and their presence in foreign cultures—they should identify with their own mission.
Our primary responsibility is to make sure that pastoral care is given to our men and women in the armed forces, to their families, and to those in Veterans Administration hospitals, as well as to anyone in our foreign embassies. In each case, we find individuals and families who aren't connected to the normal services of a territorial diocese or parish. The Church wants to make sure their specific needs are met.
You celebrated your first anniversary as archbishop for the military services last August. At that time, I saw an interview in which you characterized that year
I said “yes” to everything. I found myself all over the world—several times in Europe, six weeks in the Pacific, and all over the United States.
I'm not sorry I did because it gave me a very good impression of the vitality of this diocese and its people, who are active in their local communities and their parishes.
Wherever they are, there's a commonality between the military family and the military Catholic. It's impressive. There are priests in uniform and in VA hospitals who uniquely identify with their people and their needs.
These priests are happy in the work they're doing. It's just amazing to see the burdens they're bearing because of the shortage of priests. They're answerable to the Church and to the military, and that sometimes creates tension. But morale is high and they do their work very well.
What are the special problems facing Catholics in the military today? Is it more challenging than when you were a chaplain at Fort Bragg and in Vietnam in the early 1970s?
I think there are parallels. In the 1970s Vietnam was still very much occupying our concerns. It meant the breakup of families, it meant people whose lives were in jeopardy. Toward the end of the war, there were great casualties. That was certainly a very trying time for our nation, especially for anyone connected with the military.
Thank goodness we don't have the same stresses today. But there are stresses. This is not very well appreciated, I think, by the rest of our country, by the civilian side.
Our military is shrinking in numbers and resources. That's a political decision that has been made. I believe there's a misconception that any money given to the military budget goes into bombs.
From my understanding, the vast percentage of whatever goes toward the military, goes towards personnel who take care of our people in uniform and their families. We cover their medical, physical, and spiritual needs.
When that money is cut, we find much insecurity for the military. Promises that were made to them some years ago about medical care or retirement, for example, are now being withdrawn or readjusted.
The drawback in military personnel—understandably, to save money—has not been accompanied by a drawback in military commitments. We are more committed now than ever before to more places around the world. This creates special difficulties for military families.
It's been understood, for instance, that an individual in a “hardship tour,” where he leaves his family for a year in Korea or Okinawa, will follow with three years with his family in a more relaxed atmosphere. This could perhaps be Fort Bragg or Fort Hood, where there are weeks in the field, but still the spouse has a home base.
Now, what is happening is that they do the hardship tour, come back to the United States or perhaps go to Germany with their family, and they find themselves six months out of the year away from home under deployment in Bosnia. Sometimes, this is for a six-month period every three years.
So as we're reducing our numbers, we maintain our installations and responsibilities. That's taking a toll on our people in uniform, especially those with families. It's creating family tensions; we have marriage problems and children very insecure about what's the next step in their lives.
You mentioned resources. I understand that the central government funds military dioceses in European countries, but you have noted that in this archdiocese you're raising every penny of funds. That must be a big challenge.
One foreign military ordinariate has between 50 and 60 priests. They receive all their funding from their government, and after a recent cutback they still get $12 million a year, excluding salaries.
We have 450 priests in uniform and another 100 or more serving in our VA hospitals; our budget is a little over $1 million a year. We do raise it all. It means that we can't give some services that we should.
One of our real concerns is evangelization. We have children and teen-agers in families who deserve more religious formation than they're getting.
The Protestants in many of our installations are pro-active in offering religious programs that are very attractive to young people. They are funded very heavily by churches around the country.
They also are getting some government money because they claim to be ecumenical. But, in fact, these are programs that are heavily centered upon scripture sharing, making decisions for Christ on a traditional Protestant basis.
We should be providing some programs which are clearly Catholic for our people. We're not there yet. I think that's our main responsibility: do a much more efficient job in providing religious formation opportunities for those in our archdiocese.
Working with both the military and the Catholic Church, do chaplains sometimes feel they are caught in the middle between conflicting values?
I don't think so. I haven't seen any signs of divided loyalties—a sense that they have to compromise—among our chaplains. There was an issue a few years ago with partial-birth abortion. But it was resolved when it was made clear that chaplains have a right to preach from the pulpit both in civil and military life. They don't forfeit anything because they wear a uniform.
I think the biggest difficulty among our priests, on the military side, is where they see so much that needs to be done on behalf of Catholics. But the military commander wants them to be chaplains to everybody in the unit. They just can't be every place at once.
The primary reason we have a priest go into the military is to take care of our Catholic people. The Jewish chaplains have a special understanding that their chief aim is Jewish coverage. I think the same thing has to happen to us.
There's been an increased debate on the issue of private vs. public morality, obviously intensified by the travails of President Clinton. But there also have been a number of highly publicized military scandals over the last few years. What kind of conduct should we expect of our military leaders and our public officials?
Our country has usually held the military to the highest standards. I think that, up until now, we also have held all our public officials to a higher standard. I hope that continues although I think there's some doubt about that right now.
Some of the goings-on in the military with sexual abuse, the Tailhook scandal, and the Flynn case, required the kind of action that was taken. It's a very healthy thing that there's a code of ethics—a sense of morality—that we don't find in the rest of the country.
It's too bad we don't find it elsewhere, but I think the military is preserving an important set of values. There was a hint sometime ago that there might be a loosening of the military code, but it was rejected by the Department of Defense. They realized the public won't go for that.
I think the question now is, what's going to happen as a result of President Clinton? He's apologized and so forth, but the damage that has been done is monumental. This leads to a downgrading of an already confused and degraded sense of morality that we see in Hollywood and with some of our young people. I think this tragedy is going to take a long time to reverse.
You were secretary to two prominent New York cardinals, Terrence Cardinal Cooke and John Cardinal O'Connor. Have they had an important influence on you?
Certainly. I worked very closely with Cardinal Cooke. I was in the chancery office and in communications before becoming his secretary during the last months of his life.
None of us realized at the time—when I became his secretary—that he was so close to death. But working that closely with him and seeing his style, experiencing his own pastoral insights as I worked with him, that made a lasting impression.
I admire Cardinal O'Connor. He came with a very different style and I think he's the man for the time as well. It's amazing how [Francis] Cardinal Spellman, Cardinal Cooke, and Cardinal O'Connor have each met the needs of the Church as they had to be met, I think, for that day.
Cardinal O'Connor raised the issue of the value and sacredness of human life when many in our country thought it was a dead issue. On this, and on other fronts, he has played the role of the prophet. Such a prophet will have to take some criticism and suffering.
He has been willing to do that and, because of it, has been a great example for the rest of the hierarchy and the nation. He is not afraid to stand up and speak. He isn't willing to be forced into a defensive position because of being Catholic.
Cardinal O'Connor has given much encouragement to Catholics all over the country. He has encouraged them to be proud of their tradition and realize the importance of that tradition for the survival of our country.
Of course, Cardinal O'Connor had a long history of military…
His influence is still felt in the military. Navy personnel, retired and active, still speak of the impact he had in putting the chaplaincy in a much more visible and respected tradition during his days as chief naval chaplain [1975-79; he retired as a rear admiral. Cardinal O'Connor also was military apostolic administrator, 1984-85].
Can you tell us about others who have influenced you as a Catholic, a priest, and a bishop?
I spoke to someone recently who said that Archbishop [Fulton] Sheen, when he was in Rochester [1966-69], said the laity will save the Church. Wherever I've been—including my childhood parish in the Bronx, Our Lady of Solace, and my high school in northern Westchester County—my faith has been nourished by Catholics who love the Church and the priesthood.
So, in addition to my family, the laity has been a source of motivation to me. But so have the parish priests I grew up with. Then, everything revolved around parish life. Anybody from the “big city” of my generation would say the same thing. It really made a tremendous impression.
I think one of the difficulties we have with vocations right now is that our priests don't stay in a parish long enough for people to get to know them and for good, healthy associations to be made. There is no identification with the work and concern of the priest.
Fortunately, I did have priests who were in the parish for a good number of years. They became part of our family. Whether it was the religious side, the social side, the educational side, sports, it was all tied in with our parish. This is something that gave me my earliest respect for the priest-hood and awe for what a priest is. I never lost that.
You just mentioned vocations. In your varied career, you have been rector of the North American College in Rome and St. Joseph's Seminary in Dunwoodie, New York. What has your work in directing seminaries taught you?
The Church faces many scandals, many trials from within. You look at the culture around us and realize there are too few incentives for someone to make a lifelong commitment. There are few encourgements for someone not to get into the race for more physical and material things.
Yet, the fact that men are turning to seminaries is really a sign of God's grace. I've been impressed by the caliber of the seminarians who are entering today. And I'm convinced that if we focus a little more on finding priests, more will be there.
Both at the North American College and Dunwoodie, I saw very fine candidates who would measure up to any generation. They didn't come out of nowhere. They came out of the same ground, the same roots that many others find themselves in.
If they could come from that soil, what's preventing others from doing so? Perhaps we're not offering a strong enough message. We're not presenting the possibilities and realities of priestly life as we should. We're still searching for ways to do that.
We've touched bottom. I think we just have to get some momentum going in this field. I believe we'll do better in the days ahead.
I know the National Conference of Catholic Bishops has come up with some fine ideas. I was at a conference on vocations in Pittsburgh a few months ago; tremendous programs are being developed at the grass-roots level.
I think there's been confusion as to the identity of the priesthood. I always say that a person will give himself to an intellectual mystery, but not to a question mark. Where will the priesthood be 10 years from now? No one is going to give himself to a life that is surrounded by questions.
I think with this papacy and with so many fine bishops who are involved with vocation programs at the diocesan level, it is beginning to straighten out. I think we'll get additional people giving themselves to a Church that is more predictable, to a life that is more predictable.
What about vocations in the military?
I'm convinced that among those in uniform and others within our military families, there are vocations. Many young people come into the military somewhat confused and dis-oriented. They gain a sense of identity, confidence, and pride in who they are and what they can do.
They're looking for something to do when they get out of the military. Their experience and exposure to chaplains serves them very well, but they don't think of themselves as becoming priests.
It's our job to remind them of the possibility and to set up programs to allow them to pursue the priesthood after their military service. Fortunately, we are beginning some efforts in that regard.
We're working with the Theological College of the Catholic University of America [run by the Sulpician Fathers in Washington, D.C.] and will work with other seminaries to offer days of reflection. We had 20 men in uniform come last February just to look at the Theological College and the priest-hood; we had only expected three or four. One of those is now permanently in what we call a co-sponsorship program, where we share the formation with a home diocese. After ordination, he will spend three years in his home diocese, spend the rest of his 20 years in the military as a chaplain, and then return to his diocese.
So there are two levels to encourage vocations in the priesthood: from those in uniform and from our military families. All of this reflects the enthusiasm of our chaplains in encouraging vocations.
Vocation Director, Western Province P.O. Box 3420 . San Jose, CA 95156 . (408) 251-1361
One of the many other things you are involved with is being episcopal adviser to the Catholic Medical Association. The organization has been very much involved with pro-life issues. Can you share with us your thoughts on where you think the country is going on life issues such as abortion and the emerging issue of assisted suicide?
There's confusion on the part of the public as to what is involved in some of these life issues. I think this was present in the Hugh Finn case. I don't think the confusion is helped by the very heavy legal involvement; the law seems to be taking the primary role as ethical educator in our country.
I wish more time would be given to allow ethicists and other thinkers to debate issues before a Roe v. Wade decision, for example, takes everyone by surprise. Since then [the 1973 Supreme Court decision], everyone immediately turns to the courts to settle these things.
It's important that the medical profession—relying on their age-old Hippocratic oath, their idealism, and their high standards—be heard. The Catholic Medical Association has been trying to do that.
We have a strong, moral, ethical body of values preserved in the Catholic Church. We need to find a more effective way in educating the public and giving advice to those making life decisions. Here, too, the Catholic Medical Association is active.
In addition, the bishops are trying to have greater involvement. There was the public statement, for example, on children with encephalitis. I hope we don't place too much reliance on politicians to resolve these problems. We have so much solid Catholic guidance that can be helpful.
Finally, our readers will be interested in knowing if you are reading any books which you can recommend.
My reading is largely tied to particular things that I'm doing. In September, for example, I held four talks up in Syracuse, N.Y., on “The Priest and Preacher,” and I was absorbed in preparing for that. I got into books on the Eucharist in preparation for retreats for priests that I gave.
Although most of the books I have been reading have been in these fields, I also have been reading Maurice & TherËse: The Story of a Love [see Register review, “Great Lovers Who Never Met,” Dec. 6-12]. It's the story of letters between St. ThÈrËse of Lisieux and Maurice Belliere, a semi-niarian. It was written by Auxiliary Bishop Patrick Ahern of New York.
—Joseph Esposito
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Archbishop Edwin OíBrien ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:Internet Revolutionizes Religious Research
DESERET NEWS, Dec. 12—Many clergymen, who have acquired impressive libraries of concordances and reference texts, are wary of using the Internet as they work on their sermons, said a report in the Deseret News. Others, who use it extensively, find that they have at their finger-tips free religious reference tools that were practically unattainable—or prohibitively expensive—five years ago.
The links the article mentions are useful for interested lay people, as well: www.as.wvu.edu/coll03/relst/www/linkres.htm, for one, offers the kinds of statistics and basic information from a number of religions that public speakers—or others who frequently discuss religion—often use.
“But that's not the only use for the web, for the religion-minded,” said the article. “Thousands and thousands of people use the Web to download free or cheap software programs of everything from the game Biblehunt (which helps you learn the books of the Bible in order by arranging them) to various versions of the Bible.”
The article listed three places for such software, free or at low cost: ZDNet (www.zdnet.com), Shareware.com (www.shareware.com) and the Download Zone (www.download.com).
New Breed of Criminals Target Churches, ‘Don't Care’
SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS, Dec. 12—Crime expert and sociologist John DiIulio has warned that a widespread lack of parental control, coupled with greatly diminished standards of morality in many communities, are combining to create a new type of criminal, which he calls “super-predators.”
A spree of church vandalism and burglaries in San Antonio—which mirror incidents reported in Denver and around the country—give frightening new evidence that these sociopathic criminals may have already proliferated.
St. Leo's Catholic Church there has seen everything from satanic vandalism to stolen tables, broken and emptied candle boxes, and two missing pictures of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
One parishioner was quoted saying she is afraid to pray in the church. “I really feel scared here. There is so much vandalism. … I took off my ring
and watch and pin while I'm sitting here. You don't know who will come in behind you.”
Father Enda McKenna has been reinforcing St. Leo's locks and closing the church at dusk to compensate. It may not be enough, he told the paper. “If people are desperate, word will get out about the money boxes.”
Another Church had to hire an armed guard when it began the practice of perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, said the article. Before the guard came to St. Pius, it reported, five parishioners were robbed at gunpoint and a couple was the victim of a car-jacking in the parking lot.
Spotty reporting and inexact police classification of these incidents make the trend hard to track, said the report, but it quoted one sociologist who sees the incidents as pointing toward a fundamental moral breakdown. Armando Abney, a sociologist from the city's St. Mary's University, said of the thieves and vandals, “They just don't care.”
Abney blamed lack of parental control over “mischievous teenagers who become precarious adults and lack values,” said the paper. “About the only thing that controls [their] behavior is the police,” he is quoted saying.
Knights and Others Attract ‘Baby Boomers’
CAROLINA MORNING NEWS, Dec. 14—Groups like the Knights of Columbus have been busy recruiting younger members, worried that a senior membership leaves their organizations with an uncertain future.
A report on one Knights Council in South Carolina shows another way of reading the signs of the times: perhaps an aging “baby boomer” generation eager to help their communities as they reach retirement age is a gigantic pool of potential new members.
Said the report, “Two years ago, it would have been a stretch of the imagination to believe tiny St. Andrews Catholic Church could field enough parishioners to support an active Knights of Columbus fraternity. But times are changing. “Today, only a few months after receiving its charter, [the Council] has 51 members and is actively supporting a number of [community] charities.”
It quoted one Knight, Dick Roy, saying, “A lot of Catholics moving to the area are retirees really looking for a way to pay society back, so to speak…. and the Knights are second to none in working for our fellow man.” Roy listed the impressive charity efforts the growing council has already accomplished.
The council's publicity director, Jerry Weiland, told the paper some other benefits that make the Knights attractive to the parish with its large retirement community. “It's a matter of fellowship, of associating with people in the community,” he is quoted saying. “And, of course, it's a way to grow in one's Catholic faith.”
Added Roy, “The basic precepts of the order fall in line with my thinking of what traditional family values should be, what human life is all about and how we should treat it.”
----- EXCERPT: Excerpts from selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:Leader of Cairo and Beijing Teams to Be Made Bishop
IRISH TIMES, Dec. 12—The Irish Times’ “Saturday Profile” recently featured soon-to-be Bishop Diarmuid Martin, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and “the most senior Irish cleric in the Vatican.”
The report took great pride in an Irishman who it saw as a rising Vatican star. It said that since 1985, “Msgr. Martin has been a key, behind-the-scenes figure in what is one of the most dynamic departments in the Vatican, a department furthermore whose very raison d'Ítre takes it into daily dialogue, contact, and sometimes conflict with just about every socio-political power bloc in the modern world.”
Now, with an appointment as Titular Bishop of Glendalough and a January 6th ordination as bishop by the Pope in St. Peter's Basilica, Msgr. Martin is likely to take an even larger—and more visible—role.
Said the report, Msgr. Martin “has either led or been a senior figure on Vatican delegations at the [highest profile] United Nations conferences of the 1990s on Population (Cairo), Women (Beijing), Habitat (Istanbul), and the Environment (Rio de Janeiro).”
The report quoted Rome-based American reporter John Thavis sizing up Martin's work. “When the Vatican needs someone with political savvy, [Msgr.] Diarmuid Martin is the choice. He is very sharp, he knows his brief very, very well and [at the U.N. conferences] he was nothing less than a guiding light,” he told the paper.
It also quoted a Rome diplomat who called Msgr. Martin “a lucid, clear, and highly skillful Vatican representative with impressive knowledge of his subject matter.”
The paper said Msgr. Martin is noted for his theological orthodoxy and his commitment to projects such as the cancellation of Third World debt that the Pope has called for in celebration of the Jubilee Year 2000.
John Paul II Center Turns 20
THE DETROIT NEWS, Dec. 14—A few weeks after Karol Cardinal Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II in 1978, fellow Pole Al Jantz remembers jotting a note to Msgr. Stanley Milewski, chancellor of the Orchard Lake Schools—SS. Cyril and Methodius Seminary, St. Mary's College and St. Mary's Preparatory, all founded by a Polish immigrant priest and considered an academic and cultural center for Polish Americans.
“I think the Orchard Lake campus would be an ideal place to establish a national center for research on the life and teachings of Pope John Paul II,” he wrote, according to The Detroit News. The idea became a reality, and 1998 is the 20th anniversary of John Paul II Center, which is run by Jantz and his wife Dorothea, who have together collected some 4,000 donated items about the Pope, said the report.
“This is our main interest,” said Al Jantz. “We spend more thought, time, and attention to it than anything other than our families.”
With other Polish Americans, he recalls the pride he felt when Pope John Paul II was elected—particularly given the fact that Cardinal Wojtyla had visited the Orchard Lake campus in 1969 and 1976 .
Msgr. Milewski said the Jantzes are “the quietest, most unassuming, dedicated individuals I have ever known,” according to the paper. “Their fidelity is amazing. They are the parents of the John Paul II Center, although I'm tempted to call it the Jantz Papal Center.”
The center's archives include hundreds of articles written by Cardinal Wojtyla, said the report. Jantz recently completed work on a compilation of the social teaching of John Paul II.
“The Pope's message would do more to reconstruct this whole world than any other message or man,” Jantz, a retired business professor, told the paper.
----- EXCERPT: Excerpts from selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Pope's Week DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:Audiences
Saturday, Dec. 12:
• Lucas Cardinal Moreira Neves, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.
Tuesday, Dec. 15:
• Delegation of the Croatian bishops’ conference and of the Republic of Croatia in order to sign an accord with the Holy See.
• Archbishop Beniamino Stella, apostolic nuncio to Cuba.
• Valeriy Pustovoitenko, Prime Minister of the Ukraine, with his wife and entourage.
• Camillo Cardinal Ruini, vicar general for the diocese of Rome, with clergy caring for the universities in the diocese of Rome.
Thursday, Dec. 18:
• Bishop Javier Echevarria Rodriguez, Opus Dei prelate.
• Lech Walesa, accompanied by his wife and entourage.
• Archbishop Jorge Maria Mejia, archivist and librarian of the Holy Roman Church.
• Paul Cardinal Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.
Other Activities
Saturday, Dec. 12:
• Appointed Archbishop Paul Cordes, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, as member of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and member of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
Wednesday, Dec. 16:
• Appointed Fr. Brian Farrell LC, official at the Secretariat of State, as head official of the Section for General Affairs.
The Pope's Prayer Intentions for January
General: That during this year dedicated to God the Father believers learn to open confidently their hearts to God as children confide in their father and mother.
Mission: That men and women, all over the world, open their hearts to God the Father and become more united among themselves.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:Jordan to Open River Bank Near Baptism Site
JERUSALEM POST, Dec. 11—When Jesus “came from Galilee to the Jordan River to be baptized,” he met John on the bank that modern-day Israel has made a closed military area. Pilgrims are denied access to the area except on a few days surrounding the feast of Our Lord's Baptism.
But across the river, present-day Jordan is preparing to open the bank opposite the traditional site for pilgrims in the year 2000, said a report in the Jerusalem Post.
The paper said that an alternate arrangement Israel made when it closed the site in 1967 never caught on. It opened a new Baptism site elsewhere along the bank but, “Although that [new] site has become popular with Protestants, and especially evangelicals, it has never been recognized by the historic Churches.”
Today, the traditional site, despite a new, paved road to the river and cement stairs going down to the water, “has a general atmosphere of neglect,” said the report.
Meanwhile, Jordan has been preparing the opposite bank and also excavating a nearby site, known as Bethany beyond the Jordan, which features ancient reinforced pools and waterways that the Jordanian Minister of Tourism said were, “almost certainly used for baptisms.”
Franciscan Fr. Emilio Barcena, director of the Christian Information Center in the Old City of Jerusalem praised the archeological finds at the new site and the diligent work the Jordanians have done on the banks of the Jordan, but remained more interested in the traditional site.
“They want to open it as soon as possible. For us, the place [in Israel] is closed and [the one in Jordan] is open. Why shouldn't Israel open it all the time, and not just once a year?” Father Barcena asked, according to the paper.
Added the report, “Metropolitan Vassilios of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate said that, for his Church, both the eastern and western banks of the Jordan were equally sacred.”
In Europe, Homosexual Couples’ Status Varies
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Dec. 12— In the United States, the November elections showed an unwillingness on behalf of Americans to allow homosexual marriage—or even arrangements that closely resemble it. Now, with a controversial bill in France's parliament, Europe is embroiled in the same debate.
According to AP, the status of homosexual couples varies widely from nation to nation. Countries that give homosexual couples status:
• Denmark: Marriage rights have been given to homosexual couples since 1989, but adoption rights are still denied them.
• Sweden: Since 1995, homosexuals may register as “partners” in a civil marriage-like arrangement. Adoption—or the production of children through artificial means—is not allowed for them.
• Netherlands: A 1998 law gives homosexual couples practically identical rights to married couples, apart from adoption—which will soon be allowed, as a popular proposal is expected to go through parliament early in 1999.
• Iceland: “Registered cohabitation” has been allowed homosexuals since 1996. It is an arrangement very like marriage, but doesn't allow adoption. Countries that give homosexual couples certain rights:
• Belgium: A law passed in March gives inheritance rights and allows for joint bank accounts for homosexual couples.
• Hungary: Since 1996, homosexual couples have had inheritance rights but not adoption rights. Countries that defend marriage:
• France: Homosexual couples have no legal status. A new bill “currently under heated debate in parliament” would give them a few marriage-like rights.
• Spain: Homosexual couples have no official status outside of the northeastern Catalonia region, where a recently passed law recognizes homosexual couples but denies them adoption or inheritance rights.
• Italy: No national law gives homosexual couples legal status, despite nonbinding measures in a few cities that allow unmarried couples to “register.”
• Germany: “The new center-left government intends to grant some legal status to same-sex couples, but not the right to adopt children,” said the AP.
• Britain: No legal status for homosexuals is cited, but a July vote indicated support for a measure giving homosexuals state pension inheritance rights.
1998's Sad Legacy: 2,000 Colombian Kidnappings
BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION, Dec. 14—Weary Colombian government and political figures joined with Catholic Church and media representatives to appeal for the release of victims of kidnappings in the country, reported the BBC. The number of victims in the South American country boggles the mind: 2,000 in 1998 alone, according to the report.
At December ceremonies throughout the country, speakers called for an end to this record-breaking trend. According to the report, an anti-kidnapping group spokeswoman “told the BBC that they feared many more abductions were not reported. Colombia has the world's highest kidnapping rate; correspondents say ransoms have become a lucrative source of revenue for left-wing guerrillas and common criminals alike.”
----- EXCERPT: Excerpts from selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: In the Name of Truth DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:In its heyday, the Polish Solidarity movement declared that, after the regime's shameless lies about the most obvious matters, two plus two had to equal four again. In its own humble way, the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton may also affirm that politics cannot be allowed to deny basic truths.
As this issue goes to press, the House debate, delayed by military action against Iraq and momentarily disrupted by apparently well-timed revelations of marital infidelity by Speaker-elect Robert Livingston, goes forward. In all likelihood, Congress will send articles of impeachment to the Senate. Impeachment will not bring closure or catharsis to America about Bill Clinton, but it will bring clarity.
The Clintons arrived in Washington promising to avoid not only the improprieties they attributed to previous administrations, but even the appearance of impropriety. Since then, the administration has become a cloud of improprieties and, more recently, “inappropriate” behavior. Whitewater, Travelgate, Haircutgate, Filegate, Monicagate—and these are only the scandals within the White House. Outside, there have been Buddhist nuns writing $10,000 checks to the Democratic National Committee, the Chinese connection, multiple indictments of cabinet members and more. Perjury and obstruction of justice may seem small by comparison, but so does Al Capone's indictment for income tax evasion. His greater illegalities were difficult to prove, but the lesser conviction, at least, established his criminal behavior as a fact.
In the history of the American Republic, we have never had a leader with such a weak sense for facts, when they do not suit his purposes. Earlier, it would have been inconceivable that a president would stand before a grand jury and claim that whether he had sex with an intern depends on what you mean by the word “is,” as if a trial were an existential foray into the question of being. Politics aside, if the president is allowed to lie under oath, it can lead to only two outcomes: Either we will become a nation with leaders not subject to the law as are all other citizens (there are unfortunate historical and contemporary precedents), or we will become a nation in which swearing to God to tell the truth in legal proceedings becomes a cat-and-mouse game, in which witnesses may “mislead” or “not volunteer information,” and dare the rest of us to call the messy result by its true name: lying.
For some people, these considerations mask a deeper motive: partisan hatred of the president and what he represents. For them, questions of truth are obviously only politics, since they themselves judge truth by its political orientation. No man is entirely responsible for his followers, but it may not be an accident that feminists, homosexual activists, the pro-abortion lobby, and—not to mince words ourselves—the whole anti-Christian side of the culture sees impeachment not as a discrete question about the president's personal responsibility, but as a battle in the culture war.
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz let the cat out of the bag last week: “A vote against impeachment is not a vote for Bill Clinton. It is a vote against bigotry. It's a vote against fundamentalism. It's a vote against anti-environmentalism. It's a vote against the right-to-life movement. It's a vote against the radical right. This is truly the first battle in a great culture war.” As Cicero said, in war the first casualty is truth. And it appears that the rule holds whether the engagement occurs on the battlefield or Harvard Yard.
Clinton supporter and actor Alec Baldwin went still further: “In other countries they are laughing at us 24 hours a day, and I'm thinking to myself if we were in other countries, we would all right now … go down to Washington and we would stone Henry Hyde to death! … and we would go to [the homes of pro-impeachment congressmen] and we'd kill their wives and children.”
Baldwin was right. In many other countries, that is precisely what happens to people who challenge the national leader. In America, though, we have always thought that, even when it threatens Hollywood's love affair with abortion, vigilantism is for barbarians. Americans take orderly legal procedures to truth—and justice.
A cloud of confusion and untruth has for too long hovered over this fair land. Impeaching the president for perjury and obstructing justice is not a happy solution to that problem. Any American who loves this country cannot take pleasure in the spectacle, particularly when we face grave challenges at home and abroad. But given the character of the accused and the likely consequences of his acts on our moral environment, impeachment seems the only means available to us to declare our allegiance, as Americans, to truth.
Truth is, as Our Lord told us, one of the names of God.
Robert Royal is vice president for research and director of Catholic studies at the Ethics & Public Policy Center, Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: PERSPECTIVE ----- EXTENDED BODY: Robert Royal ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The World From a Young Refugee's View DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:Book review by MARY THOMAS NOBLE OP
From Anschluss To Albion, Memoirs of a Refugee Girl, by Elisabeth M. Orsten(Lutterworth Press, England, 1998, 144 pg., $29.98)
“As the long-awaited moment drew near, we could barely manage to finish our supper. Seated by the window, we would look at the night sky, wondering on which bright star the Christ Child would travel home again. Then, suddenly, the double doors were flung wide open and there in the dark room stood a blazing tree, reaching all the way to the ceiling and topped with a shining silver star. Hundreds of white wax candles threw a steady light, while little sparkling rockets exploded from all sides like miniature fireworks. Sweets that appeared only at Christmas weighed down the tree, whose scent filled the whole room.”
Austria, 1937. Mixed messages were floating through those same magic night skies, ready to break up what seemed to a child the eternal rhythm of life in Vienna.
In the springtime, Elisabeth and George could find the first snowdrop blossoms in the cool, mysterious Vienna woods as early as February. Lent brought them to the “Kalvarienburg,” an outdoor representation of the Passion story with its miniature figurines that moved mechanically. The volley of cannon fire announcing Christ's resurrection on Easter morn gave sure promise of summer holidays in beloved Velden, brought to a close all too soon when autumn summoned them back to school in the city. And then it was Christmas again. All so taken for granted, all so suddenly broken up, everything left behind, all lost.
But not quite all. Dr. Elisabeth Orsten, English professor at Champlain College in the University of Trent in Canada, picked up a diary one day that she had abandoned 50 years before. The slender, handsome volume had been bestowed on her as a parting gift by her Viennese “nanny” shortly after Hitler's invasion of Austria. Now it came to life, and with it a flood of memories spanning the two years she had spent in England before sailing for America. Hence the title of her book, From Anschluss to Albion.
The experience of a refugee, any refugee, is unique. We become inured to an anguish that is multiplied beyond calculable numbers and ranges the length and breadth of the entire world. We need to stop and look intently at just one child's story, listen to one child's sobs into a pillow and the peals of one child's laughter in the sunlit morning, if we would understand the reality of what has actually transpired in this ambivalent century of ours. Standing at its close, we look back through one child's eyes at an incredible interlude.
Elisabeth was 10, George 8, when they arrived in their extra-large, custom-made great-coats, intended to last indefinitely, at Victoria Station in London, on a bleak, wintry afternoon in 1939.
Elisabeth's diary entries have a huge simplicity about them. She is out to impress no one; Frauli, her Nanny, had begged her to write in the diary, and she could not let her down. Happenings are recorded in a straightforward, matter-of-fact tone. At the rare moment when she is tempted to dramatize her situation, she catches herself up in the running commentary that accompanies the diary. Indeed, the commentary shows her observing the past, and herself, with a certain dry humor.
Commentary and diary form a book-long dialogue. We learn that childhood in Austria was by no means idyllic. Elisabeth dreaded her beautiful, quick-tempered mother, and was devoted to the father whose work as a physician so limited his time with her. She bossed her brother George; they squabbled and quickly made up. After a formal multicourse party served with Tante Louise's magnificent dinner service in Frankfort, while all the grownups were enjoying a post-prandial rest, the two children got into a quarrel that had Elisabeth racing through the house to the kitchen with George in hot pursuit, only to crash into the table, knocking off several dishes and leaving two or three shattered upon the floor beside a handleless cup. This sobered them; they were partners in crime.
Once in England, Elisabeth and George were immediately separated. Lodging had been found for George with Quakers in the countryside, while Elisabeth went to friends of the family in London, who only had room for one extra child. The diary describes the new family, the new language, the new food, the new school, the new “persona” of a refugee struggling to adapt to all this very much on her own. We meet “Aunt Evelyn,” as Mrs. C. wanted to be called; her absent, estranged husband; the eldest daughter, elegant Rowena, away at boarding school but home for holidays; Gillian, the second; and the youngest daughter, Julia, about two years older than Elisabeth. “Seb,” the Swiss governess, was a Frauli figure, and brought comfort to the newcomer when she felt bruised by “sibling” rivalry.
There is a familiarity about this unique story, because it is so utterly human. Again and again we identify with Elisabeth in her surprises, delights, frustrations, bewilderments, and swift reactions, which were often as swiftly repressed. She was always the visitor, the refugee, an alien on alien soil, growing rapidly through the crisis years from 10 to 12, and of necessity thrusting down eager roots. Just as these roots took firm hold of British soil, air raid alarms began to trouble the days and nights, gas masks were issued, and visas were hastily obtained for Elisabeth and George. They left England on Sept. 18, 1940, in two different ships largely filled with English children being evacuated for the duration of the war, heading through U-boat infested waters for America the unknown.
It is not possible to convey the message of this book from the sidelines. It has to be read personally. The impact needs to be felt directly, and it leaves the reader with deep, deep thoughts. Our world is much like the world into which the Christ Child was born, a world so filled with treachery and violence that he became a refugee as a newborn infant, fleeing for his very life. Must it always be the children who suffer?
Sister Mary Thomas Noble, a Dominican nun, writes from Buffalo, N.Y.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mary Thomas Noble OP ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Our Crisis of Christlessness DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:Digest by ELLEN WILSON FIELDING
“What I Learned From a Muslim About Eucharistic Adoration,” by Peter Kreeft(Crisis magazine, December 1998)
Peter Kreeft writes that a former student told him about a Muslim friend, who said, “‘If I believed that thing that looks like a little round piece of bread was really Allah Himself, I think I would just faint. I would fall at His feet like a dead man.’"
He continues: “This story got me thinking about the ills of our culture both outside and inside the Church. Every American knows our culture is in crisis. And every Catholic knows that the crisis has infected the Church as well as the world. But what is the root of the disease … ?
“As St. Thomas Aquinas says, the primary object of faith is a reality, not a proposition (although propositions are indispensable). Not the proposition ‘God exists’ but God; not the doctrine of the Resurrection but the reality of the Resurrection; not the creeds about Christ but the real presence of Christ, is the crux and crisis. It is a crisis of Christlessness.
“Wherever God shows up in scripture, it is His real presence that makes all the difference. Job's three friends talked about God as if He were absent, but Job talked to Him, however confusedly, for his faith was in God's presence. That faith was rewarded when God appeared to Job but not to his friends, and approved Job's speeches, not theirs.
“Throughout the Gospels we find Jesus constantly doing just that: showing the difference between mere concepts and real presence. … He did it when He berated the Pharisees, with ironic humor, for keeping their noses in their books instead of looking to Him—the book was wholly about Him! (John 5:39-40)
“He did it in His parting words to His apostles, when He left them with the only thing powerful enough to transform the world: not comforting words about Him but His real presence: ‘Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.’ (Matthew 28:20)
“Why are the Christian soldiers no longer marching onward but retreating? Because we no longer understand this ‘real presence,’ this difference between Christ abstract and Christ concrete.
‘Wherever God shows up in scripture, it is His real presence that makes all the difference. Job's three friends talked about God as if He were absent, but Job talked to Him, however confusedly, for his faith was in God's presence.
… The crisis of faith in the Church is a crisis of faith in Christ's real presence. The deepest root of the dullness and ineffectiveness of most parishes, laity, clergy, homilies, liturgies, music, catechesis, programs, and all the extra Martha-like activities, is not outright heresy or apostasy but simply remoteness—not, as the ‘liberals’ say, the Church's remoteness from 'the people,’ but from The Person.
“Why have Evangelical, Fundamentalist, and Pentecostal Protestant sects and denominations been so much more successful throughout the Americas during the past generation? … It is not primarily because of a disaffection for the things Catholics have and Protestants don't … but for the one thing Catholics have but don't know they have—in fact, the main thing Catholics have: Christ. These Catholics never knew Jesus Christ in the Church, but they did find Christ present in the souls and lives of Protestants.
“Where is He present now? In His Church. This means essentially two things. First, He is present in the Church's sacraments, primarily in the Eucharist. Second, He is also present in the Church's members, in the souls and lives of those who have believed in Him. What a tragedy that so many Protestants do not know that first presence! And what an equal tragedy that so many Catholics do not know the second!
“What will happen if we also neglect the first? What sound will we hear to replace the great silence of eucharistic adoration? The same sound we hear from the National Council of Churches: the sound of coffins being built, the sound of dead logs falling.
“And what will we hear if we rediscover His presence and adore Him? The same sound we hear in the Gospels: the sound of a blazing fire, the rattle of dry bones coming to life, the shouts of joy that ring through scripture and through the great old Protestant hymns.
“For in adoration we focus on Christ the center, and everything else then appears as it truly is: as a ray of light from that sun, the Son of God. … Even this great mental benefit, or ‘payoff,’ must not be our primary motive, however. … He commands us to adore Him for His sake, not for our sake; but He does this for our sake, not for His sake.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidsonville, Maryland.
The Definite Article is a digest of the Register's choice from the nation's top journals.
----- EXCERPT: THE DEFINITE ARTICLE ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: New Age Aramaic? DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:I read your recent article in the Register on the revived use of Aramaic in liturgy ("Demand is Rising for the Language that Jesus Spoke,” Dec. 13-19, 1998), and wish to share a few thoughts on this with your readers.
To begin, I am a recent convert to the Maronite Catholic rite, and prior to conversion, I have been associated with many Aramaic-speaking people, namely Assyrians—that was a big factor in my choice of the Maronite rite of the Church. As this is the case, I am pleased to see your excellent paper focusing on the Syriac traditions and would encourage you to do more in this area, being as the Catholic family has a substantial number of native Syriac speakers in three Eastern rites (Syrian, Maronite, and Chaldean). However, in reading the article, I noted a slight problem. Please let me elaborate.
The problem I speak of involves your use of one Rocco Errico as an expert. It needs to be noted that Errico's Noohra Foundation is an esoteric New Age cult, and not a reliable source of information on Syriac studies.
Read the article on Noohra, found in the current edition of J. Gordon Melton's Encyclopedia of American Religions, which classifies Errico as a New Thought proponent who got his inspiration from a Bible “scholar” named George Lamsa who, despite being a native Syriac speaker, was cultic in his theology and soundly rejected by both the Catholic and Orthodox branches of the Syriac Church. Therefore, Errico is not in conformity with sound Catholic belief, and should be anathema-tized, instead of consulted as a so-called “authority.”
In conclusion, to obtain the best sources on Syriac language, why don't you consult the native speakers themselves? For anyone wanting to know how, it is suggested that you ask your parish priest, or consult the local phone directory to find out if there are Maronite, Syrian, or Chaldean parishes in the locality. If so, that would be the best source of information. Also, there are non-Catholic Syrian Orthodox and Assyrian parishes in the U.S. that might be willing to answer your questions. I hope this will be of use to all readers of this fine piece of Catholic journalism. Shlomo Barikhlookh.
David Thrower
St. Petersburg, Florida
----- EXCERPT: LETTERS ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Is The Time Right Fora New Conservative Party? DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:At year's end, religious conservatives have become the target of hostile attacks by the dominant players on the political scene. Republican leaders, who in the past have won elections with a conservative platform, have grown less trusting of these issues. Democrats gleefully label them as “the extremist wing” of the Republican party, and identify them as the engine pushing for impeachment of the President. Backed into a corner by both press and politicians, what kind of a future can they envision for themselves?
Predictions are risky these days—when one week it looks as if President Clinton can get on with “business as usual” and impeachment looks impossible, and the next week there are four articles of impeachment voted out of the House Judiciary Committee, and a grim-faced President says he has no thought of resigning.
The future for religious conservatives will be nothing less than dramatic, I think. In the next few months and years, the country will undergo a dramatic period of political realignment in the aftermath of the scandalous Clinton administration. Conservatives will become more important, not less, as they fight for the institutions that support a culture of life, and try to make their voices heard by politicians eager to win.
One of the problems that must be resolved is the leftward movement of the Republican party. We hear more of the so-called Republican “moderates,” who are positioned to be the key to the impeachment vote in the House. The word “moderate” implies that these people are in the center. They are not. Often they hold pro-choice positions and lean to the left. They are held in higher esteem than the “extreme right” (conservatives), also called the “Ayatollah wing” of the Republican party, the supposed thorn in the side of the party, impeding its way to a “progressive” future.
The conservative base of the Republican party was the source of the Reagan and Bush victories, but the party leadership has a case of amnesia about that history. The leadership is tempted to look for victory down a progressive route. For Republicans it will be a dead end. Conservatives will not support it. The religious conservative vote this time was down 13 points from 1994. Democrats took note that all candidates who held a pro-life position won in the November elections. The Democrats are shrewdly recruiting candidates who are socially conservative, for districts where being so is an advantage. One pollster after the elections reminded Republicans that religious conservatives are on a mission to save the country, not to save the Republican party.
If this shift in political alignments continues, conservatives have another option. John O'Sullivan, former editor of National Review, has suggested that perhaps the time has come for conservatives to form their own national party. The advantage of such a party is that they would no longer be taken for granted, and would have to be wooed. They could take strong stands on issues, such as better educational choice for the poor, and make both Republicans and Democrats clarify their stands.
An obvious objection to this proposal is that such a party would split the Right and guarantee the victory of the Left. O'Sullivan thinks the arrangement would work if the new party did not try to replace the Republican party but served as a “philosophical ginger group,” allied with the Republican party but independent of it. The party could support the Republican candidates it liked, as well as occasional Democratic candidates. But the party would run its own man when the Republicans ran a liberal. New York conservatives have had such a party for the last forty years. One of its candidates (James Buckley) was elected senator, and another (Herb London) was almost elected governor.
The ferocious attack on conservatives, especially religious conservatives, shows they are doing some things right. In the thick of the culture war, they are holding out for principle over polling as a way to arrive at policy decisions. The most recent episode is the Clinton impeachment controversy. The contrast is stark between the arguments for and against impeachment. Republicans, Ken Starr, and Henry Hyde are being pilloried as extremists, out to get the president. The opposition misspeaks. The Republicans, in this instance, have taken a stand on principle, and are holding accountable a man of shameful character who is not worthy by our constitutional standards to be president. It remains to be seen whether our elected representatives will be guided by polling or principle in this historic moment. But conservatives have scored a win for the best arguments for impeachment.
Mary Ellen Bork, a board member of the Catholic Campaign for America and the Institute for Religion in Democracy, writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mary Ellen Bork ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Bishop's Work Is Never Done DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:Following is an excerpt from the Statement of Conclusions issued regarding four days of meetings between the bishops of Australia and the Cardinal Prefects of the Congregations in Rome:
The bishop, in his role as chief pastor in his diocese, proclaims the “Good News” of salvation by his life and witness to the saving message of Jesus Christ: a message of truth, hope and joy for the world. Like a good shepherd, the bishop is close to his people, … and in his episcopal ministry he is ever mindful that he is at the service of the People of God.
While every bishop is himself a witness to the truth and is the “visible source and foundation of unity in the particular Church” (Dogmatic Const. Lumen gentium 23), each bishop is a member of the one episcopate, the single and undivided body of bishops. The unity of the episcopate is therefore one of the constitutive elements of the unity of the Church, and the visible source of the unity of bishops is the Roman Pontiff, head of the episcopal body. It is the authentic communion of the individual bishop with the Successor of Peter which, in a certain sense, guarantees and ensures that the voice of the bishop speaks the word of the Church and so witnesses to the same revealed truth.
The bishop is entrusted with specific responsibilities and duties, which are at times difficult and indeed burdensome. In our day, we are only too aware of the multitude of influences in our society which work not only against the gospel message of truth, but are even directly hostile to the Catholic Faith. The People of God look to their shepherds for guidance and leadership now more than ever in these confusing and increasingly secularized times. The bishop, as servant of the Gospel, is a beacon of light, leading people to Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life.
The principal means by which bishops carry out this mandate from Christ to build up the unity of His Mystical Body, is through the three fold office of teaching, sanctifying, and governing, which every bishop is called to exercise.
CALLED TO TEACH
The bishop teaches clearly and effectively in union with the Holy Father and the Magisterium of the Church: “the teaching of each bishop, taken individually, is exercised in communion with the Roman Pontiff, pastor of the universal Church and with the other bishops dispersed throughout the world or gathered in ecumenical council. Such communion is a condition for its authenticity” (Congr. for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Donum veritatis 19; cf. Lumen gentium 25). The People of God who are entrusted to their care have a right to receive authentic and clear Catholic teaching from those who represent the Church in its various institutions.
The bishops … are intensely conscious that they are authentic teachers “endowed with the authority of Christ,” and that it is their grave responsibility, clearly and unambiguously, to proclaim the Church's teaching and to do all that they can to preserve the faithful from error. As the “visible source and foundation of unity” in his diocese, the bishop is committed to fostering unity among the faithful and to preventing factions and divisions from developing among the People of God.
The bishop may not tolerate error in matters of doctrine and morals or Church discipline, and true unity must never be at the expense of truth. This delicate tension between truth and unity is experienced by most … bishops. When such cases of tension arise, the bishops intend to overcome it, trying to identify the truth by all appropriate and available means, especially consulting their brother bishops and the Holy See, and striving to correct errors, not by blunt use of authority, but through dialogue and persuasion.
Making their voice heard by all Catholics (let alone non-Catholics) is a major problem for bishops today. They recognize the importance of a free press and legitimate criticism and, for their part, will endeavor to collaborate more effectively with all responsible forms of the media in order to find new ways for effectively communicating the Gospel in today's world.
The bishops of Australia, as testes veritatis, are committed to teach the Catholic Faith in Australia. They are assisted in this task by theologians. The Magisterium and theology are both, each in its own way, necessary for the building up of the People of God. In summary yet essential terms, one can say that the theologian has the task of reflecting on Revelation with the instruments of critical reason and of exploring the contents of the Faith with the arguments proper to the intellectual process, but always within the context of the Faith of the Church and in communion with its Pastors. The Magisterium, on the other hand, taking into consideration sound theology, has the task of safeguarding, expounding, and teaching the deposit of the Faith in its integrity; that is, of interpreting, with an authority which comes from Christ, the word of God, whether written or transmitted in the living Tradition of the Church.
CALLED TO SANCTIFY
The bishop is the guardian of the sacraments, the means of sanctification for the faithful, particularly the Holy Eucharist, which is “the source and summit of the Christian life” (Lumen gentium 11). The bishop is called upon to exercise vigilance over the celebration and administration of the sacraments in his diocese. He ensures the sacraments are administered according to the proper liturgical norms set forth by the Church. If he discovers that these norms are not being followed properly, with integrity and reverence, he acts quickly to correct the error or abuse.
[B]ishops realize that the sacred Liturgy is at the heart of their pastoral responsibilities. In promoting authentic sacred Liturgy, they have to provide against the introduction of spurious elements on the one hand, while, on the other, encouraging a Liturgy that is living and vibrant according to the prescribed norms and in the spirit of the liturgical reform. Most important is the bishop's own life of prayer which sustains his whole ministry, especially his central role in the Liturgy of his diocese. He must constantly return to the wellsprings of prayer in order to be strengthened by God in the grace of the Holy Spirit for his own personal sanctification for the good of the Church.
CALLED TO GOVERN
The bishop, in his pastoral governance, is entrusted with the important task of cultivating deep communion within the particular Church which, in turn, contributes to communion in the universal Church and for each and all members of his diocese: priests, members of institutes of consecrated life and societies of apostolic life, the lay faithful, and other diocesan groups and associations. As the minister of unity in the diocese, the bishop exercises an authority in the service of truth and love. The bishop receives his responsibility and duty to govern as a mandate from Christ himself and therefore keeps watch “over the whole flock of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you overseers, in which you tend the Church of God that he acquired with his own blood” (Acts 20:28).
The bishop's duty to teach, sanctify, and govern is a personal one, received by virtue of his episcopal consecration and the laying on of hands. This duty is by divine right, and cannot be surrendered to others. The … Bishops Conference is a forum where a local bishop can seek the assistance of his fellow bishops in pursuing his mission to proclaim the Gospel message (cf. Motu Proprio Apostolos suos 5-7, 14-24). In collaboration with his brother bishops in his own country and throughout the world, and in communion with the Successor of Saint Peter, the local bishop can build up and strengthen the Body of Christ in his own diocese.
In choosing their collaborators in the diocesan administration, in the seminary and in parishes, bishops need to make these appointments with a careful eye and with great attention, always giving emphasis to sanctity of life, orthodoxy, and pastoral competence. Continual vigilance is imperative in order to safeguard the integrity of the Faith and to ensure that it is clearly taught and explained at all levels of diocesan life.
The bishop maintains contact with his people at many levels and in many different contexts. It is his special care to demonstrate gratitude and appreciation, and to encourage the faithful in their endeavors as members of the Church, both in their striving for holiness and their charitable service to others. He keeps close contact with the many different diocesan agencies and apostolates under his care.
The bishop nourishes a special relationship with his priests, treating them as friends and collaborators, encouraging them in their work, promoting a sense of fraternity in the presbyterate, organizing retreats, and promoting opportunities for their on-going education. The bishop himself receives support and encouragement from his priests by their dedication, priestly example, and friendship. On the human level, the bishop can foster the positive identity of the priest by being present to him in a caring, personal, direct way, affording him all possible attention and time. As the priest is the closest and most indispensable collaborator of the bishop, he has a primary call on the bishop as his spiritual father, thus no care expended on him can ever be seen to be excessive.
PROMOTING VOCATIONS
The bishop's care for priests extends to a special concern for the promotion of all vocations, especially to the priest-hood, not only locally, but also nationally. One initiative already taken is the national network of vocation directors in Australia—“Catholic Vocations Ministry Australia”—which provides support, ideas, and materials.
As a personal responsibility enjoined upon him for the welfare of his seminarians, the bishop gives his assistance to the rector and staff of the seminary especially in the choice of candidates for admission. The bishop must have assurance of the candidates’ proper motivation for entrance to the seminary and their preparation (doctrinal, moral, spiritual, human and pastoral) for ordination. The diocesan bishop must have moral certainty of the suitability of the candidate in terms of doctrine, spiritual life and human qualities, before he is ordained to the diaconate. The bishop should never ordain a candidate if there is any serious doubt as to his suitability for Holy Orders.
A CROSS IN LIFE
In the world in which we live today, for a bishop to be a true shepherd, he is called to teach doctrinal truth with gentle firmness and profound humility, to sanctify by word and example, and to govern with fidelity and genuine authority. This will necessarily lead to suffering and the Cross. We know well that when the bearers of apostolic office dare to exercise authority which is theirs in matters of doctrine and morals, they become a sign of contradiction to the world. While this is indeed a real challenge for the bishop today, it is at the same time his source of grace, strength, and deep joy. The greatest sign of contradiction is also the greatest sign of hope. For in the mystery of the Cross we learn a wisdom which transcends our own weakness and limitations; we learn that in Christ truth and love are one, and in Him we find the meaning of our vocation.
----- EXCERPT: Just what are the demands on our shepherds in the world today? ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Anxiety of Time DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:[The phrase] “Time on my hands” has far deeper significance than is generally envisaged. It could very well be that time is one of the greatest obstacles to happiness, and for two reasons.
Time makes the combination of pleasures impossible. Because we live in time we cannot simultaneously listen to Cicero, Demosthenes and Bossuet; because the clock of our life is wound but only once, we cannot at one and the same moment enjoy the snow of the Alps and the refreshing sunshine of the highlands of Kenya; because the heart beats out the lease on life, one cannot, despite the advertisements, “dine and dance” at the same time.
It is an interesting psychological fact that the more pleasurable are our moments, the less we are conscious of time. At the end of a pleasant evening with friends, or listening to good music, or being spiritually uplifted in prayer, we say, “Time passed like anything.” When, however, work is a bore, visits a trial in patience and an appointment with the dentist a cross, time never seems to end.
Hidden in this psychological and subjective judgment is already a hint of immortality and the necessity of a timeless existence in order to find perfect happiness. If the more we feel ourselves outside of time, the greater is our happiness, it follows that eternity is the one condition in which all things can be enjoyed at one and the same time. This, curiously enough, is the definition that the philosophers give of eternity: tota simul, all pleasures at once.
But in recent decades, with the decline of faith and belief in immortality, time has become one of the major causes of many psychotic and neurotic disorders. If there is no other life than this, if the daily burden of life leads to nothing more than the grave, if existence has no meaning, then time is the root of most of our anxieties. What then is life but a long corridor through which one passes closing doors, not knowing which door will be the last? Every crisis in life, every new turning in the road, diminishes possibilities. The anxiety of the temporal then begins to press us down, so that we are like a criminal awaiting a death sentence.
The passing parade of time, the slamming of the gates of opportunity, the calming of passions, forced retirements —all of these produce an existential anxiety which makes one wonder if it is worthwhile carrying on.
Because life does not end here, the closing of the doors of time and the burden of the years become bearable—because they lead to something better when properly utilized. That was why St. Paul said that for the sake of Christ he “gloried in his infirmities” and in his anxieties and in his sorrows. This was nothing but the continuation of the message of Our Blessed Lord: “Be not anxious.” This means, “Have no existential anxiety about acquiring too much in time, for it ends and leads to judgment.” So long as one lives for treasures that moths consume and rust eats and thieves steal, there is no possible escape from anxiety and worry. We cannot cast these cares upon God , for God has no interest whatsoever in making a person rich. As William James once wrote, “The sovereign cure for worry is religious faith. The turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and to him who has a hold of vaster and more permanent realities, the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things.” It is only to the extent that timeless existence, or eternity, is brought to bear upon all of our actions in time, that we become liberated from that awful, frustrating anxiety of the temporal.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Archbishop Fulton Sheen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Elizabeth's England Wasn't Quite That Way DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:Nowadays most people learn history from popular culture. Movies, in particular, have become important purveyors of what we think about a specific era in the past. Two hours in a darkened theater, surrounded by other rapt spectators, can leave a deeper imprint on our consciousness than hours spent in a library poring over academic texts. With its close-ups of beautiful people and carefully calibrated emotional climaxes, a well-executed drama or comedy can touch nerves that even the best scholarly arguments or research will never reach.
Most Hollywood productions also work hard at reproducing the visuals of a particular period with great accuracy so that we in the audience becomes convinced we are there. This creates certain dangers from a historical perspective. The visual accuracy may lend an aura of truthfulness to various incidents in the story that, in fact, are completely made up.
Elizabeth is a dark, sumptuous melodrama about England's illustrious 16th-century queen. It focuses primarily on her personal relationships and how she learns to make them secondary to political imperatives in order to succeed as a head of state. Like many movies, it often deviates from the historical record to make its drama more compelling.
As part of this process, the struggle between Protestants and Catholics in Tudor England is reduced to a contest between good guys and bad guys, and the papists are always the villains. While this era in Britain may not have been the Church's finest hour, what the movie's audience will conclude about Catholicism during this period is a radical distortion of history.
The action begins with the burning at the stake of three English Protestants, among them the celebrated Nicholas Ridley. The cruel brutality of the scene is heavily underlined so that the ruler who ordered it will be perceived as a bloodthirsty tyrant.
The Catholic queen, Mary Tudor (Cathy Burke), is not one of history's more attractive figures, but the movie reduces her to a two-dimensional caricature. In reality, she was a devout woman of faith with an interest in theology. Director Shekhar Kapur (The Bandit Queen) and screenwriter Michael Hirst present her Catholicism as nothing more than a narrow species of bigotry which inspires her to execute mindlessly all those who oppose her efforts to impose her religion on the people.
Among those whose lives are threatened is her Protestant half sister, Princess Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett), next in line to the throne. Elizabeth is falsely accused of participating in a plot to overthrow the queen and is imprisoned in the Tower of London. In a dramatic face-to-face encounter, Mary grudgingly accepts her protestations of innocence and refuses to kill her.
Soon thereafter the Catholic monarch is dead, and in 1558 Elizabeth ascends to the throne. The filmmakers present the new queen as something of a skeptic. “This small question of religion,” she asks, “why must we tear ourselves apart?” She is neither ardently pro-Protestant nor anti-Catholic—a stance the movie wholeheartedly endorses.
The Protestant Sir Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush) returns from exile to take charge of her personal security. Adept at political intrigue and a ruthless murderer, he is shown doubting the existence of God, a rare position for any person of that period. The filmmakers give his atheism a positive spin, implying that it made him the only one of Elizabeth's advisers clear-headed enough to take the steps necessary to preserve her sovereignty. There is little historical evidence to support this view.
Elizabeth falls in love with the Protestant Lord Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes), but she is advised to marry Catholic royalty to keep the peace. The favored candidates are the French Duc d'Anjou (Vincent Cassel) and her dead half sister's husband, King Philip II of Spain. As her heart belongs to Lord Robert, she hesitates, and when she learns her true love is already married, she rejects all her suitors. “I will have one mistress here,” she exclaims, “and no master!” The filmmakers consider her desire to rule on her own a kind of 16th-century equivalent of feminism and applaud it.
Scotland is controlled by the Catholic, French-born regent, Mary of Guise (Fanny Ardant), who defeats the English troops by inflicting many casualties. Since Walsingham was the only one of Elizabeth's advisers to counsel against this attack, she decides to listen almost exclusively to him. His solution to her problems is to wipe out all the leading Catholics who oppose her.
The filmmakers take great pains to show how richly the papists deserve their fate. The pope (John Gielgud) is depicted as sending Catholic priests to England solely for the purpose of assassinating its Protestant queen, whom he labels as “illegitimate” and “a heretic.” Those Jesuits such as Edmund Campion who secretly entered England for reasons of faith and were martyred don't exist in the movie—a terrible distortion of the historical record.
In terms of body count, there were more Protestants killed than Catholics during the persecutions in England, and neither Mary Tudor nor Mary of Guise should be held up as role models for Catholic women today. Nevertheless, many Catholics innocent of political intrigue suffered and died for their beliefs. To erase this fact from history is dangerous.
Because Elizabeth has been praised by critics on both sides of the Atlantic, its version of history will be taken seriously. As its makers are dubious about the value of any kind of religion, its anti-Catholicism is almost an afterthought. But Catholics still need to step forward to set the record straight. Otherwise, the film's untruths will be accepted by mass audiences as fact. These, in turn, may have the potential to be used in support of anti-Catholic bias in the future.
John Prizer is currently based in Paris.
Elizabeth is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America.
----- EXCERPT: A critically lauded film tars Catholicism in sweeping strokes ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:Six Days and Seven Nights
Robin Monroe (Anne Heche) is an assistant editor of a magazine in New York. In order to break from work and get away from the cold of the city, boyfriend Frank Martin (David Schwimmer) takes her on vacation to a tropical island. Boarding a tiny plane owned by cargo pilot Quinn Harris (Harrison Ford), the two lovebirds arrive at their tropical destination and immediately get engaged. However, an urgent work deadline then forces Robin to hire Quinn to fly her to Tahiti for a photo shoot. On the way to Tahiti they run into a lighting storm and are forced to crash-land their plane on a remote island. Hearing that the plane never arrived at its destination, Frank is concerned and takes comfort in the company of Quinn's girlfriend, Angelica (Jacqueline Obradors). Meanwhile, realizing that they may be stranded for a long time, Robin and Quinn try to make the best of their situation. At first they get on each other's nerves. But the two slowly begin to fall for each other as they deal with the dangers they encounter on the island. Contains strong language, suggestive sexuality, and some violence. (MPAA—PG-13)
Billboard Dad
Made-for-video comedy with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, about two sisters who have lost their mother and are concerned about their widowed father. The video is filled with girlish adventures in their determination to find their dad a new wife; the pair paint an advertisement on a giant billboard in the heart of Hollywood, but they get more than they bargained for. Lighthearted fun for the entire family. Not rated.
Sour Grapes
Two cousins, sneaker designer Richie (Craig Bierko) and brain surgeon Evan (Steven Weber), need a weekend of rest and relaxation. So, they head off to Atlantic City with their girlfriends Roberta (Robyn Peterman) and Joan (Karen Sillas) After a night of gambling, the cousins are down to their last quarters. Evan gives Richie his last two and when three bunches of grapes show up in a row on his slot machine, Richie is suddenly $436,000 richer. Evan thinks that his cousin should split the money with him and so begins the prolonged discourse about splitting the money. Roberta and Joan eventually leave them in disgust. Evan resumes his medical career and Richie deliberately gets fired from his job to spend time with his possessive mother Selma (Viola Harris). A series of comic mishaps follow; Evan tells his cousin that he only has a short time to live (from a previous medical condition) and ends up botching a separate operation because he can't focus on anything but the money. Other characters include Digby (Orlando Jones), a homeless man, and Danny Pepper (Matt Keeslar), a popular TV actor, who both need surgery and who, through no fault of their own, get wrapped up in the cousins’ fight. Billed as a comedy but not suitable viewing due to its language and sex-related humor. (MPAA—R)
Sliding Doors
Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow), a public relations specialist, has just been fired from her job. Racing to catch the subway home, she just misses it as the sliding doors close in front of her. In an unexplained sequence, another version of her does make it onto the train. From that moment on, the two different Helens continue with their parallel, but different lives. The Helen who makes it onto the subway meets James (John Hannah), and then gets home in time to find her live-in boyfriend and aspiring novelist, Gerry (John Lynch), with his former girlfriend, Lydia (Jeanne Tripplehorn). The Helen who didn't make it onto the train nearly gets mugged on the way home, and thus is delayed long enough to miss Lydia leaving their place. As each of the Helens and their lives continue in different directions—the first falling for James whom she later meets again, and the second becoming suspicious of Gerry—they must decide what is best for each of them. Not suitable viewing for children because of sexual content and language. (MPAA—PG-13)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Yale's More House Celebrates 60th Anniversary DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:William Cardinal Keeler, archbishop of Baltimore, told a fall gathering at More House, the Catholic center at Yale university, that he was gratified “to see the dedication and commitment of Catholic alumni to this chapel.” He said that Saint Thomas More, the center's patron saint, had been “deeply influential … in the lives of so many Catholic men and women at Yale.”
Undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, administrators, and alumni gathered to commemorate the center's founding in 1938. Some traveled from as far as California and Italy to be part of the 60th anniversary event.
Among the more prominent graduates of Yale who have been associated with More House are Francis (Faye) Vincent, the former commissioner of Major League Baseball; Virgil Dechant, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus; William F. Buckley, Jr., editor-at-large of the National Review; and Judge Guido Calabresi, former dean of the Yale Law School.
Cardinal Keeler presided and preached at the opening session of the celebration, which was an evening of prayer. He was joined in the three-day celebration by a number of clergy—including Archbishop Daniel Cronin of Hartford—and prominent lay people, among whom was Buckley, who has received numerous awards for his accomplishments, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1991), and a television Emmy for his weekly TV show, Firing Line. He is the author of 38 books, including God and Man at Yale (1951) and Nearer My God, An Autobiography of Faith (1997).
In his address at a symposium on the second day of the event, Buckley noted that despite the “progressive demotion of religion by the culture of science,” there is a refusal by religion “to perish by any sword.”
Buckley also took “political correctness” to task, saying, “Why do we, in deference to an unrealistic fear of giving offense, deprive ourselves of satisfactions to which the majority of a college community are entitled. … Might not classes be suspended on Good Friday, and religious exhortations cited at convocations? What are the reasons for this deracination, as we bustle through the Easter season without any inclination to pause over the Resurrection, and sap the ampler joys of a religious tradition by pledging at Christmas not to let the image of the Christ Child pass through the mind?"
The theme for the anniversary event was “The Legacy of Thomas More: Catholic Faith and Intellectual Life at the Threshold of the 21st Century.” A special tribute was paid also to the founder of the center, Father T. Lawrason Riggs, himself a graduate of Yale in 1910, and a Catholic who hoped and planned for construction of a chapel and center on the campus that would fulfill the spiritual needs of all Catholics at Yale.
Father Riggs was ordained to the priesthood in 1922 and was assigned to the campus ministry at Yale. He immediately enlisted the help of fellow Yale Catholic alumni, whose financial contributions led to construction of the chapel and an administrative wing in 1937. In 1938, the chapel was dedicated by Bishop Maurice McAuliffe, Bishop of Hartford.
Father Riggs and other founders named the Georgian-style chapel and center after Saint Thomas More, the English martyr who was executed in 1535 and who was canonized in 1935 by Saint Pius XI. Saint Thomas More was deemed an appropriate patron for the chapel, since he was a layman, scholar, lawyer, writer, and statesman, not unlike so many young people who have attended Yale and made their mark in the world.
Since the time of Father Riggs the number of Catholics at Yale has grown considerably. When he attended Yale, before answering the call to a priestly vocation, the Catholic population at the university was around 10%. Today, it is 20-25%, according to Father Robert Beloin, the current More House chaplain.
----- EXCERPT: Cardinal Keeler highlights St. Thomas More as a model for Catholics at the university ----- EXTENDED BODY: James Malerba ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Help for Christians Along the Scenic Hudson DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:A New York shrine honors Mary and the Salesian saint known as 'the father and teacher of youth’
Exactly 100 years ago, just after the death of St. John Bosco, members of his Salesian order arrived in New York City. They were responding to the call of Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan to minister to a growing population of Italian immigrants.
Since then, Salesian priests, brothers, and sisters have staffed schools, parishes, and youth and retreat centers, in New York and across the country.
A special monument to the Salesians’ work lies just 35 miles outside the city, in West Haverstraw, New York. There the order established a Marian Shrine, on 200 scenic acres above the Hudson River, honoring the Blessed Mother in her title most favored by St. John Bosco. This is the National Shrine of Mary, Help of Christians.
The Salesians began this shrine as a simple place of devotion in the late 1940s. Things began to change in 1954, when the order built the Rosary Way to observe the Marian Year, and large numbers of pilgrims streamed up the Hudson Valley to pray along this “Gospel trail.” This prompted a major expansion of the Marian Shrine into what the current director, Salesian Father Jerry Sesto, describes as “a huge facility.”
The Rosary Way remains a key attraction of the shrine, with life-sized representations of the mysteries in marble, carved in Italy by Enrico Arrighini. The Way winds along a mile of woodland paths, with shrines of Lourdes and Fatima at one end of the path. The Fatima grotto, in particular, has an original interpretation: Our Lady is shown standing on an arch, reminiscent of a rainbow, that spans a rock-edged pool. The three Fatima children kneel attentively before her on rocks that break the pool's surface.
Yet before visitors even reach the woodland prayer trails of the Rosary Way, they come upon the Don Bosco Pavilion Chapel. One of three chapels at the Shrine, the pavilion is dominated by a statue of St. John Bosco standing with two boys, representing the particular devotion to youth which marked the saint's mission. At the base of the statue are his words: “Anyone in trouble is my friend.” Within this pavilion chapel, a statue of Mary holding the Child Jesus, inscribed “Our Lady Help of Christians, Pray for Us,” is a reminder of the shrine's patroness.
The nearby paved road-walkway continues onto acres of rolling lawn, where our Lady is honored as the Rosary Madonna. Though the bronze statue is an impressive 48-feet tall, Mary is a gentle, welcoming presence for all.
The 6.5-ton statue was designed by Martin Lumen Winter of New York, cast in Italy in 1959, and blessed at the Vatican by Pope John XXIII. Later donated to the Marian shrine, it was placed Sept. 25, 1977, on a pedestal of Vermont stone resting on a star-shaped base—much like the base, further down river, which upholds the Statue of Liberty. Further up the river from that monument of political freedom, the Rosary Madonna awaits, facing the Hudson, welcoming those who seek the freedom of the Children of God.
Further along the lawns, the outdoor altar accommodates gatherings that draw 4,000-7,000 on particular feasts or for certain devotions. The feast of Mary Help of Christians (May 24) was long the traditional feast of the shrine; Divine Mercy Sunday, a week after Easter, is a newer observance here. Other key celebrations are the feasts of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12, and of St. John Bosco on Jan. 31—though these are celebrated in the indoor chapels.
Yet even in cool weather, the “outdoor cathedral” invites a stop. The marble altar, the statue of Mary Help of Christians honored high behind it, and the resplendent mosaics lie beneath a baldachinolike protective structure, topped by dome and cross. Along with our Lady, St. John Bosco is depicted with St. Dominic Savio, and St. Mary Mazzarello with Bl. Laura Vicuna.
The road from the pavilion chapel to this altar passes Becchi House, an authentic replica of Don Bosco's birthplace in Italy. At age 9, Bosco dreamed of a confrontation with a crowd of unruly youths. A “majestic” man saved him, then ordered him to take charge by using kindness. When the man gave young John his mother as “teacher and guide,” our Lady appeared to reassure the young saint.
After ordination, Bosco drew about himself a group of troubled boys and orphans in Turin. There, he eventually erected a shrine church to Mary Help of Christians. Hundreds of boys at a time attended his Oratory, drawn to his mix of prayer, song, catechism, games, athletics, and picnics. In this past decade, Pope John Paul II declared the saint “Father and Teacher of Youth.”
Bosco's Oratorian spirit of a family that welcomes, a school that educates and prepares for life, and a church that evangelizes, remains at the Marian Shrine and its major retreat center. “Children love to come up,” says Father Sesto. Last year alone, thousands came for retreat and summer camp.
The retreat apostolate is strong for both children and adults. There are ample boys and girls dorms, and a newer adult retreat house accommodating 100 doubles or 50 singles. Retreats range from a day to a week, and youth retreats are tailored for high school by classes, for graduations, and for confirmations.
The simple spontaneity of Don Bosco's Oratorian spirit of prayer, study, and play is meant to imbue everything with religious and joyful aspects. Facilities at the shrine include another chapel, a large cafeteria, a gym, outdoor courts, and sports fields. There's a large gift and book shop appealing to all visitors.
The shrine has daily Mass and recitation of the Rosary, and confession is available. Groups can schedule devotions, including Mass.
The Marian shrine is halfway between the George Washington Bridge and West Point, using Route 9W along the Hudson River, or Palisades Parkway to Exit 14. Either route has scenic spots, and both touch Filors Lane. For information, call the shrine at 914-947-2200, or write to West Haverstraw, N.Y. 10993.
Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: LIFE in 1998-VICTORIES and DEFEATS DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:JANUARY
A Pro-Life Activist Returns to Jail
A judge in Pittsburgh sentences Joan Andrews Bell to serve three to 23 months in jail for violating terms of her probation after she joined a picket at an abortion clinic.
Healing From the Pain of Abortion
Rachel's Vineyard is a post-abortion healing ministry in many dioceses around the country and has spread to other countries. It was started by Barbara Cullen and psychologist Theresa Karminski Burke in the mid-1980s, and has helped hundreds of women heal through weekend retreats and a 13-week group counseling program.
FEBRUARY
Florida Women Brings Healing to Bosnia
Sandy Tobin managed to head regular missions from Pilgrims’ Peace Center in Florida, to bring aid to the people in and around Medjugorje, many of whom were forgotten after the war in the former Yugoslavia.
Chastity After the Sexual Revolution
Abstinence-only sex education programs struggle to gain a stronger foothold in the culture. Chastity educators in the United States note a few trouble spots in an otherwise favorable response to morality-based sex education. With the rise in the number of teenage pregnancies, abortion, and out-of-wedlock childbirth, many have look with renewed interest on chastity and abstinence as a remedy.
MARCH
Surrogate Motherhood in the Holy Land
Surrogacy becomes a subject for debate in Israel after a Jewish woman, hired by an infertile Jewish couple to serve as a surrogate mother, gave birth to twins. The local Catholic clergy reiterate Church teaching against fertility treatments such as artificial insemination and surrogate motherhood.
Underage Pregnancies in Britain Hit New High
More adolescent girls in Great Britain than ever before are taking the contraceptive pill, according to new figures. Meanwhile, a legal suit is launched against manufacturers of the pill by 170 women or their relatives who claim the contraceptive drug caused serious side effects or, in some cases, death.
APRIL
Pro-Lifers Maneuver to End Partial-Birth Abortion
Congress begins considering how to override President Clinton's veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. It was the second round of a political showdown that began in 1996 when Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) challenged on the floor of the Senate the late-term procedure known in the medical industry as dilation and extraction, or “D & X.”
Coast-to-Coast Walk Attracts Committed Young Pro-Lifers
Students from Franciscan University of Steubenville hit the road in a coast-to-coast walk to witness to life “from the womb to the tomb.” The annual walk was begun in 1995 by then student Steve Sanborn to provide American youths and Steubenville students with an impetus to speak out and witness to the value of human life.
Where Have All Italy's Children Gone?
The country most associated with the Church now has the world's lowest birth rate. Demographers warn that the low birth rate, coupled with one of the world's highest life expectancies, could produce disturbing consequences for Italian society. One of these is the reversal of the “age pyramid,” which means that people older than 65 are becoming much more numerous than those younger than 18.
Canadian Court Accords ‘Rights Status’ to Sexual Orientation
The Supreme Court of Canada delivered a sweeping decision on homosexual rights, using what some decry as an exercise of raw judicial power. The court unanimously ruled that the province of Alberta's human rights legislation must include sexual orientation among the prohibited grounds for discrimination. Instead of declaring the law unconstitutional as written, the Court decided to “read in” sexual orientation.
MAY
A Pro-Life Justice's Freedom To Speak is Upheld
Washington State Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders, 52, is cleared of a reprimand he received for speaking in January 1996 to a pro-life group. Apanel of nine court of appeals judges ruled that he had not diminished public confidence in the judiciary with his remarks. A controversy brewed for two and a half years around Saunders after he spoke at a pro-life rally.
Pharmacists Point to Dark Side of ‘Beauty Pill’
Manufacturers of the birth control pill launch a new marketing campaign. Their target audience: teen-age girls seeking a clear complexion. Ortho Pharmaceutical Co. launches a major ad campaign touting their Ortho Tri-Cyclen birth control pills as dual-purpose: as a birth control pill and as a pill to help clear up or avoid acne. A “beauty pill,” according to the company. Pro-lifers such as Pharmacists for Life's Bo Kuhar fear that Ortho's new marketing campaign may be the sign of “more tricks to get young girls” to use birth control pills. He warned that the pill has bad physical side-effects.
Canadian Doctor Gets Two-Year Jail Term for Assisted Suicide
Church and pro-life organizations in Canada are appalled by a light jail sentence given a Toronto AIDS specialist Dr. Maurice Genereux for assisting in the death of a depressed but otherwise viable patient. Genereux prescribed powerful sleeping pills in 1996 to two depressed male patients who wanted to end their lives. Ontario Crown Prosecutor Attorney Michael Leshner described Genereux's actions as “the worst thing a doctor could have done.” He added that while a prison sentence was appropriate, the presiding judge should have sent a stronger message by way of a longer term.
JUNE
Prospects for Premature Babies Are Improving
Babies born prematurely aren't necessarily destined for death or life with severe disabilities, according to a study released at the Pediatric Academic Society's annual conference in New Orleans. The study debunks the popular notion that many babies will not survive or will suffer severe disabilities.
Jane Roe's Long Road to Truth
Norma McCorvey—the Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade—speaks to the Register about how the deceit of abortion industry drew her in and brought her to the depths of anguish and confusion. That deceit began when she was told by attorneys that they could help her. Instead she never received the help she needed, was never asked to come to court, and was simply used to advance the so-called pro-choice agenda. A convert to the pro-life movement, McCorvey received confirmation in the Church.
House Vote Bans Funding for Abortion Pill RU-486
Pro-life forces score a major congressional victory in the fight against the abortion pill RU-486. The House adopts an amendment to prevent the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from proceeding with activities related to the drug. The amendment stipulates that no federal money would be made available to the FDA"for testing, development, or approval (including approval of production, manufacturing, or distribution) of any drug for the chemical inducement of abortion.” The initiative passes 223-202.
Portugal's Voters Reject Attempt to Liberalize Abortion Law
The pro-abortion victory party planned in Portugal for the end of June never happens. Abortion advocates and the media predicted the first-ever referendum would result in the liberalization of the country's abortion laws. When the votes were counted though, pro-lifers were the ones claiming victory.
Study Confirms Creighton Method's Reliability in NFP
The Creighton Method of natural family planning (NFP) is roughly as effective as the birth control pill when used to avoid pregnancy, according to a 14-year, five-state study published in the June Journal of Reproductive Medicine.
JULY
Canada Softening Stand On New Reproductive Technology
Canadian Church groups raised concerns that the federal government may be backing away from a pledge to regulate a number of controversial practices in the new areas of reproductive technology.
Abstinence Education Gets a Boost in Ontario
Ontario Education Minister Dave Johnson announced that, beginning in September, the province's public schools must include information about abstinence in sex-education programs.
AUGUST
Bioethicist's Views Generate Controversy at Princeton
Princeton University hires an Australian bioethicist Peter Singer, 52, best known in this country for his views on animal rights but who has described people with birth defects and some disabilities as “defective.” National attention focuses on his controversial writings on euthanasia.
SEPTEMBER
A Pro-Life Credit Card
Vitae Corp. is trying to “change the world” by helping those groups fighting the battle on the front lines. Steve Thomas, director of Illinois-based Vitae, said the idea for the organization came after several years of working in the pro-life movement. Vitae seeks to raise funds for pro-life groups through a pro-life credit card.
‘Brain Death’ Issue Sparks Debate
At the Catholic Medical Association's annual convention in New York, a debate ensues over “brain death.” Dr. Paul Byrne, the outgoing CMA president, says “brain death” is a non-medical term that was invented to allow the harvesting of vital organs from patients who may be dying but not yet dead. Taking organs in such cases actually kills the patient, he states.
Canadian Pro-Life Activist Jailed For Her Silent Witness
The arrest of pro-life activist Linda Gibbons underscores the Canadian pro-life movement's ongoing struggle against injunctions limiting right-to-life demonstrations. Gibbons was arrested Sept. 9 for picketing outside a Toronto abortion clinic. It was the 10th time since the fall of 1994 that she had been arrested for pro-life activity.
New D.C.-Area Black Group Vows to Fight for Life
Through adoption, education, and promotion of strong family life, black Catholics can defeat abortion, speakers say at a pro-life conference in Washington, D.C. Human Life International and St. Joseph Catholic Church of Alexandria, Va., co-sponsor the Pierre Toussaint Pro-Life Conference at St. Luke Catholic Church. About 50 people attended the event, which took place the day after the U.S. Senate failed to override President Clinton's veto of the ban on partial-birth abortion.
OCTOBER
Bishops Oppose Execution of Retarded Man in Illinois
Catholic leaders, including Francis Cardinal George of Chicago and Bishop Wilton Gregory of Belleville, oppose the state of Illinois’ proposed execution of Anthony Porter, a 41-year-old retarded man convicted of murdering two people in a 1982 robbery. Porter, who according to reports has an I.Q. of 51, would be the most severely retarded person to be executed in the United States since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. The hearings for his case continue.
NOVEMBER
Faiths Unite to Fight Death Penalty in California
Members of Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, and Quaker groups meet at the Changing Hearts and Minds conference in San Francisco to speak out against capital punishment in California. Religious leaders released a collective Statement of Conscience pledging to work actively for the abolition of the death penalty.
Terminally Ill Mother Rallies Physicians Against Euthanasia
From her wheelchair, Deanna Aikman, a victim of Lou Gehrig's disease, rallies support against Proposal B, the attempt to legalize assisted suicide which was crushed by Michigan voters. Aikman spoke of living with a terminal illness with hope, rather than despair, as a life-and-death choice. She credited God with giving her the grace to make the choice for hope.
Euthanasia Movement Marches Forward in Europe
The Socialist Party in Belgium is pushing for the legalization of assisted suicide—a move which would make Belgium the third European country, after Holland and Switzerland, to permit the euthanization of the terminally ill. Although Belgium is nominally Catholic, proponents of the measure claim that only 20% of the Belgian electorate is opposed to assisted suicide, and that many doctors routinely prescribe lethal doses of pain killers to patients who request them.
Hard Data Show Unreliability of U.N. Population Projections
The United Nations announces new population forecasts showing that the annual increase in population has dropped to 1.37%, or 78 million—far below the figure of 94 million projected in 1992. Consequently, the United Nations once again had to drastically reduce projections for the year 2050. The medium variant now sits at 8.91 billion, compared with 9.37 billion in a 1996 report.
Execution Up Close Underscores the Indignity of Death Penalty
On Oct. 7, the day of his execution in Texas, double murderer Johnathan Wayne Nobles fasts, prays the rosary with visitors, and receives Holy Communion in lieu of his last meal. Nobles, a Third Order Dominican who converted to Catholicism seven years ago, chooses Bishop Edmond Carmody of Tyler, Texas, as a witness to the execution. “It's a terrible thing to witness a person being executed,” Bishop Carmody says. Nobles was buried in his Dominican habit with a rosary in his hand.
Kevorkian's Euthanasia Stunt Rankles Hospice Chief
The medical director of Hospice of Michigan says Dr. Jack Kevorkian's latest victim “didn't have to die that way.” The victim, Thomas Youk, died by assisted suicide with the help of Kevorkian. Avideotape of the death was later broadcast on national television. Dr. Walter Hunter, the Hospice director, said his type of institution tries to get at the root of the patients’ fears, their concerns, and tell them what can be done and the types of treatment available. “I do not believe that any patient with this condition need have active euthanasia performed,” he said.
DECEMBER
10-Year Term Reimposed in Daughter's Death
A provincial Canadian Court of Appeal ruling reimposes a 10-year prison sentence on a Saskatchewan farmer who killed his disabled 12-year-old daughter in 1993. The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal ruled that Robert Latimer, 45, of Wilkie, must serve at least 10 years, the minimum under Canadian law for those convicted of second-degree murder, for his role in the death of Tracy Latimer, who suffered from a severe form of cerebral palsy. The court overturned the 1997 decision of Judge T.G. Noble, who bypassed the minimum penalty on the grounds that Latimer's move was an act of “compassionate homicide.” Latimer is free on bail, pending an appeal of the latest ruling.
Can an Unborn Child Sue his Mother?
In Canada, a Supreme Court decision is anticipated concerning the right of children to sue their mothers for injuries suffered prior to birth. The case revolves around 5-year-old Ryan Dobson of Moncton, who was born prematurely as a result of an auto accident, and suffers from cerebral palsy and other disabilities. The suit alleges that Ryan's mother, Cynthia Dobson, was negligent for engaging in risky behavior while pregnant. Her insurance company has argued that granting unborn children the right to sue their parents infringes severely on a pregnant woman's “lifestyle and freedom of mobility.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Calendar of Events-January 1999 DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:3-8: Youth Ministry Conference
Featuring Scott Hahn Sponsored by Franciscan University of Steubenville Phoenix, Ariz.
For more information call 602-820-7001
8-10: Deacons for Life and Family International Conference
Featuring Deacon Keith Fournier, director of Deacons for Life and Family International, Father Paul Marx, founder of Human Life International, and others. Washington, D.C.
For more information call 540-622-5273
9: One Day Conference on Love, Life, and the Family
Human Life International Binghamton, N.Y.
For more information call 540-622-5273
10-17: Crisis Magazine Second Annual Cruise
Featuring Mary Cunningham Agee, Bowie Kuhn, Michael Novak, Father George Rutler, Russell Hittinger, Robert Reilly, Peter Kreeft, William Donohue, George Sim Johnston, and Father Frank Pavone. For more information call 800-548-1011
21: Annual March for Life Convention
March for Life Education and Defense Fund Washington, D.C.
For more information call 202-543-3377
21 and 22: Mass and Thanksgiving for Life
21: 8:00 p.m.; 22: 7:30 a.m. Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception Celebrant: William Cardinal Keeler Washington, D.C.
For more information call 202-526-8300
22: 26th Annual March for Life
Theme: “For What Shall It Profit A Man, If He Gain the Whole World, and Lose His Own Soul?"
March for Life Education and Defense Fund Washington, D.C.
For more information call 202-543-3377
22-23: A Celebration of the Thought of Pope John Paul II
Featuring Father Avery Dulles, Dr. Janet Smith, George Weigel, Father Robert Sirico, Helen Alvare, and others.
St. Louis University, St. Louis.
For more information call 800-758-3678, (314) 977-2711
26-27: Pope John Paul II Visits Archdiocese of St. Louis.
Jan. 26: Meeting with Youth
Jan. 27: Mass in Trans World Dome For more information call 314-533-1887
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Cardinal Decries Drugstore's Teen Birth-Control Program DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:MANCHESTER, England—British Catholics are boycotting the country's largest pharmaceutical chain after it was revealed that teen-agers will be given free contraceptives at one of its stores.
The move by Boots in its busiest store in Glasgow, Scotland, brought a swift rebuke from Thomas Cardinal Winning, archbishop of Glasgow, who said the store was sending the wrong moral message to teens.
“This is absolutely disgraceful and unacceptable,” he said. “It erodes the principles of morality and undermines the role and authority of parents. The place has gone sex mad.
“The message to young people seems to be that if you have sex, we will try to limit the damage that causes.”
Parents and pro-life activists are appalled at the store's partnership with city health authorities to provide an in-store family planning clinic. The clinic opens for two hours a day, twice a week, giving sex advice, condoms, and the birth-control pill to teen-agers.
Those against the scheme believe it is a trial run for a national program. It has also been revealed that the clinic will give the pill to girls under the age of 16, the U.K.'s age of consent.
Said Cardinal Winning: “I would argue that it would be better to encourage young people to take a responsible attitude to sex in the first place. Parents should be encouraged to take a greater role, but under the guise of patient confidentiality they are being [left] out entirely.
“If a teen-ager is being bullied at school, the first thing that would happen is that the parents would be told. But if they are having sex at a young age that appears to be a different story.” Catholic newspapers in Britain have urged their readers to write to the company's chairman, Lord Blyth, saying they will boycott the store until the policy is reversed.
‘If a teen-ager is being bullied at school, the first thing that would happen is that the parents would be told. But if they are having sex at a young age that appears to be a different story.’
The Universe, a weekly Catholic tabloid, urged readers to send the following cut-out coupon to the company: “Dear Lord Blyth, I am appalled that your company has decided to open a clinic providing free contraception to young people at your Glasgow store, and at the possibility that the scheme could be extended to your other stores. I believe this move to bring free contraception onto the High Street is morally unacceptable and therefore I have no choice but to boycott your stores in the hope that you will reconsider this plan and the effect it will have on young people.”
Backing the boycott was Nuala Scarisbrick, a trustee of Life, one of the two major pro-life organizations in the United Kingdom. “We need to show our disgust that such a good company should descend to encouraging underage sex,” Scarisbrick said. Life said the policy would lead to a rise in promiscuity and would result in increased abortion and sexually transmitted diseases among teens. The organization said the only way to stop the spread of the policy was to hit the company in its cash tills.
The action by Boots has revived the debate over the rights of parents vs. patient confidentiality. In the mid-1980s the issue became high profile when Victoria Gillick, a Catholic, took her local health authority and the U.K.'s Department of Health to court in a bid to allow parents the right to veto the prescription of the pill and the provision of abortion to underage girls.
Although three judges in the U.K. Court of Appeal voted in her favor, the ruling was overturned by the highest court in Britain, the House of Lords. The five law Lords voted 3-2 to overturn the earlier decision. Even then they ruled that contraception and abortion should only be given to underage teens without parental knowledge or consent in exceptional circumstances. Within months of the 1985 ruling, however, free contraception to under-16s became widely available fueled in part by the U.K.'s Safe Sex campaign.
Gillick, a pregnancy counselor with five daughters, told the Register, “I think Boots is cashing in on something. The clinic is on the premises, so where will they take their free prescription for the pill?” Gillick said she was skeptical about Boots’ claims that this Glasgow policy was not the forerunner of national action: “I don't believe them because of the financial links between selling contraceptives and the health education lobby. The contraceptives are free to the girls but somebody is making money from the prescription.”
Gillick also predicted that if more stores opened these clinics, the birth control pill and the “morning-after” pill would be prescribed by nurses rather than a doctor.
She said the policy was not just immoral but it also created serious health risks for the teen-age girls: “It is very worrying. We now know there is a positive link between women who develop breast cancer under the age of 30 and the fact that they took oral contraceptives in their teens.
“More especially the adolescents risk a 50% increase in breast cancer. At present the rates of breast cancer for all ages have gone through the stratosphere.” Gillick said even if the girls
were not offered the pill they were given condoms. When those failed the girls would return to the clinic for PC4—the so-called morning-after pill. “The morning-after pill is a massive experiment with the health of young people,” she added.
Meanwhile, a fresh campaign is being forged by another group, Parents Against Oral Contraceptives For Children. It has also condemned the clinic as a disgrace.
“We shouldn't be prescribing these potent drugs to children,” said the group's founder, Jenny Bacon, whose own daughter Caroline died from a stroke caused by the birth control pill. She had been given a prescription for the pill at age 14 without her parents’ knowledge and died just before her 16th birthday.
Said Bacon: “I am absolutely appalled; we must all stand together because we've got to let them know how we feel. I would encourage everyone to write to Boots and make as much of a fuss as possible. I certainly intend never to set foot in the shop again.”
Both Bacon and Gillick met U.K. government officials at the Cabinet Office in mid-December as part of consultations involving the Blair government. Representatives of health groups, Church bodies, and lobby groups met to discuss the issue of teenage pregnancy.
Boots, the British-owned chain, has more than 1,300 stores in Britain and 85 outlets in Ireland, Holland, and Thailand. The company said it had no plans to close the birth-control service in its Glasgow store.
A Boots spokeswoman told the Register the company had received both negative and positive responses to the operation. She said the company was only responding to a local initiative as part of its policy to support government health objectives. The U.K. government has five key health goals, one of which is reducing teen-age pregnancies. “We have made it absolutely clear we will do everything we can, as the chemist to the nation, to support the government in its health objectives,” the spokeswoman said.
She said the chain was responding to a local health need by offering its store as a venue for the clinic operated by Greater Glasgow Community and Mental Health National Health Service Trust.
A spokeswoman denied the Glasgow program was the start of a national policy but also said, “If we were approached with a similar idea in another store we would consider it in the light of our concern for the nation's health.”
Dr. Tina Mackie, who will be in charge of the drop-in center, told journalists that if a 13-year-old girl asked for the morning-after pill she would consider prescribing it. “Young people have a right to a confidential medical service and that includes contraception,” she said. The clinic will be held in a private room while health workers will staff a stall on the shop floor handing out leaflets on issues such as HIV.
Paul Burnell writes from Manchester, England.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Paul Burnell ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 12/27/1999 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: December 27, 1998-January 2, 1999 ----- BODY:1999 is the year of God the Father, the last year of preparation for the millennium, the Grand Jubilee of the year 2000. In the encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem, Pope John Paul II calls us to prepare our minds and hearts for this great celebration.
In the time leading up to the third millennium after Christ, while “the Spirit and the Bride say to the Lord Jesus: Come!” this prayer of theirs is filled, as always, with an eschatological significance, which is also destined to give fullness of meaning to the celebration of the great Jubilee. It is a prayer concerned with the salvific destinies toward which the Holy Spirit by his action opens hearts throughout the history of man on earth. But at the same time this prayer is directed toward a precise moment in history which highlights the “fullness of time” marked by the year 2000. The Church wishes to prepare for this Jubilee in the Holy Spirit, just as the Virgin of Nazareth in whom the Word was made flesh was prepared by the Holy Spirit.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Students Promote Chastity for Future Spouses' Sake DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Colleen Johncox's classmates at Damascus High School could-n't believe her.
“I told them that I was doing a press conference on chastity and they said, ‘You've got to be kidding me,’” the Damascus, Md., teen-ager told the Register. “People don't connect chastity and love, but it's synonymous with love because it's the highest form of respect you can give your future spouse.”
Johncox and three other students were invited to speak to the National Press Club on Feb. 14. The Valentine's Day press conference, held by Why Life? and Concerned Women for America, kicked off National Week of Chastity.
Johncox, 18, said that the week's special message involved more than just abstinence. “‘Don't have sex’ doesn't work,” she said. “You have to accentuate the positive.”
Phil Sapienza, who also spoke at the conference, agreed that chastity's main appeal is not in what it avoids, but in what it provides.
“It's about the respect you can show to yourself and other people, to respect your future wife and to respect other people's future wives,” said Sapienza, 20, who attends Anne Arundel College in Severn, Md.
Such testimony was music to the ears of Andrew Daub, director of youth divisions for the American Life League, which is the parent organization of Why Life?
“They talked about their experiences and they were awesome,” Daub told the Register.
He especially savored how the young people took on organizations like Planned Parenthood who push for sex education on the assumption that teen-agers and young adults cannot possibly control themselves.
“They said, ‘It's insulting, you're basically reducing us to animals and that makes us mad,’” Daub said.
Planned Parenthood did not return phone calls to the Register.
In addition to the press conference, Why Life? is getting the chastity message to students through special literature designed to remind young people of the future consequences of present decisions.
The pamphlets are called A Letter to My Future Husband and A Letter to My Future Wife and tell young adults that remaining chaste today will lead to a more fulfilling loving relationship with a future spouse.
In A Letter to My Future Wife, the man writes, “And loving you, without ever having met you, makes me want to be deserving of your love. So I wait for you — in mind, body and soul.”
The woman writes, in A Letter to My Future Husband: “I'm all for living in the present, but thinking about the future can help you avoid decisions that may alter your future — our future.”
So far, Why Life? has distributed 75,000 copies of the pamphlets. Even public schools have been receptive to the letters, said Daub.
Mary Beth Bonacci, who has spoken to teens about chastity for 14 years, said the pamphlets are an excellent way to reach people. The pamphlets, she said, are modeled after an “open letter” that she wrote to a hypothetical future husband a few years ago.
“I'm thrilled that Why Life? has done so much to get these brochures into teens' hands,” Bonacci told the Register. “I think the idea of saving yourself out of love for a future spouse is something that appeals to a lot of single people, especially teenagers.” Bonacci also commended the focus on the positive results of chastity.
“They're sexually active, for the most part, because they're looking for love,” she observed.
“They're not finding it in sex, of course, but they're gonna keep trying — regardless of the risks — until we show them a better way.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joshua Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Clinton Asks Cut in Abstinence Budget DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Supporters of National Week of Chastity will find little support from the White House.
A few days before the chastity week kicked off, President Clinton submitted a budget proposal that would cut federal spending for abstinence education programs while increasing it for so-called safe sex programs.
At a congressional hearing, Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Okla., told the president's secretary of health and human services, Donna Shalala, “You're in your eighth year now, and you've supported more spending on everything else, yet you've never proposed a single penny to promote abstinence. Congress has stepped in to do that, and now your budget wants to reverse our efforts.”
Last year Istook was the chief sponsor of the $20 million in new funding to promote abstinence.
Shalala admitted that her department is refusing application for the new abstinence grants because she proposes to eliminate them.
She told the committee that the $50 million established for abstinence in the 1996 welfare bill is sufficient.
“We believe there is a substantial investment,” she said, “we have been strong supporters of abstinence education.”
Istook shot back: “No, Ms. Shalala, don't insult me by telling me you're supporting abstinence education when you've never proposed a penny for it. The only money that's been funded was what Congress insisted upon, over your objections, over your efforts to block it. That is pathetic. It is a disgrace, Ms. Shalala.”
Istook later told the Register: “We need a clear message that abstinence is the only sure way to prevent teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. It's sad that the Clinton administration condones the teen sex that causes disease, unwanted pregnancies and abortions, and that traps young mothers in a cycle of poverty.”
Andrew Daub, director of youth divisions for American Life League, was also critical of the administration.
He said Clinton sent teen-agers the wrong message by calling for a cut in abstinence funding just as he proposed an increase in “safe sex” programs.
Daub said that the outreach to students would continue with or without help from the politicians. He added, “We're not counting on them to do anything.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joshua Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: National Geographic: Lost in Demographics? DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:TAMPA, Fla.—Alarmists said planes would fall from the sky, cities would go dark and water wouldn't run when the new millennium dawned. Clearly, they were wrong.
Likewise, National Geographic magazine may have erred in warning about an over-population crisis that looms over the 21st century.
In its millennium series leading up to the year 2000, the magazine devoted most of its October 1998 issue to population, promoting a view that the world is too crowded and can't sustain much more life. A 1999 issue focused on biodiversity, raising doubts about the ability of plants and animals to survive the human population explosion.
Everyone knows the world didn't shut down on Jan. 1, and it's becoming increasingly apparent, even in the mainstream media, that we may face no population explosion at all.
“Of all the issues we face as the new millennium nears, none is more important than population growth,” wrote demographer Wolfgang Lutz, in an opening to the October 1998 issue on population.
The Tampa, Fla.-based magazine's editor, Bill Allen, introduced the population subject with an editorial that said the world's population increases by 27 people every 10 seconds. Only “with luck,” he wrote, will those 27 people have food, shelter and clothing.
It was a message readily embraced by some Americans. “Los Angeles is getting dangerously near to me, and I started out 150 miles away,” said Aaron Seggerman, a longtime reader of National Geographic. Seggerman has been discussing the National Geographic stories in online chat rooms, quoting the articles to promote his argument that the world is too crowded.
“I didn't need a magazine to tell me what I already knew, but it has certainly confirmed my fears,” Seggerman told the Register. “I can climb a hill and look at all the new housing, easily identified by the lack of vegetation and the sea of tile roofs, and see a population explosion.”
Suburban and exurban sprawl aside, statistics suggest that the real population problem is too little growth on the horizon.
In the United States, major newspapers like The Wall Street Journal and New York Times regularly publish stories warning of looming inflation — a phenomenon that economists blame on a shortage of births that has left industry with too few workers.
The labor shortage is inflating wages, which ultimately will raise the price of goods and services. Many economists say the near-collapse of Japan's economy can be directly attributed to the country's aging population, and decades of reduced fertility.
“Americans are just now starting to feel the effects that decades of so-called family planning are having on our culture and the economy,” said Scott Weinberg, spokesman for the Population Research Institute, in Virginia. “Finally, the overpopulation myth is so full of holes that even much of the secular media are calling it into question.”
National Geographic, however, seems to be bucking that trend. Why is another question. The 7.8-million circulation monthly, long famous for its stunning photography, refused repeated requests for comment for this article.
Underpopulation Problem
The looming problem of depopulation was confirmed by the U.N. Population Division's 1998 World Population Prospects report.
The report said the global population growth rate peaked around 1970 and has fallen steadily ever since. It predicts that the population of the world will begin to plummet in about four decades. Between 2040 and 2050 the population will decrease by some 85 million people. Thereafter, it will decrease by roughly 25% each successive generation.
Due mostly to the widespread use of birth control, Weinberg said, the average age of the world's population will only grow older. Today, the median age is 26.8 years. By 2025, the median age is projected to be 35.1 years.
In Europe, where the birthrate has fallen dramatically below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per couple, the age equation is dramatic. By 2050, retirees age 65 and older are expected to outnumber children age 15 and younger 3-to-1.
The global fertility decline is reflected in the dramatic increase in the number of countries that have experienced below-replacement level fertility since the 1990s. In 1990, between 50 and 60 nations had below-replacement fertility rates. Today, 64 nations are below replacement, the United States among them.
“A lot of countries are going to start shrinking soon — Japan, Europe, China in 30 years or so,” said demographer Nicholas Eberstadt in The New York Times. “And that means that sooner than we think, we could be headed into the end of surplus manpower.”
The Technological Society
Physicist Jeff Lindsay of Iowa has also studied the effects of population extensively. He takes issue with the assumptions of the National Geographic stories. Lindsay believes the plight of humans has only improved with increases in population and will suffer as populations decline.
“Our technological society, fueled by the precious resource of abundant working, thinking human beings, has enabled croplands to skyrocket in productivity and has enabled humans to live vastly longer than ever before,” Lindsay said. “The resulting large population, living at a higher standard than ever before, breathing cleaner air and drinking purer water, is a cause for celebration, not for doomsaying.”
Another, longtime observer of demographics is Benedictine Father Paul Marx, founder and former board member of Human Life International. Father Marx said sin and greed have made it easy for many people to believe that the world is overpopulated and that birth control is essential to sustaining life on earth.
“It plays right into a fear and selfishness that's rooted in evil,” Father Marx said. “In most of us, there's the fear that there won't be enough for me. And if there are fewer people in the world, then I can have more for myself.”
He added, “We could produce enough food in Minnesota alone each year to feed the entire United States. … The reason some people starve is not because of too few resources, but because of the unjust social order and the sin of man. We simply have an inability to share.”
Wayne Laugesen writes from Boulder, Colorado.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Wayne Laugesen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Papal Surprise for EWTN DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—While it's customary to receive hearts on Valentine's Day, little did Mother Angelica, founder of the Eternal Word Television Network, expect to receive a gift from the Holy Father.
Some observers said the “valentine” had a deeper meaning: a special sign of approbation from Rome.
On Feb. 14 an enormous package arrived at the cable TV channel from the Vatican. “We kept the box in the shrine, on our side of the altar, and did not open it because I wanted to share it with all the people who have been there with us through our 18 years on the air,” Mother Angelica told the Register.
The next day the package was opened on her live show in the presence of the apostolate's sisters, the network's president, vice president and spiritual adviser, and a studio audience. Cable TV viewers worldwide were tuned in.
The package's contents included a 2_-foot high monstrance, used to display the Blessed Sacrament for Benediction and adoration.
The monstrance depicts a large silver heart surrounded by golden rays and topped with Noah's ark. It came in a white linen box bearing a papal seal. Inscriptions inside the box, and on the monstrance itself, were in Polish and could not be translated during Mother Angelica's program. The network has since learned additional information about the monstrance.
According to Mother Angelica, the monstrance was a gift from the people of Nowa Huta, a suburb of Krakow, Poland, during Pope John Paul II's visit in 1999.
An inscription on the monstrance bears the Pope's name and the date of his visit, June 15. “The Holy Father had fallen the day before,” Mother recalled, “and so Cardinal Sodano accepted the monstrance on his behalf. We have footage of that.”
One regular viewer of “Mother Angelica Live” who was watching that night, Linda Gaitely of Cypress, Calif., said the gift was significant.
“It was beautiful for him to entrust something like that to her,” she said. “It really showed that she is a source of unity for the Church in the United States.”
Mark Brumley, managing editor of The Catholic Faith and Catholic Dossier magazines said the gift could also be seen as a comment on EWTN's liturgy.
“No doubt,” he said, “the Holy Father's gift of a monstrance expresses his deep appreciation for the profound commitment that Mother Angelica and her sisters have to a reverential and authentic offering of the sacred liturgy, a commitment manifest in their new chapel and their regularly televised, beautiful celebrations of holy Mass.”
A Mysterious Ark
The most perplexing part of the monstrance, for Mother, was the small golden ark sitting atop the monstrance.
“We did some research,” said Mother Angelica, “and the ark symbolizes not only Noah's ark, but also the Church of the Ark, located in Nowa Huta. It is a church whose construction began while Karol Wojtyla was archbishop of Krakow. The Church was completed entirely by voluntary labor, and took 10 years to build.”
Launched in 1981, EWTN was America's first Catholic cable network. The network now transmits 24 hours per day to more than 55 million homes in 38 countries. Mother Angelica first met the Pope in 1982, just months after beginning EWTN. She has since traveled to Rome several times to provide updates on the global work of the station.
Asked if there was a reason given for the gift, Mother Angelica replied, “It was given in appreciation for the work EWTN is doing for the Church, and for our sisters who have perpetual eucharistic adoration in our shrine of the Blessed Sacrament year-round.” She said the monstrance will be used for Benediction and Corpus Christi processions.
Lisa Gould, vice president of viewer services said on the show, “For the employees here at EWTN, that is the greatest gift we can have. When you work at EWTN, the devil works twice as hard against you. You take away Jesus in the Eucharist and we couldn't survive.”
“I'm just grateful that the Holy Father would think of us,” Mother Angelica concluded in her interview with the Register. “It means so much to us that he would give us something so very dear to him.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tim Drake ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Firm Offers a Family-Friendly Path on the Internet DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:WEST LAKE VILLAGE, Calif.—Making unpopular decisions. To children, it's what parents do best.
But a new Internet company has saved parents one decision that is potentially unpopular by providing worry-free Internet access.
“I'm constantly bombarded by my 9-year-old daughter,” said Jorge Gonzalez. “She wants to get on e-mail and chats — even my 7-year-old daughter is excited about the medium.”
Gonzalez is co-founder of Familink, an Internet filtering company in California that hopes to make the Internet decision an easy one for parents. He and his colleagues have tested options, researched family-friendly sites and launched a marketing campaign for their Internet filtering product.
At a time when hundreds of new pornographic Web sites appear daily, Familink founder Ryan Lamberton said his firm has developed an effective strategy. It doesn't try to block all the bad sites; instead, it only provides access to the good ones.
With 200 subscribers under its belt, Familink Internet filtering service has a long way to go in reaching American homes. But the company has big plans.
“Since the beginning we've had the idea that this is really a genuine service for the family. We support the idea of the family as the basis for society and we really feel that Familink will … strengthen the nuclear family and all that comes from it,” Gonzalez said.
Offering e-mail accounts to subscribers and a safe Internet environment is just the first step in Familink's vision of the family-friendly Internet, Gonzalez explained. The next step is to create a portal where subscribers will find documents, literature and links to a variety of family oriented services.
“We want to be able to provide members with information that will really help them to have better relationships, whether it means having experts on natural family planning, or experts on learning disabilities or experts in the field of marriage,” Gonzalez said. “From the beginning we have tried to contact a group of international experts in all the fields.”
Professionals Agree
For now, industry observers say, the filter is a good start.
“I'm so glad Familink offers what they do,” said Michael Soeherman, a sales executive for the Baltimore-based Web hosting company Alabanza. “I don't have children yet, but my wife and I are fearful of Internet pornography.” Because of Familink, Soeherman said, neither of them will ever see it.
Filtering systems have been in place in elementary schools for some time. Most of them rely on a system provided by a Seattle-based company called N2H2. Lamberton said Familink has been using N2H2 since 1995.
“When we chose them, they had the largest database for blocked sites,” he added.
According to Lamberton, N2H2's list of sites contains hundreds of thousands of Web pages that are personally reviewed and updated daily at N2H2.
Customers are also provided with a Web-based request form if they wish to request that a specific site be added to the list of excluded sites. According to the Familink's Web site, N2H2's database of blocked sites “is unmatched in the industry.”
That's reassuring to Cindy Young.
The Atlanta mother of four said she subscribed to Familink to take away any “temptation my children or possibly my husband and I might have to explore sites out of curiosity.“
Young said that filters do more for a home than block offensive material from reaching it.
Parents who take such a precaution are also preparing their children to make responsible choices themselves later on, she said.
“Computers are opening up many opportunities that we want them to explore,” Young noted. “We teach them that they have to make choices, they have to form their consciences according to the Ten Commandments and that they have to practice that outside the house too.”
That's just the kind of connection Familink co-founder Gonzalez envisioned for his business. “Familink was born out of a real desire to serve the family,” he recalled. “The economic part was important but really secondary. It was more a vision of service.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Mcguire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Voice of the Slaves DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:From his exile in Nairobi, Kenya, he makes dangerous apostolic visits to his El Obeid Diocese in central Sudan. He wants to prod the international community to stop the 17-year-long Sudanese civil war which has seen 2 million people killed and more than 5 million displaced. He spoke with Register correspondent Loretta G. Seyer from Washington, D.C.
Seyer: For those who don't know much about Sudan and its civil war, could you please describe what's been happening there since 1983?
Bishop Gassis: I would prefer to go to 1989. That is when the present Islamic fundamentalist regime overthrew a democratically elected government and established a dictatorship of Islamic fundamentalism.
Ever since, the war has escalated, slavery has become a top issue, and the persecution of the Christians has become more acute. The detention of priests, the assassination of catechists, killing of innocent people, closing of churches, bombing, aerial bombardment, man-made famine — all this came with the present Islamic fundamentalist regime in Sudan.
How has this conflict affected you both personally and as the bishop of El Obeid?
It is very clear. A bishop cannot sit idle or sit in his house while his flock is being persecuted, being starved to death, the children are being abducted and enslaved, the girls are being raped — they go through this genital mutilation — our elders are being killed. I can't sit there and just say things are all right. Things are not all right.
I have to stand up and defend the dignity of my people in their human rights. This is the mission of the Church.
And if the Church keeps quiet, the Church has already betrayed its mission. That is not only true for us, the Sudanese bishops who have to face this difficulty; I think the Catholic Church all over the world should feel the pinch of the persecution.
They should show a kind of solidarity with us by opening their mouths and saying, “There is a persecuted church which we have to save before it is annihilated.”
Who are the Catholics in your diocese?
The Catholics are mainly people from southern Sudan or from the Nuba Mountains.
The entire population of the Nuba region, which is as big as Scotland, is part and parcel of my diocese. The Dinka population — which in southern Sudan is part of the clan of the Dinkas known as the Dinka Abea or Dinkumgob — are part and parcel of my diocese.
This is in addition to other peoples and tribes from southern Sudan who have escaped from their respective areas because of the war. They came up to areas where they can feel secure. These are the Christians.
Just Catholics, or other Christians as well?
It is not only Catholics.
In the Nuba Mountains, it is the Nuba. They are multicultural, multiracial and multireligious in a sense. Within the Nuba Mountains, you have Catholics, you have Episcopalians, you have evangelicals, you have Africans of traditional beliefs, and you even have Muslims.
These groups have traditionally gotten on pretty well, haven't they?
They have always lived in peace. There was never, never, and I underline it, any kind of conflict or persecution or any kind of difficulty among them. The Nuba culture and tradition is a one of peaceful coexistence.
I remember many years ago I went to visit the Nuba Mountains, and there were more than 3,000 people. And who was there? There were the Muslim leaders of the Nuba people there to greet me. There were also the Episcopalian ministers, pastors, the evangelical pastors. And when I started to say Mass, the evangelical pastors stood up to read the first reading, the Episcopalian read the second reading, and the Catholic read the Gospel.
So, I think that this issue of religious antagonism and bigotry is something being introduced by the present regime of Sudan.
It's having that much of an impact?
Yet, it has a lot of impact because it has divided the people. As long as the issue of creed, the liberty to worship and adore, is left to the people to decide and the issue of ethnicity is left to the people, I think that other issues can be settled easily.
‘If this had happened in Europe, or had happened in Asia or in the Middle East, all the newspapers would have carried it on their front papes.’
But when religion is used as a leverage to frighten, to terrorize, to kill, to assassinate, to rape, to enslave under the guise of religion, I think we are entering into a very, very dangerous area.
What's happening with regard to slavery? It seems that there's finally been some recognition that this is going on. What are you hearing or seeing?
Slavery has become such a controversial issue in the United States, unfortunately. There is an international organization, UNICEF, that has never spoken against slavery in Sudan. Only a year ago, I think, they admitted that there is slavery.
But there are so many other people who say that the way the children are redeemed [“bought” by Westerners who intend to free them] is wrong because it might encourage an increase in the abduction of other children, it would increase the number of slaves, and it would enrich the Arabs or the middle persons who bring these redeemed children to be set free.
Who is taking the children? And where are they being sold?
The Sudanese embassy tries to justify it, to say it is a kind of intertribal strife that has always existed. …
It is not something that is traditional anymore. In the past, there was this kind of intertribal strife because the Arabs during the dry season used to move southward with their cattle in search of pasture and of water because their land is dry. But, now, with the sophisticated weapons and with the training they have, the creation of Islamic mujahedin [a guerrilla force that claims divine authority for its activities], Islamic militias, telling them that whatever they capture is their property.
It is a jihad, it is a holy war — take what you can, including women, including children, including grain, including cattle.
Some people have been saying that the slavers have been taking Christian children so they can be forcibly Islamized.
Of course, this is the policy of the regime. They are not going to admit it, but the very fact that these children are taken, especially the adolescents, and they are brainwashed with Islamic doctrine says something. They are being robbed of their language, of their customs and of their traditions.
These children may be Africans because of their skin, that's all. But they are going to be Arabized, they're going to be Islamized, they are going to be made fanatic. And at the end of the day, these people are going to be trained militarily to go and kill their own people. This is the tragedy.
Do you agree or disagree with the strategy of buying children to free them?
I say, “OK, if you tell me that the way these children are redeemed is not correct and it does not solve the problem, I ask you, for the sake of justice, give me an alternative solution. What would be the solution to get our children back?”
And they have no solution to bring us. So, maybe in their heart of hearts, they mean to let these children remain as slaves at the hands of their captors. That means that these children are going to come one day to suppress their own people.
I reply: “If that child was your child, or if that young women was your wife or your sister or your daughter who goes through these humiliations of rape and genital mutilation, I wonder if you would say, ‘Let them stay there as slaves or as concubines.’”
They would adopt a totally, a totally different attitude, and their version would be changed instantly.
Some make the argument that the children are redeemed only to be captured and sold again. They ask, What's the point of redeeming them in the first place?
If some think that these children are “recycled” slaves: I think that the only people on the ground who could determine whether these are genuine enslaved children are the local bishops, the local clergy, with our catechists and with our elders, together with the families of these children.
These children are not cut off from the trees. They have relatives, they have families who will identify whether these children are their own who were abducted.
Secondly, if these people think that there is a risk in the whole operation, I would say: “OK, there is an element of risk, fine. But is it not a risk worth taking?”
I ask these people: “If you have a child, what would be the value of your child? Fifty dollars? A thousand dollars? A million dollars? Is that what is the value of your son or of your daughter?”
Definitely not. It's the worth of the entire world. It's a human life.
So, I think we have a noble cause. We are bringing these children back. They are the future of the Church, the future of Sudan.
We do not have gold and money to invest in banks. This is our capital investment — our children.
Have you come to the United States to tell people this? To let them know what's going on?
It is mainly because I think that there are people who don't know what is happening in Sudan. And at the same time I want to draw the attention of all my brothers and sisters in the United States, including my brothers in the episcopate, to come and give us a hand.
I'm not asking anybody to carry our cross. We're asking our brothers in the United States to help us carry the cross, to help us carry the cross.
And at the same time, we would like that the leadership of this country who champions human rights — they have rescued the Kurds, they have rescued the Kosovars, they have rescued the Bosnians and many others — to help us. Why not the Africans of Sudan? Why not the Christians of Sudan?
And my people say it, they say it bluntly: “Why? Is it because we have different features? Is it because we are black? Is it because we don't live in Europe? Is it because we don't have oil?”
We have oil. They found oil. And now they are selling us for 30 pieces of silver. Even less — for peanuts.
A Canadian company and others in Europe — they are selling us. They are helping the regime of Khartoum to exploit the resources of the people of southern Sudan so that the regime of Khartoum can pump this oil. It is pumping it now to get revenues to continue the war and wipe us off the map of Sudan.
I'm asking: “Where are the Christian leaders? Where are they?”
Tomorrow — as it happened with other races after they were wiped out or 6 million were killed — will they say: “Let us apologize. Let us make up.”
Why can't we do it now and rescue the people?
So, I'm begging the leadership of the United States, whether religious or civil, save the savable in Sudan before it's too late.
What happened in the air attack on your school in the Nuba Mountains?
Just a few days ago, on the 7th of this month, the regime of Khartoum sent Russian-made planes. They bombed our school, the Catholic school, which was the only well-organized school in the whole of the Nuba region [see the Feb. 20-28 Register].
Our school has 360 students. Now, they killed 14 — including the teacher, 15. How many are wounded seriously?
I'm sure by now, some of these seriously wounded children are already dead. That's why I'm going to send a medical team from the United States. I don't care how much it's going to cost me. I will find good, generous people who are going to pay $25,000 to get this team to go in and see to the butchered children.
As I'm talking to you, it just came to my mind exactly the words of what happened to the children of that land: “A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children and she would not be consoled since they were no more.”
That's exactly what's happening there.
And not even one newspaper carried the massacre of our children, not one carried the massacre of our children. I made a press release saying that our children were bombed and they were killed. Not one brought it to the forefront. why?
If this had happened in Europe, or had happened in Asia or in the Middle East, all the newspapers would have carried it on their front pages. And now we have children massacred. This is our future.
The regime of Khartoum says they have done well. And, of course, they have done well because they are killing the future, the fruit. They don't care about the tree. They want the fruit.
Kill the fruit. You will have no more trees in the future.
----- EXCERPT: 'Save the savable in Sudan before it's too late' ----- EXTENDED BODY: Bishop Macram Max Gassis ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Cardinal Bevilacqua Has Unique View in the Making of Saint DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:PHILADELPHIA—When Pope John Paul II approved a miracle as proof of Katharine Drexel's sanctity, he communicated that information to a number of key parties in the United States through Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, the archbishop of Philadelphia.
That's because “Philly” is Blessed Katharine's hometown, the site of her order's motherhouse, and the home diocese to 7-year-old Amanda Wall of Bucks Country, Pa., the young girl who was healed through the future saint's intercession.
The feast day of soon-to-be St. Katharine is March 3.
Cardinal Bevilacqua has been a close observer of Blessed Katharine's cause since becoming archbishop of Philadelphia in the 1980s. He recently spoke with Register Radio correspondent Rich Rinaldi about the prospective saint and the recent events that will soon culminate in her canonization, sometime during the Great Jubilee.
Rinaldi: Please tell us about the recent events that have touched on Blessed Katharine Drexel's cause.
Cardinal Bevilacqua: On Jan. 27th the Pope issued the decree in which he officially recognized the second miracle for Katharine Drexel. The first one was necessary for her to be declared blessed; this one is necessary for her to be canonized a saint.
What formalities remain?
One needs to take place at the beginning of March when the Holy Father will meet in consistory with all the cardinals [to] present this miracle by Mother Katharine Drexel, probably along with some other [candidates for canonization as well as beatification], and ask if they agree that they should either be beat-ified or canonized. The cardinals will respond — they usually respond in the affirmative. Then there is the actual setting of the date for the canonization, and then the canonization ceremony [itself].
Tell us about the child who was healed.
She likes to be known as Amy, but her name is Amanda Wall, a lovely young girl I never met until … January. She is very unassuming, and you can see that she is a very holy girl herself and kind of shy. The smile on her face is the smile of the spirit within her.
She was cured of total nerve deafness. [Her hearing] was so minimal her parents could not get her to respond. They would bang pots behind her and she would not respond.
And they prayed to Blessed Katharine Drexel?
They prayed, but it was a very strange set of circumstances. They did not really pray for Amy to hear at the beginning. [Mrs. Wall] could not communicate with her daughter and there wasn't intimacy like a mother should have with a child because the child never responded. So she prayed that she could have communication with her daughter. She felt her prayers were answered when a woman with a daughter who was deaf introduced [the Walls] to the world of deaf children. She brought them to a school for the deaf and Amy and her mother soon learned to speak sign language, and a true intimacy began and flourished between mother and daughter. She could now actually communicate with her daughter. The daughter could tell her mom when she was hungry and so on, and the mother loved that communication and that was [a true answer] to her prayer.
But the story doesn't end there.
It was only later that Amy's brother Jack was making his first Communion, and was taught about miracles. He came home and said, “Let's not only pray for Amy's communication, but lets pray for a miracle that she is healed from this deafness.”
The mother began, reluctantly at first, to pray to Mother Katharine Drexel for a miracle. She had seen a TV documentary on Mother Drexel and how the first miracle of Mother Katharine's was in favor of a deaf boy, also from Philly. At the prompting of the son, their young boy, the whole family began to pray for a miracle.
They then got a relic and applied it to Amy's ear. Within a short time the mother was told by Amy's teacher at school that, “I don't think your daughter is one of us anymore.” [Mrs. Wall] did not want to believe at first because Amy had such a happy life with the other deaf children and mothers at the school. Even Amy felt sad when she began to hear, even keeping it quiet for a long time because she didn't want to be separated from that world of deaf children and their families. It was a beautiful world, she said.
But then she realized she was fully healed, and it meant that she would have to be separated from that other world of the deaf.
Can you tell us about Mother Drexel's life? I understand her inheritance was substantial.
Yes, it was between $14 and $20 million, a huge amount. She established the [Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament] to take care of Native-Americans and the African-Americans. She was gradually led into this even before she became a nun — she originally wanted to become a cloistered nun. She and her other two sisters helped the poor a great deal with those funds. She received a huge inheritance that today would be hundreds of millions. The three daughters were raised in a very religious and holy family and so they gave a lot of their money away for various causes. Blessed Katharine was asked by a bishop-friend of hers to [help relieve] the plight of Native-Americans in the Dakotas and in the Southwest and then she heard of the poor blacks in the South.
What made her actually decide to begin this work and to do it as a religious?
She was moved by [the response of] Pope Leo XIII when she asked him, “Why don't you send more priests to help the poor blacks and Indians.” He told her, “Why don't you become a missionary?” That stayed on her mind and, through the influence of Bishop O'Connor of Omaha, Neb., she thought of establishing an order of her own. All the money she received from her father was used for those two missions, the Native-Americans and the African[-American]s. While she received that money, it was not hers by [reason of] her vow of poverty.
Tell us about the sisters' apostolate.
When she established her order it was specifically for the poor among the African-Americans and the Native-Americans, solely for them. In [addition to the] usual vows of poverty chastity and obedience, … she took a fourth vow for herself to be the mother of the Indians and the Negroes, according to the rules of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. She added [that she would] not take any work that would lend to the neglect or abandonment of the Indian and colored races. It was solely for those two minority groups.
You have in your archdiocese two saints.
We are very proud of that, and it is unique for the United States. Here we have St. John Neumann who was the forth bishop of Philadelphia, canonized in 1977. And now we will have St. Katharine Drexel.
How unusual is that?
That's extremely unusual. It is certainly unique in the United States. There are cities in Europe, obviously, but not that many. We're very proud of that. I hope the people of Philly realize that, and that both saints worked extensively with the poor. I hope Mother Drexel can be named patron of social justice. Remember, while she had found the mission for the blacks and Native-Americans, [it] was contrary to the attitude and the culture of the times. She was a forerunner in social justice and human rights for minority groups. The separation of the races was considered legal. She was way ahead of her time.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Rich Rinaldi ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Pub Preaching Packs Them In at a D.C. Bar DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—On a recent Tuesday evening, about 400 young professionals packed the basement of Kelly's Irish Times, a popular bar near the Capitol building to hear a talk on … theology.
And yes, for a couple of beers too.
Call it “Theology on Tap.” And bring friends. The best kind are those who may have strayed far from the pew but not from the barstools since leaving the parental nest. Theology on Tap is tailor-made for this large and largely untapped-class of fallen-away or searching Catholics.
And it's catching on.
“There just seems to be something about the atmosphere of a rustic Irish bar and Guinness and a priest talking about the faith. The atmosphere is just really exciting,” said Greg DiNapoli, a 25-year-old master's student at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C.
To event organizers, it seemed like an almost perfect fit. And the numbers confirm it. Thanks to an advertisement in The Catholic Standard, Washington's archdiocesan newspaper, some flyers at local churches and word of mouth, the group's first meeting in late January drew about 300 people. For the two meetings that followed, crowds swelled even more.
“Can you imagine? They were all packed into the bar. They took out all of the chairs and all of the tables out of the place while I talked for over an hour. Not one person left — and then they wanted to ask questions!,” said Legionary of Christ Father John Hopkins, the event's most recent speaker.
After the talk, Father John said, several people grabbed him for confession.
Organizer Joe Rogers said the event was appealing for two reasons: a laid back setting and a clear presentation of the faith.
“As long as we present it as it is, the faith is attractive to people,” Rogers said. “There is very little that we have to do other than be honest, and show young adults that they can go out and date and also have a flourishing Catholic life,” added the John Paul II Institute student.
While Rogers can't take credit for coming up with the idea, he has taken it in a new direction.
Rogers said Father John Cusick, a parish priest in Chicago, came up with the idea of a lecture series for young adults. The goal was to reach out to people who didn't have a ready means of participating in the life of their local parish community.
Rogers, a Mobile, Ala., native, heard about the Chicago lectures. Because of the name, he wrongly assumed that they were held in a bar. So he started his own series of talks at a local Atlanta watering hole.
On his model, the lectures were given for 12 weeks. Rogers said this was enough time to present the faith systematically.
“Young people could come to the bar and basically get a catechesis over some hot wings and some beers,” Rogers said. “The environment wasn't imposing, and at the same time it was natural. Bars are natural places to talk about [religion].”
According to Rogers, the average crowd for Atlanta's Theology on Tap group was around 350.
After moving to Washington last August, 1999, Rogers met a group of people who had heard about the Atlanta group and wanted to start something similar in Washington. Jennifer Dornbush, also a student at the JPII Institute, formed a committee to put it together.
The committee contacted Washington Archdiocesan Director of Young Adults Ministry Peter Newbern, who quickly took to the idea. He had heard of the Chicago group and, according to Rogers, “spearheaded” the development of Theology on Tap in Washington.
According to Rogers, joining forces with the archdiocese was key. “We wanted to get people on the right track, back to confession and Sunday Mass. We wanted to let them know that the diocese was concerned about them,” he said, adding that the contact also includes opportunities to transmit information on such practical matters as church locations and Mass schedules.
At the Feb. 15 meeting, Father Hopkins mixed the style of David Letterman with the substance of Pope John Paul II, by presenting two top 10 lists. First he listed reasons not to be a Catholic. Then, he offered the top 10 reasons to be a Catholic. The crowd loved it.
“He was awesome,” DiNapoli said.
“We bring in speakers who are able to communicate the faith to a young audience in a language that's understandable to them and through experiences they can relate to”, Rogers said. “From there, the Holy Spirit does the work.”
Father Hopkins called this beer and theology apostolate “a very non-threatening way” to evangelize. He recalled the Holy Father's 1993 World Youth Day challenge for Christians to go out to the byroads and preach. “That's what Theology on Tap does,” he said, “it meets them where they are.”
‘Top 10’ Reasons People Give for Leaving the Church
10. I am tired of having the Church shoved down my throat.
9. The Church is boring!
8. I don't have time!
7. The Church makes me feel uncomfortable.
6. There is no fellowship at the Catholic Church.
5. The Catholic Church is outdated
4. The Church hurt me. I hate the Church.
3. I was kicked out.
2. I have met the most special person in the world.
And the No. 1 reason why people leave the Church:
1. I really do not know the person of Jesus Christ.
—Father John Hopkins, LC
‘Top 10’ Reasons to Bother With The Church
10. We are all adults.
9. Can God be boring?
8. We make time for whatever is truly important for us.
7. Falling into sin is not a tragedy, not getting back up is.
6. Fellowship has to start with you.
5. The Church is eternal.
4. The Church is the Mystical body of Christ, the people of God.
3. The Church is a mother.
2. The Church is unique.
And the No. 1 reason why people bother with the Church:
1. The Church is the road to a personal and passionate relationship with Jesus Christ.
—Father John Hopkins, LC
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Mcguire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:GOP Offers Consolation Prizes to Catholics
• Speaker of the House Denny Hastert's invitation to Chicago Cardinal Francis George to sit in the speaker's box during the State of the Union address.
• Passage of a House resolution to honor Catholic schools.
• A 413-1 vote to award New York's Cardinal John O'Connor the Congressional Gold Medal, its highest civilian honor.
K.C.'s Catholic Paper Blasts AIDS Series
“The series evoked a storm of sewer-level invective from the ever-ready anti-Catholic bigots, as evidenced in the e-mail messages on the Star's Internet site.
“… The fact is, the series was not news. It is based on old information. It went over the same ground tracked by the National Catholic Reporter in a story published on April 17, 1999, and a three-part series by Catholic News Service in 1987.
“… The Star estimated the AIDS-related death rate among priests to be ‘about 4 per 10,000 — four times that of the general population rate of roughly 1 per 10,000.’ But the appropriate comparison groups for priests is surely not the general population, which includes women and children, but rather adult males.
Concluded the diocesan newspaper: “… From our point of view, there is enough misinformation and bigotry about the Church without having a powerful news organization purposefully add to it.”
Denver Has Ceremony for Homosexual Unions
The Denver City Council approved the registry late last year in large part to give homosexual, lesbian and straight couples the chance to gain insurance and other benefits enjoyed by married couples. Denver is the 36th city with a domestic partners registry, the Colorado daily reported.
Mayor Wellington Webb and other city officials congratulated the couples in a brief ceremony in the second-floor rotunda. “Strong family bonds are what make our society great,” he said.
New York's Bishops: Same but Different
The Times noted that 10 out of New York's 11 bishops, and all of its archbishops have been Irish. The exception, Bishop John Dubois, was harassed by the city's Irish community, and the diocesan trustees, who at one point tried to withhold his salary.
“‘You may vote the salary or not, just as seems good to you,’ Bishop Dubois famously told the trustees. ‘I can live in a basement or a garret. But, whether I come up from the basement or down from the garret, I shall still be your bishop.’”
The Times gave Msgr. Florence Cohalan, author of a history of the Church in New York, the last word on Cardinal O'Connor's legacy.
“Msgr. Cohalan ventured that Cardinal O'Connor, who is expected to retire soon, will be remembered as a ‘very good caretaker.’ Asked whether he meant for souls or of the Church itself, Msgr. Cohalan said the two went together. ‘An archbishop who does his duty frequently has to speak up on issues that irritate people, like divorce [and] abortion.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Clarifies Status of Communist-era Czech Priests DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—The Vatican said clandestinely ordained priests and bishops in the Czech Republic who have failed to reconcile with Church authorities are forbidden from celebrating Mass and the sacraments.
After several years of Vatican efforts to regularize those secretly ordained under communism — including more than 60 married priests — the time has come to clarify the status of those who have refused the Vatican's terms, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said in a Feb. 14 statement.
“Difficulties remain and a clarifying discussion is requested,” the statement said, without elaborating on when or where such a meeting would be held.
Meanwhile, it said, the Czech faithful should know that Masses celebrated by those refusing the Vatican conditions are illicit and the sacraments they perform are of doubtful validity, it said.
“These Masses, administration of sacraments and other liturgical celebrations are forbidden. Whoever, in fact, refuses the authority of the Pope and bishops celebrates illicitly,” it said.
“The Holy See addresses itself to those Catholics who have not yet complied with its indications and invites them to unite again with other Catholics under the guidance of the Pope,” said the statement. It was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the doctrinal congregation.
The problem of clandestinely ordained priests surfaced after the fall of Czechoslovakia's communist regime in 1989. About 250 priests and 16 bishops were ordained without individual Vatican approval as an emergency pastoral measure under communism; of the 127 cases still pending in 1996, more than half involved married priests or bishops.
As a solution for many of the priests, the Vatican offered a conditional re-ordination and technically assigned the married men to Eastern-rite Churches, which have a tradition of married clergy.
But some of the priests have steadfastly refused even a conditional re-ordination, saying the Vatican was showing lack of trust.
The Vatican statement said it understood the psychological motives and the objections that had been raised and said Church officials had attempted to explain to these priests that conditional re-ordination was the best way to end doubts about their status.
It said, in fact, that the original ordinations had not always been carried out validly, especially those performed by underground Bishop Felix Davidek.
While voicing respect for the courage of underground Church leaders under communism, the Vatican statement sharply rejected the idea that a “clandestine Church” still exists in the Czech Republic.
Catholics who characterize themselves as clandestine “are not persecuted like Christians in the cata-combs, in fact they give interviews to the media, publish books and express in full freedom their dissent from the Roman Pontiff,” it said.
The Vatican said the position of married bishops was different from that of the married priests, since Church law and traditions in the Eastern and Latin rites do not allow for married bishops. It said that the conditions for reconciliation offered by the Vatican to the married bishops were rejected.
(From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: England's 'Favorite' Bishop Replaces Hume DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:LONDON—Pope John Paul II has appointed Bishop Cormac Murphy-O'Connor as archbishop of Westminster and primate of the English Church.
The Feb. 15 appointment ended months of speculation following the death of Cardinal Hume in June.
The new primate has served 23 years as bishop of Arundel and Brighton - a diocese covering the Southeast corner of England. Some commentators suggested that the appointment of Archbishop Murphy-O'Connor was a stopgap. At 67, he will have to offer his retirement at the age of 75.
Westminster Auxiliary Bishop Vincent Nichols, 54, was viewed as a more likely choice. Instead, Bishop Nichols was named archbishop of Birmingham, also on Feb. 15.
Aware of the age factor, Bishop Murphy-O'Connor told journalists, “Although I am not as young as I was when I first became a bishop, I now undertake this new task with equal willingness, encouraged as I know I will be by the good wishes and prayers of so very many people.”
He also acknowledged that “Christian practice and the Christian message have been diminished in England and Wales over recent years.
“The Church believes that Christian faith is the potent force that allows us to be freed from a view of the world that ultimately can enslave us. The people of our country have to learn again what it is to wonder at the gifts of God.”
Viewed as a theological centrist, Archbishop Murphy-O'Connor is possessed of a light pastoral touch that has already endeared him to Anglicans through his work, since 1982, as the Catholic chairman of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission. He has also been chairman of the Department for Mission and Unity of the Catholic Bishops'Conference of England and Wales.
As bishop of Arundel and Brighton, he extended a warm welcome to former Anglican clerics who became Catholics over the ordination of women and other issues that have badly divided Anglicans in recent years. This was not the case in all English dioceses.
Father David Goddard, a married ex-vicar and custodian of the diocese's Marian Shrine, was one of 12 men ordained by the bishop.
“He gave us a wonderful welcome, and he also had the vision to see what we could bring to the Catholic Church,” Father Goddard told the Register.
He added, “The bishop showed great generosity to ourselves and our families. It is interesting that half of the men he ordained were married.”
Another who praised him was John Wilkins, editor of The Tablet, the London-based weekly journal with a liberal bent who said, “He is every-body's favorite bishop.”
Second-generation Irish, Cormac Murphy-O'Connor was born in 1932 in Reading, Berkshire, the fifth son of Dr. George Murphy-O'Connor and his wife, Ellen. He still speaks with an accent described as “upper crust Irish.”
He trained for the priesthood at the English College in Rome and earned degrees in philosophy and theology at Gregorian University. He was ordained in Rome in 1956.
In the summer of 1966, he became private secretary to Portsmouth Bishop Derek Worlock, who would later become archbishop of Liverpool.
In 1967, the Holy See appointed Father Murphy-O'Connor rector of the English College in Rome. It was in that role that he acted as a host to Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan on his historic visit to Pope Paul VI in 1977.
Later that year Father Murphy-O'Connor was appointed bishop of Arundel and Brighton.
Paul Burnell writes from Birmingham, England.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Paul Burnell ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Pope: Persevere in Fight for Life DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—War is not inevitable, and neither are legalized abortion and euthanasia, Pope John Paul II said.
Catholics must never accept defeat in the struggle to protect life from the moment of conception to natural death, the Pope said Feb. 14 at a Vatican conference marking the fifth anniversary of his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life).
Pope John Paul told participants the encyclical is “a document which I consider central to the whole magisterium of my pontificate.”
As artificial contraception, sterilization and legalized abortion become decades-old realities and discussions about legalizing euthanasia increase, he said, many people are tempted to think they are inevitable.
“On the contrary, they are the seeds of the corruption of society and its foundations,” the Pope said.
“The civil and moral conscience cannot accept this false inevitability, just as it cannot accept the idea of the inevitability of wars or of interethnic extermination.”
The Pope said the Church and its members would try everything possible “to eliminate the legalized crime or at least to limit the damage of these laws.”
He described abortion as a “type of silent and cruel selection through which the weak are unjustly eliminated.”
“Life, truth and love” go hand in hand, John Paul said. When one of the values is attacked, all of them suffer.
“Facts exist which prove with growing clarity how policies and legislation contrary to life are leading society to decadence, not only morally but also demographically and economically.”
Laws legalizing abortion and euthanasia will not change until people's morality changes.
“In this sphere the Church will not leave anything untried, nor can it accept negligence or culpable silence.”
Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told the Feb. 11-14 plenary meeting of Pontifical Academy for Life that “many Catholics do not adequately fulfill their obligation to oppose these laws” which legalize abortion and euthanasia.
In fact, he said, while pastors have a role in explaining Christian morality and offering guidance, “it is principally up to lay Christians to confront the ‘imperfect laws’ of modern democracies.
When faced with unjust laws, Christians have several morally legitimate options, the archbishop said:
l “Prophetic resistance, which is a matter of affirming a value higher than that proposed by the state.”
l Collaboration in order to reduce the effects of the wrong. “Because this attitude may be difficult for those not directly involved in politics to understand, this must be publicly explained by those who make such a decision in conscience.”
l Tolerance, but only in a case in which “resistance to the wrong would bring about a greater wrong.”
If Christians are acting after serious thought and prayer and with guidance from their pastor, others are not to judge them, Archbishop Bertone said.
“One who tolerates or collaborates must not be judged as fearful or mediocre,” but as one who is trying to sow “a mustard seed” of goodness and hope for the future, he said.
One the other hand, one who chooses the path of resistance “must not be considered an extremist,” but one who is bringing truth to the world.
(From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:Vatican Puts ‘Burning At Stake’ in Context
The Vatican took the opportunity to express regret over the incident, but also to teach. Bruno's Feb. 17, 1600, death is viewed, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano said, with “profound regret” by the modern Church. He added, however, that it was not up to modern Church leaders to pass judgment on the motives of those who sentenced Bruno.
Bruno's errors were no triflings. He questioned the Trinity and the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Mother and claimed that Jesus was a wizard, reported the Times.
In a message to an Italian conference, Cardinal Sodano said that those who judged Bruno were “animated by a desire to serve the truth and promote the common good, while trying to save his life.”
While the Times was careful to note that the year he was burned for refusing to recant heretical teachingswas also a Holy Year, the newspaper acknowledged that Bruno's eight-year-long trial was carried out according to the common legal practices of the day.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Scot Leads Fight Against Teaching Homosexuality DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:LONDON—British Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing one of the trickiest crises of his administration, thanks to Scotland's feisty Cardinal Thomas Winning.
The Labor prime minister is facing stiff resistance from a number of religious leaders to his plans to scrap a law banning the promotion of homosexuality by town, city and state councils.
Blair, an Anglican who attends Mass with his Catholic wife and children, is torn between two competing ideals. His endorsement of family values has helped him woo moderate “Middle England” voters to the Labor Party, which is also supported by homosexual pressure groups.
The London and Edinburgh parliaments — both dominated by Labor — announced last year their plans to repeal a clause in a law passed by the government of Margaret Thatcher in the late 1980s that barred local government from promoting homosexual activity.
Known as Section 28, the proviso was aimed at city and regional administrations, which had begun to spend public funds to champion “homosexual rights,” even placing storybooks in primary schools which showed children living with same-sex couples.
Because Labor had pledged to repeal Section 28, it was not surprising when the issue was brought up for debate.
However, unexpected backlashes quickly erupted in both Scotland and London. “The silent majority will not accept homosexuality as a pretended family relationship,” said Glasgow's Cardinal Winning.
In a statement issued to the Register, he said, “After 50 years as a priest and more than 25 as a bishop I usually feel not a lot will shock me. But in recent days I have been horrified to see some of the literature that will be allowed into our schools if Section 28 is abolished.
“Under the guise of health promotion one authority has suggested that children as young as 13 might like to role play a homosexual “coming out”; others will be asked to imagine themselves as a married man caught having homosexual sex in a public toilet or as a transvestite cabaret artist,” he added.
His call has been backed by massive public support, including one poll that showed 82% of the Scottish people sharing the cardinal's view.
Support has also come from Jewish and Muslim leaders, and even some Anglican bishops who are also contending with an effort in the Church of England to allow practicing homosexuals to be ordained as priests.
England's Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs told reporters, “I will never forget as a Jew that homosexuals were sent to Auschwitz just as Jews were. However, the current proposal is based on a fundamental confusion between toleration and moral judgment.”
He added, “There is a real danger that the abolition of Section 28 will lead to the promotion of a homosexual lifestyle as morally equivalent to marriage.”
Iqbal Sacranie, president of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the policy was in serious conflict with the government's professed pro-family proclamations.
The measure was defeated in the national Parliament's upper chamber, the House of Lords, but the Blair Government will almost certainly reintroduce it and override the Lord's legal veto.
Blair's spokesman referred the Register to the Prime Minister's comments during a parliamentary debate on Feb. 9 in which he rebutted Conservative opposition leader William Hague during fiery exchanges in the debating chamber.
Hague had challenged him to listen to archbishops, cardinals, the chief rabbi, the Muslim Council, many Labor Members, the chief inspector of schools, and the vast majority of mainstream opinion in the United Kingdom.
But Blair said, “Section 28 has nothing whatever to do with some of the nonsense that we have heard over the past few days. It is intended to ensure that teachers and others are able properly to give children information that they need.”
He claimed that the section does not affect what is currently taught in schools and that teachers and parents should determine sex education policies. Blair said the repeal would stop “homophobic bullying” and “create a more tolerant society.”
Despite the rhetoric, a compromise may eventually be worked out. Blair promised to meet all “interested parties” with a view to introduce safeguards into the law, which he plans to re-introduce.
Blair's spokesman confirmed to the Register that Catholic and other religious groups would be included in the dialogue.
Paul Burnell writes from Manchester, England.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Paul Burnell ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:Sabbath Mass Disturbs Orthodox
Bishop Arrested in China
The fallout from the shocking stories of the fetal parts trade continues — and now Wisconsin legislators are getting into the act.
In August, evidence suggesting that companies were harvesting and profiting from the unborn babies removed in late-term abortions was released by a Denton, Texas, pro-life group, Life Dynamics. The Register has been tracking the story since November, when the U.S. House called for hearings to investigate the “trafficking of baby body parts for profit.”
The coverage has already helped spur one group to form to oppose the practice: Women Against the Killing and Exploitation of Unprotected Persons or WAKE-UP (see the Jan. 30-Feb. 5 Register).
Now, on Feb. 17, Wisconsin state Rep. Sheryl Abers, a Republican, and Sen. Robert Breske, a Democrat, introduced legislation to outlaw the practice.
The legislation would outlaw the selling of any organ, tissue, blood or body part of any aborted baby. It was spurred in part by media reports of price sheets listing the costs of body parts.
The organization Pro-Life Wisconsin told of one reputed parts-seller that listed the gory details: $999 for a baby's brain, $150 for a liver and $75 for babies' eyes.
“Pro-lifers have long suspected that the body parts of aborted babies were being sold to research facilities for profit,” said Peggy Hamill, president of Pro-Life Wisconsin. “This new documentation confirmed our fears.”
The two co-sponsors, and their supporters, are to be commended. Whatever the fate of their bill, by putting this issue in the public forum they will only help bring more attention to the matter. And the more the public hears about the gruesome reality of today's culture of death, the better.
Which state will be next?
* * *
Sudanese Bishop Macram Max Gassis is on a mission to tell the world about the atrocities in his war-torn homeland (see Inperson, Page 1). There, civilians and children are being attacked, sold into slavery and forcibly converted by Sudanese forces in the country's civil war. Particularly egregious was a Feb. 8 bombing attack on a Catholic grade school that killed 15.
The bishop has brought his cry for help to the highest levels of the U.S. government. A partial response came from Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Feb. 16:
“Appalled by the bishop's description of the government's bombing campaign against civilian targets,” a spokesman said, “Secretary Albright reaf-firmed the determination of the United States to do everything it can to bring an end to the tragic civil war in Sudan.”
But what does this “everything” entail?
At a Washington summit on Africa the next day, Albright spoke eloquently about the tragedies in the Sudan, some of which she saw firsthand in a recent visit. But she was less specific what action the United States would take.
“We have taken a major role in trying to energize a regional peace process,” she said.
That simply isn't enough. Nor are the United States'recent sanctions against Sudan. Undertaken for commendable motives, they were greeted with a shrug of the shoulders from Sudan's warlords. The sanctions' main effect seems to have been to bring record first-quarter earnings to a Canadian company that still trades with Sudan. There are many diplomatic avenues available to the United States to put pressure on errant nations. When will these be tried?
The destruction of children at an elementary school, if it had happened in Europe or America, would make those responsible the target of a strong, systematic response. No one would be satisfied with the United States “trying to energize a regional peace process” after a promise to do “everything it can” to answer such a tragedy.
It is time for America's leaders to speak as loudly for the people of Sudan with actions as they have with words.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: A Firm Foundation for a Powerful Prayer Life DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:“Prayer is the lifting of our minds and hearts to God, to praise His goodness, to thank Him for His kindness, to acknowledge our sins and plead for pardon, to ask His aid for our salvation, and to give glory to Him.” So begins this very helpful guide to prayer-improvement.
Many readers know the late Divine Word Father Lovasik as the author of many excellent books and tracts. This one, an edited reprint of a 1961 book, Prayer in Catholic Life (MacMillan), shows how fervently Father Lovasik worked to make God better-known and loved.
Why do we need to pray? How do we pray? And just what is prayer, anyway? Looking to Jesus as the ultimate role model to emulate in prayer, Father Lovasik answers those questions and makes clear, for example, why our Lord prayed openly and vocally before undertaking especially important events and at the close of his life upon the cross. A line-by-line explanation of the “Our Father” is especially enlightening.
But Father Lovasik doesn't merely instruct us in prayer. He motivates us to pray, too. “Following the example of Jesus, you, too, must pray,” he writes, “because there is nothing higher and nothing better than to converse with God — and nothing is more necessary.”
If you feel you need help with your prayer life — and you're in the minority if you don't feel that way — you will find much insight and encouragement in these pages. The idea of prayer is to enter into a deep dialogue with God, and Father Lovasik proves a wise guide in that endeavor.
To be sure, there is a great hunger in our time for a “closer walk with God.” One need only look at the number of books being published on the subject of prayer lately. What makes this one different from the rest of the pack? I think its appeal lies in its sticking to, and fully exploring, the fundamentals.
As a “basic book,” it provides a good starting point for someone with little experience in prayer, yet it's also an excellent review for the likes of me, a monk, who can only benefit from a “refresher course” after many years of dedication to prayer.
After exploring the power of prayer — something I have become more convinced of over the years — Father Lovasik writes of various forms of prayer. Both vocal and mental prayer are considered in depth. It was good to read about vocal prayer written by a teacher who has such respect for the form; clearly the author does not see it merely as mental prayer's lowly preparation.
It's been my experience that many people fear mental prayer or meditation. Father Lovasik helps break that barrier. “Mental prayer is not too high and difficult for you,” he writes, and then relates a simple method of meditating based on the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola.
Chapters on adoration and thanksgiving follow. We all seem to need to be reminded to thank God for our blessings. Father Lovasik tells how to develop qualities that will help us to pray, beginning with humility.
I suspect that is how people who are poor and homeless pray. We are urged to pray with confidence. Mother Teresa of Calcutta used to pray in thanksgiving for a favor granted before she had received it! Praying with a sincere heart is emphasized, as is perseverance.
Ah, here is where so many people go wrong — they give up praying too soon. At least, that's my opinion, and Father Lovasik seems to agree. “Some people stop praying when they do not get what they ask for immediately,” he writes. Part of the problem may be our intentions: “We often pray to God for things that we believe to be good and useful, but which would be ruinous for us.”
After encouraging us to be attentive when we pray, Father Lovasik tackles preparing for prayer. The advice he gives here may surprise some people who do not consider prayer as something that needs preparation but rather as something one just does. It's true that not all prayer requires preparation — people in emergency-room waiting areas don't need preparation to pray deeply and effectively. But to grow daily in regular prayer, you need what St. Teresa of Avila called “recollection.” It's all about focus, something we're in dire need of in these busy and distracting days.
Here Father Lovasik's advice is both kind and soothing. “Do not disturb yourself about the distractions you may happen to have, but remain faithful, and lead your mind back gently to the subject that should be occupying you.”
As for dryness, something that will affect anyone who sets out to pray every day, we are here reminded: “Prayer requires no special feeling of devotion.” That is something I, for one, am forever saying (or want to say) to people when they express the belief that they do not pray well. Sadly, people seem to worry about their feelings, which, in prayer, are simply not relevant. The will to pray is what it's all about. I should recommend they read this book.
Father Lovasik also writes of using short prayers sometimes called aspirations: “Just as the thought of a friend will often come to your mind, so if you really look on God as a friend, you cannot help thinking of Him at times during the day, asking for mercy, begging a favor, and praising His goodness.”
There is a handy chapter on making one's ordinary actions more prayerful by recalling God's presence. “By degrees you will reach a point at which you always feel that you are not alone, but with and in God,” Father Lovasik writes.
I like priests who both encourage us to grow spiritually and show us how to do so. I like books that help us pray. I like The Basic Book of Catholic Prayer.
Brother Craig Driscoll, founder of the Monks of Adoration, lives in Petersham, Massachusetts.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brother Craig Driscoll ----- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:AMA Sends Senseless Signals
I agree with Rep. Tom Coburn and Mary Beth Bonacci in their criticism of the American Medical Association's position in rejecting abstinence and supporting condom distribution programs (“AMA Rejects Abstinence,” Dec. 26-Jan. 1). As Ms. Bonacci states, “safe sex” programs have been evaluated for 30 years and they don't work.
The AMA approval of condom distribution programs does not make sense. In all other areas of inappropriate behavior, we request that the activity be stopped. In this area, though, it appears that the AMA is merely asking young people to take steps to avoid the consequences of misbehavior, thereby approving the behavior itself.
During the time I served as a juvenile judge, I encountered many young people who were committing shoplifting, burglary or car theft. It certainly would have been wrong to say to them, “Don't do this, but, in case you do, we will give you free kits containing bulletproof vests, which might provide some protection should things not go as planned.” This approach would be dishonest and do a grave disservice to young people in that it would give the obvious impression that we were not serious in our objection to their misbehavior.
Judge Joseph Moylan (Ret.) Omaha, Nebraska
May a rather amused 80-year-old join the Harry Potter combat? Let me first say that my parents had very strict morals and strict ideas about childhood obedience, and also carefully monitored our books and the few movies we were allowed to see. (No TV in that era!) Nevertheless, they did not object to my reading every fairy-tale book, some of which had been my mother's, that I could lay my hands on. Now many of these stories, especially those based on folk tales, have plenty of incidents of broken promises, acts of duplicity, smart-aleck cleverness, etc. All, of course, used to win the kingdom, rescue the princess or whatever. My parents never sat down and explained to us that these things were wrong. They expected us to use our intelligence to realize that they were just fairy tales and, indeed, I do not remember ever being wrongly influenced by those tales. As to Harry and his friends breaking school rules, mostly minor ones, well, he never does it maliciously or just for the sake of breaking them.
Mike Williams (“Harry Potter, Faith and Fantasy,” Feb. 6-12) especially objects to Albus Dumbledore (my favorite character) counseling Harry and Hermoine to break a strict wizard rule [in J.K. Rowling's series of fantasy books for kids], but Mike fails to mention that he does it so that two innocent lives may be saved. I suspect that Mike was not around during World War II, when many rules, including the very strict enclosure rules for nuns (excommunication as punishment for an infraction) were broken to save the lives of Jews and downed Allied airmen. I think that it is more correct to say that Dumbledore was wise enough to know when a rule should be broken. (The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.)
Perhaps it would be helpful for parents to remember that, at 10 and 11, a child who reads is perfectly capable of living in two distinct worlds at the same time, one real and the other imaginary. This is a wonderful gift which most children lose only too soon.
Dear concerned parents, remember that what most influences children is what they see and hear you doing and saying, and what you allow them to do and say, not what happens in [fantasy] tales. So do let them wander with Harry through the halls of that fantastic castle of Hogwart as they wash the dishes and let them mount their trusty magic broom when they run down to the store to get something for Mom.
C.S. Lewis once wrote that, as one grows up, one leaves fairy tales behind and then finds them again as one grows old. With this I agree. Would that I had a magic broom!
Jeanne Palmer Flemington, New Jersey
Benjamin Wiker made very good points regarding the Harry Potter books and I recommend his article to my friends. However, I would urge parents to be more cautious than Mr. Wiker appears to be. He neglected to mention the coarseness and vulgarity sprinkled throughout these books (earwax-, vomit- and booger-flavored jellybeans; troll [mucus] all over a sword; burping and vomiting up slugs). I suppose it gets lost in the brouhaha over the witch/wizard content.
As Mr. Wiker said, vice is exemplified much more thoroughly than virtue. However, parents should also know that even the “good” characters like Harry, appealing as he is, lie and disobey in small things (always small), whenever it's convenient, and always with impunity. The books are so entertaining that the reader finds himself accepting these lesser evils as irrelevant.
A theme that runs through all three books is the idea that witches (and wizards) are just nice people who have gotten a lot of bad press, but who happen to have powers that they can choose to use for good or evil. The utter contempt with which the author treats the “human” characters who fear/disbelieve in witches must have some purpose. She spends too much time building up a case against these people, making them completely repulsive. The contrast between these people (narrow, conformist, gross)and the exhilarating, imaginative, exciting world of wizard school, is striking and present in all three books. Whether the author does it in order to entertain her readers or for more sinister purposes is not for me to say. But the Harry Potter books might be disarming in more ways than one.
Theresa Fagan Chevy Chase, Maryland
While Mr. Wiker is technically correct that no one will be hurt by not reading the Harry Potter books, I'd like to suggest that we may be doing an injustice to our religion by being so suspicious of them. Historically, our Catholic faith has always really believed that God created the world, and acted accordingly, in contrast to some sects which have viewed creation with suspicion, as though it were the work of the devil. While some sects banned singing and music and color, the Church has used them in worship, and encouraged them in secular society. While some sects have viewed the human mind with suspicion, the Church encouraged the use of reason, symbolism, and imagination. Remember that Catholic civilization, long before Tolkien, produced the Arthurian cycle, which has captured the Western imagination for centuries. It was also the Church which saw much goodness and nobility in the works of pagan antiquity (in spite of the false gods), and preserved them for later generations. Are we living up to this history, or are we presenting our faith to our children as if it were narrow and paranoid, unable to see good if it happens to be mixed up with imperfections?
Theresa Graham Seattle, Washington
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I am a subscriber to the Register who is disturbed by an ad that you are running in the Feb. 13-19, 2000 paper. The ad is for the College of St. Elizabeth, Center for Theological and Spiritual Development. It appears on Page 11 in the paper.
I am familiar with two of the keynote speakers at the center's “Spirituality Convocation.” Both of them are less than orthodox and obedient theologians. One of them taught at the university I attended for undergraduate studies, and it was common knowledge that he had left the priesthood and married without being laicized.
As a convert to the Catholic faith, I depend upon your paper as a trustworthy medium for learning more about that faith. When you run ads for organizations and events with participants as questionable as the participants in the Center for Theological and Spiritual Development, you undermine the trust I put in your newspaper.
Please make sure you examine advertisements more closely so you do not inadvertently promote dissent within the Church.
Rebecca L. Kroeger Charlottesville, Va.
Editor's Note: The advertisement in question will not appear in the Register again.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: The Horror Of All Things Victorian DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:Whenever I open the New York Times Book Review I only have to read a few pages before coming across a statement which illustrates George Orwell's remark that there are some ideas that are so stupid that only intellectuals can entertain them. Take, for example, Richard Posner's recent review of Gertrude Himmelfarb's new book, One Nation, Two Cultures. The book, among other things, is a thoughtful critique of moral relativism. Posner is chief judge of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and a card-carrying member of the academic elite.
Posner, of course, cannot stand Himmelfarb's book. You get the impression that he picked it up with a pair of tongs while holding his nose. Himmelfarb, one of our foremost cultural historians, has devastating things to say about the social consequences of the sexual revolution. Posner, an aggressively secular liberal, does not want to admit that there is anything wrong with sexual promiscuity. As a judge, Posner is often criticized by other jurists for ignoring inconvenient facts. In this case, the “facts” overwhelmingly demonstrate that our society's spree of recreational sex has caused emotional and physical damage on an enormous scale. But Posner brushes aside the statistics, because to draw a logical conclusion from them is to give aid and comfort to the “other side” in the culture wars.
Posner's evasion is a good example of what really drives many modern thinkers: the horror of appearing to be Victorian. This is the great hobgoblin of the modern secular mind. It even affects Supreme Court justices. In the 51 pages of tangled legal reasoning known as Roe v. Wade, the late Justice Harry Blackmun wrote that one reason laws are enacted against abortion is “a Victorian social concern to discourage illicit sexual conduct.” The use of the pejorative “Victorian,” of course, does not belong in a serious legal opinion; but its presence is a tip-off that a fear of appearing culturally retrograde can haunt the chambers of the Supreme Court.
This horror of all things Victorian has its counterpart in the modern Catholic Church. Among many clergy and laity there is a dread of anything smacking of “pre-conciliar Catholicism.” Latin, Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony, incense, gothic or baroque church architecture — all evoke a reaction well-described by the philosopher David Stove, a sound diagnostician of horror victorianorum: “Asensation of darkness, stillness, enclosure, and, above all, of weight or pressure.” And the impulse of these “progressive” Catholics is to do what their counterparts have done in the secular culture: to turn upside-down everything they find left standing from the old days.
To the modern secular mind, no horror is greater than appearing ‘Victorian.’
This topsy-turvy mentality, needless to say, has nothing to do with the actual teachings of Vatican II. But the results are all around us: new churches which look as though they were designed to be auto-parts wholesale distribution warehouses; music ranging from pietistic treacle to pop jingles; liturgies whose man-centeredness effectively erases all beauty and grandeur and reverence for God.
In a way, one can sympathize with the modernizers. In this country, anyway, they are partly reacting against the Irish brand of Jansenism which dominated the Church for so many years — the hellfire sermons, the deeply suspicious attitude toward many areas of human endeavor, the legalisms, the fortress mentality against even what is good and creative in modern thought. But, as so often happens in human affairs, there was a boomerang effect, a headlong flight to the other extreme. The result was, as Dietrich von Hildebrand put it, an “eruption of mediocrity” in the Catholic Church in the '60s and '70s. It was too bad that the “opening” to the modern world decreed by Pope John XXIII occurred at just the moment when modern art and architecture were going through a very bad patch.
I know one Catholic parish in a Northeast suburb where the parishioners are so annoyed by the church building put up in the early '70s that they plan to raise money to tear it down and build another. Who, after all, wants to worship in a building that looks like a waiting lounge at Kennedy airport? The driving force in this restoration campaign are the younger parishioners who feel no need to rebel against “pre-conciliar Catholicism” because they never experienced it.
Although they tend to be underinstructed about the truths of the faith (another result of the “ground zero” mentality among Church elites in the past decades), these younger Catholics realize that something is often missing from Catholic worship today. Although their progressive catechisms may have told them in so many words that their goal on earth is not God but “self-realization” (as if the two were contradictory), for reasons which they can't always explain, this demotion of God, and the liturgy and architecture it inspires, are not at all satisfying.
So this is my prediction for the new millennium: A “new springtime” of the faith will bring with it a restoration of beauty and sublimity in Catholic worship. In the meantime, let's not be too cranky about the fallen state of Catholic aesthetics and get on with the program.
George Sim Johnston is the author of Did Darwin Get It Right?
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: George Sim Johnston ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: DOES PPHILOSOPHY HHAVEA FUTURE? DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:The earliest philosophers were called “wise men.” Believing such an appellation to be presumptuous, Pythagoras coined the term “philosophy” (philia + sophia) around 500 b.c. to indicate that philosophers should be known not as the epitome of Wisdom but as her friends or lovers. A philosopher, then, came to be known as a “lover of wisdom” and philosophy as the pursuit of wisdom insofar as it is accessible to human nature.
This new identification gained philosophers an important measure of modesty. And yet, this modesty itself was a mark of wisdom. The hold that any philosopher can claim concerning his attainment of wisdom is, at best, tenuous and insecure. Human nature is weak and beset by innumerable external temptations. The 20th-century Aquinas scholar Jacques Maritain once said that a philosopher is no more than “a beggar at the door of wisdom.”
But, more importantly, this new modesty brought into focus two cardinal principles of philosophy that have both established its rectitude and set it against the prevailing — and far less wise — “spirit of the times.” The first, according to the maxim philosophi est distinguere (philosophy is to distinguish), distinguishes the philosopher from the wisdom he seeks, which is to say the imperfect from the perfect.
At the same time, it distinguishes the actual from the ideal. Therefore, the philosopher operates with the abiding belief that his actual situation, imperfect and tainted with foolishness as it may be, can become more perfect and less foolish as it approximates that which he loves, which is wisdom. This principle is also one of hope.
The second principle relates to ordering, according to the maxim, sapientia est ordinare (it belongs to the wise man to order). The proper ordering here is not the reduction of wisdom to the actual state of the philosopher, but, on the contrary, the subordination of the philosopher to wisdom. The philosopher seeks to be enriched by wisdom, not to identify wisdom with his existing state of being. This principle is also one of humility.
Through these two principles, of distinction and subordination, the philosopher sets himself on his rightful path, enlivened by the hope of acquiring greater wisdom and sobered by the humility that permits the recognition of his own imperfections.
Winsome Wisdom
Philosophy, then, is dynamic and enriching, elevating and fulfilling. Thus could St. Thomas state in his Summa Contra Gentiles: “Of all human pursuits the pursuit of wisdom is the most perfect, the most sublime, the most profitable, the most delightful.”
It is most perfect because of the way it fulfills or completes its pursuer, most sublime because of the exalted status of its object, most profitable because of how it enriches its seeker and most delightful because of how it confers upon him a sense of wholeness and happiness.
The modern world, however, has lost sight of the value of philosophy, as well as wisdom, in its zealous pursuit of lesser goods. Karl Marx, whose primary pursuit involved wealth, pronounced the death of philosophy when he declared that we should no longer try to understand the world, but to transform it. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel claimed to have brought philosophy as a discipline to an end by reconciling the tension between individual freedom and communal authority in the Prussian state (1815-1871).
The American philosopher John Dewey excoriated all wisdom from philosophy when he reduced it to the service of building a political technology. Nonetheless, as George Santayana has observed, it is curious how philosophy continues to bury its undertakers.
And if these lesser pursuits were not social, they were personal. The Freudian school sets its sights on pleasure; that of Nietzsche, power; that of Sartre, freedom; that of Darwin, competition; that of Derrida, deconstruction.
These lesser pursuits that certain individuals embark upon are appealing mainly for three reasons. The have immediacy, simplicity and expediency. As the pursuit of wisdom becomes more disreputable in our society, people prefer instant gratification (immediacy), freedom from struggling with the paradoxes of life (simplicity), and things that they can put to practical use (expediency).
Bill Maher, host of the popular television talk-show program “Politically Incorrect” (which turns out to be as amplified a platform for political correctness as there is just now), aptly captured the state of disfavor to which the pursuit of wisdom has been relegated in the contemporary world. “Philosophy,” he said, “is as useful as a bidet in a gorilla cage.” Noting the pervasiveness of this sort of perspective, journalist Chris Matthews, who moderates television's Hardball, opined that the only “philosopher” the average American might be able to name is Hugh Hefner.
Wisdom is neither a native notion nor a trival pursuit.
More cynically, Ambrose Bierce defined philosophy as “a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.” Not to be out-done, deconstructionists say that “the world is made up of empty rooms, with impenetrable walls and no doors, in which individual minds are bent upon reading texts with a slight smile.” Their point is that there is no such thing as the real world; it is merely a text that is read and misunderstood. According to the high priest of deconstruction, Jacques Derrida, “America is deconstruction.”
Deconstructive Criticism
Philosopher Allan Bloom, who labored to place his students at wisdom's starting gate, lamented in The Closing of the American Mind that “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.” The state of students leaving the university may not be any better, as wisdom is systematically excluded from their relativistic purview.
Toward the close of 1999, the Toronto Star did a series of articles on the seven deadly sins. In a wrap-up piece, Christopher Hume offered his reflections on the dispositions that reasonable people throughout history understood to be deadly. The title of his article, “It's the sinning that makes us human,” perfectly encapsulates the secular and anti-philosophical notion that all we are is what we happen to be at the moment. We live without hope in improving or further humanizing ourselves.
We have no aspirations, goals or projects that could add either grace or stature to our humanity. Consequently, as he tells us, the seven deadly sins are really consistent with who we are (it's philosophy that is troublesome — “Only a fascist would choose to inhabit the City of Perfection”). Hence, “What is envy, after all, but motivation? What is lust but biology? What is sloth but nature's way of telling us to slow down? What is pride but self-respect? What is anger but righteous indignation?”
It is not naive to pursue wisdom. What is naive is the belief that we can, having abandoned wisdom, avoid foolishness. Wisdom is not an idle fabrication to be deconstructed; it is a meaningful ideal to be emulated.
The sad state of philosophy in the contemporary world raises the question: “Does philosophy have a future?” The answer turns on our attitude toward the correlative virtues of humility and hope. Humility, unfashionable and discomforting as it may be, requires us to take stock of our own ignorance.
“A man who is puzzled and wonders,” wrote Aristotle, “thinks himself ignorant … therefore [he] philosophizes to escape from ignorance.” Hope demands our subordination to something higher than ourselves. It requires shedding all illusions about self-sufficiency. It offers us the startling paradox that, by pursuing something other than ourselves, we can discover ourselves.
We will return to humility and hope as our desire to escape from ignorance becomes stronger than our preference for self-delusion, as our belief in wisdom, especially in its divine embodiment, becomes stronger than our hope in scientific progress.
As humility and hope return (and, concomitantly, our ability to distinguish and to subordinate), so will philosophy. And as our belief that we can be touched by God's grace returns, so will our love of wisdom:
“Sensum tuum, Domine, quis scire poterit, nisi tu dederis sapientiam? … “O Lord, who can understand what you mean unless you gave [him] wisdom?”
Donald DeMarco is a professor of philosophy at St. Jerome's University in Waterloo, Ontario.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Donald DeMarco ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Finding Peace Below Beacon Hill DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:Editor's note: This is the third installment in a series tracing David Gordon's journey “home to Rome” from evangelical Protestantism.
With Lent fast approaching, so too is the day when I am “fully incorporated into the society of the Church,” as the Catechism says. For the last 18 months, I have tried to ignore how very far away Easter 2000 has seemed. When I first sat down with my priest, Father Jim, to discuss joining RCIA(the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults), I was disappointed to learn how long the process is. I had made my decision. Why couldn't I step right in?
RCIA, answered the patient priest, is not only a way for converts to warm up to the Church; it is an opportunity for the Church to warm up to converts — a practice begun in the days of the Roman Empire when Christians had reason to fear strangers eager to join the outlawed fellowship. Besides, he continued, one should take time to grow familiar — this is family, remember? — with Catholic culture, habits and rituals. Months of reflection and conversion would only make entrance into the Church all the more satisfying, he promised.
“But you see, Father, I'm already converted,” I said. “I've been baptized.” Conversion, he replied, is a process that only ends in heaven. The idea of conversion as a way of life rather than a singular event struck an odd note in my Protestant ears. So did the argument that it would be wiser to give ancient custom precedence over my individual and impatient ambitions. Nevertheless, I trusted him and had already become convinced of the Church's authority — even on doctrines and practices I didn't fully understand.
That conversation echoed in my mind recently when I read Pope John Paul II's Lenten message on the Vatican's Web site, www.vatican.va. The Holy Father writes that “the time of Lent is the culminating point of the journey of conversion and reconciliation which the Jubilee, the year of the Lord's favor, offers to all the faithful.” Those words suggest in a very rich way that during our catechesis, we in RCIA have been engaged not so much in an extraordinary episode of Catholic life but rather in what should be the routine life of faith, namely conversion and reconciliation. Citing Ephesians 3:9, the Pope continues: “Lent helps Christians to enter more deeply into this ‘mystery hidden for ages.’”
There's that very Catholic emphasis on “mystery” again. In the evangelical tradition I grew up in, which is rooted in Methodism, mystery is eschewed. Salvation is secured through a series of clearly defined steps (hence the “method”); it's treated as a certainty, not a great hope. The preacher's cry at the end of an evangelistic sermon is “You can know for sure tonight …” — and this assurance applies to any number of things. You're saved, you're sanctified, you'll go to heaven if you die. Mystery is equated with uncertainty, and uncertainty is taken as proof that you're not saved, sanctified, going to heaven, etc. Small wonder that the Catholic eucharistic memorial, in which “Christ is really and mysteriously made present," as the Catechism puts it, is dismissed as hocuspocus.
I suppose this is why I could not consider joining the Church until I had begun to experience the mystery of the Eucharist. The Real Presence is a hard teaching, and I will not pretend even now to have grasped it with any intellectual confidence. I accept the truth of it, however, because I trust the testimony of those saints who have gone before me. I trust the magisterium of the Church, which is protected by the promise of Christ to Peter.
And then there's my own experience. When I lived on Beacon Hill in Boston two years ago, my schedule afforded me a generous amount of free time at midday. Having already begun an inquiry into the Catholic faith, I made a habit of walking down the hill for daily noontime Mass at St. Joseph's, an old parish church tucked behind the sprawling Massachusetts General Hospital. The church had once served the bustling and bawdy West End neighborhood of Irish and Italian immigrants that urban “renewal” bulldozed away in the 1960s.
An odd mix of characters attended those noon Masses — blue-suited men from nearby Government Center with their “power” neckties of reds and yellows, nurses in white uniforms and sneakers, hoary men and women from retirement high-rises, visitors with great mournful faces sitting vigil for hospitalized loved ones.
Mass itself was rather businesslike as the priests said their prayers and dispensed the Sacrament with what seemed to be a passionless efficiency. More than once, my Protestant mind noted disapprovingly what dry, habitual worship these Catholics practiced.
Yet in observing the Mass day after day, I began to understand what the late Catholic writer Andre Dubus called “the wonder and necessity of ritual.” In Dubus' masterful tale, A Father's Story, the crusty narrator acknowledges that the Eucharist has become his lifeblood: “[T]here is, as I take the Host from Father Paul and place it on my tongue and return to the pew, a feeling that I am thankful I have not lost in the forty-eight years since my first Communion. At its center is excitement; spreading out from it is the peace of certainty. Or the certainty of peace.”
Even as a spectator, I began to experience that same peace when Communion was distributed. One day, I was even surprised by tears. I hadn't cried in 10 years about anything, though those years had provided ample reason to weep.
The tears were sweet and subdued. My unbelief was being helped, and I was grateful to witness what I knew was the sensory presence of Christ. The tears continued for many days thereafter; I kept expecting them to go away, yet each time the Host was distributed, my eyes would fill up. Before long, that peaceful feeling was accompanied by a desire to receive the Host myself. Like Zaccheus in his tree, I had enjoyed the spectator's view.
Now it was time to come down and encounter him in the flesh. It was then that I signed up for RCIA.
In his Lenten message, John Paul writes, “For Christians, time is marked by an expectation of the eternal wedding feast, anticipated daily at the eucharistic table.”
As Lent approaches and I head into the homestretch of my journey to the Church, I have tried to imagine that first Communion. What will it be like to finally partake of the Body and Blood?
My sponsor recently challenged me to imagine something greater: what it will be like to partake of him the day after first Communion. And the next day, and the one after that, and so on, until mere habit is transformed into a wondrous and necessary ritual. That, he assures me, is what Catholic life is all about. I can hardly wait.
David Gordon, a former Newsweek editor, writes from Cambridge, Massachusetts.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: David Gordon ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: THE CHURCH IN AMERICA TEACHERS AND LEADERS DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:A new wave of immigrants arrived in the United States in the last third of the 20th century. At the head of this wave were those who came from Cuba in 1960 to escape Fidel Castro's oppressive regime. Massive immigration had ceased in 1924 with the passage of the National Origins Act, which limited the number of immigrants and largely favored those from northern and western Europe. Latin Americans, however, were exempt from the law's provision. The need for farmworkers and other laborers kept the door open to them. Political turmoil and economic stagnation marked Latin America all through this century, sending many immigrants northward. The rise of Castro added to the flow.
Melchor and Maria Louisa Gaston and their extended family of more than 80 relatives left Cuba in 1960 and settled in Florida with 400,000 other Cubans. They hoped to return in several months, as soon as the trouble was over, but the months extended to a year, then several years, until they knew they would never return to their beloved homeland. In the meantime, the family became a part of the fabric of America.
Hispanics were part of the Church in the United States well before European Catholics would swell membership beginning in the 19th century. Many arrived in what became the United States before the first English-speaking Catholics arrived in Maryland in 1634. Today, on the doorstep of a new century, the Church in the United States is becoming increasingly Hispanic. In recent years, the country has seen a significant influx of Catholics from Vietnam, Haiti, Poland and other places marked by persecution, economic hardship or both.
Teaching the Truths
Across the generations, the Church has played an important role in helping the children of immigrant Catholics enter mainstream society. It has done this, in large part, through its schools. When most people think of the teaching ministry of the Church, they think of Catholic schools. But it is more than schools. From the classroom to the pulpit, from the Catholic press to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Church teaches. Her teaching is more than reading, writing and arithmetic, and science, medicine and law. At the core of her teaching ministry is instruction on living as disciples of Jesus, with that call's many facets and dimensions.
The Jesuits in Maryland began the first Catholic schools in the English-speaking colonies for the sons of Catholic landowners. These schools were later banned when a new Puritan majority in Maryland revoked the Act of Toleration in 1654, five years after it was passed. Later, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774-1821) established several Catholic schools and St. John Neumann (1811-1860) is credited with establishing the Catholic school system in Philadelphia.
The Church entered the ministry of education in a systematic way in order to save Catholic immigrant children from the Protestant public school system. Spurred on by the 1884 Plenary Council of Baltimore, which mandated a Catholic school in every parish (which was never enforced), by the 20th century, the Church (and, in many cases, religious orders) established schools at all levels from preschool to postgraduate. Catholic education for Catholic children was considered so much a part of Catholic life that parents who did not send their children to the schools were considered lax, or worse.
Teaching orders of women and men concentrated their efforts on Catholic schools. Orders of men and women religious came from Europe to teach the children of immigrants. Other orders, such as the Sisters (or Daughters) of Charity in Maryland and the Sisters of Loretto in Kentucky, were homegrown on American soil. Many established their own schools or, more often, staffed parochial schools. The number of schools and their enrollment peaked in the mid-1960s, then underwent a significant decline in the post-Vatican II years. Since the late 1980s, Catholic elementary and secondary education has been making a comeback, with increased enrollments and new schools being established in recent years, particularly in the South and Southwest.
High Aims for Higher Ed
At the level of higher education, colleges such as Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. (1789), and Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg, Md. (1808), were two of the first established. Much growth occurred in the 19th century. But of the more than 230 Catholic colleges and universities in existence in 1999, many were established in the 20th century. Even in recent years, new Catholic colleges are being founded — including Thomas Aquinas College in California (1971), Christendom College in Virginia (1977) and the College of Corpus Christi in Texas (1998).
Despite their many and varied contributions, Catholic higher education institutions were often criticized, even by Catholics, as second-rate when compared to many public and private non-sectarian institutions. They were seen as one of the reasons for the anemic state of Catholic intellectual life in the United States in the 1950s. Msgr. John Tracy Ellis, a noted Church historian at Catholic University, made his own devastating critique in 1955. A growing chorus of criticism over a number of issues led a number of Catholic educators to meet in 1967 in Land O'Lakes, Wis., to study the problem. They issued a statement calling for institutional autonomy from the founding religious orders and dioceses and for academic freedom for the faculty.
While creating much-needed stability in the Catholic colleges and universities, the changes chipped away at their Catholic identity and focus. It is no secret that, today, many Catholic institutions of higher education are all but indistinguishable from their secular counterparts. Pope John Paul II is now trying to re-establish the Catholic identity of these colleges through the provisions of Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church, 1990). Many are hoping that the coming year will yield some resolution on this issue.
Widening Mission
Besides the ministry of education, the Church teaches in other ways as well. For example, the bishops often speak with one voice on moral, pastoral and other issues. In the 19th century, the bishops gathered for several provincial and plenary councils, but it wasn't until World War I that they banded together in a formal way in the National Catholic War Council (1918) to provide and coordinate Catholic support for the troops and war effort. After the war when the bishops were challenged to come up with a Catholic program of recovery, they responded with in 1919 with the “Bishops' Program of Social Reconstruction” written by Father John A. Ryan. This major teaching statement of the bishops set the pattern for the years to come.
The concept of a formal organization for the nation's Catholic bishops such as the renamed National Catholic Welfare Council was opposed by some bishops, notably Boston's Cardinal William O'Connell. They appealed to Rome to prevent the council from becoming permanent, but ultimately lost when Rome endorsed the establishment of the broader, and again renamed, National Catholic Welfare Conference in 1922. Its permanent departments included education, social action, lay organizations and missions. The first two were clearly focused on the educational mission of the Church. (In 1966, the Welfare Conference became the U.S. Catholic Conference, the operational secretariat and service agency of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.) From the time of its establishment, Father Ryan used it as a platform to teach about the Church and social justice.
Besides teaching at the level of the Welfare Conference, significant teaching took place at other places and levels in the Church as well, both at “official” and “unofficial” levels. Sometimes the result was positive, as through the teaching regarding racism and antiSemitism by lay movements such as Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker and Catherine de Hueck Dougherty's Friendship House. Their efforts were built upon through the pages of the Jesuit-run America magazine and the lay-run Commonweal. Bishops sometimes independently led the way. Cardinal Joseph Ritter (1892-1967) of St. Louis and Cardinal Patrick O'Boyle (1896-1987) of Washington, who integrated the Catholic schools of their archdioceses beginning in 1947 and 1948 well before the Supreme Court ruling of 1954, undoubtedly had an effect on the American bishops who wrote a pastoral letter on racism in 1958.
But sometimes the result of this “teaching” was negative, as when Father Charles E. Coughlin (1891-1979), the popular “radio priest” of the 1930s and '40s, broadcast his antiSemitic diatribes while pastor of Little Flower parish in Royal Oak, Mich., outside Detroit. To avert the scandal Father Coughlin was causing, the plug was pulled on his program in 1942. Jesuit Father John LaFarge (1880-1963), through his efforts as an editor of America, quietly countered Father Coughlin as America sought to develop Catholic understanding of the Jews in its pages in the '30s and '40s. This was well before the Church condemned anti-Semitism in the Vatican II declaration Nostra Aetate (1965).
The bishops' conference and the U.S. Catholic Conference became of age as a teaching body after Vatican II. Before the council, it was difficult for the bishops to critically reflect on deficiencies in American society because Catholics were still trying to gain acceptance as loyal Americans. After World War II and the Cold War, this loyalty could no longer be questioned. Pope Paul VI in his 1971 apostolic letter Octogesima Adveniens encouraged the national bishops' conferences to reflect theologically on pastoral problems. Following this challenge, the American bishops looked more intently at their own society, and found it wanting. Since 1980, they have issued more than 20 pastoral letters on social, political and economic issues.
For example, in 1983, after several years of study, the bishops issued The Challenge of Peace, their pastoral letter on war and peace which criticized American participation in the arms race, first-strike use of nuclear weapons and defense spending. They followed this with Economic Justice for All, their 1986 pastoral that leveled strong criticism at the free-enterprise system. While yielding prosperity to many, the American economy was criticized by the bishops for doing so unevenly and leaving many in poverty. These pastoral letters antagonized many Catholics who felt that the bishops' teaching role would be better directed toward “spiritual” issues and not “secular” concerns. Many Catholics still did not see the interconnection of the two. Even stronger criticism erupted over the bishops' attempt to write a pastoral letter on women. The fourth draft of that pastoral was withdrawn in 1992 when it became apparent that deeply divergent views in the hierarchy and in the whole Church regarding women and feminism prevented consensus on the issue.
The Challenge Continues
While the Church helped the children of immigrants to enter mainstream America through its school system, many Catholics now think much like the mainstream. In many ways, the Church suffers from its own success. As the 21st century begins rolling along, the Church is finding even greater challenges as she tries to teach her followers how to live as disciples of Jesus Christ.
And what happened to the members of the Gaston family? Almost 40 years after they first entered American society, they count among their members doctors, lawyers, teachers, women religious, a priest and professionals of all sorts — even a mayor of a major city (Miami). They have attended some of the best state, secular and Catholic colleges and universities in the country, and in the process are thoroughly American. About 85% are active Catholics. The rest are Protestant fundamentalists, inactive Catholics and unchurched. Their family experience is much better than the overall experience of the Church in America in the 20th century.
Anthony Bosnick lectures on history and writes from Gaithersburg, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: Third in an occasional series ----- EXTENDED BODY: Anthony Bosnick ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Education is Integral to The Church's Life and Mission DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:Ever since it received the great commission from Jesus to “make disciples of all nations … teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19,20), the Church has found itself entrusted with the ministry of teaching.
This ministry has faced new challenges throughout history. In Western Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire, the defunct Roman schools were replaced by monasteries not only as centers of evangelization and catechesis, but also of learning in general. It was there centers of Christian culture blossomed into the cathedral schools and universities of the high Middle Ages.
This educational mission has flourished even when transplanted across the sea to mission territory such as America. However, the challenge facing those who work within the Catholic schools today is not merely to “give witness to Christ, the unique Teacher, by their lives as well as their teachings” in their apostolate (Vatican II, Declaration on Christian Education, No. 8). It is to do so in a setting increasingly characterized by aggressive secularism.
Catholic centers of education in the coming millennium must not only find ways to reaffirm their Catholic identities, but must become centers of the “new evangelization” — an evangelization new in “ardor, methods, and expression” (John Paul II, The Church in America, nos. 66, 71).
John Grabowski is associate professor of moral theology at The Catholic University of America
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Grabowski ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Still the Best and Truest Joan DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:The eyes are the window of the soul,” an Italian Renaissance philosopher once wrote. Silent movies are an art form that demonstrates the truth of this maxim. Without recourse to the spoken word, actors and actresses in that medium are often forced to use their eyes alone to project their emotions.
The Passion of Joan of Arc is filmed almost exclusively in close-ups and medium shots. Joan's face (Renee Maria Falconetti) is on screen at least 40% of the time, but this doesn't seem excessive. She communicates through her eyes a wide enough range of emotions to move us deeply. We fully share in her suffering and joy. We don't need to hear her words. Danish writer-director Carl Dreyer (Ordet) uses the same techniques to depict the cruelty and cynicism of her persecutors.
The real-life Joan of Arc was a 15th-century French peasant girl who claimed she heard voices from God telling her to drive the English out of France. Dressed as a man, she participated in seven military campaigns. Following her inspiration and leadership, the French army overcame the siege of Orleans, liberated Paris and saw the Dauphin crowned at Rheims.
After these victories, she was captured by the English, who used French ecclesiastical authorities loyal to them to put her on trial for heresy. She was burned at the stake in Rouen on May 30, 1431, at the age of 19.
Twenty years later Joan was retried and rehabilitated. She became in succeeding centuries a symbol for those who wanted to protect France from foreign domination. She was canonized in 1920. During World War II, Charles de Gaulle used her Cross of Lorraine to represent the resistance of Free France to the Nazis.
Her story has been told many times — most recently in the trashy 1999 feature The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc and in last year's competent but uninspired miniseries starring Leelee Sobieski, Joan of Arc.
When The Passion of Joan of Arc was first released in 1928, French audiences expected a traditional historical pageant with a nationalistic portrait of a female warrior. Instead, writer-director Dreyer gave them a stark, intensely spiritual dramatization of Joan's trial, condensing 18 months and 29 separate interrogations into one prolonged session which takes place the day before her execution. He threw out the screenplay given him by the producers, which had been adapted from Joseph Delteil's book, and based the action and title cards on recently published trial transcripts. The title suggests the popular “passion plays” about the life of Christ staged each year around Easter.
From the film's very first image, Joan is presented as a visionary and her interrogators as men of the world. The English guards and the French ecclesiastical authorities are allied against her. The movie focuses on the differences between her and them in education, class and gender rather than nationality.
Dreyer usually films the inquisitors from low angles, in high contrast. The contours of their faces are harshly illuminated, evoking the sickness in their souls.
Joan's face is presented in softer shades of gray. Her goodness and sincerity seem to emanate from deep interior belief. She is at first confused by her interrogators' hatred but remains resolute in her faith.
Her face lights up at the promise of hearing Mass. But her inquisitors deny her this satisfaction when she refuses to discard her men's clothing, an action they find particularly threatening. “When the mission God gave me is done,” she declares, “I'll dress like a woman.” Then she weeps, covering her face with her hands. As we watch her slowly count out her age on her fingers, we're surprised to discover that such a forceful personality is illiterate.
Led by Bishop Cauchon (Eugene Silvain), her interrogators try to trap her in complicated theological questions that could lead to proof of heresy. “Do you think you're sure of salvation?” she's asked. “Are you in a state of grace? Do you think you've been elected by God?”
In a skillful use of title cards, Dreyer shows her to be their match. “Don't you think the judges are wiser than you?” she's warned. “But God is wiser,” she replies.
Although every sequence and shot is realistic in itself, the overall effect of each in succession is a subjective, and viscerally powerful, expression of Joan's state of mind.
When she's led into the torture room, we experience her fear as she looks at a spiked wheel whirling around faster and faster. We also feel her humiliation when her head is being shaved and shudder at her pain as doctors bleed her for illness.
But throughout the entire ordeal, her eyes are always fixed on God and eternity while her adversaries manipulate the truth for temporary political gain.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: 1928 classic Passion remains unparalleled ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Prizer's Picks DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:The Horse Whisperer (1998)
Director Robert Redford believes that a whiff of fresh air and immersion in wide-open spaces are a sure-fire tonic for uptight city slickers. Fourteen-year-old Grace McLean (Scarlett Johansson) is out horse-back riding in suburban Connecticut when she has a freak accident which causes the amputation of her leg and the maiming of her beloved horse, Pilgrim. Grace's mother, Annie (Kristin Scott Thomas), is a workaholic magazine editor who sees Pilgrim's healing as the key to her daughter's recovery. They travel to a Montana ranch to work with a “horse whisperer,” Tom Booker (Redford), who “can see into the creature's soul and soothe its wounds.”
Soon sparks are flying between Tom and the stressed-out Annie. But they both have a quality in short supply in most Hollywood films, moral intelligence, and they don't give in to temptation. The Horse Whisperer is often overly sentimental. But there's a sincerity and passion in its storytelling, and its heart is in the right place.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
In the 1930s, action-adventure serials were screened at Saturday matinees along with the regular double feature. Director Steven Spielberg (Schindler's List) perfectly recreates the spirit of these cliff-hanging shorts in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is a scholarly archeologist who's as fearless as James Bond. In 1936, the U.S. government asks him to prevent Hitler from acquiring the Ark of the Covenant, which contains the tablets on which the Ten Commandments are inscribed. Its possession will somehow mystically ensure the Nazis' conquest of the world. Indiana, wielding his trademark bull whip, travels to Nepal, where he's forced to join up with the high-spirited Marion (Karen Allen), a former colleague's daughter.
This constantly squabbling couple moves on to Egypt. After several death-defying adventures, Marion is kidnapped and Indiana must outwit the Nazis to save her and rescue the Ark. The movie treats the religious aspect of its subject matter with reverence and awe.
Lilies of the Field (1963)
God uses unexpected people in surprising ways. Homer Smith (Sidney Poitier) is an unemployed construction worker traveling around the Southwest who stops at a small farm to refill his car radiator. The spread is run by five German nuns who are new to America and don't speak much English. The mother superior (Lilia Skala) convinces Homer to help them work the place. After he fixes their leaky roof, they offer thanksgivings for the man whom “God has sent,” singing the rousing hymn, “Amen.”
Mother Superior asks Homer to stay. Weary of aimless wanderings, he begins to build their chapel, giving back his earnings to help them buy food and teaching them to speak English.
But when construction materials run out, Homer disappears and the nuns wonder if he's abandoned them. The Oscar-winning Lilies of the Field is full of laughter and charm, presenting God's intervention in our lives as a subtle and natural thing.
The Wrong Man (1956)
Master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock returned to the same themes in his 53 feature films. The Wrong Man has most of the usual ingredients: the normal world of an ordinary man jolted into chaos, an innocent person wrongly accused and the machinery of authority working to grind the innocent down. Manny Balestrero (Henry Fonda) is a bass player at the fashionable Stork Club. When his wife, Rose (Vera Miles), suffers from dental pains, he decides to borrow against his life insurance policy to help her. While at the insurance company, two secretaries mistakenly identify him as a robber. He's arrested and imprisoned.
Believing herself responsible for her husband's situation, Rose cracks up. But unlike most Hitchcock heroes, Balestrero is also a man of faith. He begins to pray — and surprising things start to happen. Based on a true story, the movie is directed in a spare, semi-documentary style which skillfully dramatizes the horrors Manny is forced to endure.
Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Young love is often sincere, passionate and foolish, and no story has ever dramatized these qualities better than Romeo and Juliet. This Oscar-winning version, directed by Franco Zeffirelli (Jesus of Nazareth), is the most financially successful of all Shakespeare films. It wisely casts unknown teen-agers as the leads and lets their adolescent innocence and enthusiasm set the romance on fire.
A bloody feud has erupted between two powerful families in Renaissance Verona. As the hostilities progress from ‘ancient grudge to new mutiny,’ a young boy from one clan, Romeo Montague (Leonard Whiting), falls in love with the daughter of the other, Juliet Capulet (Olivia Hussey). Of course, their parents are opposed so they marry secretly. Youthful casting makes the macho bravado of each family's would-be warriors especially convincing as their pointless duels set in motion the tragedy that follows. Realistic location filming and robust performances make this classic tale of ‘star-crossed lovers’ seem as contemporary as ever.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Art of Our Fathers DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:JERUSALEM—Visitors to the Holy Land with two or three free hours on their hands would do well to check out Jerusalem's Bible Lands Museum. This archeological treasure-trove, which is located right next to the equally impressive Israel Museum, recently inaugurated a new exhibit tailor-made for Catholic travelers.
“Images of Inspiration: The Old Testiment in Early Christian Art,” running through next Jan. 6, examines the use of biblical imagery in the art of the first Christians and reveals how the Old Testament provided an important source of inspiration for artists and craftsmen at the very beginning of Christianity.
The 160 artifacts in the exhibit, which date from the second through eighth centuries, reflect very clearly the Jewish roots of Christianity. Early Christians, many of whom were Jews, reinterpreted the Old Testament stories, applying new layers of meaning to the traditional tales.
The first specifically Christian forms did not appear until a century and a half after the Ascension (about 180). Historians attribute the gap to the fact that Judaism had an aversion to representational arts, as expressed in the Second Commandment: “You shall not make yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters under the earth.”
As the exhibition's oil lamps, amulets, pendants, coins, textiles, ceramicware, sarcophagi, statues and other pieces reveal, early Christians' avoidance of human and animal imagery began to disappear by the late-second and early-third centuries.
Over the next few centuries, Christian artists adapted the styles of classical art (Greek and Roman) flourishing all around them, and incorporated their decorative motifs and mythology into their own renderings of Old and New T e s t a m e n t scenes.
This fusion is evident in an ornate fourth-century sarcophagus belonging to a Christian woman named Julia Latronilla which seamlessly combines scenes from the Old and New Testaments. The left panel depicts Adam and Eve after their fall from grace, symbolized by an ear of corn (man's cultivation of the fields) and a spindle (women's craftsmanship); the lower panel illustrates the miracle at Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine. The upper right panel shows Abraham as he is about to sacrifice Isaac, as told in the Old Testament.
Samuel Rocca, an archaeologist and art historian who helped plan the exhibition, told the Register that “the Church Fathers found many parallels between the near-sacrifice of Isaac and the Crucifixion. For example, it took three days for Abraham to reach Mount Moriah and it took three days for Jesus to be resurrected.”
In retelling the sacrifice story, he noted, Christian art typically places a lamb, rather than the ram mentioned in the Book of Genesis, at Abraham's side.
Like Isaac, Jonah is also portrayed as a symbol of Jesus' life and resurrection, as the Gospel of Matthew makes clear: “For as Jonah remained in the belly of the sea-monster for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights” (Matthew 12:40).
The exhibition includes several depictions of the Jonah story, most appearing on North African plates from the fourth and fifth centuries. Borrowing from the culture around them, one plate sports a Roman merchant ship, while a sarcophagus lid with Jonah includes a Greek inscription with a chris-togram (a circular, graphic symbol of Christ).
The story of Noah and the ark, too, had great significance for early Christian artists, who viewed the flood as a baptism, or cleansing of the sins of humanity. “For Christians,” Rocca said, “the dove with an olive branch came to represent the Holy Spirit, the bringer of peace.” The Gospel of Mark states that the Holy Spirit descended at the baptism of Jesus in the form of a dove (Mark 1:9-10).
Among other items, the exhibition features a perfectly preserved fragment from a sixth-century bronze ring with a dove holding an olive branch in its beak. Beneath the dove, a small arc represents the rainbow which marked God's covenant with Noah.
It is unclear whether a clay lamp from Italy, dating back to the late-first or early-second century, is connected to any biblical episode. More likely, the carved dove was emblem-atic of the goddess Aphrodite or Venus.
At this period, say the curators, Christians did not create explicitly Christian art. Rather, they used earlier images, such as the Good Shepherd, to represent Jesus, endowing them with Christian significance.
While very early Christian art contains none of the symbols we today associate with Christianity, halos, crosses and the like gradually begin to appear in the exhibit's later pieces.
This transition is particularly evident in a collection of seals and amulets depicting Solomon. In a fourth-century oil lamp, Solomon is seated on a throne, dressed in Oriental robes. A sixth- or seventh-century bronze amulet shows a Solomon-like horseman on a horse, a halo on his head. The spear in his hand ends in a cross. The reverse side of the amulet depicts the ascension of Jesus.
It is unclear when this formative period of Christian art came to an end.
Some historians believe that early Christian art existed only in the third and fourth centuries, and say that the art of the fifth and sixth centuries was Western Christian and early Byzantine.
The majority hold that early Christian art began its decline after 639, when the emperer Heraclius I was defeated. This marked the beginning of the end of the Byzantine Empire.
Michele Chabin writes from Jerusalem.
----- EXCERPT: In a yearlong Jerusalem exhibit, rare artifacts bring early Christian life to light. ----- EXTENDED BODY: Michele Chabin ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Bishops Urge Gov. Bush to Stop Executions DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:AUSTIN, Texas—The Texas Catholic bishops have asked Gov. George W. Bush to suspend executions pending a thorough review of the state's system for carrying out capital punishment.
In a Feb. 16 letter, Richard Daly, executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference, asked on behalf of the state's bishops that Bush suspend all future executions on a case-by-case basis.
Under the Texas Constitution, the governor does not have the authority to issue a blanket order stopping executions, even temporarily. But it would be legal for the governor and the Board of Pardons and Paroles to suspend executions individually as they come up while a study is conducted.
Illinois Gov. George Ryan on Jan. 31 imposed a moratorium on executions in his state pending review of the process. Several other states have legislative proposals in the works to impose similar limits and reviews.
‘Of the 85 individuals who have been released from death row in the United States (since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976), seven have been released in Texas,’ said Daly's letter. ‘It's essential that if the state is going to impose the ultimate punishment that there be no margin of error.’
By Feb. 19, half of the nation's 14 executions in the year 2000 had been carried out in Texas.
A spokeswoman for Bush told the Associated Press he had no plans to stop executions. When asked about the death penalty during a presidential debate earlier in the week, Bush defended its use in Texas.
‘These are people who have had full access to the courts of law,’ Bush said. ‘There's no doubt in my mind that each person who's been executed in our state was guilty of the crime committed.’
‘The Texas Catholic Conference will join with other anti-death penalty groups during the next legislative session to attempt to legislatively mandate a moratorium on executions in Texas while such a study is undertaken,’ Daly's letter said. ‘The bishops believe that it is important to initiate such a study as quickly as possible.’
Daly said he is aware of at least three people on Texas death row who have strong claims of innocence. One, Odell Barnes Jr., has been scheduled for execution on March 1.
The Catholic bishops of Texas oppose the death penalty in all cases, but they also are concerned about related issues, Daly noted, ‘including the significant evidence of racial bias in sentencing and the inadequacy of legal counsel for poor defendants in Texas.’
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Target's Largess Puts It in a Gray Area DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:MINNEAPOLIS—What could be wrong with a company agreeing to give back 1% of the sales made on its credit cards to a local school of the cardholder's choosing?
That's a question hanging over Target stores. The Minneapolis-based megaretailer supports boasts of supporting more than 104,000 schools, including Catholic schools, through its Take Charge of Education program.
But, as several letters to the Register noted after a recent article, Target also gives money to Planned Parenthood.
And that's where the problem is, the readers say.
They contend that good Catholics can't accept the support of companies who fund abortion.
“Some parents say it's conscience money,” said Bob Marcucci, head teacher at the Catholic Academy, a parochial elementary school in Omaha, Neb. His school doesn't take money from Target.
“We thought about taking money from Target a few years ago,” Marcucci recalled. “But then someone showed documentation that they were tied to Planned Parenthood, so we decided not to do that.”
Marcucci said he relies on parents to alert him to connections between corporations and Planned Parenthood, but added that it's tough to know where to draw the line.
“If [investor] Warren Buffett said he wanted to give $10,000 to the school, should we take it?” Marcucci asked. “Other people say it's $10,000 less that he can give to population control programs. It's tough to know.”
Indeed it is, agreed a prominent moral theologian contacted by the Register.
“People want simple answers to these questions, but they are not going to get them,” said Germain Grisez, whose recent book, Difficult Moral Questions, deals with dilemmas such as those raised by Marcucci.
A Denial, Sort of
Meanwhile, contending that “Target does not support Planned Parenthood,” company spokes-woman Carolyn Brookter acknowledged that Target's parent, formerly called Dayton Hudson Corp., has given an annual $18,000 “education” grant to Planned Parenthood of Minnesota. “It's a continuing grant annually,” she told the Register, “it's been several years.”
Brookter noted Target is in the midst of a corporate shake-up, and Dayton Hudson is now called Target Foundation.
“We are in transition,” she said. “What we are doing is looking at things that were funded by Dayton Hudson and changing the focus of the foundation.” at to Planned Parenthood? “I can't speculate on that further,” Brookter said.
That's all Doug Scott needed to hear. For the president of Life Decisions International, a nonprofit organization which tracks corporate support of Planned Parenthood, money produced by a single branch infects the whole tree.
“They must think people are stupid,” Scott said. “They are trying to convince people that Target stores and [their parent company] have nothing to do with each other. Target would have no money if it weren't for [the parent firm].
“All Target has to do at corporate headquarters is say that neither our corporate foundation nor any local stores can give to Planned Parenthood.”
Some argue that since Target gives to so many organizations, they shouldn't be vilified for giving an annual $18,000 grant to Planned Parenthood.
A school official from a large U.S. diocese who didn't want to be quoted by name praised Target for its generous support of parochial schools in his district.
“I just don't have single bad thing to say about Target,” the official said. “It's just unbelievable what they've done for our schools.”
He added that when Target first started offering money to the schools, the diocese looked into its purported connection with Planned Parenthood, but found the allegations wanting.
“I'd hate to see a company that gives $1 million a week to schools being zapped,” he added.
Would his diocese ever take money from someone it knew supported Planned Parenthood? “Heavens no,” the official said.
So what about the claim that Dayton Hudson, not Target, gives the money to Planned Parenthood?
Scott at Life Decisions said that when a company gives to Planned Parenthood, it is offering an implicit endorsement of its abortion business. “Faye Waddleton even said that,” he added. Waddleton is a former director of Planned Parenthood.
Scott offered this analogy: “If the Ku Klux Klan had a reading program that had no racial element to it, would a company give to the Klan and say they are just giving to help education …? If you support any part of the program, you are supporting the Klan. The same goes for Planned Parenthood.”
The Rumor Mill
But some think it's more complicated than that, even if a subsidiary tries unconvincingly to distance itself from its parent.
For theologian Germain Grisez, even companies that have a demonstrable link to Planned Parenthood don't provide a simple case. He said the whole area of morality touched upon by the Target case, called material cooperation, calls for deeper reflection.
Grisez noted that the Church has historically accepted money from all sorts of questionable people.
“If someone leaves you their estate and you know they've gotten in from nasty business habits, there are going to be very few bishops turning it down,” he said.
Grisez added that unless someone intended to support abortion or some other evil practice, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with accepting money or buying products from a company that does.
What does have to be considered, he contended, are the side effects of such an action. One such good effect would be if a customer or someone who receives aid could exert pressure on a corporation to change its polices, Grisez said. Another effect to consider is bad witness, if dealing with a notorious company would give scandal. Still another factor, Grisez said, is the case of companies that give money with strings attached.
So can someone do business with a company that is involved with an organization whose work is morally objectionable in principle? Grisez said there were no easy answers to questions of material cooperation, but added that in the end, “you still have to use judgment.”
Boycott Denied
A recent spate of e-mails distributed among pro-lifers claims that Planned Parenthood has organized a boycott of Wal-Mart after the retailer decided not to carry the abortion pill Preven.
But Planned Parenthood spokesman Julie McCabe denied that her employer had called for a boycott. “We don't engage in boycotts,” McCabe told the Register.
Wal-Mart spokesman Jessica Moser said she had heard the rumor for six months, but also denied that it had any basis in fact.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Mcguire ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of life -------- TITLE: 'Five Wishes': Now and at the Hour of Death DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:TALLAHASSEE, Fla.—It's easy to make a “living will,” stipulating when you will die.
But what about stipulating how you will die?
In today's euthanasia-prone culture, respect can be the hardest thing for the dying to find, said Jim Towey, executive director of the privately funded, nonprofit Commission on Aging with Dignity.
“People say, ‘Gosh, we put our animals to sleep when they're very sick. Why can't we do that for people?’” Towey explained.
“When you start taking human life it affects the disabled, the poor. It gives the message, ‘Do the decent thing and get out of the way. Stop being a burden.’ Our premise is that life is a gift from God, and there's no such thing as a life that's a burden.”
Two years ago, Aging with Dignity introduced “The Five Wishes,” a living will that gives control to end-of-life care by considering more than just legal and medical questions. It also addresses a person's desires in the areas of comfort, companionship and relationships.
“The strength of this document is that it is very clear and easy to understand. It is not written in medical or legal language,” said Father John West, a moral theologian and ethicist, and rector of St. John's Center for Youth and the Family in Washington, D.C.
For example, under Wish No. 3, “How Comfortable I Want to Be,” people are asked to consider such alternatives as, “I wish to have my favorite music played when possible until my time of death,” and “I want my lips and mouth kept moist to stop dryness.”
An Education in Calcutta
Towey was introduced to end-of-life realities through Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
“In 1985, I was working as legislative director for Senator Mark Hatfield,” said Towey. “He knew Mother, so on my way back from a business trip, I spent one day in Calcutta. After Mass, Mother asked me if I'd seen her House for the Dying.
“I went that afternoon, and the sister who greeted me handed me some cotton and a bottle of solution and told me to go clean a man who had scabies. I was trapped. If I had known I'd have to work that day, I don't think I'd have gone. But what I found was the Lord waiting for me in that bed.”
That experience led Towey to work with the dying in Calcutta; Tijuana, Mexico; and Washington, D.C. A lawyer, he has also been the U.S. legal counsel for the Missionaries of Charity for 12 years.
Towey is an expert on social services for the elderly for another reason. From 1993 through 1995, he was secretary of Florida's 40,000-employee Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services.
“I was acutely aware of how the disabled and elderly were not valued, and how we push them to the margins of society,” said Towey. “I've volunteered in First World hospitals, and seen end-of-life care there. It struck me that the way Mother Teresa cared for the dying in Calcutta was a lot more humane and dignified than what you see in the First World. People are dying alone. They're hurting, they're miserable, and it doesn't have to be that way.”
“Most Americans are scared to death of dying,” said Annette Kane, executive director of the National Council for Catholic Women, citing a study commissioned by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (the country's largest philanthropy devoted to health and health care).
“Women tend to lead the conversation in families on these things,” Kane continued, “and the Five Wishes set up the opportunity to get the dialogue going.”
“It was a wonderful tool for opening the conversation with my family,” said Tallahassee resident Kristin Manos. “My grandmother was very sick, and she had a living will, but it wasn't as extensive or caring as the Five Wishes. Using the Five Wishes, my parents, my grandparents, my husband and I were able to talk about everything before my grandmother died.
“My husband and I have filled out the Five Wishes ourselves, and I've given it to my parents and my grandfather.”
The Five Wishes have been distributed to more than 625,000 households all over the country, and 350 hospitals have ordered it. It is supported by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and has been distributed to more than 5,000 Florida state employees. It is valid in 33 states and usable in all 50, by filling it out and attaching it to required state forms.
“We haven't paid a penny in advertising,” said Towey. “We only have six full-time employees in Tallahassee and one in Miami. I marvel at what the Lord is doing, that he can shine through something as small as this.”
My Wish For:
1. The person I want to make care decisions for me when I can't.
2. The kind of medical treatment I want or don't want.
3. How comfortable I want to be.
4. How I want people to treat me.
5. What I want my loved ones to know.
Dana Mildebrath is based in Seminole, Florida.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dana Mildebrath ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of life -------- TITLE: How to Save Babies From Abandonment? Critics Disagree DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:COSTA MESA, Calif.—They are in denial about their pregnancies. And when they give birth they either can't find help or don't want to, simply because they can't believe they've become mothers.
Such is the typical profile of young, usually unmarried, mothers who abandon their babies, alive or dead. There are no hard figures available on the number of these cases nationwide, but many observers and public officials believe such cases are on the rise.
Now, efforts are under way by state and local governments to provide a safe place for women to give up their babies without fear.
California state Sen. James Brulte introduced a “legalized abandonment” bill in January in order to give frightened mothers a safe alternative, modeled on a Texas law. It also mirrors efforts in Colorado and Kentucky.
“Our message to young mothers is that guilt, shame or panic are not reasons to destroy a newborn's chance at life,” said Brulte. “There are many people willing to adopt these babies, and we need to create greater awareness of options other than child abandonment.”
Under the Texas law, a mother can voluntarily deliver a child to emergency medical personnel without threat of prosecution. Law-makers in Texas acted after a string of abandoned babies were found in Houston. In total, 13 babies were discovered in just 10 months. U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat, is proposing federal legislation to track the number of babies abandoned nationwide.
The Texas law was in turn modeled on a program started in Mobile, Ala. There, television reporter Jodi Brooks became so disgusted with the number of abandonment cases that she gathered together the local prosecutor, social service agencies and hospitals to create “A Secret Safe Place for Newborns.”
Under the program, a baby has to be dropped off within 72 hours of birth to a designated hospital. The mother is promised that she won't be prosecuted and the baby is placed in foster care. A mother has six months to reclaim her child.
Since the program started in 1998, four babies were brought in safely. Authorities are aware of only one abandoned infant.
Critics of the “legalized abandonment” programs and laws recognize the good intentions behind them, especially in the wake of high-profile cases such as the New Jersey teen who gave birth in a bathroom at her senior prom and dumped the infant in a trash can.
But these same critics are concerned that women who are in denial over their pregnancy and childbirth may be unwilling to walk into a busy hospital with security cameras on the walls.
Among the critics is Project Cuddle, a Costa Mesa, Calif.-based group. Spokeswoman Laurie Larson said its national hot line ([888] 628-3353) and volunteer network provides one-on-one support that surpasses the anonymity of a baby drop-off.
“We really treat the girls as people and the state treats them as numbers,” Larson told the Register. “A loving program comforts the soul. You can't believe the difference when you tell a girl, ‘I'll be there for you, no matter what.’”
Established by Debbe Magnusen in 1990, Project Cuddle claims to have counseled 190 mothers who might have abandoned their babies. Which is a far better record than the baby drop-off programs, Larson contended.
Larson noted that no babies have dropped off at the designated areas since the Texas law took effect. In fact, she said, four babies in Houston were abandoned in that time, one of which died.
“In the same period, we've rescued 22 babies across the nation,” Larson said. She contended that legalized-abandonment laws often contain too many loopholes. “You can still be prosecuted,” she noted. “It's up to the discretion of the prosecutor.”
In addition, she noted, the law doesn't require that the baby be giving to a hospital worker. “The girl can hide the baby in the bathroom or outside the hospital,” she said. She also wondered what the law would offer a mother whose baby was over 30 days old, but still needed help.
Which is why Leah Thomas recommends Project Cuddle for any woman who finds herself in a situation similar to Thomas' last year.
“Project Cuddle makes sure you can get back on your feet and that the baby is taken care of,” said Thomas, who credits the program with helping her before and after her twins were born. “I just think that's better than dropping off the baby at the hospital.”
Just in Time
Seven months pregnant, with no family living nearby, Leah Thomas caught the last few minutes of a television program that changed her life.
The show highlighted a nonprofit group called Project Cuddle, which tries to save babies from being abandoned by providing their mothers with financial and spiritual support.
“I waited a few days before I called because I was so scared,” Thomas, 20, told the Register. She said she found a gentle and healing voice on the phone.
Thomas received important information over the phone. Within a few days a volunteer came by to visit her. The volunteer brought Thomas maternity clothes and brought her to a doctor for prenatal care.
The assistance made for a special Christmas celebration.
“I had my kids on Christmas Day,” said Thomas. “It was very nice. Laurie [Larson, of Project Cuddle] was in the delivery room because I don't really have any relatives out here. She was like my coach.”
Thomas gave birth to twin boys, Jordan and Josiah. Project Cuddle even got her a job baby-sitting other children, including her own, because Thomas decided to raise her children. (Project Cuddle also helps moms who give their babies up for adoption.)
To this day Thomas still does-n't know what she would have done had she not learned about Project Cuddle.
“I'm happy I called,” said Thomas. “I'm glad I saw that program on TV.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joshua Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:In his 1994 Letter to Children, Pope John Paul II outlined the many difficult and tragic conditions that can befall children throughout the world, including outright abandonment by their parents (see story by Joshua Mercer below). In outlining these problems, he urged children to be empathetic and to look to the Child Jesus for a model of how to respond to children who suffer:
Unfortunately, many children in different parts of the world are suffering and being threatened: They are hungry and poor, they are dying from diseases and malnutrition, they are the victims of war, they are abandoned by their parents and condemned to remain without a home, without the warmth of a family of their own, they suffer many forms of violence and arrogance from grown-ups. How can we not care when we see the suffering of so many children, especially when this suffering is in some way caused by grownups?
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of life -------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:McCain Under Fire for Flip-Flop on Tissue Research
South Carolina Citizens for Life has aired radio ads urging voters to oppose McCain because, the ads said, the Arizona Republican had “flipflopped” on a promise to maintain the ban on federal funds for research “that uses the body parts of aborted babies.”
The Globe reported that in April 1992 McCain voted in favor of authorizing funds for the National Institutes of Health that included a provision to lift the federal fetal-research moratorium that presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush had put in place.
Also, McCain was the chief sponsor of a bill, enacted in 1997, that provides $100 million a year for finding a cure for Parkinson's disease; however, he opposed an amendment that would have banned research on fetal-tissue transplants, reported the Globe.
Parish Priest Rebukes Pro-Abortion Legislator
Father Daniel Rupp chastised Poirier's committee in the state legislature for bottling up legislation that would require notification to parents of a minor who wants an abortion, reported the Herald.
“He used the sacred Mass to make a political point, and that's where I got upset. I believe it was an attempt to intimidate me personally,” Poirier said. “I was preaching to everybody. I wasn't trying to single him out,” said Father Rupp, an associate pastor at St. Monica's Church. “I was trying to tell the people that this is an issue … that I think, as Catholics, we are called to be involved in.”
Father Rupp said he was following in a tradition of priestly opposition to such government-approved practices as capital punishment, abortion and same-sex marriage, reported the Herald.
Media Campaign Launches in Southern California
The media campaign in San Diego began Jan. 24 on all major broadcast networks and cable stations, and will run through the beginning of April. This concept of a network of life organizations that is formed for this purpose is spreading as other California regions are coming together and raising funds for media advertisements.
Permission Needed for Abortion Facility Inspections
The compromise precludes a trial that had been slated for Feb. 12 in U.S. District Court.
The case arose after five abortion facilities filed suit against the state, calling a 1999 law that gave state health officials “broader authority” in inspecting abortion facilities a violation of the Fourth Amendment protection against search and seizure. The abortion facilities claimed that the new law allowed for inspections without a warrant or the consent of the owner.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 02/27/2000 12.00.00 P.M. CATEGORY: February 27-March 4, 2000 ----- BODY:Much of the world's efforts to control population are directed at the poor, especially in the Third World. However, contraceptives and abortifacients cost anywhere from $33 to $65 annually. Even though natural methods are absolutely free, they are rarely recommended by the main population control organizations.
(Source: “The Advantages of
Natural Family Planning,” a brochure by Benedictine
Father Paul Marx)
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of life -------- TITLE: Ad Defends Pius XII on Nazi Charges DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:NEW YORK — The New York Times is of two minds about Pope Pius XII. During the war years, he was a saint for standing up to the Nazis — but the paper today seems to have forgotten that history.
This is the contradiction the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights highlightedwith its full page advertisement in the April 10 Times. The ad quotes 10 editorials and news articles published in the Times during World War II, all praising Pius XII's courageous defense of the Jews against Hitler.
On Christmas Day, 1941, the editorial page of the New York Times wrote, “The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness overwhelming Europe this Christmas.”
But on March 16 that same editorial page wrote, “Some now hope that the pope [John Paul II] will use his trip to Israel next week to ask forgiveness for Pius XII's silence during the Holocaust.”
In the past two years, a spate of new books have attacked and defended Pius XII. The attackers — principally James Carroll in Constantine's Sword, John Cornwell in Hitler's Pope, Garry Wills in Papal Sin, and Susan Zuccotti in Under His Very Windows — charge that Pius XII stood by in silence or even collaborated with the Nazis.
This claim first surfaced after the pope's death, in a 1963 play, The Deputy, which portrayed Pius XII as a Hitler toady obsessed with his personal hygiene.
The recent anti-Pius books are more sophisticated. Cornwell and Carroll both received positive front-page coverage in the New York Times Book Review, which also praised Papal Sin.
The Catholic League's Patrick Scully said that the purpose of the advertisement was to say, “You don't have to take the Catholic League's word” that Pius XII strongly opposed Hitler. “Here's what was said, when it was happening, by the New York Times. We're saying, ‘Here's the evidence; you decide.’”
Scully said that the Times insisted on seeing evidence that the material quoted actually appeared in the newspaper. The quotations are “rock-solid,” he added.
Robert Rychlak, author of Hitler, the War, and the Pope, said, “It's fair enough to question certain things, say you could have done this differently, but to suggest that he was callously indifferent is to disregard the clear record.”
Why didn't Pius XII speak more forcefully by, for example, publicly excommunicating Hitler, or using the word “Nazi” in his condemnations of racism? “The same reason the National Red Cross did not do that,” Rychlak replied — when international authorities spoke too sharply, the Germans cracked down, slaughtering hundreds more Jews.
But Pius XII worked against Hitler behind the scenes, Rychlak said, funneling information about German troop movements to the Allies.
And in October 1943, Pius XII asked Italian churches and convents to hide Jews. In Rome, five thousand Jews were sheltered from the Nazis. Three thousand fled to the pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. Hundreds lived within the Vatican itself.
Pius XII is being considered for sainthood, and Rychlak said, “The study of his life would have been completed but for delays caused by the eruption of this controversy.”
The New York Times is a focal point of the controversy, because it has undergone a high profile reversal.
In January 1940 the Times editorialized: “Now the Vatican has spoken, with authority that cannot be questioned, and has confirmed the worst intimations of terror which have come out of the Polish darkness.”
The headline reporting Pius XII's first encyclical, on October 28, 1939, read, “Pope Condemns Dictators, Treaty Violators, Racism.”
Headlines on August 6, 1942, read, “Pope Is Said to Plead for Jews Listed for Removal from France”; three weeks later, the headline was, “Vichy Seizes Jews; Pope Pius Ignored.”
But in 2000, editorial and news coverage sounded very different. It was the eve of Pope John Paul II's “mea culpa” address asking forgiveness for pastsins of Catholics — including the mistreatment of Jews.
A March 14 Times editorial condemned John Paul II for failing to “candidly [acknowledge] the failure of Pope Pius XII to speak out against the Nazi genocide.”
On March 24, the foreign desk reported, “But in all of his many statements of regret, the pope has never faulted the behavior of Pope Pius XII, a figure whose silence during the Nazi era remains a source of deep division between many Jewish groups and the Vatican.”
Hitler's Pope made the case in its strongest form. The Times review, headlined “A Deafening Silence,” argued that the pope failed to speak out because of his alleged anti-Semitism, desire for autocratic rule, and fear of communism. The review speaks of Pius XII “tolerating” convents that sheltered Jews, rather than encouraging them.
The Times review ends with a description of the modern Vatican as “a fortress built against the tide of time.”
The Times refused to comment on the grounds that it had not reviewed all of its coverage of Pius XII to track how that coverage had changed.
Rychlak praised a recent article by Rabbi David Dalin in the Weekly Standard for pointing out what he sees as the motive for the opposition to Pius XII.
“Many people are focusing on Pius XII and arguing one way or another as a way of trying to effect some changes in the Catholic Church for the future,” Rychlak said. “Many people who want to criticize the pre-Vatican II Church are pointing to Pius XII, the last pre-Vatican II pope.”
Rychlak pointed to the last chapter of Hitler's Pope, “Pius XII Redivivus.” Cornwell is “saying John Paul II is Pius XII all over again,” he said. Similarly, Constantine's Sword calls for a “Vatican III” to reform the Church, and Papal Sin advocates that the Church ditch doctrines like its teaching on contraception.
On the other hand, one thing that angered Rabbi Dalin is that attacks on Pius XII require discrediting the testimony of Jews — Jewish leaders like Golda Meir, Albert Einstein and the Holocaust survivor and Chief Rabbi of Denmark, Marcus Melchior.
As Rabbi Dalin wrote: “Faced with such monstrous moral equivalence and misuse of the Holocaust, how can we not object?”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Eve Tushnet ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Pastor and Flock Become Catholics This Easter DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:DETROIT — When Detroit-born Alex Jones became a Pentecostal minister in 1972, there was little question among those who knew him that he was answering God's call to preach.
Now, many of his friends and family have dismissed the 59-year-old pastor as an apostate for embracing the Catholic faith, closing the nondenomi-national church he organized in 1982, and taking part of his congregation with him.
At this year's April 14 Easter Vigil, Jones, his wife, Donna, and 62 other former members of Detroit's Maranatha Church, will be received into the Catholic Church during the Easter Vigil at St. Suzanne's Parish here.
For Jones, becoming a Catholic will mark the end of a journey that began with the planting of a seed by Catholic apologist and Register columnist Karl Keating. It also will mean the beginning of a new way of life.
Jones first heard Keating, the founder of Catholic Answers, at a debate on whether the origins of the Christian church were Protestant or Catholic. At the close, Keating asked, “If something took place, who would you want to believe, those who saw it or those who came thousands of years later and told what happened?”
“Good point,” Jones thought, and tucked it away. Five years later, while he was reading about the church fathers, Keating's question resurfaced. Jones began a study of the Church's beginnings, sharing his newfound knowledge with his congregation.
To illustrate what he was talking about, in the spring of 1998 he re-enacted an early worship service, never intending to alter his congregation's worship style. “But once I discovered the foundational truths and saw that Christianity was not the same as I was preaching, some fine-tuning needed to take place.”
Soon, Maranatha Church's Sunday service was looking more like a Catholic Mass with Pentecostal overtones. “We said all the prayers with all the rubrics of the Church, all the readings, the Eucharistic prayers. We did it all, and we did it with an African-American style.”
Not everyone liked the change, however, and the 200-member congregation began to dwindle.
Meanwhile, Jones contacted Detroit's Sacred Heart Seminary and was referred to Steve Ray of Milan, Mich., whose conversion story is told in Crossing the Tiber.
“I set up a lunch with him right away and we pretty much had lunch every month after that,” said Ray. He introduced Jones to Dennis Walters, the catechist at Christ the King Parish in Ann Arbor, Mich. Walters began giving the Pentecostal pastor and his wife weekly instructions in March, 1999.
Crossroads
Eventually, Jones and his congregation arrived at a crossroads.
On June 4, the remaining adult members of Maranatha Church voted 39–19 to begin the process of becoming Catholic. In September, they began studies at St. Suzanne's.
Maranatha closed for good in December. The congregation voted to give Jones severance pay and sell the building, a former Greek Orthodox church, to the First Tabernacle Church of God in Christ.
Father Dennis Duggan, St. Suzanne's 53-year-old pastor, said the former Maranatha members and their pastor along with about 10 other candidates comprise the 750-member parish's largest ever convert class.
Unity and Diversity
Although not all parishioners at predominantly white St. Suzanne's have received the group warmly, Father Duggan, who also is white, said he considers the newcomers a gift and an answer to prayer.
“What the Lord seems to have brought together in the two of us — Alex and myself — is two individuals who have a similar dream about diversity. Detroit is a particularly segregated kind of community, especially on Sunday morning, and here you've got two baptized believers who really believe we ought to be looking different.”
Father Duggan hopes eventually to bring Jones onto the parish staff. Already, he has encouraged Jones to join him in teaching at a Wednesday night Bible service. And, he is working on adapting the music at Masses so that it better reflects the parish's new makeup.
The current European worship style at St. Suzanne's has been the most difficult adjustment for the former Maranatha members, Jones said, because they had been accustomed to using contemporary music with the Catholic prayers and rituals.
“The cultural adaptation is far more difficult than the theological adaptation,” he said.
Protestant Issues
Jones said the four biggest problems Protestants have with Catholicism are teachings about Mary, purgatory, papal authority, and praying to saints. He resolved three of the four long ago, but struggled the most with Mary, finally accepting the teaching on her just because the church taught it.
“It is so ingrained in Protestants that only God inhabits heaven and to pray to anyone else is idolatry. … The culture had so placed in my heart that only the Trinity received prayer that it was difficult.”
He is writing a paper on the appropriateness of venerating Mary for a class at Detroit's Sacred Heart Seminary, where he is taking prerequisite courses for a master's degree in theology and pastoral studies. He also is writing a book for Ignatius Press and accepting speaking engagements through St. Joseph Communications, West Covina, Calif.
Jones, the father of three married sons and grandfather of six, is leaving the question of whether he becomes a priest up to the Church.
“If the Church discerns that vocation, I will accept it. If not, I will accept that, too. Whatever the Church calls me to do, I will do.”
Although he has given up his job, prestige, and the congregation he built to become Catholic, Jones said the hardest loss of all has been the family and friends who rejected him because of his decision.
“To see those that have worshiped with and prayed with me for over 40 years walk away and have no contact with them is sad.”
It was especially painful, he said, when his mother, who had helped him start Maranatha, left to go to Detroit's Perfecting Church, where his cousin, gospel singer Marvin Winans, is the pastor.
Neither Winans nor the pastor of the church that bought Maranatha's building would comment on Jones’ conversion.
Jones also is troubled that those he left behind do not understand his decision.
“To them, I have apostasized into error. And that's painful for me because we all want to be looked at as being right and correct, but now you have the stigma of being mentally unbalanced, changeable, being looked at as though you've just walked away from God.”
Jones said when his group was considering converting, prayer groups were formed to stop them. “People fasted and prayed that God would stop us from making this terrible mistake. When we did it, it was as though we had died.”
He said Catholics do not fully understand how many Protestants see their church. “There's this thin veneer of amicability, and below that there is great hostility.”
But he remains convinced he is doing the right thing.
“How can you say no to truth? I knew that I would lose everything and that in those circles I would never be accepted again, but I had no choice,” he said.
“It would be mortal sin for me to know what I know and not act on it. If I returned to my former life, I would be dishonest, untrust-worthy, a man who saw truth, knew truth, and turned away from it, and I could just not do that.”
Judy Roberts writes from Millbury, Ohio
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Judy Roberts ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Spy-Plane Showdown Spotlights Human-Rights Concerns DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON — As China and the U.S. traded accusations over a downed American spy plane, Steven Mosher, president of Population Research International, called for a boycott of goods made in China.
Some human-rights advocates disagree with that strategy but everyone can be certain of one thing: Such a boycott would be difficult, particularly for parents.
G.I. Joe, “a real American hero,” had his patriotic plastic form molded in the People's Republic of China. So did the Trumpet-Playing Cookie Monster from Mattel, an enormous purple plush frog from Animal Alley, scores of cute stuffed animals, and even the Big Mouth Billy Bass.
But all-pervasive Chinese goods should nonetheless be skipped, said renowned dissident Harry Wu. He charged that the Chinese laogai prison system, which opponents compare to the Soviet gulag, uses “reform through labor” to control the Chinese people while netting a profit for the Communist government.
Wu acknowledged that most Chinese products were not made with forced labor — but there is no way to tell which. “Many toys, electronic components, garments, shoes and Christmas decorations are processed by forced labor in China,” he said.
Wu was imprisoned in the laogai for 19 years in the 1960s and 1970s, for criticizing the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary. After his release, he returned to the laogai in disguise throughout the 1990s to videotape and document the prisons’ abuses.
There he saw a prisoner forced to climb, naked, into a vat of toxic chemicals and stir them with his body. Other prisoners who failed to meet their production quotas were tortured, denied food, or placed in solitary confinement.
A boycott should not focus solely on the laogai, said Wu, but on all of China's human rights abuses. “This government can use the money to strengthen their power. The money supports the police departments,” he said.
While Russo suggested shopping in larger stores, which offer more choices, Bruce Grossan, a physicist living in Berkeley, Calif., recommended that shoppers make their boycotts public.
“Without being rude, without being unpleasant, let people know what you're doing,” he said. “Let people in the stores know. Let the Chinese government know.”
He knew of several stores that had changed their buying policies because customers requested products not made in China, said Grossan. “As people insist on and ask for non Chinese products merchants have to respond,” he said.
Parents face the added obstacle of a child's desire for the perfect toy — a Super Soaker, a Pokèmon doll, a Scrabble set. All are made in China.
Parents might substitute Legos, Connect Four, or a Hula Hoop, which were made elsewhere.
But, in some cases, there's no easy method for sorting out products. Many Pressman games, Play-Doh, and Crayola products were made elsewhere, but each brand also offers Chinese goods. Most Hot Wheels cars come from China, but it has a line of smaller, 99-cent cars which were mostly made elsewhere.
Each car has its country of origin engraved on its underside.
Toys and games with many small parts, especially plastic parts, are likely to use components from China. Many board games, for example, are made in the U.S. but packaged with dice from China. Companies are required to list this information on the box.
Many advocates of greater freedom in China disagree with Wu that a boycott is appropriate. William McGurn, chief editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, noted, “I understand the sentiment, but boycotts and sanctions almost never work. They haven't worked in Iraq.”
He argued, “When you deprive the outside world from coming in, you inadvertently strengthen the government. You prop up a government monopoly. Trade has been the most positive influence on China.” He emphasized that China's economy is not “based on prison labor.”
“Look at the worst places for human rights,” McGurn said. “They're not the places linked to the world economically; they're the places cut off from the world economically.”
But Lawrence Uzzell, president of the religious-freedom monitoring group the Keston Institute, told the Yale Free Press in January, “With China, we in the free-market movement learned an unpleasant lesson.”
Uzzell said, “Fifteen to 20 years ago, I was optimistic about progress in China through increased open trade. But that has manifestly not happened.”
“China is definitely freer in the economic realm,” he said, “but is clearly still repressive in some fundamental areas such as political, journalistic, and religious freedom. The crackdown on religious minorities has gotten worse since the early 1990s, and will continue to do so. It is definitely more hostile to the press now than it was in the '80s.”
Meanwhile, this Sunday, one irony may spur Catholics to boycott: Most of the plastic Easter eggs sold in American stores were made in a country where priests have been jailed for saying Mass.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Eve Tushnet ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Poverty Attracts Consecrated Women DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:COMBERMERE, Ontario — Like many visitors to Madonna House Apostolate, Reyna Smith found more than she bargained for when she visited its main center in Combermere, a rural northern Ontario village.
All she wanted was a cheap place to stay. What she got was a sense that God was calling her to a consecrated lay life of poverty, chastity and obedience.
A restless 19-year-old, Reyna was on the first leg of a three-month travel adventure. Madonna House had seemed an ideal stopover. Its members staff a small center in her hometown of Winslow, Ariz., and the Smith family knew and liked them. But Reyna hadn't realized that visitors to Combermere are expected to share in the daily life of its community of priests and consecrated single laymen and women.
“I hated that!” Reyna laughs, ticking off the reasons. “Staying in a dorm with women from different cultures and backgrounds. No privacy. Lights out at 11. Daily Mass — when you've barely been making it to Sunday Mass. People telling you to pick up after yourself.”
She stayed for a month — “only because my money ran out” — then fled. Two months later, in August 1991, she was back. “Somehow,” she said, “I was seeing things differently.”
This June, after years of formation and service at the apostolate's houses in Combermere and the Yukon, Reyna will make her final promises as a Madonna House staff member.
The spirituality of Madonna House is summed up in the “Little Mandate.” Presented in the first person, as if spoken by Christ, this short distillation of Gospel directives came to foundress Catherine de Hueck Doherty over the course of many years.
Talk to any member about their experience of Madonna House, and you'll catch echoes of this “Little Mandate”:
— “Love — love — love, never counting the cost.”
Seeing the community's earnest attempt to live this out in the nitty-gritty of everyday life is what drew Reyna back. “There's such an honesty, a search for truth in relationships with God and each other. I saw that these were real people who had struggles and who didn't always get along. When they failed, though, they picked themselves up and kept trying to work things out.”
Living in this school of love gives Madonna House members a foundation from which to reach out to society's less loveable characters — people like the verbally abusive alcoholic Reyna used to encounter while giving out food at the Whitehorse, Yukon, center.
“Why am I trying to be nice to this guy?” Reyna would fume. “I can't stand him. He's mean, he's drunk, he stinks….”
Then one day her nemesis showed up sober, said it was the anniversary of his mother's death, and spoke about his life. Reyna melted.
“I'd been so tempted to treat this man cynically. But here was a real person, with joys and fears and tears,” she said. “It brought me to my knees again, and my heart opened up with compassion. This kind of thing happens all the time.”
— “ Go into the marketplace and stay with Me … pray … fast … pray always … fast.”
In “the marketplace” isn't where Angela Redmond once envisioned she'd be serving God. Drawn to contemplative religious life after stumbling on St. Thérèse of Lisieux's Story of a Soul during her senior year of college, Angela spent one happy but vaguely unsettled year with cloistered Dominicans in Lukfin, Texas. Then her novice director recommended a period of vocation discernment in Combermere. Angela went unenthusiastically, with “no idea” and no interest as to what a lay Christian community might be. Eventually, she realized that God was inviting her to Madonna House.
Today, almost 18 years later,Angela lives out her calling to contemplation at the apostolate's house of prayer and hospitality on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C. It was opened in 1981 at the request of Cardinal James Hickey, who charged staffers with praying for the government and serving the spiritual needs of all comers.
“We're committed to offering every moment of every day in prayer,” Angela explains. Daily Mass, the Divine Office, and regular periods of solitary prayer and fasting form the rhythm of life. “But we try to bring Christ into every part of life, whether we're doing the dishes, visiting a nursing home, or listening to someone who stops by. It's spiritual work, but real work!”
— “Little — be always little … simple — poor — childlike.”
Maria Victoria Fausto was in a graduate theology program, struggling to write a paper on the rich young man whom Jesus looked at “and loved” (Mark 10:21), when she realized she could no longer postpone her own Yes to Christ. Joining Madonna House was her way of following Jesus and becoming poor for his sake.
Paving the way for this decision was a “moment of grace” that took place when Maria Victoria was 17. It happened five years after her family's immigration from the Philippines, at a time when Maria Victoria was desperate to fit into North American culture.
She was walking with friends when a poor-looking Vietnamese woman approached to ask directions.
“Your grandmother?” they teased.
Embarrassed, Maria Victoria gave the refugee a curt response and left. But the woman's deep, piercing look stayed with her.
“I recognized myself — my own poverty — in” that look, she said. “And something else, too. Words from the Gospel rose up in my heart: ‘When I was hungry, you gave me to eat. …’ It was a turning point.”
Madonna House members live out their promise of poverty by living simply and relying on God to provide what they need through other people's generosity.
Sometimes that's a challenge, Maria Victoria admits. “As the eldest child of immigrants, I found it hard to surrender my plans for worldly success. My parents struggled with that too—with things like seeing me wearing second-hand clothes. At the same, they've been very accepting, because they also see my joy.”
Loise Perrotta writes from St. Paul.
Advice for Troubled Parents
Wendell and Elise Redmond, of Jacksonville, Ark., have come to grips with their daughter's vocation to consecrated life at the Madonna House. They now see it as a blessing for the whole family — a view they came to over time, in two stages, they say.
At first they were shocked by Angela's decision to enter the cloistered Dominicans, says Elise.
“Despite having sometimes thought what a blessing it would be to have a child enter religious life — well, at the time, we didn't think it was a blessing! What stood out was our financial struggle to get Angela through school.”
Then, when Angela decided to join Madonna House instead, the Redmonds worried about what the group was like.
Was it a cult, or what? Meeting a Madonna House priest who was traveling through their area allayed their fears.
What can help parents whose daughters are considering some form of consecrated life? Based on their experience, the Redmonds offer three pieces of advice:
— “Trust your child's judgment.” Don't just reject the idea.
— “Visit the group and meet the people.” Wendell and Elise have been to Combermere a number of times and now consider Madonna House members “extended family.”
— “Ask yourself, ‘Doesn't God deserve the best?’ That's what our pastor asked me regarding Angela,” says Elise. “It put things in the proper perspective!”
— Louise Perrotta
The Baroness Who Started it All
“Did God save me from death in Russia so that I should … get rich again and give my soul a middle-aged spread?”
A young baroness who had fled the Communist Revolution and was climbing the ladder of success in North America, asked herself this question in a soul-searching moment in the late 1920s. Out of her decision to change course for a life of following Christ in radical love and service to the poor, Madonna House Apostolate was born.
It took time. But in 1947, Catherine de Hueck Doherty and her husband, Eddie, settled in remote, scenic Combermere, Ontario, and began what has become an international family of Catholic lay men, women and priests who seek “to live out the Gospel on a daily basis by forming a community of love.”
Madonna House is a public association of the faithful within the Roman Catholic Church, under the bishop of Pembroke, Ontario.
Members make promises of poverty, chastity and obedience. They renounce marriage, personal possessions and incomes, and they work wherever needed. The apostolate maintains more than a dozen “field houses” in North America, with additional centers in Brazil, Grenada, Ghana, Russia, England, France, Belgium. Each was opened at the invitation of the local bishop and has its own particular purpose.
Distinctive features of Madonna House include an emphasis on prayer and service to the poor; a rich liturgical life that draws on both Eastern and Western rites; poustinias (from the Russian word for “desert”) — places set apart for prayer and fasting; special programs for guests, including priests and families; an orientation to listen, pray, and talk with people seeking counsel.
— Louise Perrotta
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Louise Perrotta ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Anchor Speaks Out DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:Teresa Tomeo
Tired of the increase in violence and bias in the media, she gave up a 20-year career in broadcast journalism to serve as a public speaker and media consultant. She spoke recently with Register features correspondent Tim Drake.
Drake: Where did you grow up? Tell me about your family.
I was born in New Jersey, but have lived in the Detroit area all my life. I am the youngest of three sisters. My mother named me after St. Teresa of Avila, not realizing that it was Teresa's mouth that got her into trouble all the time. I come from a large Italian-American family. My mother comes from a family of 10, and my father comes from a family of five.
I attended St. Joan of Arc Catholic School and graduated from Central Michigan University with a journalism degree. My husband and I have been married for 18 years.
I've known since I was a child that I wanted to be in media.
The Sisters of St. Joseph were very encouraging to me in my reading and writing. They asked me to read a poem out loud during my third grade Christmas pageant. Holding the microphone in my hand, I got hooked. God instills unique gifts in all of us. Mine happens to be the gift of communicating.
How did you get your start in journalism?
There was no doubt that I was going into broadcast journalism. I had everything all planned out. I decided my major right away and worked for the college newspaper and radio station.
My goal was to have a television job when I was 30 years old. I was fortunate to start working in my hometown, and got my first television job at age 27. I was thrilled to be able to stay at home and cover an area that I knew well. I thought I would be in broadcast journalism all my life.
What led you to give it all up?
About seven or eight years ago, when I was still in television news, I began to notice a real change with increased violence and bias in the media, especially with regard to the issues of abortion and homosexual agenda.
The sleaze factor was skyrocketing. It seemed that all we were covering during prime time were murders and rape. Friends around the country said that they were noticing the same thing. I felt that God was asking me to do something different, but I didn't know what.
About two years ago, I received a phone call from a friend in public relations.
She explained to me how hard it was to get news stories for her clients. All the media seemed to want to cover was blood and guts, rape and murder. I mentioned some of the trends I had noticed and she invited me to come give a keynote on the subject. I wrote a 20-minute talk and it was a huge success. Many folks told me to take the show on the road. A year ago I took a big leap of faith and left my job as a news director at a local radio station to start my speaking career.
My goal now is to encourage all Christians to take a stand, fight back and improve the media in a positive way — to bring balance to the coverage and reduce violence. From my own experience and inside knowledge I can tell my seminar audiences when and whom to call.
When I decided to give it up I had reached the point where I couldn't justify doing it any longer for a living. It's an all-consuming kind of job that you can't get away from. You have to do what you're told. I'm far happier now.
Didn't this also coincide with a reversion-like experience?
When I got to college I forgot about my faith.
God became a weekly, and less than weekly thing for me. My husband and I became so successful so quickly that we didn't think we needed God. I started working nights as an anchor and we began to drift apart, almost to the point of separation. My husband got involved in a Bible study program and recommitted himself to the Lord. Meanwhile, I was a star.
Quite suddenly, changes were made at the independent station at which I worked, and I lost my job. One night I was the lead story, and the next night I was in the unemployment line.
Out of desperation I asked God back into my life. After I did that it seemed as if God were saying, “O.K., here's what we're going to do.” The following year my husband and I made a pilgrimage to Israel with our parish. It was at that time that I discovered that perhaps my communication gifts weren't for me, but were to be used for God.
What was it like being a person of faith in broadcast journalism?
It was very difficult at times, especially in the areas of life. I did a lot of coverage of Jack Kervorkian and whereas it was Kervorkian who was dropping dead bodies off at the Coroner's office, the media made it look like the Christians, and the Catholic bishop, were the lunatics on the fringe. It was very disheartening to see how the media kowtowed to the liberal side.
A recent study in Columbia Journalism Review found that over 60% of those in the news media have no faith at all. They are either atheist or agnostic. It's no wonder they're being subjective and reflecting only their own views in their coverage.
You have made a career out of telling people that they can make a difference in the secular media. How can people make a difference?
First, they have to become familiar with the form of media they wish to target. If they feel a particular station is biased in their coverage, they need to begin monitoring it and videotaping it.
Second, if there has been bias, they should write to the reporter, the news director, or the general manager. Letters that stations receive must be put into the station's files for FCC review. If several members of an organization, such as a church group, can sign a letter that is even better. A letter should be sent and followed up with a phone call or a meeting.
Viewers need to realize that they have a lot of power as a consumer. The TV audience has dropped. Inside Media Research reports that only about 1 out of every 4 adults watches local news. Avoidance of local news had doubled in the past 10 years. According toa survey done by CNN and Time, 75% of respondents feel that news media is sensationalistic. Individuals do not feel that local news pertains to anything in their life.
The news media has to listen. Consumers represent ratings dollars and all the mediums are fighting for a smaller piece of the pie. When I was growing up the choices were ABC, CBS, NBC and the independent station. Today there are more stations, as wellas radio and the Internet.
In addition, there are many advocacy organizations that people can get involved with. The Parents TV Council puts out a family programming list. They've taken away advertising dollars from Howard Stern and the WWF. There is also Focus on the Family, andthe U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops launched a national campaign with their document on “Renewing the Mind of the Media.”
Do you have any examples of individuals who have had success with the media?
One of my favorite is about a local Right to Life Lifespan group that noticed biased coverage of a life chain that was held on a Sunday in October a couple of years ago.
Hundreds of people lined up along a street in Detroit. However, it wasn't until about three or four abortion-rights protestors showed up across the street that a local news crew arrived. When they did, the news crew interviewed only the abortion-rights protestors.
The group taped the coverage, wrote a letter, and asked for a meeting with the general manager. After watching the tape he said, “You are absolutely right,” and the next year they received balanced coverage — which is the best that viewers canexpect. Ever since, the coverage has been very fair.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Volunteering the Catholic Faith Via the Radio Airwaves DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:ORANGE, Calif. — It is the kind of radio that transforms hearts and minds.
When Timothy L. Talkington, a former Protestant pastor from Austin, Texas, first heard a St. Joseph Radio program, he knew he had to learn more about the Catholic faith. Talkington called a volunteer at the organization's office in Orange, Calif., asking for more information. He had many questions, particularly on Catholic teaching about the Holy Eucharist, which the woman volunteer answered.
In fact, she mailed the pastor volumes of information, including a book on the Holy Eucharist by Mark Shea. After months of study, Talkington concluded that the Catholic Church indeed possesses the fullness of Christ's revelation, and he now plans to convert.
Last month, Talkington contacted St. Joseph's Radio to express his gratitude, declaring, “I appreciate all that St. Joseph's Radio has done, and is presently doing, in assisting people like myself to come to a knowledge of the fullness of the Faith.”
Nineteen-year-old college student Michael Dougherty had grown lukewarm in the practice of his Catholic faith. One day, the Southern California youth tuned into a St. Joseph Radio broadcast via the Internet, during which a priest discussed the afterlife. By the end of the broadcast, Michael knew he had to return to active participation in the Church.
Explained Dougherty, “Father's story made me aware again of the horrible possibility of Hell. I am now beginning to pray the rosary daily — I love being able to ask the Mother of My Lord for her assistance! May God give us the grace of final perseverance!”
Lay apostolate
These are just two of the many listeners worldwide who have either begun or returned to active participation in the Catholic Church due to the work of St. Joseph Radio, a lay Catholic apostolate that provides prominent Catholic speakers with access to the radio airwaves.
The initiative began in the early 1980s, when Catholic laywoman Lu Cortese of Orange organized a retreat association to bring the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius to lay Catholics.
It wasn't long, however, before Cortese saw a broader need. Listening to Protestant radio shows, she realized the importance of having qualified Catholic speakers present the Catholic faith and defend it from critics. “There's a lot of confusion out there about what we Catholics believe,” Cortese told the Register.
Cortese and her volunteers began organizing seminars in Southern California parishes designed to teach the unin-formed — often the ordinary Catholic in the pew — about basic Catholic teachings. To further expand the potential audience, the group founded St. Joseph Radio in 1987.
Starting without any equipment or funding, the organization began taping its first daily radio programs the following year. Norbertine Father Thomas Nelson of St. Michael's Abbey in Silverado, Calif., was the host. “People need to hear the truth, because the truth has the power to effect people to be good,” said Father Thomas. “The mission of St. Joseph Radio is to get the truth on the airwaves so people can hear it.”
In 1992, the operation moved out of the Cortese home and into a professional office that could offer Catholic books, audio and videotapes, evangelization pamphlets and other resources. Besides distributing this material and producing radio programming, St. Joseph Radio continued to organize local conferences at parishes featuring prominent Catholic apologists.
In recent years, St. Joseph Radio's reach has become global. For example, Bishop Donald Reece of Antigua, West Indies, recently hosted some volunteers at a seminar in his diocese, and also referred them to a parish in nearby St. Lucia. Explained Cortese, “We want to be of service to bishops who want to be in the radio business.”
St. Joseph Radio collaborates extensively with Mother Angelica's radio network, WEWN, supplying radio programs that are broadcast nationwide via shortwave, AM and FM stations and the Internet. In 1996, St. Joseph Radio began broadcasting live worldwide for two hours a week.
The Volunteers
The apostolate continues to rely solely upon unpaid volunteers and donations. About 30 volunteers regularly offer their services to St. Joseph Radio, including Ed Gerber of Corona, Calif. Gerber, a former Jehovah's Witness, first came to St. Joseph Radio in 1993, after hearing a presentation on the Bible by Clayton Bower. St. Joseph's resources helped solidify his conversion, and he subsequently became a volunteer.
Gerber now heads the St. Joseph Radio Evangelization Society, which teaches parishes to conduct parish censuses.
“St. Joseph Radio has provided me with the means to grow in my knowledge of the faith as well as my spirituality,” said Gerber. “When people ask me questions about the faith that I don't know, the Radio provides me the means with which to learn the answers.”
Each day presents new challenges to the staff of St. Joseph Radio, particularly in securing sufficient funding and volunteers. They persevere, however, placing their success completely in the hands of God. Said Cortese, “We try to remained focused on what God wants. We're here to do his will.”
Jim Graves writes from Irvine, Calif. ----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jim Graves ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:
Is Christmas Constitutional?
BECKET FUND, March 30 — The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty called on the U.S. Supreme Court to reject a court challenge to the designation of Christmas as a federal holiday, the organization announced.
In 1998, an assistant city attorney from Cincinnati filed suit claiming that the federal holiday violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. But two courts have already rejected this claim.
Dissent on Bush's Ambassador Pick
FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL, March 29 — President George W. Bush made a misstep in nominating Massachusetts Gov. Paul Cellucci as ambassador to Canada, according to the pro-family group. Cellucci's nomination was confirmed by a Senate committee April 5.
As governor, Cellucci introduced legislation that would allow minors to get abortions without the consent or notification of their parents. One of Cellucci's three appointments to the Massachusetts Supreme Court had served as an attorney for Planned Parenthood, while another had served on the board of directors for an abortion clinic. Cellucci also raised funding for the Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth.
Cellucci also faced criticism for his handling of allegedly false sexual-abuse charges against a day care center, and charges of dishonesty regarding the cost of the “Big Dig” highway project in Boston.
Columbus Statue Attack Called ‘Hate Crime'
WASHINGTON WATCH RADIO COMMENTARY, March 29 — When James Costner took a sledgehammer to a San Jose statue commemorating Christopher Columbus, he thought he was striking a blow against colonialism, the radio program reported.
But Costner was charged with committing an anti-Italian hate crime. The radio commentary decried this charge, saying that Costner should receive solely a three-year sentence for vandalism. Costner has denied that he was motivated by hatred of Italians.
High-Tech Leaders Have Faith
USA TODAY, March 27 — The national daily's “Money” section surveyed leaders in the technology industries and found that for most, science reinforced their belief.
While some industry leaders believed in a more diffuse “spirituality,” and a few thought that science and religion were incompatible, Nobel prizewinner Arno Penzias spoke for many when he explained that his Judaism “goes past physical sciences.”
Bishop Finally Rests With Fellows
CHICAGO TRIBUNE, March 30 — The body of James Duggan, who served Chicago as a bishop during the Civil War, was brought to the mausoleum reserved for the city's leaders of the Church, the Chicago daily reported.
The mausoleum was built in 1912. The archdiocese had exhumed the bishops who had already died — except for Bishop Duggan. He was left behind, most likely because he had been mentally ill.
Said Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, “I hope that we can make visible the silent suffering of mental illness and that we will never leave anyone behind as we left Bishop Duggan behind.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Does Timothy McVeigh Deserve the Death Penalty? DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:OKLAHOMA CITY — As the force of the explosion lifted a retreating Timothy McVeigh off his feet, the young Gulf War veteran looked back to see what he'd done to Oklahoma's Alfred Murrah building.
The only thought that occurred to him, according to a recent interview with Buffalo News reporters, was: “Damn. I didn't knock the building down. I didn't take it down.”
The April 19, 1995, bombing killed 168 people, 19 of them children. McVeigh, 32, is scheduled to be executed May 16.
For advocates of the death penalty, the enormity of McVeigh's crime, coupled with his persistent lack of regret, make his case a textbook argument.
No single person has ever murdered more people on American soil in American history. Justice and the protection of society both demand his execution, death penalty proponents insist.
Opponents of the death penalty, on the other hand, argue that the negative effects of the death penalty on society overall outweigh its value — even in the case of Timothy McVeigh.
As Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput recently wrote in opposing McVeigh's execution:
“Capital punishment is just another drug we take to ease other, much deeper anxieties about the direction of our culture. Executions may take away some of the symptoms for a time … but the underlying illness — today's contempt for human life — remains and grows worse.”
University of Notre Dame Law Professor Charles Rice quoted Archbishop Chaput's comments in a Jan. 30 article he wrote for the Notre Dame Observer. A onetime defender of the death penalty, Rice changed his mind on the subject after reading Pope John Paul II's encyclical Evangelium Vitae.
That document, in which the Pope articulated his comprehensive vision for a “culture of life,” included a brief discussion on the death penalty. In contemporary societies, he wrote, cases that warrant capital punishment as a means to defend society are “very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”
The Pope also quoted the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states, “If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person” (No. 2267).
According to Rice, this means that human persons have a dignity that “transcends the power of the state” to take their lives.
“In his challenge to our pagan culture,” Rice wrote, John Paul insists that God — not the individual and not the state — is in charge of the ending as well as the beginning of life.
Yet the state's right to impose capital punishment was defended in a recent lecture on the topic by Cardinal Avery Dulles.
Speaking at Fordham University, Cardinal Dulles said “Pope John Paul II spoke for the whole Catholic tradition when he proclaimed that ‘the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral.'
“But he wisely included in that statement the word ‘innocent.’ He has never said that every criminal has a right to live nor has he denied that the state has the right in some cases to execute the guilty.”
But, Cardinal Dulles continued, this principle — that the state has the right to execute criminals — leaves open the question of “whether and when the death penalty ought to be applied.”
Extreme Case
According to New York arch-diocesan priest and popular speaker Father George Rutler, the case of Timothy McVeigh is clearly one in which the state should exercise its right to execute.
“It would be hard to think of a case any more extreme,” Father Rutler said.
“It becomes disingenuous to say that this is not an extreme situation. How many people do you have to kill” for it to be extreme? he asked.
Father Rutler said he fears that an “absolutist” position against the death penalty confuses the Church's traditional teaching on the subject.
“Unlike abortion, in which innocent life is taken, Father Rutler said, the death penalty is not “evil in itself,” but “plausible and just” in certain cases.
Moreover, he added, the state's authority to impose the death penalty is granted directly from God, not through the Church.
“I would object to an abuse of clericalism which suggests that the authority of the state to execute is delegated by the Church,” Father Rutler said.
Speaking in general terms, however, Cardinal Dulles explained that while the Church does not automatically assume that every application of the death penalty is evil in itself, it can also hold that the state may be acting contrary to God's will in applying it today.
In American society today, Cardinal Dulles said, “the state is not seen as having divine authority, but rather as just executing the desire of the people for vengeance — not as God's minister, but as taking dominion over human life.
“I think the symbolic significance of the death penalty doesn't appear with any clarity in our society. In principle, the state has the right and maybe in some cases the duty [to execute criminals], but that presumes it will not do more harm than good.”
Archbishop Buechlein's View
Indianapolis Archbishop Daniel Buechlein, in whose diocese Timothy McVeigh is scheduled to be executed, opposes the punishment on the same grounds.
“Even as our Church opposes the death penalty in a case as awful as McVeigh's, we do not question, in principle, the state's right to impose the death penalty,” Archbishop Buechlein said in an April 3 statement.
“Yet we must oppose the death penalty because the circumstances of our day do not warrant it,” he added.
“In recent times, the death penalty does more harm than goo,” he concluded, “because it feeds a frenzy for revenge, while there is no demonstrable proof that capital punishment deters violence.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Pro-Life Priest Ejected From Catholic School Ceremony DATE: 5/15/2000 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21,2000 ----- BODY:NEWARK, N.J. — Father Peter West, an associate of Father Frank Pavone and a staff member at Priests for Life headquarters in New York, was recently physically pushed out of a Catholic school hall while a pro-abortion politician was being honored inside, Lifesite News reported.
Father West and a group of 15 pro-lifers protested the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Newark on Sunday, March 18. Their complaint was that pro-abortion politician Jim McGreevey was appointed Grand Marshal of the parade.
Wearing stickers reading, “McGreevey Supports Partial-Birth Abortion” and “St. Patrick Is Pro-Life,” Father West entered a post-parade gathering at St. Patrick's School and gave McGreevey a copy of the American Bishops document “Living the Gospel of Life: A Challenge to American Catholics,” which McGreevey said he would read.
However, after the discussion, Father West was approached by a woman who shouted at him saying, “How many children did you raise?” A debate ensued with several Catholic pro-abortion McGreevey supporters. Some denied that McGreevey supported partial-birth abortion, but Father West produced a newspaper article with a record of McGreevey's vote on the subject.
Father West said that a man in plain clothes, who identified himself as a police officer, accused him of harassment. Then he and a companion were physically pushed out the door nearly causing them to fall down a flight of stairs. However, after strenuously pointing out the irony that a Catholic priest had been ejected from a Catholic school by abortion supporters as a pro-abortion politician was being honored inside, the prolifers were allowed back into the school.
Father West told Lifesite News, “I believe our first mission is to the Church, and trying to convince our own people that we can not have any compromise on this issue.”
(Lifesite News)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: This Woman's Place Is ... In the Vatican Curia DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY — One doesn't necessarily plan to work in the Vatican. But once the offer is made, it's hard to refuse.
Such was the experience of Lucienne Sallé, a French woman who has been working as an official at the Pontifical Council for the Laity since 1978.
“I worked in Rome for nine years before joining the Vatican,” she said, referring to her time at the international secretariat for Catholic Action, a worldwide lay organization. “The Pontifical Council for the Laity wanted someone like me, a lay woman. But when I was asked to join, it was a difficult decision for me.”
The choice involved leaving a job she already loved, which involved greater independence, in order to enter a vast organization with a more rigid structure.
“But then I realized I couldn't refuse,” she said. “After all, I had already asked the Vatican's Council for the Laity to hire more lay women during previous meetings with its members.”
The New Movements
Since then, Lucienne Sallé has devoted herself to the Council's primary mission, namely, to work with Catholic ecclesial movements and communities around the world, and help them “be united to the universal Church.” The Council works with about 160 international Catholic movements, some of them begun as recently as the 1980s.
“Our job is to get to know their statutes,” said Salle, “their president and their members. They send us summaries of their work. We give them feedback. It's a never-ending process.”
Council for the Laity officials make an effort to attend the international meetings of Catholic movements, a job which involves substantial travel, though movement leaders are also frequently invited to Rome.
Sallé's office is teeming with mementos from such trips — African wooden statues, Latin American prints, Far Eastern decorations — an eloquent testament to the diversity of Catholic life. Her bookshelves also reflect the range of issues covered in her job, with such topics as feminism, charisms and liturgy.
“What impresses me the most about Lucienne,” said Giorgia Stelasalatielo, who teaches philosophy at the Gregorian University of Rome, “besides her great intellectual and spiritual openess, are her constant efforts in the field. I know that outside her official work, she even does things personally to help these groups.”
In fact, Sallé is often spotted around Rome, attending prayer meetings and liturgies for different groups in the area, ready to share her counsel and support.
“I had the opportunity to organize a meeting at Lucienne's initiative after Beijing,” said Professor Carmen Aparicio, referring to the 1996 U.N. conference on women.
Aparicio worked at the Council for the Laity from 1989 to 1999 and currently teaches fundamental theology at the Gregorian.
“Lucienne wanted to continue the experience we had just had,” he said. “She brought the whole project forward. Many Eastern European women came to give testimonies about their lives. Lucienne has great attention for those who have lesser voice.”
Feminism and the Church
It is precisely the issue of feminism and women in the Church for which she is most often in demand — due to her years in the Vatican and two books she has authored: Women in the Vatican (1997) and Women Who Love (2000).
“The first women to work in the Vatican came in 1961,” said Sallé. “A Canadian priest noticed that there weren't any women at all and offered to lend a few from the order he had founded.”
By the time Sallé arrived, it was no longer a rarity to see women within Vatican buildings. “No one stops and stares at us,” she said, “though we are still few in number.”
Professionally speaking, there are no differences. Women receive equal pay for equal work.
“But the curia is based on a hierarchy. We first depend on the Pope and then on the people around him, who are all cardinals and priests. There are no females in the top positions of responsibility,” she said, explaining that all congregations and pontifical councils are led by cardinals or archbishops.
The Council for the Laity has the highest ranking lay person in the entire Vatican, Guzman Carriquiry, as undersecretary, a position normally reserved for archbishops, bishops or priests.
“But with regards to the lay people who work in the Vatican, men and women are considered the same,” she said.
The U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing seems to have been a turning point, however.
“The fact that Prof. Mary Ann Glendon was named as the head of the Holy See delegation broke a tradition and introduced a new possibility,” said Sallé, referring to the Harvard Law School professor. “She did a great, [professional] job. Everything functioned very well within the delegation, and everyone was happy.”
According to Sallé, the impact of the conference was immense and “there is no going back.” The conference underscored that without the collaboration of women, the urgent issues of the world could not be resolved.
However, Sallé is also quick to point out the problems with the brand of feminism prevalent at Beijing. Feminism, which focuses only on women, as though they were disconnected from humanity — without any relation to men — is weak, she said. The same holds true for a feminism that is only concerned about achieving parity with men.
“The idea of parity is limited,” said Sallé. “We need to talk about reciprocity, the unity of man and woman and the true gift of self. This would bring about better relations between men and women, in love. And this is an idea which is beyond feminism.”
The Michelets
An example she gives involves the Michelets, a couple from France who arenow deceased. From the first day that Edmond Michelet met his wife, they decided to pray for each other at the same time every day. This practice continued during World War II and especially when Edmond was sent to a concentration camp. “The story shows how reciprocity is stronger than parity.” The Michelets are now being considered for beatification.
When asked about the Church and feminism, Sallé emphasizes that the Church has “made great strides with John Paul II.” Many of these strides, however, are still only written in documents, and have yet to be fully absorbed at all levels of the Church. Instead of delving deeper into the Christian message, some people stop at feminism.
“But the Christian message is deeper than feminism,” insists Sallé.
She also firmly believes that the leaders of the Catholic Church need the contribution of women to do their work. “In the Book of Revelation, the heavenly Jerusalem is depicted as a feminine bride resting on the 12 columns of the Apostles. The Apostles needed women to do their work. They and their successors need to root themselves in the Church's femininity.” Sallé cites the vivid example of the Holy Father's trip to Calcutta in 1986. When the Pope visited the Missionary of Charity's Home for the Dying, Mother Teresa led him around the center by the hand.
“He needed her to introduce him,” she said, “so that he could meet the sick and dying.”
Sallé also notes that priests who have a devotion to Mary seem to have an instinctive understanding of the gifts that women bring to the Church. This explains John Paul II's tremendous respect for women, “especially because he calls Mary the first Church.”
Sallé is hard pressed to choose among countless treasured moments. She remembers a meeting in 1987 connected to the Synod for the Laity.
The Council for the Laity had invited 400 people from various movements — names like Focolare, Communion and Liberation, Emmanuel. The idea was for people to meet and freely share information. They milled about, in and out of 12 rooms especially set up for them. “One man came up to me, so excited. He gasped ‘We've discovered so many new movements. I had no idea!'”
But Lucienne Sallé knew all along. After all, it's her job.
Sabrina Arena Ferrisi writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Sabrina Arena Ferrisi ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:Missionary Priest Brings Hope to the Persecuted
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, March 29 — In its weekly Houses of Worship column, the Journal took readers on a tour of the Rome offices of Fides, the Vatican's missionary news service in Rome.
“The magnificent Palazzo di Propaganda Fide, with its 17th-century facade designed by Bernini, sits a stone's throw from the busy Piazza di Spagna and the shopping mecca of Via Condotti. But inside the lavish walls, away from the throngs of tourists, the small, dedicated staff of the Fides News Service sit in spare offices that would not look out of place in an American Catholic School,” the Journal report began.
Founded in 1927 by the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith, Fides reports on and circulates information about Catholic missionary work for the Vatican. Its director, Father Bernardo Cervellera, has been with the news agency since 1997. Ordained a priest of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions in 1978, Father Cervellera worked as editor in chief of the monthly magazine Mondo e Missione, until leaving for Asia in 1989 to work as a missionary in China and Hong Kong.
It was in Hong Kong, Journal writer Kate Flatley writes, that Father Cervellera developed his interest in the Internet as a tool to let people now about the Hong Kong Mission's activities. This led to Father Cervellera's starting the Fides Web site, www.fides.org. The site has become a valuable tool, Flately said, in making the world aware of the struggles of the persecuted Church worldwide.
Japanese Bishops Say Today's ‘Values’ Destroy Man
FIDES, March 30— Japan will be destroyed not by the threatening economic crisis but by a crisis in spirit, according to the Japanese bishops who visited Rome for their ad limina visit, March 26–31.
Materialism and self-centered values, the bishops warned, are leading Japanese society to self-destruction. Youth suicide is also a growing phenomenon in Japan, where more than 30,000 young people took their own lives in 1999 and many more attempted.
Japanese society today is one of “anxiety and sadness,” Nagasaki Archbishop Shimamoto Kaname, told Fides.
One hundred twenty-six million Japanese, with 440,000 Catholics among them, live in a country in which the myth of materialism, the pursuit of pleasure, productivity and technology has robbed Japan of its soul, the bishops said. They added that “life itself has lost all value,” and that it is “abused and distant from God.”
Pope to Plant Olive Tree in Golan Heights
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, March 29 — Pope John Paul II will plant an olive tree as a symbol of peace, on the Syrian side of the divided Golan Heights during his visit to Syria in May, the French news agency reported.
The Golan Heights are a symbol of a still-unresolved conflict between Syria and neighboring Israel, which captured them from Syria during the 1967 Middle East war.
Disagreement over their future is the key sticking point in Israel and Syria reaching a peace agreement.
The Pope will visit Syria May 5–8, as part of a trip that will also take him to Greece and Malta on a pilgrimage in the steps of the apostle Paul.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: A Rarity: The Two Churches Share One Easter Date DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — There's something different about this year's celebration of Easter.
Christians all over the world will be celebrating the feast on the same day.
In a typical year, most Christians of the various eastern rites celebrate Easter 1 to 5 weeks later than Christians in the Western traditions.
That's because most Orthodox and some Catholic Eastern-rite churches follow the “old” or Julian calendar that was in effect when the Council of Nicea established the formula for determining Easter in the year 325. At present, the Julian calendar lags 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar followed by civil authorities worldwide and the churches of the west.
Every once in a while, though, the two calendars yield the same date for the celebration of Easter. They can do that in spite of the 13-day lag because the date of Easter is the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox.
The joint celebration of Easter this year has inspired those in the ecumenical movement to propose that all churches celebrate Easter together in the future.
In a meeting in Aleppo, Syria, in 1997, representatives of many Christian churches agreed that working towards a common date for Easter should be a priority.
But acceptance of the Aleppo formula among most Orthodox churches seems like a long-shot proposition at best. That's because the Orthodox themselves are divided over whether to use the “old” or “new” calendars.
Some Orthodox churches use the old calendar only to figure the date of Easter and other feast days that depend on when Easter falls. They celebrate Christmas, for instance, with churches of the West. These churches include those of Constantinople, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Alexandria, Antioch, Cyprus and the Orthodox Church in America.
But large sections of the Orthodox world use the old calendar to figure all feast days. Thus, the Russian, Serbian, Georgian and Polish orthodox churches, along with the Jerusalem patriarchate and the monks of Mt. Athos, all celebrate their Christmas on what the new calendar calls Jan. 7.
Christians in the Middle East most acutely feel the need for a common date, said Professor John Erickson, professor of canon law and church history at St. Vladimir's Seminary in New York, under the Orthodox Church in America. Christians in the Middle East are a minority divided among themselves.
Divided Christendom
“Their divided celebration in this Muslim world sends the worst message of division, a counter-witness to a faith that they all profess in common,” Erickson said. “The Muslims might say, ‘Is Christ going to rise twice this year?’”
In some parts of the world — notably, Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union — the keeping of the old calendar became a symbol of the sacrifice that believers had to undertake to maintain their faith in the face of a hostile and intensely secular regime.
“It would be difficult to change the calendar without this being perceived as a capitulation,” Erickson said.
Unilateral Change?
The proposed new method of calculating Easter would be little noticed in the West, since the date would usually remain unchanged from the one set by the present method.
“It would mean more changes for the Orthodox than for the west,” said Father Ron Roberson. Roberson is the associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
In America, Orthodox-Catholic and Orthodox-Lutheran dialogues have reached agreement that a common date for Easter on the Aleppo formula should be studied. But Roberson thinks the Orthodox will not be able to reach agreement among themselves.
The common celebration of Easter in 2001 comes after an 11-year interval from the last time East and West met. In the coming decades, however, East and West will celebrate Easter many times together even if they don't adopt a common date of celebration.
Using their separate methods of calculation, East and West will celebrate Easter together in 2004, 2007, 2010, 2014 and 2017. Common dates will recur until 2698, when the Julian and Gregorian calendars will have grown too far apart to make a common celebration possible.
Wesley Young writes from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Wesley R. Young ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Difference a Boon to Some Families DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:Not everybody sees such a big problem in celebrating Easter on different days. Greg and Georgia Wood may be typical of some mixed-marriage couples in that two Easters gives them a chance to celebrate with each side of the family.
Georgia is Greek Orthodox. Her husband Greg belongs to the Advent Christian Church and his parents live 200 miles away from their home in Winston-Salem, N.C.
“The belief is basically the same — there is a difference on the calendar date,” Greg said. “For us that has worked out real well, with my family being out of town. We said we wished all holidays would be like that. It makes it easier for us to spend appropriate time with both families.”
This year is harder because Easter falls on the same date for both families, Georgia said. The Woods came up with a compromise: they will be in Winston-Salem during most of Holy Week and take part as much as possible in the services at the Orthodox church. Then they would spend Easter day with Greg's family.
Georgia remembers one advantage the Orthodox always had growing up: They could buy their Easter candy on discount after the Western Easter passed.
— Wes Young
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Wesley R. Young ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Marking the Entire Day With Prayer DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:Register Summary
In his weekly general audience April 4 Pope John Paul continued to encourage Christians, especially the laity, to pray the Liturgy of the Hours. He recalled the conviction of the ancient monks that the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church's prayer allowed a “special ‘energy’ … to burst forth from the verses of the psalms.” The Pope also said that the arrangement of prayers throughout the day in the Liturgy of the Hours responded to the Lord's command to “pray without ceasing.”Before embarking on the commentary on the individual psalms and canticles of morning prayer, today we will complete the introductory reflections begun in the last catechesis. We will do this by catching the drift of a deeply cherished aspect of the spiritual tradition: When singing the psalms, a Christian experiences a kind of harmony between the Spirit present in the Scriptures and the Spirit dwelling in him through baptismal grace. Rather than praying in his own words, he echoes those ‘inexpressible groanings’ of which St. Paul speaks (Romans 8:26), by which the Spirit of the Lord moves believers to unite themselves to Jesus' distinctive prayer: ‘Abba, Father!’ (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6).
The ancient monks were so certain of this truth that they were not concerned to sing the psalms in their own mother tongue; it was enough for them to realize that they were in some way ‘organs’ of the Holy Spirit. They were convinced that their faith would allow a special ‘energy’ of the Holy Spirit to burst forth from the verses of the psalms. The same conviction is evident in the characteristic use of the psalms that was called ‘ejaculatory prayer’ (from the Latin word ‘iaculum,’ that is, dart) to indicate very brief expressions of the psalms that could be ‘thrown,’ almost as fiery barbs — against temptations, for example. John Cassian, a writer who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries, mentions that some monks had discovered the extraordinary power of the very brief beginning of Psalm 69: ‘O God, come to my assistance! O Lord, make haste to help me’ — a prayer that from then on acquired the role of entryway to the Liturgy of the Hours (Conlationes, 10,10: CPL 512, 298 ss).
Christ Present in the Church's Praise
Together with the presence of the Holy Spirit, another important element is the priestly action Christ carries out in this prayer, associating the Church his Spouse with himself. In this regard, referring precisely to the Liturgy of the Hours, the Second Vatican Council teaches: ‘The High Priest of the new and eternal Covenant, Jesus Christ … unites to himself all the community of men, and associates himself in raising this divine canticle of praise. Indeed, Christ continues this priestly office through his Church, which praises the Lord incessantly and intercedes for the salvation of the whole world, not only with the celebration of the Eucharist, but also in other ways, especially with the recitation of the Divine Office’ (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 83).
The Liturgy of the Hours, therefore, also has the character of public prayer, in which the Church is particularly engaged. It is enlightening, then, to rediscover how the Church progressively established this, her specific commitment to prayer, spread throughout the various periods of the day. In order to do this it is necessary to go back to the early times of the apostolic community, when there was still a close link between Christian prayer and what was called ‘legal prayers’ — prescribed, that is, by the Mosaic law — which took place at specific hours of the day in the temple of Jerusalem. From the book of Acts we know that the Apostles ‘devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area’ (2:46), and that they went ‘up to the temple area for the three o'clock hour of prayer’ (3:1). We also know, moreover, that the ‘legal prayers’ par excellence were precisely morning and the evening prayer.
Gradually, Jesus' disciples identified some psalms that were particularly appropriate for specific times of the day, week and year, grasping their profound meaning in relation to the Christian mystery. St. Cyprian is an authoritative witness of this process. In the first half of the third century, he wrote: ‘It is necessary, in fact, to pray at the beginning of the day to celebrate the Lord's resurrection in morning prayer. This corresponds to what the Holy Spirit indicated long ago in the Psalms with these words: ‘You are my king, my Lord, for to you do I pray. O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; you will hear my supplication; in the morning I will come before you and contemplate you’ (Psalms 5:3-4). … When the sun sets and day is over, it is necessary to pray again. In fact, because Christ is the true sun and the true day, by requesting in prayer, at the moment when the sun and the day of the world end, that the light will shine above us again, we call on Christ to return and bring us the grace of eternal light’ (De oratione dominica, 35: PL 39, 655).
New Developments
Christian tradition did not limit itself to perpetuating the Jewish tradition, but developed new practices that in various ways reflected all the experiences of prayer in the life of Jesus' disciples. In fact, in addition to reciting the Our Father in the morning and evening, Christians freely chose the psalms for celebrating their daily prayer. Throughout history, this process suggested the use of specific psalms for particularly significant times of faith. Among these, in first place there was the vigil prayer, which prepared for Sunday, the Lord's Day, on which the Easter Resurrection was celebrated.
A typically Christian feature was the addition of the Trinitarian doxology to the end of every psalm and canticle: ‘Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.’ In this way, every psalm and canticle is illumined by the fullness of God.
Christian prayer is born, nourished and develops around the paschal mystery of Christ, the faith event par excellence. Thus, in the morning and in the evening, at the rising and the setting of the sun, Easter, the Lord's passage from death to life was commemorated. The symbol of Christ as the ‘light of the world’ appears in the lamp lit during the prayer of Vespers, which for this reason is also called light bearer. The daytime hours recall, in turn, the account of the Lord's Passion, while the mid-morning hour recalls the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Finally, night prayer has an eschatological character, evoking Jesus' recommendation to watch while awaiting his return (Mark 13:35-37).
Continuous Prayer
By arranging their prayer at intervals, Christians responded to the Lord's command to ‘pray without ceasing’ (Luke 18:1; 21:36; 1 Thessalonians 5:17; Ephesians 6:18), never forgetting that all of life must in some way become a prayer. In this regard, Origen wrote: ‘He prays without ceasing who unites prayer with works and works with prayer’ (On Prayer, XII, 2: PG 11, 452 C).
This panorama taken together constitutes the natural environment for the recitation of the psalms. If they are experienced and lived this way, the Trinitarian doxology that crowns every psalm becomes, for each believer in Christ, a continuous plunging — on the wave of the Spirit and in communion with the whole people of God — into the ocean of life and peace in which he was immersed at baptism, that is, into the mystery of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
(Translation by Zenit and Register)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:Arroyo: Improving Morals Must Start At the Top
ASSOCIATED PRESS, March 31 — Faced with endemic corruption and other social ills in the Philippines, new President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said recently that the only way to build a brighter future for the country is “leadership by example,” the news service reported.
Arroyo, who took power Jan. 20 when Joseph Estrada was forced from office by protests over allegations of corruption, realizes she faces a massive task in trying to end the perception of pervasive cronyism.
“We have to work on integrity down the line,” the new president told Associated Press.
The daughter of a former president, Arroyo has taken several high-profile actions that reflect a new approach. Among other things, she ordered the sale of luxury government cars that proliferated under Estrada and banned a controversial film about sexual performers on moral grounds. Asked about the prospect of seeking her own six-year term in 2004, Arroyo said she was leaving that decision up to “divine providence.”
Added Arroyo, “The Lord has been a very good manager of my career.”
Russian Catholics Celebrate Anniversary of Freedom
FIDES, April 3 — “God Almighty and Everlasting! Ten years ago you restored our freedom and happiness.” Thus began a prayer composed by Bishop Joseph Werth, apostolic administrator of Western Siberia, in commemoration of the restoration of religious freedom in the former Soviet Union, reported the missionary news agency.
In the prayer, Bishop Werth thanked God for the martyrs of the 20th century and their sacrifice, “on which you have re-built your Church in these last 10 years.”
On April 13, 1991, the Catholic Church was allowed to re-establish ecclesiastical structures after more than 70 years of state-imposed atheism. After the October Revolution in 1917, the Soviet government confiscated all Church property, and in 1923 Stalin initiated a campaign to eliminate totally the presence of the Church.
Bishop Werth, who was born in Karaganda, Kazakhstan, also thanked God for all those “who despite persecution kept the faith and handed the light on to us” and expressed gratitude for missionaries — “the priests, religious and laity who left their own countries and came to Russia to help our spiritual rebirth.”
Uzbekistan Officials Block Religious Literature
KESTON NEWS SERVICE, March 30 — Despite its international human rights commitments to allow the free publication, import and dissemination of religious literature, the Uzbek government continues to obstruct this right for all religious groups, the news service reported.
In a March report, Keston said that Uzbek government authorities frequently obstruct or ban religious literature from a variety of faiths, including Christianity. Censorship of all religious literature, Keston said, is enshrined in law and enforced throughthe government's Committee for Religious Affairs.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: EDITORIAL DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:China looks like the world's biggest economic opportunity in the first half of the 21st century; for America to distance itself from that goldmine looks utterly foolish to most businessmen.
But we think America would be foolish to stay too close to the Chinese government.
In our Inperson interview last week, China expert Steve Mosher gave us an idea of China's mindset. “In China, you name a human right and the government of China is abusing it — freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience, freedom to practice one's faith — these are all forbidden to the Chinese people,” he said.
“China persecutes not only Christians, but minorities such as the Uigers in the West, Mongols and Manchus in the North, and Tibetans in the South. While some countries violate some human rights, China has the distinction of violating all human rights regularly.”
So why is the United States suddenly so willing have a close relationship with a nation like that?
Perhaps it's because Americans have always had a quiet (and appropriate) reverence for Chinese culture.
From The King and I to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon our popular entertainment has envied primal Eastern civilization. From Pearl S. Buck to Amy Tan, our fiction has explored the country's villages and introduced us to its people. We take-out Chinese when we're dating and we buy China when we get engaged. We are charmed by fortune cookies and entranced by The Last Emperor.
There is certainly great beauty in the Chinese culture and its people. But that shouldn't make us forget the great threat of China's geopolitical ambitions.
China's self-concept is one that can be frighteningly familiar to the post-World War II West. China is very aware of sheer size and the power that its mammoth population gives it. Chinese elite call the country Tian-Xia, which means “All Under Heaven.” The government seems to operate under the assumption that it is a master race.
China isn't a benign player on the world scene; it's a monster. It is a regime controlled by a frightening ideology who are bent on taking over the world.
When we trade with China, we're thinking in economic terms. But what are the Chinese elite thinking? We speak of how our trade with China will open the country to Western ideas of freedom, justice and democracy. But how likely is it that “All Under Heaven” will undergo a political metanoia just because its sweatshops are churning out Happy Meal toys?
And in America's present-day culture-of-death phase, is our command of freedom, justice and democracy great enough to attract converts in the East anyway?
Chances are, the opposite is true. Over the past 20 years of trade with China, we have become much more like them than they have become like us. Our family sizes have shrunk almost to their government-imposed one-child limit. Abortion has become as important a value to many of our politicians as it is for theirs. And while China's abuse of religious rights hasn't abated, our commitment to religious freedom has, from crèches in public places to the dismantling of the conscience rights of doctors.
In classical literature, weak people always deal with dragons the same way: by appeasing them. That plan always works to the benefit of the dragon, not the villagers (or its maidens), and America should reject that strategy.
Rather, President Bush is being called by Providence to do to China what Ronald Reagan did in the Soviet Union.
America should have a zero-tolerance rule toward China's abuses. Our military should be as wary of Beijing as it was of Moscow. No Olympics should be held in China under its current regime. Trade should be curtailed, starting with companies in any way associated with the military (and that's a long list). Finally, the disastrous sharing of technology with the Peoples’ Liberation Army that started under the Clinton administration must certainly stop.
Is it a hopeless situation? Certainly not. Greater things have happened against greater odds. Just look at the empty tomb.
----- EXCERPT: Flirting With the Dragon ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:Catholic University Responds
I write to respond to the erroneous claims made in a letter to the editor, titled “Co-ed Catholics,” which appeared in the March 11–17 Register.
There are no coed dorms at The Catholic University of America (CUA). Our residence halls are divided by floors where the male and female residents are not mixed, but separated according to gender. In fact, as we are in the process of allocating rooms to students in our newly constructed residence facilities, some parents have requested that student floors be “mixed” so that their daughters or sons can benefit from living in newer facilities. CUA has uniformly denied that request.
CUA has and enforces very clear regulations regarding appropriate conduct and behavior, and very appropriate sanctions when such regulations are violated by students who “indulge in disruptive activities.”
The current student-faculty ratio for undergraduates is 10-to-1, one of the lowest that I have seen at any comparable university in the United States. [Only] six out of 1,000-plus undergraduate courses available at CUA have enrollments of 75 students, and these are world civilization, survey-type courses. Our average undergraduate class size is 18 students.
Our undergraduate curricula are taught by full- and part-time faculty. Some general content courses in English, foreign languages and religious studies benefit from qualified and supervised graduate teaching assistants who teach as part of their doctoral training programs, a standard practice in graduate-research institutions.
There are no “questionable clubs” at CUA. All officially recognized and funded student organizations must be approved by the appropriate administrative officials and function in accordance with the university's Catholic identity and purposes, as well as its established policies and procedures, and are supervised by faculty, staff or administrators.
I appreciate the opportunity to set the record straight.
FATHER DAVID M. O'CONNELL, C.M.
Washington, D.C.
The writer is president of The Catholic University of America.
Risk and Grace
The letter to the editor by Mr. Werner (“St. Dale of Daytona?” March 18–24) was well-intentioned and interesting. I do believe, however, that it missed the mark.
Mr. Werner's theme seemed to be that, since Mr. Earnhardt worked in a risky profession that was not directly in service to God, Mr. Earnhardt's salvation is in question. I must point out that salvation is not based on the risks or income associated with any profession. It is based on the fact that we have all fallen “short of the glory of God” and that Jesus’ love for us overcame that when he sacrificed himself on the cross so that we may be saved.
Beyond that, our duty is to remain in a state of grace. Does holding a profession that is not in direct service to God and contains a significant amount of risk negate one's state of grace? I do not believe so. Military personnel engage in behavior that is risky to themselves and certainly to the “enemy.” Yet when the Roman soldier asked what he should do, St. John the Baptist told him to do his job and do it well.
We are told in Scripture that we are to do our job as if serving God the Father in place of our employer. Electricians, steelworkers and factory workers all face substantial risk in their professions. I believe the grace of God works in many of their lives as they serve him by honorably performing their duties and supporting their families.
We do not know the state of Dale Earnhardt's soul at the time of his death. Neither does Mr. Werner. What I do know is that we can use this time to reflect on how fleeting this lifetime is for us and how important it is to remain in a state of grace, bringing the “Good News” to all around us.
ELIZABETH MADIGAN
Melrose, New York
Disarm Disrespect for Life
“Praying to an Embryo” (March 25–31) — what a magnificent editorial! What magnificent lessons the Annunciation and the Visitation teach us about the faith of Mary and how we should respect the lives of the pre-born from conception! The rejection of these lessons is evident in the violence of our society, especially the shootings at schools.
Since shootings at schools are now a regular occurrence, many have offered opinions as to the cause. They cite contemporary films and music, teasing and bullying, the increased availability of and easy access to guns, and a host of other reasons.
These reasons may contribute to school violence, but it is difficult to see them as the sole causes, because society's entertainment has always contained violence, there has always been teasing and bullying, and the general population has in the past had easier access to guns.
What is new in the current generation is a tremendous devaluation of human life — in contrast to the respect shown for Jesus when he was conceived — as seen in abortion and the infanticide called partial-birth abortion.
When we cite as examples of legal and acceptable behavior to youngsters the killing of the unborn with such brutality as seen in photos of reassembled babies whose bodies have literally been torn apart limb by limb, and when we give as an example of acceptable behavior the stabbing of a baby in the neck to extract its brains as it is being born, it is remarkable that the violence level in our society is not much higher.
The solution is to follow the model of Mary and Elizabeth — their faith and how they respected the person of Jesus when he was a tiny embryo.
WILLIAM LUKSIC
Rockville, Maryland
Penitent's Prerogative, Priest's Discretion?
I think that the point among canonists is still debated as to whether a penitent can release a priest from the seal of confession. No doubt the seal should be firmly protected. The quotes provided by Mr. Mazza (“Confessional Conundrum,” Letters, April 1–7) are excellent. However, the fine commentary from Father William Woestman's book Sacraments: Initiation, Penance, Anointing of the Sick gives a different point of view:
“The penitent may give the confessor permission to speak about what was said in confession. … The permission can be for speaking only to the penitent, or to another person, or to everyone. Even if such permission is given, the confessor must use great discretion lest anyone think that he is breaking the seal and this cause harm.”
I invite further clarification on this if it is possible.
FATHER GREG J. MARKEY
Bridgeport, Connecticut
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Stem Cell Primer DATE: 5/15/2000 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21,2000 ----- BODY:I am a physician and I am strongly against the use of fetal or embryonic tissue for scientific research. The media continues to back those who demand the use of aborted fetuses and frozen embryos; meanwhile, apart from publications like the Register, nothing is heard about the success stories of adult stem-cell research (“Umbilical Stem Cells Offer Alternative to Killing Embryos,” April 8-14).
Italian scientists have generated muscle tissue using rat stem cells, a discovery that may have significant implications for organ-transplant therapy. Researchers at the University of South Florida report that rats genetically engineered to have strokes were injected with rat stem cells that “integrated seamlessly into the surrounding brain tissue, maturing into the type of cell appropriate for that area of the brain.”
The group of scientists who achieved worldwide fame for cloning Dolly the sheep have successfully created heart tissue using cow stem cells. Scientists inserted anti-HIV genes into human stem cells. The stem cells survived, grew, and developed into a type of white blood cell that is affected adversely by HIV infection. In the laboratory, these treated cells blocked HIV growth!
Again, none of these advances are well known and none relied on the use of stem cells from embryos or the products of abortion. All of these experiments involved adult stem cells.
Embryonic and aborted tissue research may not actually produce the therapeutic benefits its supporters have told us to anticipate. We also learn in the Register (“Fetal Tissue Transplants Cripple Patients,” March 25-31) that the March 8 New England Journal of Medicine reported tragic side effects from an experiment involving the insertion of fetal brain cells into the brains of Parkinson's disease patients. The patients treated showed modest, if any, overall benefits.
The results, in the words of one disheartened researcher, were “utterly devastating,” with the unfortunate patients exhibiting permanent uncontrollable movements: writhing, twisting, head-jerking, arm flailing and constant chewing. One man was so badly affected he no longer can eat, requiring the insertion of a feeding tube. Grafts of fetal and embryonic tissue may provoke the body's immune response, leading to rejection of the tissue and potentially death.
I believe that our tax dollars should not be used to finance this research! In fact, this was the law of the land until the Clinton administration, when the National Institutes of Health began accepting grant proposals for research using embryos originally created for in vitro fertilization but now deemed “in excess of clinical need.”
Why is federal funding for embryo and fetal research pushed so hard and so publicly while adult stem-cell and other alternative therapies are put on the back burner?
I suppose it is linked to the power of the abortion industry and our wonderful Hollywood celebrities. If Michael J Fox, Mary Tyler Moore and Christopher Reeve believe something, then we must all believe it. I respectfully disagree.
Remember, we are creatures of God. We cannot “experiment” or destroy his newly created life. The Hippocratic oath says, “As to diseases, make a habit of two things — to help, or at least do no harm.”
THOMAS V. MESSE, M.D.
Groton, Connecticut
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: To My Daughter On Her Confirmation DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:My dear daughter,
I have prayed, throughout your life, even before you were conceived, that you would grow to love God beyond all else. I knew that, if you learned to do this, all I hope for you would follow. Now that you are a young woman in the last days before the Easter Sunday on which you will be anointed by a bishop of the Church, I want to tell you what it means to me to be a member of the Body of Christ. It is my heartfelt hope that my experience of growing in love for God will help you with yours.
Before there was confirmation, before Communion, before kindergarten and siblings and my high chair and crib, there was, in my life, a presence. It loved me, held me, rocked me, permeated the air around me. It was there all the time, telling me: I made you. I delight in you. I see you always. You are my little love. I will never leave you.
I am blessed — your grandma says cursed — with a crisp memory. I remember riding my tricycle on hard-wood floors while my mother knitted on snowy days. I remember my first encounter with my closest sister, your aunt, who's three years younger. I remember climbing into her crib (from which I'd only recently been evicted) to bonk her on the head with her bottle. And I can even remember the soft flannel of a diaper against my cheek, my head resting on my mother's shoulder, the room swaying as she rocked to me, singing, “Mother is near, nothing to fear.”
But, my dear daughter, someone else was near as well. In church, I learned his name. I saw that other people knew about him, too, and that made them family. And, as we learned the Catechism, I realized the only people who could really understand this conversation I was having with God were the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary who came to teach us every Sunday.
When the sisters taught us to sing, “of all friends the best thou art,” I felt I had a first-hand understanding of the words. This unseen Other was my best friend. Without him, life would have been unbearable.
For my confirmation instruction, I, like you, had lay teachers. They taught me to walk with my name-card up past the Communion rail, to where no children except altar boys were allowed.
We practiced answering the questions of the mysterious man we'd meet that night, the bishop. We practiced being anointed. We practiced being slapped in the face and told, “Peace be with you.” (Our accepting the slap, we were told, was a sign of our openness to persecution and even martyrdom on behalf of Jesus.) And we practiced singing, “Come Holy Ghost, Creator blest, and in our hearts take up thy rest …”
I am blessed with a crisp memory, my grandmother says ‘cursed.’
On May 10, 1969, your mom wore crimson and white, and asked the Church for confirmation of her baptism. A voice introduced the Most Rev. J. Carroll McCormick, bishop of Scranton, the man who was supposed to be so scary — but whom I loved instantly. He questioned us and I, a bundle of nervous energy, faltered. My teacher scowled, but my dear bishop threw back his head and laughed warmly.
I approached the sanctuary, up the steps to where he sat. As he anointed my forehead, he said, “I sign thee with the sign of the cross; I confirm thee with the chrism of salvation.” The Chrism of salvation — the mark of the presence of God.
Dear daughter, the night of my confirmation, I knew the Holy Spirit was dancing. It was as though all that had been outside me — this vast power that seemed to cradle me in its arms all my life — was now inside of me as well as all around me. Where I stopped and God began, there was no telling. In me there was an intensity and strength and focus I'd never known before.
I lay in bed, covers up to my nose, laughing, crying, saying “thank you thank you thank you” — for what, I didn't know. All I knew was a happiness beyond words.
Years later, when your grandfather died, I sat in a chapel wondering if the gash in my heart would ever heal. I was so sad I couldn't pray. I sat, for an hour every day, for many months, before the Blessed Sacrament. I mean, I just sat there. I didn't ask anything. I didn't do anything. Finally, one day, a mini-miracle: I felt my way through the grief. And on the other side of my self-pity over losing my dad? The Presence. Soothing me, loving me back to health, washing me as with the chrism of salvation once again.
Dear daughter, you who have taken Elizabeth Ann Seton as your model, you who have chosen as your sponsor my sister (who has long since forgiven me for bonking her head with a bottle): I want you to know I am praying for you. I pray that your confirmation will mark a time in your life when heaven opened for you, and God declared to all the world:
“This is my beloved child, upon whom I delight. Nothing she ever does will make me love her any less than I do at this moment, which is higher and deeper and wider than she will ever understand. And there is nothing she can do to make me love her more. To receive this love, she need not ask. All she ever need do is pull up the covers, be still and wait — and know that I am God.”
Susan Baxter writes from Mishawaka, Indiana.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Susan Baxter ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: The Empty Tomb as Viewed from the PYRAMIDS DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:Last year, on what was Easter Sunday according to the eastern liturgical calendar followed by many in Egypt, I visited the pyramids of Giza.
Standing under the watchful gaze of the Sphinx, I was reminded that the pyramids are tombs — tombs on a grand scale, to be sure, but tombs nevertheless.
The pyramids rightfully rank among the wonders of the ancient world, and it's not hard to see why. Their scale is immense, their architecture precise. Within, amid walls painted with intricate hieroglyphs, in rooms filled with provisions for the afterlife, the pharaohs lied in state for centuries, well preserved.
Dynastic Egypt was one of the most successful civilizations in history, and these tombs — monuments to the ancients’ aspirations to immortality — are its most enduring artifacts.
The ancient Egyptians are not alone in such aspirations. The desire to live forever lies deep in the human heart and every culture needs to give answer to it.
The Christian hope for eternal life also looks to a tomb — a rough burial place hewn out of the rock in a garden outside Jerusalem's old city wall, the borrowed grave of a Galilean carpenter who did not even own the shroud in which he was wrapped. In marked contrast to the pyramid tombs of Egypt, the most important fact about the carpenter's tomb is that it is empty.
Some historians believe that the ancient Egyptians killed the workers who built the secret entrances to the pyramids in order to guard the tombs against thieves. For millennia grave-robbers and archaeologists have sought out the Egyptian tombs to raid what was inside.
The Christian message is quite the opposite: There is nothing here to steal. All four Gospel accounts insist on that one historical fact — that the tomb was empty. Matthew and Mark even have the angels indicating that the place where the corpse lay is now vacant.
“The empty tomb of Jesus Christ is the promise given in history of that day when all the tombs shall be empty,” said Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher of the papal household, commenting upon the scene of Pope John Paul II visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The empty tomb fulfills the desire for immortality.
The empty tomb near Calvary stands as a rebuke to the mammoth tombs that rise up against the horizon across the Sinai peninsula. It is not a long way from the Nile River delta to the hills overlooking the Jordan River valley, but the empty tomb is the definitive rejection of all that is represented by the pyramids of ancient Egypt.
The journey from Giza to Golgotha is the path from self-assertion to salvation, from reliance on reason alone to trust in revelation, from the cult of the cosmic gods to the worship of the God of the cosmos.
The God Above Gods
Professor Leon Kass, a University of Chicago scholar who reads the Scripturesas a believing Jew, has argued that the Torah is in part an anti-Egyptian polemic. All that ancient Egypt represented is rejected in the creation of the people Israel, and their very identity is partly constituted by being anti-Egyptian. “The firstborn of the Egyptians he smote, for his love endures forever,” sings the psalmist in Psalm 136, a hymn to the Lord's twin wonders — creation of the world and destruction of Pharaoh.
As Christians, we are heirs to this same history of salvation. The Exsultet of the Easter Vigil refers to the passage through the Red Sea. And later, after that account is read, the congregation joins in the hymn of the Israelites: “The Lord is a warrior! The Lord is his name. The chariots of Pharaoh he hurled into the sea … Let us sing to the Lord, for he has covered himself in glory” (Exodus 15). On the night Christ rose from his tomb, the Christian people now sing exultantly of the burial in the Red Sea of pharaoh's charioteers.
Why the ferocity of the attacks on the civilization of the pharaohs? The Chosen People are referred to dozens of times in the Old Testament as having come “out of Egypt.”
The Exodus defines who the Chosen People are; the common experience of having come “out of Egypt” is almost a synonym for Israel. And this even predates slavery in Egypt, for Jacob — the father of the 12 tribes, Israel himself — dies in Egypt, but not before making his son Joseph promise that his body will be taken back to the promised land. “Do not bury me in Egypt. … carry me out of Egypt” (Genesis 47:29–30). As Joseph did for his father, so he made his descendants promise that his bones, too, would be carried away, “out of Egypt” (Genesis 50:25).
Biblical Egypt is not a land of pure wickedness or oppression — it is not Babylon. Indeed, it was a land of refuge for Jacob and his sons; later it would serve the same purpose for the Holy Family. Matthew speaks of the flight into Egypt, but at the same time refers to prophecy that the Messiah would come out of Egypt (Matthew 2:15). Egypt is a land to leave behind.
Ancient Egypt was a land to leave behind precisely because it was such a prosperous and thriving civilization. Or rather, because it achieved its greatness through a mastery of — and a faith in — the natural world. Man needed to break out of Egypt, for all that Egypt offered was the best that man could do through reliance on his own reason. And that is not only not good enough for salvation, but a hindrance to it.
Eternal Aspirations
Salvation begins with the realization that man is not capable of saving himself, not capable of mastering his world, not capable of living forever.
The enormous energies of ancient Egypt were poured into precisely those tasks. If pride was the original sin in Eden, Egypt was sin run amok — not in debauchery, but worse, in delusions of divinity.
The pantheon of Egyptian gods was populated by the forces of nature, which the scholars of ancient Egypt were extraordinarily adept at understanding. But cosmic gods — like river gods and crocodile gods and fertility gods — are not really gods at all, but the names given to phenomena that are subject to man's knowledge and even manipulation. They were not so much gods as they were testaments to the Egyptians’ own knowledge.
“Non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum,” said St. Ambrose: Not by the ways of logic did it please God to save his people. Not by the ways of ancient Egypt would God save his people, where men achieved scientific and engineering feats that even today defy explanation, but by the ways of the ragtag farmers and shepherds whom the Egyptians kept for slaves.
Salvation that comes by way of the empty tomb begins with the realization that, by himself, the best man can aspire to is being buried in a fancy tomb.
Ancient Egypt represents the best man can do on his own, under gods of his own creation, to save himself. And because it was the best attempt, it needed to be drowned in the Red Sea, as a warning to all those who would seek salvation through man's self-assertion. Israel is the people saved for no other reason than God's having chosen to save them (Deuteronomy 7:7).
The polemic against Egypt is a warning against the ultimate emptiness of all that man does without God.
Christians look at Easter to a different kind of emptiness: The emptiness of the tomb that testifies that there is another way, a way that depends only on allowing oneself to be chosen. Man chose for himself in Eden and ended up building tombs in Egypt.
The folly of the pharaohs was to build tombs as eternal homes. The empty tombin the garden is God's definitive word that a tomb is no place for man to live.
Raymond de Souza is the Register's Rome correspondent.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond J. De Souza ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: On April 15, Every American Longs for a Tax Cut DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:As a Catholic economist, I support his proposal wholeheartedly. Let me tell you why.
Opponents of the tax cut charge that it “favors the rich.” The truth that is any plan to cut all rates across the board results in the poor receiving a smaller refund. This is a feature of our progressive tax rate structure. Here's how.
Everyone knows that tax rates increase as incomes increase. But people sometimes forget that the higher tax rate doesn't apply to all the income the person earns. The higher rate applies only to the income earned above the threshold amount that defines the next-higher tax bracket. (Take a look at the tax-rate schedules in the back of the instructions of your Form 1040 and you'll see what I mean.) That is what a progressive tax structure means.
The president plans to create a new, lower rate for the very poorest taxpayers. Specifically, he wants to lower the rate from the current 15% to 10% of the first $6,000 of taxable income for single taxpayers, $10,000 of income for heads of households, and $12,000 for married taxpayers filing jointly. This translates into an extra $300 for single taxpayers with incomes of $6,000, for instance, $500 for heads of households and $600 for married couples filing jointly.
At first glance, this particular rate-cut appears to benefit only the people earning the lowest incomes. In truth, however, any single taxpayer with an income greater than $6,000 will see a tax reduction of $300. For instance, a single person who earns $50,000 will receive a tax cut of $300 on their first $6,000 of income. That same person will receive additional cuts from any reductions in the rates paid in higher tax brackets. In this way, reducing the rates across the board will have a cumulative impact as people move up the income scale.
If you are trying to return large sums of money to taxpayers, sooner or later you'll have to give big chunks to people at the higher end of the spectrum. Why? Because they pay the lion's share of the taxes. The top 1% of income-earners pays the top 34% of income taxes, with the top 5% paying over half of all income taxes. Any substantial reduction in the federal surplus requires giving a lot to those top earners.
Besides, a great many people at the bottom of the income scale currently pay no taxes at all, for a variety of reasons. An estimated 35 million households with incomes under $20,000 will file income tax returns this year and ultimately owe no taxes. There isn't much more you can do to redistribute income to the lowest-income households using the tax code — unless you do something to take more people off the rolls.
And the Bush plan will probably do exactly that, for some. In a family-friendly move, the Bush plan doubles the child-tax credit. A tax credit is a straight deduction from the amount of taxes you owe. Doubling the child-tax credit, for instance, means a wholesome Catholic family with six children would pay $3,000 less in taxes than they are now paying. Some families, especially at the lower end of the income scale, will end up paying nothing at all.
Another result of the progressive tax code is that it really necessitates periodic tax-rate reductions. People move into higher tax brackets as their incomes increase. When the economy grows, the government will automatically absorb a greater percentage of national income just because of tax-bracket creep. For instance, the last decade witnessed a phenomenal increase in personal income, but nearly half of that went to taxes. (Yes, you read that right — you can look it up: http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxcuts.html.)
As people grow wealthier, their need for government services declines. Periodic tax-rate reductions are a prudent way of adjusting for the government's increased absorption of income.
For all these reasons, it is unfair to consider this tax cut a “giveaway to the rich.” But how would the tax cut really affect the poor?
If cutting taxes were to mean cutting services, the critics might have a point. But this tax cut is taking place in the context of a projected budget surplus of $5.6 trillion over the next 10 years. The cut reduces government tax collections by $1.6 trillion over the same period. There is not a single spending program that is on the chopping block to make this proposal possible. It is hard to see how the poor would be harmed on this score.
Cutting taxes in this context is consistent with the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, which has been a part of Catholic social teaching for more than a century. Subsidiarity means that the primary responsibility for solving a problem should lie with the lowest unit of society that can accomplish the goal. The federal government should leave to the people tasks they can accomplish for themselves. The implication for tax policy is that people should keep their own money unless there is a compelling reason to take it from them.
The government is planning to collect $5.5 trillion for which it has no particular spending plan. Honestly, does hoarding this massive cache of money serve the common good? It is far-fetched to presume that unspecified spending of this magnitude will benefit ordinary people more allowing them to decide how to spend the money they earned.
Finally, we should keep in mind that perfection is not one of the options. We can all find parts of this tax-cut proposal that we would like to change. But our choices are not between the Bush plan and perfection. Our choices are the Bush plan and the status quo.
This Catholic economist is confident that Catholics can support President Bush's tax-reduction plan in good conscience.
Jennifer Roback Morse, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, welcomes e-mail at jmorse@jps.net.
----- EXCERPT: So President Bush proposes to cut taxes by $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years, and the battle is joined. ----- EXTENDED BODY: J.R. Morse ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Why the Easter Bunny's Fur Is White DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:Why do people put up pictures of rabbits at Easter time? What does the glorious Resurrection of Our Lord from the dead have to do with fluffy white bunnies?
Some people click their tongues and say that the Easter Bunny isn't a Christian. They say his cult is a pagan invention that has nothing to do with Jesus. But an old European tradition tells a different story:
It was just before dawn on the first Sunday after the Crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus’ followers were in Jerusalem, hiding from the elders who wanted to arrest them.
Out beyond the gates of the city, soldiers stood guarding Our Lord's tomb. A huge stone had been rolled in front of the entrance to block it, and no one dared come near. Well, almost no one.
A young brown rabbit appeared from his burrow for an early morning snack of tender new grass and garden shoots. He didn't know that this day would be unusual.
Suddenly, there was a roar as loud as 20 peals of thunder. The earth shook, and there was a blinding flash of light. An angel of the Lord streaked down from Heaven to the huge stone blocking the entrance to the tomb. He flicked the giant rock aside as if it had been a pebble, and sat on it.
St. Matthew says, “His countenance was like lightning,” and his robe like snow. The soldiers, who had braved a hundred battles, collapsed in fear and “became like dead men.” (28: 3–5)
White as an Angel
The frightened bunny, who was really too young to be out this early by himself, didn't move a whisker. The great flash had turned all his fur white.
Jesus stepped forth from the tomb, alive. Reaching down, He scratched the bunny behind the ears and sent him home to tell the Good News of His Resurrection to all God's creatures. Today, the Easter Bunny is as white as the angel who moved the stone. He leaves children sweets, and also eggs—which stand for the promise of great things to come.
Duncan Anderson is the editor of Faith & Family magazine.
Faith & Family Magazine
Faith & Family, the Magazine of Catholic Living, is the Register's sister publication at Circle Media. It is designed to help wives and mothers nurture a Catholic culture at home.
The magazine is a practical and inspirational guide for Catholic living, offering helpful information and insights for families as well as ideas, crafts and activities for everyday living.
Its promotional literature says, “Faith & Family is a cherished, beautiful companion for a wife and mother. It honors her as a woman and celebrates her mission to create and nurture a family home, a culture of life, a civilization of love. The magazine helps her tap into the well-springs of her faith, surrounds her with cheerful and understanding friends who have struggled gracefully with the same demands and worries.
“The magazine is joyful and inspiring in tone, cheerfully provocative and faithful to the magisterium of the Church. It is filled with traditions to be passed on to the next generation and new ideas for keeping the faith in today's world.
“The mission of Faith & Family is to help our readers — particularly women and mothers — to build a Catholic culture at home that will spread around the world. Faith & Family aims to foster a contagious joy that will bring family members, friends and total strangers closer to God.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Duncan Maxwell Anderson ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Dessert for the Feasting Season DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:When I was growing up, the traditional meat chosen for our Easter dinner was never questioned. We celebrated the holiday with the non-Catholic side of my family, and it was ham hands down. That side of the family would have considered lamb too fancy.
We kids were never interested in the particulars of the dinner, anyway. Our day was focused almost exclusively on the “eggstravaganza” in my Grandma and Grandpa's big back yard, for there were prizes to be won, strategies to be developed, “Big Bad Uncle Jon's” antics to be cleverly avoided — and, somewhere, the golden egg!
In the midst of enjoying glorious goodies such as these, how can families keep the focus on Christ's glorious resurrection during the hours they aren't in church?
Here are some religiously based things my family does to capture my children's imaginations and reclaim some of the culture's Easter symbolism for Christ:
On Good Friday, we take down religious pictures from our walls. We don't have that many, but we have enough that the emptiness — and the restoration on Easter — makes an impression.
We dye Easter eggs to use as a centerpiece for our Easter dinner, reminding the kids that it's a perfect symbol of the Resurrection — out of the “tomb” of the shell new life emerges.
On Easter morning, the little ones are likely to be up by dawn. So, we read the dawn discovery of Christ's empty tomb. On that note, even the Easter bunny can be “baptized,” since what animal was likely to be the first to discover the empty tomb? We then hunt for the Easter baskets hidden by the “Easter angel.” The children look for the resurrected Christ in the form of a holy card in their baskets.
1 Later on Easter day, we hide colored eggs, coins and candy in the yard. The golden egg holds a ticket, which entitles the bearer to a religious book or item, or a coupon for a special outing or activity with Mom or Dad.
Throughout the day, we greet each other with the traditional monastic greeting, “Christ is risen!” and its response, “He is truly risen!” The kids really get into this, and it's a great way to continually recall the reason for the season.
1 Finally, we eat lamb at Easter dinner. There's nothing wrong with ham on Easter; in fact, there are ancient blessings for Easter hams. There is something to be said, however, for eating lamb as a sign of continuity with the Jewish Passover. We eat lamb — not just because it happens to be my husband's favorite — but because it's an opportunity to remember the Lamb of God and talk about the Passover meal that came before the greatest miracle of all: Christ.
April Hoopes writes from Hamden, Connecticut.
Easter Fruit Tart
Here's an excellent dessert recipe to help you celebrate Easter. The fruit can be arranged to display a variety of Easter-based designs. This recipe is easier if it's done in stages. It provides 10 to 12 servings for lovers of sweets.
Tart crust:
1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
Heat oven to 300° F. In small mixer bowl, beat butter and powdered sugar until smooth; blend in flour.
Press mixture into bottom and up side of 12-inch round pizza pan. Flute edge, if desired. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool completely.
Vanilla filling:
1 2/3 cups (10 oz. package) vanilla chips
1/4 cup whipping cream
1 package (8 oz.) softened cream cheese
Place vanilla chips and whipping cream in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high 1 to 1 1/2 minutes, or until chips are melted and mixture is smooth when stirred vigorously. Beat in cream cheese. Spread on crust. Cover and refrigerate.
Fruit topping:
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 cup pineapple juice
1/2 tsp lemon juice
assorted fresh fruit, sliced
In small saucepan, stir together sugar and cornstarch; stir in juices. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened; cool. Meanwhile, arrange fruit on top of filling; carefully pour or brush juice mixture over fruit. Cover and refrigerate assembled tart just before serving.
— April Hoopes
Easter Blessings
Special readings are an important part of our Easter-dinner blessing.
For kids, we read aloud the second chapter of Jonah, a story that naturally interests children. We make the connection about Christ who lay in the earth's belly and then rose from the dead, and explain why we should, like Jonah, give praise to the Lord.
For adults, we read the following excerpt from a discourse on the psalms by St. Augustine of Hippo:
“We are given two liturgical seasons, one before Easter and the other after. The season before Easter signifies the troubles in which we live here and now, while the time after Easter which we are celebrating at present signifies the happiness that will be ours in the future. What we commemorate before Easter is what we experience in this life; what we celebrate after Easter points to something we do not yet possess. This is why we keep the first season with fasting and prayer; but now the fast is over and we devote the present season to praise. Such is the meaning of the Alleluia we sing. … But see that your praise comes from your whole being; in other words, see that you praise God not with your lips and voices alone, but with your minds, lives and all your actions.”
— April Hoopes
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: April Hoopes ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Easter Epicenter DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:Surprises are in store for the first-time pilgrim to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which sits deep in Jerusalem's Old City.
For starters, its modest courtyard is hemmed in by a jumble of buildings and towered over by a Muslim minaret.
Many first-time visitors to the church are also startled to find that both Calvary and the tomb of Jesus are inside. Perhaps this shouldn't be so surprising — their proximity to one another is consistent with John's Gospel: “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb where no one had ever been laid” (John 19:41). And it wasn't at all unusual for early Christians to build churches over holy places.
In Jesus’ day, this site was an abandoned quarry just outside the city's west wall. Stonecutters had left a skull-shaped hump of poor-quality rock (“skull” is calvarium in Latin, golgotha in Aramaic) which the Romans used as a place of execution. Tombs were dug into the quarry walls and floor, and a few olive or fruit trees had taken root as topsoil accumulated.
But it is difficult indeed to anticipate anything like this scene in the church that was built over the spot. Look right as you enter its only door, and you'll see Calvary. The Crusaders encased it in marble in the 11th century; now it looks like a balcony, with 19 steep steps leading up to two chapels. Bear left as you enter, and you'll arrive at a two-room structure that marks the place where Jesus rose from the dead. The original tomb is long gone, sledge-hammered to the ground in 1009 by order of an insane Muslim ruler. The little chapel you see dates from 1809.
Pilgrims’ Perseverance
Another surprise: At first glance, this is not the place of peace and beauty which might be expected of Christianity's holiest shrine.
On a normal day, hundreds of clergy, pilgrims and unabashed tourists weave in and out, creating a chaotic mixture of devotion, noise and confusion. There is commotion, too, in the church's decor. Traditional icons, modernist brass sculptures, assorted mosaics and other adornments seem to contend for attention in a curious mishmash of clashing styles. It is a visual sign of the jostling that has gone on among the six religious communities that occupy the building: Latin Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Egyptian Copts and Ethiopians.
Only in recent years have the religious groups that have custodial rights been able to reach agreement and move ahead on urgently needed repairs. In 1997, a new dome over Christ's tomb was completed, and scaffolding that had been set up decades before was finally removed. But other parts of the church are still waiting. The Syrian chapel — badly damaged in an 1808 fire, but still in use — looks like it was torched only yesterday. Pieces of its charred wooden altar are held together by wire; a framed picture is indistinguishable behind blackened and broken glass.
Definitely not what I expected, I thought after my first visit to what St. John of Damascus called “the mother of all churches.” Where is the splendor that should honor the place where Jesus suffered, died and rose?
Splendor was here once, in the fourth-century basilica built by Constantine and his mother, St. Helena, but it was destroyed by the Persians in 614. Eyewitnesses described the immense structure as a marvel of artistic achievement, decorated with gold and filled with jewels and silken hangings. The Anastasis, they called it, after the Greek word for resurrection.
Today's Church of the Holy Sepulcher — much abridged and scarred by fire, earthquake, multiple destructions, neglect and inept repairs — is more suggestive of Christ's dying than his rising. Paraphrasing a verse from a reading in the Good Friday liturgy, one might say about it what Isaiah prophesied of the messiah whowould come as a suffering servant: “There was in it no stately bearing to make us look at it, nor appearance that would attract us to it” (see Isaiah 53:2).
Telltale Tomb
But perhaps the greatest surprise of all comes as you “visit and revisit this sanctuary many a time” during your Jerusalem stay, as Franciscan Father Eugene Hoade advises in his Guide to the Holy Land. As your initial shock wears off, you become more aware of God's presence here — in the faith of its pilgrims and in the ravaged church itself. “For those who love it, the Holy Sepulcher is like a book,” wrote Father Charles Coüasnon, a French Dominican archeologist. It “most movingly” reveals “the fervor of all Christian peoples for the tomb of their Savior. This fervor shines before our eyes.”
To this pilgrim, at least, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher also speaks most movingly of God's mercy. Praying at the tomb once, I realized that, with all its mismatched furnishings, dark chambers, and need of cleaning and repair, this church could stand as a symbol of my own life. “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner” became a fervent cry of the heart that day.
God is merciful — and present, despite sorry appearances — says this church. Here Jesus turned loving eyes on a crucified thief and saw a candidate for paradise. Here the workings of hidden grace drew a cry of faith from an unlikely source: “Clearly this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:39). Here Mary Magdalene mis-took the risen Jesus for a gardener. Here what appeared to be death's greatest triumph was revealed as God's greatest act of love for us, as the Lord of life rose victorious from the tomb.
As Pope John Paul II said last March in this very place, “The mystery is clearly reflected in this ancient Church of the Anastasis, which contains both the empty tomb — the sign of the Resurrection, and Golgotha — the place of the Crucifixion. The good news of the Resurrection can never be separated from the mystery of the Cross.”
The world's magnificent churches tell of God's glory and turn a pilgrim's eyes heavenward. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher tells of God's loving presence and power amid weakness and need. Prayer does not come easily here, but, when it does, it leaves the pilgrim with renewed hope that God is at work in mysterious ways to transform even that least tidy of all places — the human heart.
Louise Perrotta writes from St. Paul, Minnesota.
----- EXCERPT: Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher ----- EXTENDED BODY: Louise Perrotta ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Weekly TV Picks DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:All times Eastern
APRIL, VARIOUS DATES
The Face: Jesus in Art PBS; check local listings for day and time
The Catholic Communication Campaign helped fund this visually stunning film, which takes viewers around the world and through the ages to examine artistic representations of Christ. The program traces how, from the Church's earliest days, artists have strived to reveal Jesus’ divinity, inspire devotion to him and spread his teachings.
SUNDAY, APRIL 15
Easter Sunday in St. Peter's Square EWTN, 4:30 a.m. live
Pope John Paul II celebrates Easter Mass in St. Peter's Square. Then, around 6 a.m., he gives his Easter message and multi-lingual blessing “urbi et orbi” (to the city of Rome and the world). To be rebroadcast at 7 p.m.
SUNDAY, APRIL 15
Easter 2001: A Celebration with Dave Brubeck ABC; check local listings for time
Jazz composer and pianist Dave Brubeck performs selections from “To Hope,” a composition for Mass that he wrote in 1979. (Two cantors will sing more sections.) This hour-long special airs from St. Joseph's Cathedral in San Jose, Calif. It was produced by Oblate Media for the U.S. Bishops’ Catholic Communication Campaign.
SUNDAY, APRIL 15
The Apostle Paul: The Man Who Turned the World Upside Down History Channel, 10 a.m.
Co-produced by Paulist Productions and Weller/Grossman Productions, this 90-minute “Time Machine” special examines how God led St. Paul to become an Apostle of Christ and a martyr for Him. A preview video was not available by press time, but it's heartening that the secular network's press release acknowledges that St. Paul's missionary zeal “changed the world forever.”
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18
Yellowstone to Yukon: The Wild Heart of North America Discovery, 6 p.m.
Tour the spectacular wilderness vistas of the American and Canadian West.
THURSDAY, APRIL 19
Shroud of Turin: Imprint of Mercy EWTN, 2 p.m.
The late Fr. Harold Cohen hosts this third installment of a 4-part series. His guest is John Lannoe, author of Mystery of the Shroud of Turin: New Scientific Evidence. To be rebroadcast Friday, Apr. 20, at 4 a.m. and 11 p.m.
FRIDAY, APRIL 20
Last Stand of the Tallgrass Prairie PBS, 9 p.m.
The Flint Hills in Kansas shelter the last of the tallgrass prairie that once covered a third of North America. Almost all of the rich soil and lush grass on which the buffalo roamed and the deer and the antelope played is now crop-land for wheat and corn, cousins of the tallgrass, which feed America and hundreds of millions of people the world over. Environmentalists blast cattle ranchers, but scientists say grazing is the ideal use of the prairie and helps preserve it. Country-western singer Lyle Lovett narrates; he also performs songs that evoke the pioneer era and the cowboy ethos.
Dan Engler writes from Santa Barbara, California.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Daniel J. Engler ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Romper Reconnaissance DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:Spy movies can be divided into two categories.
The first is cynical and non-heroic, with aspirations to political realism and an understanding of the dark side of human nature (The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, The Ipcress File, The Mask of Dimitrios, etc.). The second revels in fantasy, action and larger-than-life heroes and villains (The World Is Not Enough, Tomorrow Never Dies and the rest of the James Bond series). Its only purposes are escapism and fun.
This division can help us place the contrasting messages of two recently released espionage thrillers in their proper cinematic context. The Tailor of Panama, based on John le Carre's best-selling novel, is a tired example of the first category. A melancholy, ironic look at post-Cold War intelligence work in contemporary Panama, it takes predictable potshots at American foreign policy and former President George Bush. A shady British operative (Pierce Brosnan) recruits a local tailor (Geoffrey Rush) as a spy and uses his fabricated reports for personal gain, overturning the region's political stability in the process. Director John Boorman (Deliverance ) wallows in a trendy pessimism which somehow blames the United States for that nation's economic and moral corruption. It all rings false.
Spy Kids, which belongs in the second category, sounds a different note. Director Robert Rodriguez (Desperado ) takes the conventions of that often-violent genre and imaginatively reworks them into an enjoyable film with an uplifting message. Though the film may be too aggressive for many small children, older kids will enjoy it with their parents (see www.screen-it.com for a run-down of the content before you go). There's little attempt at realism in either plot or visuals. But the movie playfully dramatizes some larger truths about both children and parents.
It also assigns most of its heroic roles to Hispanic characters — an overdue move for mainstream family movies.
Gregorio and Ingrid Cortez (Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino) are former secret agents who meet and fall in love when they're on opposite sides of an international espionage war. They marry and quit the spy game to raise two kids in what looks like the suburbs of either Texas or Southern California.
“We exchanged one life of adventure for another,” says Ingrid, giving voice to the movie's positive view of parenthood. Neither 8-year-old Juni (Daryl Sabara) nor 12-year-old Carmen (Alexa Vega) knows of their parents’ previous profession.
Gregorio, currently working as a management consultant, is drafted out of retirement for one final mission. Ingrid, who misses the excitement of international intrigue, can't resist going along. They suit up in the dashing black leather they used to wear, and Gregorio adds a fake pencil mustache to look right for the part. The kids are left in the care of friendly Uncle Felix (Cheech Marin), who turns out to be an ex-secret agent as well.
One of Juni's favorite TV shows is “Floop's Fooglies,” hosted by the seemingly cuddly Fegan Floop (Alan Cumming). But this kiddie hero is secretly scheming to take over the world with the evil Mr. Lisp (Robert Patrick), also a former spook.
When Ingrid and Gregorio stumble onto the bad guys’ nefarious plans, they are kidnapped, and Juni and Carmen are called to save them. This allows the kids to act out a primal childhood fantasy in which they have more power than the adults.
“My parents can't be spies,” Carmen cracks in disbelief. “They're not cool enough.” Conditioned by popular culture, kids today admire anyone who lives an edgy and adventuresome life, and Rodriguez cleverly presents the world of espionage from this point of view.
The filmmaker gives Juni and Carmen the kind of high-tech gadgets found in James Bond movies, but adapted to a pre-adolescent mentality. This means they get to be daring, cunning and heroic in ways that kids can only dream of.
When bad guys pursue them, Juni and Carmen escape in either a Super Guppy underwater vehicle or through the power of pint-sized jet packs attached to their clothes. They are also able to fight back by spitting out Electroshock Gumballs that are as potent as artillery projectiles.
The movie's stylish, surreal production design adds to the treat. Floop and his mild-mannered, mad-scientist assistant, Minion (Tony Shalhoub), are holed up in a curvilinear castle that looks like it was designed by Gaudi. There they have created a robot army of eerie youthful conquerors that seem to have stepped out of the sci-fi classic Children of the Damned.
Floop himself is guarded by the Thumb-Thumbs, a comic band of awkward storm troopers whose faces, arms and legs are thumbs. Imprisoned next to Ingrid and Gregorio are the mutant Flooglies who appear on Floop's TV show. They are captured secret agents whose heads and features have been stretched and smashed into weird shapes.
Spy Kids has more interesting action sequences and a more affirmative view of Latino culture than the pretentious The Tailor of Panama. And it never loses track of its positive theme.
Beneath the visual bravado and well-executed gags are lessons about the importance of family. In order to rescue their parents, Juni and Carmen must learn to rise above their constant bickering and make peace with a long lost relative. “This spy stuff is easy,” Carmen observes. “Keeping a family together is hard.”
Arts & culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: Spy Kidsis a blast ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Weekly Video Picks DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:The Crossing (1999)
In December 1776, six months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the war looked like it would drag on for years. The continental soldiers were ill-clothed and ill-fed, seemingly defenseless against both the British and the freezing winter.
This cable-TV movie based on Howard Fast's novel, skillfully dramatizes Gen. George Washington's (Jeff Daniels) daring and winning maneuver. Washington's officers are divided along class lines. The aristocratic Gates (Nigel Bennett) and the fisherman Glover (Sebastian Roche) must assemble and navigate the boats for the landing together.
Open City (1945)
There are times when a Christian must abandon non-violence and stand up and fight. The evil perpetrated by fascist aggression during World War II couldn't be stopped by prayerand good works alone. Open City, one of the Vatican's 45 top films, persuasively establishes the righteousness of partisan uprisings against totalitarianism.
Director Roberto Rossellini (The Flowers of St. Francis ) intertwines the storyof an Italian partisan uprising with the personal lives of three participants: a priest (Aldo Fabrizi), a communist revolutionary (Marcel Pagliero) and a guerrilla fighter named Francesco (F. Grandjacquet). Under Nazi interrogation, the priest declares: “I believe one who fights injustice walks through the path of God.” He is martyred.
Man of Iron (1981)
Director Andrzej Wajda uses the same investigative reporting techniques that he perfected in his anti-Stalinist Man of Marble, mixing real-life figures like Lech Walesa with fictional characters in interviews and documentary footage, both genuine and re-created. he chronicles the political upheavals in the ship-building city of Gdansk from the student reform movement of 1968 to the Solidarity strikes in 1980. The movie, which was made just before the communists’ imprisonment of the Solidarity leadership, won the Cannes Film Festival's Grand Prize in 1981.
— John Prizer
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Put a Little Easter in Every Mass You Make DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:The Spirit of the Liturgy
by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Ignatius Press, 2000
232 pages, $17.95
In 1918, the year after World War I ended, Romano Guardini published an insightful book titled The Spirit of the Liturgy. Eighty-three years later, the prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has revisited the subject, looking back on decades of liturgical studies, reforms and experiments that marked the second half of the 20th century — and pointing ahead to the 21st.
Cardinal Ratzinger likens the Church's liturgy to a fresco that had been hidden over the centuries by layers of whitewash. “The fresco was laid bare … in a definitive way by the Second Vatican Council. For a moment its colors and figures fascinated us. But since then the fresco has been endangered by climatic conditions as well as by various restorations. … What is imperative is a new reverence in the way we treat it, a new understanding of its message and its reality, so that rediscovery does not become the first stage of irreparable loss.”
The Church's chief theologian makes it clear that he is wary of scholarship that emphasizes the history of the liturgy at the expense of its mystery. His goal is to help post-Vatican-II Catholics confused by such scholarship to understand their faith and its expression in the Church's worship. To accomplish this, he explains, in easily accessible terms, the theology behind the fundamental components of the liturgy.
The first section, “The Essence of the Liturgy,” lays out important presuppositions that are frequently ignored. For example, in the liturgy human beings worship God — yet liturgy itself is not a human construct, but a divine initiative. Because God became man, Christian worship does not exclude everyday reality or try to abstract from it; the liturgy is rooted in history and involves the entire cosmos.
One chapter is devoted to the transition “From Old Testament to New.” “[T]he synagogue was always ordered toward the Temple,” writes the cardinal. “The new Temple already exists, and so too does the new, the definitive sacrifice: the humanity of Christ opened up in his Cross and Resurrection.”
The second section explores “Time and Space in the Liturgy.” Those who follow the controversy about which way the priest should face while celebrating Mass may be surprised that the author does not take sides. Instead, he describes the ancient Christian practice of “orient-ing” a church toward the East and explains the deeper meaning of both the traditional and the current practice.
In the third part, “Art and Liturgy,” Cardinal Ratzinger examines the use of images and music in liturgy. The two chapters in this section summarize several scholarly articles and talks that were collected in the author's 1995 book A New Song for the Lord. It turns out that there are genuinely theological reasons for excluding rock music from the Mass.
Part Four, “Liturgical Form,” addresses the diversity in the Church's rites, the task of inculturation, the true meaning of “active participation” in the liturgy and the need for silence. A survey of the postures and gestures used in liturgical prayer often uncovers profound significance, especially in the Sign of the Cross.
In this book, one of the Church's towering intellects wears his erudition very lightly. If the average reader finds some of its concepts challenging, it is not because they are abstruse — but because they are so grand. With Cardinal Ratzinger as our guide, we learn how to experience every liturgy as an encounter with the risen Lord. Read The Spirit of the Liturgy and bask in Easter glory all year long.
Michael J. Miller writes from Glenside, Pennsylvania.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Michael J. Miller ----- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: Campus Watch DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:Study Vouches for Vouchers
DEPAUL UNIVERSITY, March 22 — A new book by a DePaul University economics professor demonstrates the effects of Catholic education and school vouchers, the university announced.
Catholic Schools: Private and Social Effects, by William Sander, found that: Minority Catholic high school students have a 30% higher graduation rate than minority public school students, and minority Catholic school students score higher on math and vocabulary tests than their public school counterparts. Catholic schooling also makes students more likely to pray, hold Catholic beliefs, and contribute to church funds later in life.
However, Catholic schooling does not seem to lower rates of substance abuse, and white Catholic school students do not differ greatly from white public school students in academic performance.
Sander also found that in Illinois, voucher programs neither helped nor hurt public schools. This result may surprise advocates on both sides — voucher supporters have argued that competition will force public schools to improve, while opponents contend that vouchers will siphon students, talent and money from public schools.
Teachers vs. Unions
WORLD, March 24 — The two biggest teachers’ unions are facing growing opposition from teachers who can't stand the unions’ bureaucracy, intimidation, and partisan political involvement, World magazine reported (see related story in Lifenotes on page 18).
The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers both use membership dues to donate heavily to the Democratic Party and allied causes. Many union members have used dues-withholding laws to prevent their dues from going to pro-abortion groups.
But others chose a different solution: an alternative teachers’ union.
Upstart groups in Texas, Georgia and Missouri already have more members than the NEA, and five other states have large independent teachers’ groups. And the numbers are rising, as the established unions’ membership rolls decline.
The alternative unions offer lower dues, in part because they do not make political contributions or support a Washington-based bureaucracy. But in 22 states, union dues are compulsory, so alternative unions are shut out.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Family Matters DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:School Phobia
Q. In the past month or so, my son (aged 10) hasn't wanted to go to school. Almost every morning he says he doesn't feel good. Our family doctor can find nothing physically wrong.
— T.O.
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
A. Though the term “school-phobia” was briefly in vogue, it has recently become rarer. The vast majority of school “phobia” is best called school resistance. Something about attending school bothers or upsets a child. Some anxiety may be involved, but rarely is it the main factor.
The reasons behind school resistance are almost as many as kids. Sometimes a parent can identify the source of the resistance, and maybe even do something about it: An earlier bedtime means less morning sluggishness; a brief chat with a bus driver can cue him to intercept a bully.
Just as often, you can't figure out what's going on, or if you can, you can't change it. Jim has to take P.E. The driver won't let a parental bodyguard on the school buses and, besides, a few punches in the back from some bigger kid are far more tolerable to Homer than having mom on his bus.
It's also not uncommon for a child who previously liked school to develop a temporary dislike for it. Something has changed, either with school itself (a new teacher?) or with a youngster's attitude, and his distaste evolves into resistance.
Resistance often takes the form of professed sickness, usually involving the stomach, head or throat. Symptoms may be severe enough to prompt at least one visit to the doctor yet vague enough to be cured spontaneously by late afternoon. Remarkably, the illness almost never flares up on Saturday or Sunday.
Since I know little about your son, I don't know if he's primarily anxious or resisting. Judging from this problem in general and what you've said, chances are high he's more resisting than anxious. Even if he were genuinely distraught over school, you would approach the problem similarly. Your first and foremost concern is to keep your son in school. The longer he stays home, the stronger his resistance and anxiety become.
Address the problem with your son. Explore what might have changed his feelings toward school. Talk to anyone else you think may give you some perspective — a teacher, principal, bus driver, friend, crossing guard. If there is a clear trouble spot and you can influence it, you may smooth things out quickly.
On the other hand, it's most likely that the cause will be beyond your knowledge or influence. You must then move in other directions. What directions will be the topic of our next visit, assuming I'll be here. Lately, I've been not wanting to come to work. My stomach hurts.
Dr. Ray Guarendi is a clinical psychologist and author.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dr. Ray Guarendi ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Facts of Life DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:The number of abortions in Nebraska hit a 25-year low in 2000, dropping by nearly 20% over the last two years. Pro-life leaders credit their efforts to convince mothers to keep their child or choose adoption. Other causes may include the state's 24-hour waiting period and its parental notification laws.
----- EXCERPT: NEO-NATAL NEBRASKA ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: On the Importance of EASTER BASKETS DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:When I was young, the two best things about Easter morning were the Easter-basket hunt, with all six of us kids scurrying in every direction, and, of course, the candy in our Easter baskets.
The usual candy classics overflowed — chocolate eggs and bunnies swimming in a jellybean sea. I distinctly remember the year when the Easter Bunny discovered Fannie May Meltaways: My own box of Fannie May candy — now that was a slice of heaven.
So why now, three decades later, has this special tradition lost some of its magic for me? Is it because Christmas, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day and about a zillion kids’ birthdays all fall within a four-month period, to the point where I begin wondering, “When is there not a week with some sort of glorious surprise for my children?”
Perhaps that's the point. Easter isn't just the candyfest it has become for many. Instead, it's the most significant day of the year — the day on which our Lord rose from the dead.
Easter is bigger than Thanksgiving, bigger than Christmas. But how many of us give it the importance it deserves?
Deeper reflection and a more thorough penitential course during Lent would lead to a greater celebration on Easter.
Avoiding overindulgence on secondary celebrations would also help to keep it special.
But don't overlook those Easter baskets. They hold opportunities to help make Easter a day to remember for both parents and kids.
If we start thinking outside the box — or the basket — we can give these pastel containers a new purpose. Here are some ideas for each child's basket:
• Construct a theme-based Easter basket. A nice way to create one is to design a basket around a book. For example, gather a religious book such as God's Promises for Girls (Zonderkids), a saint's medal, a rosary and crucifix, and arrange them in the basket along with suitable sweets.
• Add a special card that contains written promises that you, as parents, make to your child.
• Focus on what your child did for Lent. If he gave up chocolate or soda, load his basket with forbidden fruit.
• Think beyond toys and goodies. Give a basketful of praise that includes prize ribbons, a banner declaring, “You're Great!” or an award for the “World's Greatest Brother.”
• Recognize what your family did together during Lent. Include information about the charity you donated to, a photo of your family doing service together or a thank-you note to an organization for letting you serve them.
• Add a letter, artwork, prayer card or other token that shows how you grew spiritually during Lent. Next year, ask each family member to place something describing his own Lenten journey in the rest of the family's Easter baskets.
• Give a framed picture of something your child did during the previous year, such as performances in a school play or an activity on last summer's vacation.
• Put a plain sheet of paper in each basket. The recipients then write about an Easter-related topic. Some ideas: “What I did for Lent and how it affected me.” “The best thing my sister did for me lately was …” “If I were the Easter Bunny, I would give my Dad … in his basket because …” After the notes are written, don't read them. Place them in the family Easter notebook for next year. Read the ones from last year aloud this year.
• Although it's traditional to pass on family heirlooms, such as jewelry and art, after one's death, why wait? Place a precious family treasure in the Easter basket each year. But first make sure the child is old enough to appreciate the gift.
Easter baskets can brim with beautiful ways that your family can connect spiritually and personally.
But don't miss other chances to have fun on Easter morning. Give out the baskets creatively.
Design a treasure hunt that uses clues only your family would understand.
Make something for the others and hide it for discovery during the annual Easter-egg hunt.
But remember: Kids still need lots and lots of candy on Easter. And so does the Easter Bunny!
Anyone know where I can find Fannie May candy on the East Coast?
Bridget Seyer writes from New Hartford, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: How to Say 'Resurrection Joy' in Kid-Language ----- EXTENDED BODY: Bridget Seyer ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Gabriel Project Is Heaven-Sent to Unwed Moms DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:The caller's voice was tinged with desperation. She was two months pregnant, unmarried and already had two children She couldn't afford another child, and she knew her pregnancy would ruin her job.
When Cathy McConn, co-founder of the Gabriel Project in Houston, asked the caller what her occupation was, the trembling voice on the project's pregnancy crisis hot line explained that she shot herself out of a cannon in a circus act. Part of the act required her to strap dynamite around her waist.
Although McConn thought the caller was joking at first, she soon realized that the woman's plight was real.
“She wanted to be self-sufficient,” McConn says. “I realized she was a typical young lady, probably in her early 20s who has children and has good intentions, but is not yet adult enough to take care of them.”
That is where the Gabriel Project can help. Founded in 1990, the national program acts as a safety net for pregnant women and their families by providing the women with emotional, financial and spiritual support to help them carry their babies to term.
“Each phone call presents a unique challenge,” says McConn. “We are here to listen and provide support in whatever way we can.”
The toll-free phone call a pregnant woman makes to a Gabriel Project volunteer is just the beginning.
After the initial phone interchange, a meeting between the pregnant woman and a Gabriel Project volunteer is arranged at a parish church or rectory. The pregnant woman is assigned a “Gabriel angel,” a volunteer who will determine what the woman's needs are, present these needs to a sponsoring parish community, and help the pregnant woman in any way possible.
Because the Gabriel Project has no centralized office, it's difficult to know precisely how many parishes around the country currently participate in the project. But Rex Moses, who established the first Gabriel Project in the Diocese of Corpus Christi, Texas, estimates that more than 400 parishes nationwide have established programs modeled on the one he began in 1990.
The Gabriel Project had its origins in a sign that Moses saw in Saint Michael's Parish in Houston. He was making daily visits to the church in preparation for his conversion to the Catholic faith.
The sign said, “If you're pregnant and need help, this parish will help you in any way.” It had originally been posted by the pastor, Msgr. John C. Perusina, in 1973, the year Roe v. Wade became law.
After Moses and his wife converted to Catholicism, they moved to the Diocese of Corpus Christi to help lead the pro-life movement. In 1990, he suggested to Bishop Rene Henry Gracida of Corpus Christi that signs offering help to pregnant women be placed on the property of all the churches in the diocese.
Bishop Gracida found the idea irresistible, and encouraged every church in his diocese to post a sign bearing a toll-free number that would lead pregnant women in crisis to help.
He promised to channel diocesan resources to any parish that might be overwhelmed by the commitment the sign expressed.
“That courageous and loving act on behalf of Bishop Gracida inspired churches to join the effort,” says Moses.
Within a matter of weeks, more than 100 churches in south Texas had posted signs on their property. The Gabriel Project was on its way.
In 1991, Cathy McConn, a mother of seven and a friend of Moses, approached Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston. She asked if the Gabriel Project, which had been so successful in the Diocese of Corpus Christi, could be set up in their diocese.
Bishop Fiorenza approved her request. Since then 65 parishes in the Diocese of Galveston-Houston have become active in the Gabriel Project.
The project received a national boost when Father Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life in New York, heard about its success in Texas. He promoted the program on the Eternal Word Television Network and through a color flier published by Priests for Life.
By 1996, the Gabriel Project had taken root in the Archdioceses of Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and in the Dioceses of Dallas, Scranton, Pa., and Wilmington, Del.
The grass-roots project is designed to take place on the parish level, where there is strong volunteer support and an opportunity to provide personal assistance to each pregnant woman. The one-on-one relationship between a pregnant woman and a parish volunteer is integral to the project's success.
Elizabeth Griber, communications coordinator for the Gabriel Project in Maryland, says that since 1996, local project members have provided individual support to about 750 women and 760 babies.
“There have been 10 sets of twins, and one client is now carrying triplets!” she says enthusiastically. “Each pregnant woman is known and cared for personally.”
“The biggest challenge is to increase the pregnant woman's quality of life,” explains Annie Byrne, director of the Gabriel Project in Pennsylvania, where there are six established parish Gabriel Projects and three more parishes planning to implement the project.
“Emotionally and physically, most of these women have been through traumatic experiences,” she adds. “They have been rejected by the people they love. In many cases, their parents tell them, ‘If you have this baby, you have to leave.'
Or the man she thought would love and protect her says, ‘I don't want anything to do with you if you have that baby.’ We establish trust with the woman, and try to get her to stick with the project for counseling and job training. We help her to see that her baby is a great reason to get her life together.”
Adds Patty Sherrod, director of the Gabriel Project in Dallas: “Sometimes the girls who come to us are estranged from their parents, living a life clearly contrary to God's commandments, living with a boyfriend or in a negative situation.
A lot of these women don't have a clear direction for their lives. They are pressured to abort the child. They need a friend. They need someone to listen to them.”
Mary Ann Sullivan writes from South Amboy, N.J.
----- EXCERPT: ProLife ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mary Ann Sullivan ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 04/15/2001 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 15-21, 2001 ----- BODY:Professors vs. Unions
CYBERCAST NEWS SERVICE, March 29 — The California Faculty Association settled a lawsuit brought by two college professors from different universities who refused to pay union dues because of their religious beliefs, reported Cybercast News Service.
Seeking religious accommodation, the professors asked that their dues be sent instead to a non-profit charity.
Attorney Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, said he has successfully represented union workers in similar situations, and that such cases often involve workers who “are committed to their faith and object to the liberal positions supported by the union, which range … from work-ethic practices to supporting abortion and homosexuality,” reported Cybercast News Service.
The Pacific Justice Institute is a nonprofit legal defense organization specializing in defending religious freedom.
Dacus said as union workers nationwide learn about their rights he expects more of them to refuse paying dues to unions that contradict their religious beliefs.
Campus Pro-Life Resurgence
REPORT, April 2 — The Canadian magazine Report discussed the resurgence of pro-life activity across their nation's campuses.
One powerful tactic used on at least two Canadian campuses is the Genocide Awareness Project, which employs pictures of aborted babies and compares abortion to the Holocaust and slavery — in which the denial of “personhood” to human beings led to their persecution and systematic suppression, reported Report.
In the U.S., students at the University of Houston used similar pictures last month to educate their campus community about the brutality of abortion, reported the Daily Cougar, a campus newspaper.
Pro-life students at the University of Illinois set up 4,000 small, white crosses in front of the English Building in a display called “Cemetery of the Innocents,” reported the Daily Illini, a campus paper. Each cross symbolized one child aborted each day in the United States.
Idaho Abortions Down
IDAHO STATESMAN, April 2 — The number of abortions performed in Idaho in 1999 — the latest year for which numbers are available — dropped to 867, reported the Statesman.
Abortions in the state peaked at 2,706 in 1981. The ratio of abortions to live births in Idaho was also low: 76 (1999 figures), far below the national average of 306 (1997 figures), reported the paper.
David Ripley, executive director of Idaho Chooses Life observed, “People are beginning to realize that abortion is not a viable solution.”
Ripley also said the state's abortion numbers should drop further because of a new law banning taxpayer funding of abortions.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Mandatory Contraceptive Coverage -- Is Abortion Next? DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:BOSTON — Every state in the nation may one day mandate insurance coverage for contraceptives for women, with little or no possibility for religious groups or individuals to opt out on moral grounds.
And pro-lifers worry that's only step one in a campaign, with the next push coming for mandatory insurance coverage of all abortions.
In Massachusetts, acting Governor Jane Swift has expressed her willingness to sign a mandatory contraceptive coverage bill that cleared the Massachusetts House Jan. 30. And in New York, the Senate, whose Republican leadership had fought for a conscience clause that the Assembly version lacked, passed the Women's Health and Wellness Bill Feb. 5.
Both bills, which also mandate the coverage of screenings for breast cancer, cervical cancer and osteoporosis, contain conscience clauses that would allow dioceses and parishes to opt out — but not Catholic hospitals, social service agencies, universities and non-diocesan schools.
The bills are part of a trend that troubles pro-life advocates. Of the 17 states that already mandate coverage for contraception, five lack any conscience protection and six have only narrow exemptions. Without a vote by the legislature, Washington state put an insurance rule into effect Jan. 1 requiring insurance plans to cover contraceptives.
In December 2000, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that exclusion of prescription contraceptives by health plans constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex and pregnancy.
Other states where the issue is moving to the front burner include Utah, Arizona and Oregon.
“There seems to be a nationwide push by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood,” said Cathleen Cleaver, director of planning and information for the U.S. Bishops Committee on Pro-Life Activities. “We believe their true goal is to set the stage for mandated coverage of all so-called reproductive services, including abortion.”
William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, agreed. He predicted that if Gov. George Pataki does not veto the New York bill, it will “set the stage for forced coverage of abortions — the goal of [the National Abortion Rights Action League], this bill's prime backer.”
Abortifacients
While some of the contraceptive drugs and devices can and do act as abortifacients, Cleaver said, advocates are pushing them as “basic health care.”
During a debate prior to the Massachusetts House vote, for example, Gale Candaras of East Longmeadow said that allowing any religious institution an exemption would harm workers’ rights, including thousands of employees who work for Church-run human services organizations with a state contract.
With the nationwide trend heating up and a push for a federal law mandating coverage, there is a need for conscience protection written into federal law, Cleaver said.
Contraceptive mandates have been fought largely on religious freedom grounds, not as opposition to contraception itself. And, mandate opponents say, religious-freedom must apply to health plans of workers at religiously run organizations, like hospitals and schools, not just to people directly employed by churches.
“If legislators look at religion in a more narrowly defined sense, as acting only within the sanctuary, that would be a slippery slope of failing to recognize the ministries of the Church,” said Richard Barnes, executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference.
The California law upon which the New York Senate's bill is based is being challenged in that state's supreme court, and Barnes said it is likely the New York Catholic Conference would challenge the New York bill, should it become law.
Cardinal Edwad Egan calls the bill a ‘violation of religious liberty.’ N.Y. Senate GOP leader Joseph Bruno offers an exemption, with a catch.
The New York Senate Republicans, whose leader, Joseph Bruno, introduced the bill, explained in a statement that religious organizations would get a waiver if the employer's main mission is religious and it primarily employs and serves people of that religion. Employees must, however, be provided access to contraceptive coverage through lower-cost group rates.
The bishops of New York state, led by Cardinal Edward Egan, denounced the bill as a “clear and unprecedented violation of religious liberty.”
“By providing a religious exemption for parishes while forcing Catholic education, health and human service ministries to violate the teaching of our faith, the Senate is legislating what is and is not Catholic,” the bishops said in a statement Feb. 5.
Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre on Long Island said the narrow exemption would lead to a “confrontation of conscience.”
“How can we be true to our calling and our convictions when the Senate tries to impose on us their definition of ‘religion?’” he asked in a statement Feb. 5.
The Senate and Assembly are working to iron out differences in their versions of the bill. The Catholic Conference will continue trying to “change their course,” said executive director Barnes, and will be lobbying Gov. Pataki.
But, Barnes said, “We think it's doubtful the governor has an inclination to veto the legislation.”
The New York bishops expressed their support for other provisions of the bill, dealing with screenings for diseases, but said those issues are “being used as a pawn by abortion and contraception advocates to limit the influence of religious organizations in public policy and to drive the Church out of the business of education, health and human services.”
Massachusetts
In Massachusetts, Dan Avila, associate director of that state's Catholic Conference, said that if the bill hammered out by the House becomes law, it might force Catholic institutions to “consider dropping employee benefits altogether, unless they are able to devise their own insurance plans.”
The bill would shield only chancery offices, parishes and diocesan-run schools. An amendment offered by Rep. Elizabeth Poirier to broaden that exemption was defeated. The amendment also would have allowed individual employees to purchase special riders if they did not want their premiums to support the contraceptive coverage included in the plans offered by their secular employers.
The Massachusetts legislation also prohibits insurance companies from selling employee health plans without the contraceptive coverage to conscientiously opposed secular businesses.
More than 70% of the members of the Massachusetts House identify themselves as Catholic.
“Politics are directly affected by the moral fabric of the nation,” said Judie Brown, president of American Life League. “And what is more moral than the Church's teaching?”
But the moral issues involved in the legislation have become a “matter of opinion” among Catholics, Brown said, adding that the situation might never have reached this point if they had been taught their faith better.
Said Brown, “That's at the bottom of our struggle to stop these bills.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Burger ----- KEYWORDS: News ------- TITLE: Chávez Targets the Church and Loses the People DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:CARACAS, Venezuela — The capacity of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías to generate antagonism was on display Feb. 4. That day, despite warnings from political moderates and pleas from the Catholic Church, he “celebrated” the 10th anniversary of the failed military coup he led as an Army colonel.
Chávez's move further divided an already polarized country. One part joined in the official celebrations that were broadcast by the national radio and TV networks, while the other protested in the streets and marked a national “day of mourning and rejection” of Chávez’ s leftist policies.
In the middle is a Catholic Church trying to prevent an even deeper division of Venezuelan society.
Polls show that support for Chávez has plummeted from 80% to around 35%, BBC reported Feb. 9, since he was elected president in a 1998 landslide, promising political and economic reforms.
The depth of opposition was highlighted in December by a nationwide strike. The protest was supported not only by the Venezuelan Workers Confederation, but also by the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and the nation's major newspapers.
The unusual labor-management alliance was formed in protest against new laws that critics contend will choke off foreign investment, threaten private property rights and stifle job creation, The Wall Street Journal reported Dec. 6. Chávez “is attempting to introduce Marxist, socialist concepts at a time when these points of view and manners of doing things are in the past,” said Antonio Herrera-Vaillant, vice president of the Venezuelan-American Chamber of Commerce.
Catholic leaders don't lack their own reasons for opposing Chávez. Despite being the only institution to request that his political opponents give Chávez a chance to implement his political agenda, the Church quickly became a favorite target of the former paratrooper.
Church-State Showdown
Early in January, Chávez brought matters to a head by attacking the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop André Dupuy.
On Jan. 9, Archbishop Dupuy celebrated Mass in Caracas for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Blessed Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer. At the end of the Mass, the nuncio asked the assembly to “take a look of faith at the current historic events imposed upon us.”
“In the midst of the current crisis, we are invited to bear witness of Christian hope, no matter what is the political or ideological regime imposed on us by the leaders of the nation,” he said. “We have to act knowing that their action will not escape the judgment of God. They may fool humans, but will not fool God. I hope that those who have received a political responsibility from the Venezuelan people may never forget that.”
The next day, Chávez exploded, accusing the nuncio of “irresponsible interference in Venezuela's sovereign affairs.”
The Venezuelan bishops’ conference immediately sided with Archbishop Dupuy. In response, Chávez on Jan. 26 compared the Church to a “tumor,” saying it opposed his reforms “without helping the country's poor.” He also accused the archbishop of Caracas, Cardinal José Ignacio Velasco, of siding with his political opponents.
That weekend, the Catholic Church suffered a spree of attacks in several Caracas parishes that included vandalism, graffiti and the placement of posters accusing priests of being “Pharisees and hypocrites.”
Then, after having left the bishops on hold for a meeting for almost three years, on Jan. 28 Chávez suddenly invited the Venezuelan bishops’ conference to meet him at the presidential residence.
Speaking on behalf of the bishops, Cardinal Velasco declined. The current climate made dialogue practically impossible, he explained. “Every day we have been turning another cheek. I have no cheeks left because every day there is a new insult.”
After the bishops rejected the meeting with Chávez, other church es suffered acts of vandalism, and three pastors received anonymous death threats.
“The Church in Venezuela does not evade the dialogue with the president, but a true dialogue requires more than just a formal invitation to meet,” Archbishop Baltazar Porras, president of the Venezuelan bishops’ conference, told the Register. “The lack of a previous, common agenda, plus the recent insults without apologies of the president make it impossible to expect reasonable results from the eventual conversation.”
Feb. 4
On Feb. 4, Chávez started his celebrations for his failed 1992 coup by bringing flowers to the National Pantheon and calling on the military to be “proud and happy of being here, celebrating the unity between the army and the Venezuelan people.”
The president then attacked a “group of Venezuelans” who were allegedly “lying to the country and trying to oust me, who nonetheless will not succeed.”
Later that day, Chávez suspended a press conference because he said journalists were asking “confrontational questions.”
Meanwhile, several groups of protesters kept vigil in different squares in Caracas until the evening, when they lit candles and performed a cacerolazo protest featuring the clanging of pots and pans.
Responding to a request from a group of retired military personnel not allied with Chávez, the vicar general of Caracas, Msgr. Francisco Monterrey, celebrated a Mass at the cathedral to pray for those who died in the coup.
“This is a moment of faith and recollection free of confrontations and resentment, in which we pray for peace, unity and reconciliation in our country,” said Msgr. Monterrey during his homily.
At the conclusion of Mass, the vicar general requested that the assembly leave the cathedral by the side doors, thus avoiding a potential confrontation with Chávez’ s followers in the Simón Bolívar square.
“When peaceful Mass-goers have to leave a cathedral by the side doors, you ask yourself if you are living in a country where true democracy reigns,” said the former governor of Zulia, Oswaldo Alvarez Paz, who attended the Mass.
Added Alvarez Paz, “The climate of confrontation he has created with his permanent verbal harassment has created a climate that has no electoral way out.”
Francisco Arias Cárdenas, a pop ular former military leader who supported Chávez in his coup attempt 10 years ago, said that the president “has never attacked the Catholic Church as an institution, because he himself is a Catholic.” Said Arias Cárdenas, “He has only pointed out the un-Christian attitudes of some Catholic leaders who are eroding the revolution for selfish reasons.”
Arias Cárdenas, who once ran as a candidate against Chávez but now has become a key supporter, also said that accusing Chávez of attack ing the Church is “a disproportionate statement, motivated by ignorance, if not ill intention.”
Adolfo Salgueiro, a political analyst for El Universal, countered that Chávez “has no hesitation in attack ing anybody, absolutely anybody, if he perceives it as not completely loyal to his political project.”
“And that includes the Church, because Chávez is more a ‘Chavista’ than a Catholic,” Salgueiro said. By attacking the Venezuelan bishops, “Chávez has shown his lack of polit ical intelligence and self-restraint, which has been a major source of tensions and problems with almost every other existing institution, including political parties, unions, entrepreneurs and media.”
On Feb. 1, Acción Democrática, Venezuela's largest opposition party, demanded the Supreme Court dismiss Chávez as “mentally unfit.”
Waving a banner reading “Out With The Madman,” a large group of demonstrators, including clowns and a Chávez impersonator wearing a straitjacket, presented the demand based on reports from two teams of psychiatrists who have allegedly confirmed the former colonel is a “lying, authoritarian megalomaniac.”
The Church continues to shun that sort of rhetoric.
“We don't go as far as to call the president crazy,” said Archbishop Porras. “But definitely he has a tendency to an aggressive behavior that he must change if he really wants to pull Venezuela out of its crisis and enter into history.”
Alejandro Bermúdez is based in Lima, Peru.
(Zenit contributed to this story.)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORDS: News ------- TITLE: 'Axis of Evil' Fight Is No Crusades, Say Historians DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:NEW YORK — The Crusades are in the news, 1,000 years after they started.
Western leaders have tried mightily to distance the war on terrorism from the Christian attempts to retake lands that had been captured by Muslim invaders.
But those skirmishes from the 11th and 13th centuries (and lasting into the 15th) are very much on the minds of the West's Islamic foes in the war on terrorism.
President Bush's State of the Union reference to an “axis of evil” helped revive crusades talk. He placed Iran and Iraq on the axis along with North Korea, which isn't a Muslim country. The strong words led Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Feb 7 to criticize less-fervent Islamic countries. “Because of their lethargy and the fact that they are not united,” he said, they are threatened with a “crusade.”
But what were the Crusades? Were they acts of aggression, as the ayatollah suggests?
Some historians, like Boston University's Richard Landes, think so. “[W]hen the defense reaches into other people's lands,” he said, “then it looks a lot like aggression to me.”
But many scholars of the Crusades say the evidence exonerates the West.
Thomas Madden, chairman of the history department at St. Louis University and author of several books and articles on the Crusades, says they have been misunderstood.
“The Crusades don't really fit the mold [of Christian aggression] at all,” he said. In fact, they were a defensive war, not designed to force Christianity on people, but rather to “liberate Christians under Muslim rule.”
He pointed out that after the Crusaders won a territory, they allowed Muslims to worship freely.
Jonathan Riley-Smith, professor of ecclesiastical history at Cambridge University in England, is the scholar Madden called the “dean” of Crusades scholars. Riley-Smith too, said the Crusades were defensive battles.
“Christian ideas of warfare are quite different from Islamic ideas,” said Riley-Smith. “All Christian ideas of force require that the force is reactive. Christians can't fight a war to spread the faith, only to defend the faith, only to recover” what was theirs. In contrast, “jihad was originally about spreading Islam by force,” he said.
Landes disagrees. “[T]o argue that somehow the Christians were nicer and more moral on crusade than Muslims on jihad is slicing the baloney so thin,” he said, “that it seems like moral regression, not only in terms of modern values of civil society, but in terms of what historical understanding can offer our dynamic and unstable experiment with global cultural interaction.”
But Riley-Smith pointed out that the lands being contested in the Crusades “had been part of the Christian Empire.” The Crusaders “were not trying to extend [into areas] where Christianity had never been.”
Madden added that, at the time of the Crusades, “two-thirds” of Christian territory had been lost to the Muslims. Islamic strongholds like Morocco, Egypt and all of Asia Minor were Christian before they were Muslim.
Riley-Smith disagrees with Western leaders who have called bin Laden's behavior uncharacteristic of Islam.
While there is “an element within Islam that is uneasy with the use of force,” he said, bin Laden “comes in a long tradition of Islam — often a majority position.”
Both Madden and Riley-Smith noted that in Pope John Paul II's frank and thorough Jubilee year mea culpa prayer seeking forgiveness for historical wrongdoing by Catholics, the Pope didn't mention the Crusades.
Said Riley-Smith, “no less than six general Councils” including “the Fourth Lateran Council and Second Council of Leon” supported Crusades, as did “numerous papal letters from the 12th century onwards.”
He also pointed out that a great many saints were active supporters of the Crusades, including Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi, Bridget of Sweden and Dominic.
Riley-Smith said no apology is needed because the Crusades existed in “a different moral climate,” and because, “when someone is threatening you with a Kalashnikov [AK-47 rifle], it does little good to apologize for the fact that your ancestors attacked his ancestors with bows and arrows.”
Apologetics
The Crusades has another group of dedicated researchers: apologists who want to explain this chapter in Catholic history in order to answer the objections of potential converts.
Author and lecturer Patrick Madrid dedicated a chapter of his book Pope Fiction to dispelling some of the popular myths of the Crusades.
Said Madrid, “Muslim expansion was always at the point of a sword,” while Christian converts were generally gained through “peaceful” means.
Professor Landes answered Madrid's claim with a list of atrocities. “Surely the rampaging Crusaders of Emicho of Leiningen in 1096, the slaughtering Jews, men, women, and children, or the followers of the Master of Hungary in 1251, the slaughtering Jews, clerics, and rich people, were religious extremists by any definition,” he said.
Madrid added the sack of Constantinople to the list, and admitted that such atrocities did occur, but said they were rare. They also happened alongside Muslim atrocities like the slaughter of knights at the Horns of Hattin.
In fact, the Crusades were preached “because the Pope was alarmed” both by the Muslim violence against Christians, and by the fact that Muslim conquerors would “sell into slavery those who were able-bodied.”
Muslim regimes have long practiced slavery, said Madrid, and “still do in the Sudan.” Because Christians were being massacred, Madrid called the Crusades “offensive for defensive purposes.”
Professor Madden said it is instructive to imagine what the world would be like if the Crusades had never occurred. Though he warned that such thinking was “speculative,” Madden said he believes that “had there been no attempt to slow the spread of Islam, it seems logical that the world we live in would be radically different.”
Thanks to all the Crusaders’ efforts, Madden notes that “Europe very narrowly escaped invasion in the 16th century.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Andrew Walther ----- KEYWORDS: News ------- TITLE: Pope's Call to Arms for Lawyers: Combat 'Divorce Mentality' DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON — Pope John Paul II's recent challenge to civil lawyers not to accept divorce cases was an invitation to help combat a “divorce mentality” in the culture and not a new teaching, said the canon lawyer who is president of The Catholic University of America.
Father David O'Connell said that, despite the brouhaha generated by the Pope's comments in some circles, especially the media, a careful reading of his annual talk to the Roman Rota, a Church marriage tribunal, reveals “some nuances” but otherwise no new instruction.
Much of the Holy Father's Jan. 28 talk centered on his concern with the “divorce mentality,” a mentality Father O'Connell said it is difficult not to be affected by in a nation where virtually one out of every two marriages ends in divorce.
“Statistics indicate that the rate is not significantly different for Catholic couples. That is the reality to which the Pope refers in his address, a mentality that takes exception to the indissolubility of marriage with steadily increasing ease.”
In his talk to the Rota, John Paul refers to the indissolubility of marriage as a truth “addressed to the men and women of every time and place” and as “a necessary condition for the existence of the family.”
“Its absence, therefore, has devastating consequences that spread through the social body like a plague … and that have a negative influence on the new generations who view as tarnished the beauty of true marriage,” he said.
In addressing professionals in the field of civil law near the end of the talk, Father O'Connell said, the Pope did reach beyond his audience of Church personnel, calling them to consider the indissolubility of marriage as an inherent natural human good as well as a sacrament for those who are Catholic. But, Father O'Connell said, “This is not a new idea or exhortation, although it is certainly a boldly worded challenge.”
The Holy Father's statement that lawyers “should always decline the use of their profession for an end that is contrary to justice” should be self-evident to anyone in the legal profession, Father O'Connell said. “That he includes ‘divorce’ as an example, no doubt, is unsettling not only to Catholic lawyers but also to all who have suffered its trauma in their lives. Our first responsibility, however, should always be to resolve a marital crisis, not to give in to it by immediately abandoning a marriage.”
Lawyers’ Experiences
Tom Weisenburger, a Catholic lawyer who has practiced for 40 years in Toledo, Ohio, said although he no longer handles divorce cases, he began accepting them some years ago in good conscience in the interest of providing a Catholic point of view to clients seeking divorces. He was concerned, he said, that other lawyers might be less likely to encourage couples to seek counseling and remind them of their obligations, especially to children.
Nonetheless, he eventually gave up divorce work because he found it less and less satisfying. “I like closure and divorce work is never finished,” he said.
But Charles Testa, a Catholic lawyer from Oregon, Ohio, who has been in practice 60 years, said he simply stopped taking divorce cases years ago because he became convinced it was the right thing to do. “It's a choice you have to make between the conscience and the practice,” he said, adding that his practice did not suffer substantially because of his decision.
“It could have been increased, but who cares about an increase, really? It has been a practice to keep me comfortable,” he added.
Despite his policy against taking divorce cases, Testa tells clients he is still willing to talk with them about their marital problems. “People come to me for advice and I have no hesitancy about giving it to them. And I never send them a bill,” he said.
He knows of at least four marriages he has saved, but suspects there may have been more that he hasn't heard about.
Weisenburger said he had some difficulty with the Pope's comments because of the provision that a Catholic in the United States cannot even seek a Church annulment without first obtaining a civil divorce.
“So how can the Church say you can't have a civil divorce if it is requiring people to have a civil divorce?”
Father Marvin Borger, a canon lawyer and judge on the marriage tribunal of the Toledo Catholic Diocese, said such rules are in place because a tribunal has to protect itself from civil litigation alleging it is breaking up a marriage.
Pope John Paul did not say that a Catholic lawyer could never accept a divorce case, noted Jane Adolphe, a professor of law at Ave Maria Law School in Ann Arbor, Mich. What he did say was that lawyers must look at the intent of the client.
If the intent is simply to dissolve the marriage, they should not take the case. But the Pope allows for divorce if it is sought for a “civil effect,” such as protecting children.
Said Adolphe, “It seems to me that you've got to go on a case-by-case basis and see if you are promoting the divorce mentality or not.”
The Pope's comments should not be construed as discouraging Catholic lawyers from practicing family law, Adolphe added. But lawyers who have built an entire practice around divorce, making their living from it, will have to look at what the Pope is saying: “They're in a difficult situation,” she said.
Father O'Connell said lack of understanding about the Church's marriage annulment process has contributed to the problems many people have had with the Pope's comments.
“There are so many myths and misconceptions about what it is and is not, as well as its effects, that people find the ideal at odds with the reality,” he said. “Another contributing factor is the great number of Catholics who avail themselves of this process, often in a very public way. It has become, in the minds of many, ‘Catholic divorce.’”
Summed up Father O'Connell, “The Pope's address to the Rota each year is designed as a caution to the Church's legal practitioners not to let it become that [Catholic divorce]. Indissolubility is not simply a legal burden; it is the human truth and divinely intended reality for spouses. And in the sacramental context, marriage brings with it the support of divine grace.”
Judy Roberts writes from Millbury, Ohio.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Judy Roberts ----- KEYWORDS: News ------- TITLE: From Altar Boy to Capital Cardinal DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:As archbishop of the nation's capital he has entertained the president in his home, helped comfort the nation after terrorists attacked America and tended to the spiritual needs of the families of those killed.
On Feb. 21, he will have been a cardinal for one year. But he has been on the American — and international — Church scene for decades. Cardinal McCarrick, archbishop of Washington, D.C., spoke with Register staff writer John Burger from his office.
How did you decide to become a priest?
I was a member of the generation where every altar boy thought he had vocation. All of us at Incarnation Church in Manhattan thought that. On a Sunday morning, the priest sometimes asked, “How many of you boys are going to become priests?” and everybody raised his hand. That was our Catholic culture.
I was known by my classmates as a “late” vocation. I was already 21 when I went into the seminary, after two years of college.
I had some studies in Switzerland between high school and college. My best friend at Fordham Prep [in the Bronx] was from a Swiss family, and when he went back, they invited me to go with him to study there and live with them. They paid for my transportation overseas.
When I was turning 20, I made a retreat at a Carthusian monastery in Switzerland and had chance to think and hear the Lord say to me, “You ought to go study to be a priest.” It was at the Chartreuse of ValSainte. The quiet and the sense of totality were always appealing. These guys held back nothing for themselves. They gave everything for the Lord. They were hermits and lived just for the Lord. It was so challenging.
I see that as a real entrance into holiness. I found it extraordinarily powerful and magnetic.
Did you want to be a monk?
I was very tempted. But the retreat director said, “You don't make a decision on just one retreat. Go back and get a good spiritual director.” And I did, and my spiritual director in New York said I'd be more suited serving people in an active ministry.
But I haven't accomplished the things I dreamed of doing — being a holy man or a man for others.
What has most influenced your work?
Every time you meet a holy person, every time you hear a confession, it has an influence on you. Every time you hear a great homily or are challenged to preach one, the Lord is present in your life. Every time you read the breviary and find more wonderful expressions of God's beauty.
I don't think there's a day I've lived that hasn't challenged me to be a good person. I haven't always done it. More than anything it's the experience of great priests who have formed my life. I think of the Servant of God Terence Cardinal Cooke, who was my friend in the seminary. Later I was his secretary. I was so impressed that he never got mad. He was so close to the Lord that nothing really troubled him. He was able to handle problems of the job and maintain an extraordinary equilibrium. I never heard him say a mean word about anyone. He couldn't say the same thing about me.
What has it been like being a cardinal?
You still do the same things you did as before. The basic job description is archbishop: You try to take care of your people and work with your priests. I still try to visit the parishes almost every day. I still spend too much time at my desk and get cranky with my secretary. I have the same faults as before.
To a certain extent you have greater influence. People believe you have more authority, and they listen. The media have been very good to me; they've invited me to come talk on so many occasions. Speaking through the media means I can reach so many more people than if I'm speaking in the Basilica of the National Shrine.
Have you had any interesting meetings with the Pope?
I had one great visit with the Pope last December when I was in Rome for some meetings. He was nice enough to invite me for supper. I figured there'd be a good crowd there, but when I arrived I found out I was the only one, aside from his secretaries.
I was distracted and let the sister who was serving the food fill my plate. Everyone else had only a salad.
The Pope asked me, “How is Washington?” I talked, and they ate, and soon everybody finished. I said, “Holy Father, I'm sorry I've done all the talking,” and he said, “No, eat, eat.” They very patiently waited until I finished.
He's always been extraordinarily kind to me. He sat there and waited, smiling, while I ate until I couldn't eat anymore and had to say to the sister, “Rescue me.”
I told them that it's a great gift being able serve here in Washington. It's a beautiful Church with great people.
As bishop of the nation's capital in what ways have you been able to promote Catholic values in the public square?
By speaking out, constantly trying to proclaim the Gospel, talking about things that are important with people in government, from the president on down, making sure they know the position of the Church. As a bishop here I'm always conscious of the fact that my voice should be another voice raised in communion with the bishops of the United States. But I try to use my personal contacts to get the word out.
The president came to dinner here in our house soon after he was inaugurated. We talked about the poor, the problems of life, human dignity. I'm always talking about what the Church is talking about.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cardinal Theodore McCarrick ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson ------- TITLE: Scalia Defends Death Penalty DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON — Justice Antonin Scalia, a Catholic and one of the Supreme Court's most conservative members, said Feb. 4 that Catholic judges who oppose the death penalty should resign.
Speaking at Georgetown University, Scalia said he strongly disagrees with recent Church teachings against the death penalty and argued that the Church historically has supported capital punishment.
“No authority that I know of denies the 2,000-year-old tradition of the Church approving capital punishment,” he said. “I don't see why there's been a change.”
Scalia, a father of nine, including a priest, attended Georgetown as an undergraduate and later taught there as a visiting professor.
Asked to reconcile his Catholic faith with his support of the death penalty, Scalia said a Catholic judge with concerns about the death penalty should resign because he or she would not be upholding the laws judges must swear to protect.
“You couldn't function as a judge,” he said.
At a forum in Chicago on Jan. 25, Scalia said judges who refuse to enforce capital punishment are “ignoring duly enacted constitutional laws and sabotaging the death penalty.”
In recent years Pope John Paul II has spoken repeatedly against capital punishment, and the Church's magisterium has insisted that recourse to the death penalty should be only as a last resort when there are no other ways for society to defend itself.
In fact, the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” doesn't totally rule out recourse to the death penalty.
No. 2267 says: “Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”
The catechism continues: “Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm — without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself — the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity ‘are very rare, if not practically non-existent.’”
(From combined news services)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:Miramax Uses Lent to Make Sex Film ‘Cute’
THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE, Feb. 5 — The Catholic League is asking Disney chairman Michael Eisner and Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein to reschedule the opening of “40 Days and 40 Nights” until after Easter.
The Miramax film, which is scheduled to open March 1, the middle of Lent, is about a Catholic whose pledge to give up sex for Lent is tested by his ex-girlfriend.
“To show a film which parodies Lent in a most vulgar way is bad enough,” League president William Donohue wrote to Eisner and Weinstein. “But to show it during Lent is outrageous.”
The Miramax film is rated R for “strong sexual content, nudity and language” and is noted for its “vulgar sex gags,” according to a news release from the Catholic League. Disney is the parent company of Miramax.
Donohue said the film's publicist told the League that Lent is used in the film as a vehicle for the character to give up sex, to “make the story cute.”
Asked Donohue, “But wouldn't it have been just as cute to portray the character as a Muslim who gives up sex from sundown to sunset during Ramadan and is tempted during the day?”
Bush Team Makes Porn Purveyors Nervous
The $10-billion-a-year business grew significantly with the former administration's relaxed attitude, say pornographers Larry Flynt and Danni Ashe. And some former Justice Department officials say that corporate America felt it was safe to enter the trade. AT&T, Westin and Marriott profit from the business, PBS reported.
But that may change. Internet service provider Yahoo, for example, backed out of having a virtual sex shop after an anti-porn campaign waged by the American Family Association.
Baltimore Vocation Ad Runs During Playoffs
But there has been a lot of talk about the ads, and a lot of instances where it led people to talk up the priestly vocation with single young men.
The archdiocese, which ordained six priests last year and has 36 seminarians, figured the best place to reach young men in large numbers were the NFL playoffs when the hometown Ravens were still competing. The Catholic Communications Fund paid $17,500 for the 30-second ad.
Wisconsin Student Buried With Baby
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Feb. 4 — The pastor of a church where a young mother was buried with her newborn urged mourners to learn from the past, the news service reported. Father Al Jakubowski said at the funeral of Karen Marie Hubbard and her infant daughter, Julianna Marie, that prayer, support and compassion, not blame, are needed at such a time.
Hubbard, a 19-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin, died after giving birth in her dormitory in Eau Claire, Wisc. She and the baby were found in a bathroom stall. The baby died later from complications of being deprived of oxygen around the time of her birth.
No one knew Hubbard was pregnant.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ------- TITLE: Fetal Surgeries Provide Evidence of the Humanity of the Unborn DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:DOUGLASVILLE, Ga. — A raised fist is often used as a symbol of anger or defiance. But in Samuel Armas’ case, his raised fist proclaimed to all the world that children in the womb are people too.
Two and a half years ago, a startling photograph of little Samuel's fist, poking out of his mother's womb on an operating table, made headlines around the world. At only 14 weeks gestation, a routine medical exam showed Samuel had a severe form of spina bifida, a condition in which the spine is exposed, possibly leading to brain damage and profound physical handicaps.
His parents, Julie and Alex, from Douglasville, Ga., agreed to have Samuel undergo an experimental operation — at an unprecedented 21 weeks, while he was still in the womb — to help correct the problem.
Today Samuel is a healthy young boy, with only minimal physical handicaps due to spina bifida. But Samuel's condition isn't the only positive outcome of the landmark surgery. His world-famous fist was seen by many as undeniable proof of the humanity of the unborn children.
And medicine continues to provide more evidence.
In fact, medical treatment for children in the womb is not new. The first “open fetal surgery” (such as Samuel's operation, in which the uterus is temporarily removed from the mother while the child is operated on) was performed at the University of California at San Francisco as far back as 1981.
Today, the main centers for fetal surgery in the United States are Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, and the University of California at San Francisco. But Dr. Lillian Blackmon, chairman of the Committee on the Fetus and Newborn of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that “to a fair degree” fetal surgery of any kind is still considered experimental.
Blackmon explained that there are five major categories of open fetal surgery currently being practiced. These procedures treat cystadenomatoid malformations of the lung, urinary tract obstructions, congenital diaphragmatic hernias, spina bifida, and sacrococcygeal teratomas (tumors on the tailbone). The last three procedures are among those still considered experimental.
Risks
Because fetal surgery often carries a high risk to both mother and child, some pro-lifers have questioned certain operations, in spite of the value of fetal surgery in the public debate over abortion. The operation to correct spina bifida, for example, is life-threatening, while spina bifida itself is not.
Julie and Alex Armas, who are pro-life, never considered aborting Samuel when told of his condition. They agreed to allow the operation to be photographed and to speak to the media in part because they felt Samuel's story would serve the pro-life cause.
But Julie told Focus on the Family Magazine, “We've been asked several times, ‘How can you say you wanted your child to live no matter what, then risk his life for this surgery?’”
Julie's response was simple: “How could it be an ethical dilemma for us to make his life better?”
This reflects a very delicate situation parents like the Armases find themselves in. Although there is no clear requirement for it, there appears to be no ethical principal that would forbid such high-risk surgery. It can even be considered praiseworthy, apart from the possible benefit to the child, inasmuch as it may advance medical science and help others in the future.
Dr. Edward Furton, director of public affairs of the Boston-based National Catholic Bioethics Center, said that while an operation like Samuel's “goes beyond what is morally obligatory,” there is no definitive Catholic position against high-risk procedures in such cases.
“Those who make use of [experimental procedures] are advancing the science of medicine on several fronts … not only the cure of spina bifida but also the whole area of intra-uterine surgery. I don't think Catholics should take any different moral stance on this than the rest of the community. We should be as much a part of looking for cures … as anyone else.”
While the wisdom of an individual operation may sometimes be subject to legitimate debate, there is little dispute about the impact fetal surgery has in countering pro-abortion arguments. Mo Woltering, assistant director of public policy of the American Life League, said that advances in fetal surgery make it harder to deny the truth about abortion.
Said Woltering, “Everything in science points to the human embryo, fetus, neonate — right from the beginning of conception, everything points to its being a human person…. [Fetal surgery] certainly helps reinforce the fact that we have a human subject living in the womb and that subject deserves every kind of protection as well as medical benefit available.”
Powerful Images
The moving photograph of Samuel's fist was used powerfully in the congressional debate over partial-birth abortion — a gruesome late-term procedure often carried out on children at about the age Samuel was at when he underwent surgery in utero.
Commenting on the picture, Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, told The New York Times last year that such dramatic evidence “does make our job harder, because the images are very powerful.”
David Curtin writes from Toronto.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: David Curtin ----- KEYWORDS: ------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:Moscow Visit Said to Be Remote Preparation for Pope
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Feb. 1 — Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, will meet with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II Feb. 21-22 to try to heal the rift between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The French news agency reported Vatican sources saying that Cardinal Kasper could try to convince the patriarch to consent to the first papal visit to Russia.
According to Orthodox sources, Pope John Paul II met with a delegation sent by Alexei to the interfaith world day of prayer for peace in Assisi. The Pope reportedly declared his intention of bringing the icon of Our Lady of Kazan to Moscow. The Vatican declared a decade ago that it holds the icon, believed to date from the 16th century, which disappeared from Russia during the confusion of civil war and two world wars.
Pontifical University to Hold Slavery Forum
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Feb. 2 — The Pontifical Gregorian University will hold a conference on prostitution, child labor and other kinds of “21st century human slavery,” said James Nicholson, U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. The conference, a U.S. initiative, will be open to the participation of other nations that have diplomatic relations to the Holy See.
The forum will tackle the issues of women pressed into prostitution and of children into slave labor conditions. Many of those people are immigrants who fall into traps, Nicholson told the wire service.
Philippines Prepares to Hold Family Meeting
The Philippine Catholic Bishops Conference is charged with conducting an intensive formation campaign for the event, which will focus on the role of Christian families in evangelization. It has designated special festivals on March 19 for fathers, the second Sunday of May for mothers, Oct. 2 for children and all of December for families.
“Maybe it was because of our faith and the value that we give to our families that the Holy Father chose the Philippines to host” the meeting, said Msgr. Ding Coronel, secretary-general of the bishops conference.
Cardinal Martini Submits Retirement Letter
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Feb. 6 — Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milan offered his resignation to the Pope as he prepared to turn 75, the normal age for retirement of bishops and priests.
The French news agency described Cardinal Martini wishfully as a “liberal long seen as the most likely successor to Pope John Paul II.”
It is up to the Pope whether to accept the resignation or ask that the cardinal continue to serve.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican ------- TITLE: Vanier Speaks on the 'Handicapped' Pope for Lent DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY — “He's never been more beautiful,” said Jean Vanier, founder of the international network of L'Arche (The Ark) communities in which volunteers live full-time with the mentally handicapped.
He was speaking of Pope John Paul II, 81 years old and stooped with age, shuffling along with his cane, unable to stand for long periods, and who on occasion now drools uncontrollably and slurs his speech.
“It is a blessing to have someone so fragile — he is an incredible sign for the world,” added Vanier. “He is teaching an incredible lesson in assuming his disability, his fragility and trusting in St. Paul's words: ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’”
Vanier was in Rome to address a press conference releasing the papal message for Lent 2002, but his spontaneous remarks on his experience of living 37 years with the mentally handicapped eclipsed the event itself. There were no complaints though, as his witness was the most eloquent summary of the message possible.
“After such a beautiful testimony it is difficult to speak,” said Father Ciro Benedettini, vice-director of the Holy See Press Office, as an unusual silence settled over the normally talkative reporters.
The annual message for Lent took as its theme this year, “You have received without paying, give without pay.” It was presented by Archbishop Paul Josef Cordes, President of the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum,” which coordinates the charitable initiatives of the Holy See.
The message focused on the obligation of Christians to give of themselves to others in the usual forms of charity, but stressed the need to appreciate life itself as a gift, and to welcome it always as a gift, even when weak or handicapped.
“It is also worth repeating here that not everything that is technically possible is morally acceptable,” said the document, taking up a pro-life theme. “Scientific work aimed at securing a quality of life more in keeping with human dignity is admirable, but it must never be forgotten that human life is a gift, and that it remains precious even when marked by suffering and limitations. It is a gift to be accepted and to be loved at all times, received without pay and to be placed without pay at the service of others.”
“There is a great mystery around people with disabilities,” said Vanier. “It is a scandal, and we cannot underestimate the pain. The most oppressed people in the world are those with disabilities — in France, 96% of women who find out that they are carrying a child with disabilities will opt for an abortion. The disabled are often made to feel guilty for existing.”
“It is scandalous, but it is the same scandal as the Cross,” continued Vanier. “Many handicapped children cry out: “My God, my God, why have I been abandoned?” It is the same cry from the Cross. This is the mystery — those who appear to be less human teach us to be human and those who are most rejected are those who heal us.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond J. De Souza ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican ------- TITLE: Longing for God's Holy Temple DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:Register Summary
Pope John Paul II said believers who are overwhelmed by evil and suffering in the world could look forward with joyful hope to God's ultimate victory.
Even when God seems distant, he never forgets those who trust in him in the midst of their trials, the Pope said Feb. 6 at his weekly general audience.
The believer “still finds himself in contact with evil and suffering, but he knows with certainty that the destination of life's pilgrimage is not the void of death, but rather a saving encounter with God,” he said.
The Pope focused on Psalm 43, a poetic prayer for deliverance and perseverance in the midst of suffering. He was continuing a series of reflections on the psalms used in the Liturgy of the Hours.
In a general audience a while ago, we spoke about the psalm that precedes the one we just heard and said that it was closely related to the psalm that followed it. Psalms 42 and 43 actually form a single song, divided in three parts by the same refrain: “Why are you downcast, my soul? Why do you groan within me? Wait for God, whom I shall praise again, my savior and my God” (Psalm 42:6,12; Psalm 43:5).
These words are like a soliloquy and express the psalmist's deepest feelings. He finds himself far from Zion — the reference point for his existence since it is that special place where God dwells and where the faithful worship him. He feels, therefore, a loneliness that stems from a lack of understanding and even aggressiveness coming from the faithless people around him, which is aggravated by his isolation and God's silence. However, the psalmist reacts against his sadness with an invitation to trust that he directs to himself and with a marvelous affirmation of hope: he is counting on being able again to praise God, “his savior.”
Instead of talking only to himself as in the preceding psalm, the psalmist turns to God in Psalm 43 and begs God to defend him against his adversaries. Repeating almost word for word a cry that is foreshadowed in the previous psalm (Psalm 42:10), the psalmist actually directs his cry of distress to God this time: “Why then do you spurn me? Why must I go about mourning, with the enemy oppressing me?” (Psalm 43:2).
Light in the Darkness
Nevertheless, he feels by now that the gloomy interval of his distant separation is about to end, and he expresses his certainty that he will return to Zion and find God's dwelling place once again. The Holy City is no longer his lost homeland as it was in his lament in the preceding psalm (see Psalm 42:3-4). Instead, it is the joyous goal toward which he is journeying. God's “fidelity” and “light” (see Psalm 43:3) will be the guide for his return to Zion. The Lord himself will be the ultimate goal of his journey. He calls upon God as his judge and defender (see verses 1-2). He uses three verbs as he begs God to intervene: “grant me justice,” “defend me” and “rescue me” (verse 1). They are like three stars of hope that light up in the dark sky of the time of trial, signaling the imminent dawn of salvation.
I do not want you to be amazed at the prophet saying his soul was shaken, given that the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘Now my soul is troubled.’
St. Ambrose's reading of the psalmist's experience is significant because he applies it to Jesus praying in Gethsemane: “I do not want you to be amazed at the prophet saying his soul was shaken, given that the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘Now my soul is troubled.’ For he who took upon himself our weaknesses, took our sensitivity too, and that is why he was sad to the point of death, but not because of death. A voluntary death, on which the happiness of all men depended, could not have caused sadness. So, he was sad to the point of death, as long as that grace had not been carried to its fulfillment. His own testimony proves it, when he says about his death: ‘There is a baptism with which I must be baptized: how anxious I am until it is accomplished!’” (Le rimostranze di Giobbe e di Davide, VII, 28, Rome 1980, p. 233).
The Lord's Guidance
Going back to Psalm 43, the solution the psalmist so ardently longs for is about to open before his eyes: his return to the source of life and of communion with God. “Fidelity” (the Lord's loving truth) and “light” (the revelation of his goodness) are portrayed as messengers that God himself will send down from heaven to take the faithful one by the hand and lead him toward the goal he desires (see Psalm 43:3).
The sequence of stages in the journey to Zion and its spiritual center is very meaningful. First to appear is “the holy mountain” (the hill where the Temple and the citadel of David stand). Then “the place of your dwelling” enters the picture (the sanctuary of Zion with all its different buildings and spaces). Then comes “the altar of God” (where the entire people's sacrifices and official worship take place). The ultimate and decisive goal is the God of joy and his embrace — a renewed intimacy with him who, at first, was distant and silent.
Joyous Festivity
At this point, everything becomes song, gladness and celebration (see verse 4). The original Hebrew text speaks of the “God who is the joy of my jubilation.” This is a Semitic form of speech used to express the superlative degree: the psalmist wishes to emphasize that the Lord is the source of all happiness, supreme joy and the fullness of peace.
The Greek Septuagint translation apparently adopted an equivalent Aramaic term that means youth and translated it as “the God who gives joy to my youth,” thus introducing the idea of the freshness and the intensity of the joy that the Lord gives. The Latin Vulgate translation of the Book of Psalms, which is a translation made from the Greek, says therefore, “ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.” The psalm used to be recited in this form at the foot of the altar, in the eucharistic liturgy formerly in use, as an invocation leading into the encounter with the Lord.
Persevering Hope
The initial lament of the refrain of Psalms 42 and 43 resounds for one last time at the end of the psalm (see Psalm 43:5). The psalmist has not yet reached God's Temple, and he is still undergoing the darkness of his trial. But by now the light of his future encounter is already shining in his eyes and his lips are already intoning the strains of a joyful song. At this point, his cry is mainly marked by hope. So commenting on this psalm, St. Augustine observes: “One whose soul troubles him will tell his soul to ‘hope in God.’ … Meanwhile live in hope. Hope that is seen is not hope; but if we hope for what we cannot see, it is through patience that we wait for it (see Romans 8:24-25)” (Esposizione sui Salmi I, Rome 1982, p. 1019).
Thus, the psalm becomes the prayer of someone who is a pilgrim on earth. He still finds himself in contact with evil and suffering, but he knows with certainty that the destination of life's pilgrimage is not the void of death, but rather a saving encounter with God. This certainty is even stronger for Christians, to whom the letter to the Hebrews proclaims: “You have approached Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and countless angels in festal gathering, and the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, and God the judge of all, and the spirits of the just made perfect, and Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and the sprinkled blood that speaks more eloquently than that of Abel” (Hebrews 12:22-24).
(Translation by Zenit and Register)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican ------- TITLE: Appointments & Meetings DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:Appointed
Saturday, Feb. 2
E Don Francisco Moreno Barron as auxiliary bishop of Morelia, Mexico. E Fathers Roberto Colombo, associate professor of biochemistry at the Sacred Heart Catholic University of Milan, Italy, and Mieczyslaw Grzegocki, professor of medical physiology at the university of medicine of Leopolis, Ukraine, as ordinary members of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
Monday, Feb. 4
E Father Sebastian Adayanthrath as auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese of Ernakulam-Angamaly of the Syro-Malabars, India.
Tuesday, Feb. 5
E Msgr. Gerard Hanna as bishop of Wagga Wagga, Australia, following the resignation of Bishop William Brennan.
E Archbishop Marco Brogi as apostolic nuncio in Egypt.
E Archbishop Giuseppe Pinto as apostolic nuncio in Mali and Cape Verde.
E Archbishop Adolfo Tito Yllana as apostolic nuncio in the Solomon Islands.
Thursday, Feb. 7
E Father Joseph Mitsuaki Takami as auxiliary bishop of Nagasaki, Japan.
Met With
Saturday, Feb. 2
E Nine members of the bishops’ conference of Argentina on their ad limina visits.
E Archbishop Giacinto Berloco, apostolic nuncio in El Salvador and Belize.
E Archbishop Jozef Kowalczyk, apostolic nuncio in Poland.
Monday, Feb. 4
E Cardinal Ricardo Carles Gordo and Auxiliary Bishop Josep Sainz Meneses of Barcelona, Spain.
E Three members of the bishops’ conference of Argentina on their ad limina visits.
Tuesday, Feb. 5
E Archbishop Stephen Zurbriggen, apostolic nuncio in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, and apostolic administrator of Estonia.
E Four members of the bishops’ conference of Argentina on their ad limina visits.
Wednesday, Feb. 6
E Cardinal Camillo Ruini, vicar general for the diocese of Rome and president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, with the rector and assistants of Rome's Major Pontifical Seminary.
Thursday, Feb. 7
E Four members of the bishops’ conference of Argentina on their ad limina visits.
Friday, Feb. 8
E Four members of the bishops’ conference of Argentina on their ad limina visits.
E Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
E Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican ------- TITLE: Holy Land's Father Vasko: 'A Crisis in the Cradle of Christianity' DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:NEW YORK — Father Peter Vasko is president of the Holy Land Foundation, which assists Christians in Israel and the Palestinian territories with housing, education and jobs. He spoke to Register staff writer John Burger while touring the United States Jan. 14 to Feb. 6. He also reported to bishops on the situation in the Holy Land.
Part 2 of 2
How have recent world events impacted Christians in the Holy Land?
Father Vasko: Christians are a minority within a minority in the Holy Land. There are 3.9 million Muslims in Israel, including the occupied territories; there are 4.7 million Jews. And there are 165,000 Christians. There's been a steady decrease in the number of Christians in the Holy Land. A lot has to do with the birthrate. For Christians it's 2.2%; for Muslims, 4.8%, and for Jews 3%. The majority of young Christians are leaving, so it's likely the growth rate will become smaller. By 2020, the growth rate of Christians will be 0% if it continues like this. These figures are from a 1999 study, “Why the Christians are Leaving,” by Bernard Sabella, a leading sociologist at Bethlehem University
Why
In Israel, not including the occupied lands, they're leaving first of all because of the Islamization influence. Fringe groups, radical Muslims, are coming in. Secondly, there's an economic factor.
To encourage them to stay, we have a scholarship grant, and if someone wins one, he promises to stay in the Holy Land for four years. We then try to secure them employment.
But because of the second intifada, the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been closed off to many principal Israeli cities to keep terrorists from entering — although we've seen over the years that there are all sorts of ways to get in.
But what price do you extract to punish a nation because of a dozen or so criminals? They're stereotyping the average Palestinian who has to have a job to feed his kids and pay for their education. They've made things impossible.
We just finished a 13-unit housing facility in Beit Hanina. Couples will be paying a symbolic rent, living with other Christian couples — and not emigrating. We're very proud of that. Because we're such a minority, they feel safe with other Christians around them.
For the last four or five years, Christians have been asking, if there is a Palestinian state, will there be discrimination against them in jobs and housing because they're Christians?
Why is it important to stem the flow of Christians from the Holy Land?
If we don't have a sense of who we are as Christians, of our religious roots and heritage, how can we call ourselves followers of Christ? This is where Christianity began. Its founder was born here. Abraham was born in Iraq; Mohammed in Mecca. The Church is not an external facade but a living community. If we don't do something about this there will not be a living community, but a collection of empty monuments.
What is the Muslim attitude toward Christians in the Holy Land?
At this point, there is basically a good rapport. But for the last four or five years there's been an under-current of fundamentalism coming from Algeria, Sudan and Egypt, making the road bumpier. In Nazareth, there were no problems between Muslims and Christians. But at the end of 1997 members of the Islamic Movement came in and took over a plaza outside the Basilica of the Annunciation, which the municipality had designated as a public square for the many Jubilee Year pilgrims. There was to be an information center there and a dropping off point. The Muslims squatted, put up a huge tent and said, “We're not leaving.” The local police did nothing, and the Israeli government looked the other way.
Without impunity, the Muslims have been attacking the Christians going into the Basilica. In 1998, they burned Christian-owned shops, and the police simply looked on. Now they're building an illegal mosque in spite of a court injunction. Once again, law enforcement has looked the other way.
On Jan. 9, we, along with the International Coalition for Nazareth, protested, and construction came to a temporary halt. But it's not permanently stopped. If the mosque is built, it will be a permanent source of extreme tension between Christians and Muslims, Jews and Christians and, in the end Muslim and Jewish relations. This radical group doesn't represent moderate Muslims in Nazareth. Israel is very well aware of them, that their publications are anti-West and anti-Israeli. It will have a very detrimental effect on Christians’ trust in Israel, which promised to protect them and their places of worship.
The basilica is now under siege. Stones are thrown at worshipers as they go in. There will be further Christian emigration from even Israel proper if this mosque is allowed to be built there. The Islamic Movement leaders have said, “If the mosque is not built, the Christian leaders and Israel's leaders will pay the consequences.” A week later they indicated that there would be a bloodbath.
This is why this thing has to stop. If not, they will have created a vacuum of power that is considered very dangerous, with volatility against citizens and violence in a city that never before experienced violence.
We're not opposed to Islam, but we are opposed to violence and intimidation, to squatting on public property. Under [former Prime Minister Ehud] Barak they received government approval but had to wait for a building permit. We're asking [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon to take away that approval and go back to the original plan.
There are 11 mosques in Nazareth. Why do they need to build one under the Basilica of the Annunciation?
Saudi Arabia, King Faisal and Yasser Arafat are against it. president Bush and the Pope asked them not to build there. Faisal offered $10 million for them to build it anywhere else in Nazareth, and they said no. It's more than, “I want to build it here.” It's a statement that they are here to stay and people will be under the control of their understanding of what government is instead of a democracy.
How would you characterize Israel's response to the plight of Palestinian Christians?
There's a general indifference on the part of officials and a majority of the population. They don't identify you as a Christian or a Muslim but as a Palestinian. And as a Palestinian you are the enemy. There's an advantage for the Israeli government to keep Christians here — it's the connecting link they have with the rest of Christianity, and Christianity exists mainly in the Western world. Israel is the cradle of Christianity. The Jews are our elder brothers; they have to take care of their younger brothers — but there's no great interest to do so.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Burger ----- KEYWORDS: News ------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:British Clergy Getting Self-Defense Lessons
THE PRESS ASSOCIATION, Jan. 22 — Responding to an increased threat of violence against members of the clergy, an advocacy group has begun offering self-defense classes to priests, vicars and rabbis, the national news agency of Great Britain reported.
Tae kwon do lessons were being organized by the Amicus union for skilled and professional people.
The union reported last year that Church workers were more vulnerable to physical attacks than doctors or probation officers. The research showed that one in eight had been assaulted in the previous two years.
Australian Archbishop Laments Abortion of Handicapped
Archbishop Hart complained that the law in Victoria, which prohibits abortion unless a doctor believes it is necessary to protect a woman from serious danger to her life or mental health, seemed to permit ever-widening boundaries for abortion, the Melbourne daily said.
A spokesman for coroner Jacinta Heffey said the aborted baby, at 32 weeks gestation, was stillborn and that the coroner's court only has jurisdiction over reportable deaths. Since there was no birth, there was no death, the spokesman said. Archbishop Hart called that a “serious misjudgment.”
Said the archbishop, “If it is true that our laws do not protect children in such cases — indeed do not even allow a full coronial inquest — there is something seriously wrong with our laws.”
Messianic Groups Reaching Out to Russian Israelis
The Bible had been given to a student by Jewish Christians who believe that Jesus is the Messiah.
The Post reported that there are an estimated 1,500 adult, Russian-speaking immigrants who belong to messianic congregations. The number of messianic groups in the country has more than tripled in the decade since mass Soviet Jewish immigration began, it said.
A Conservative rabbi who leads a Russian-speaking congregation said that one of the key factors attracting Russian immigrants to messianic groups is the social distance between them and native Israelis.
The U.S. State Department reports that evangelical Christian and other religious groups have complained that police in Israel are slow to investigate incidents of alleged harassment, threats and vandalism committed by an anti-missionary organization.
Ban Abortion, Cardinal Tells South African Government
SOUTH AFRICA PRESS ASSOCIATION, Feb. 5 — Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban, South Africa, said the government should suspend abortions as a gesture of its seriousness in calling for a moral renewal in society, according to the South African news agency.
Cardinal Napier made the appeal in the Church newspaper Southern Cross. Commenting on President Thabo Mbeki's request to religious leaders to help address the nation's “moral decline,” especially in terms of violence, crime and corruption, the cardinal said suspending abortions would demonstrate the government's seriousness about the value of life.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ------- TITLE: EDITORIAL DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:Justice Antonin Scalia deserves admiration for his pro-life convictions and much of his Supreme Court work. He should stick to being a jurist. As a theologian, he isn't as successful. Scalia spoke twice recently about his support for the death penalty — once at the University of Chicago Divinity School and once at Georgetown University.
Unfortunately, his remarks will do more harm than good. He said that, since the Pope's teaching on capital punishment in Evangelium Vitae did not come ex cathedra, i.e., with formal infallibility, he is not obligated as a Catholic to accept it, only to give it “serious consideration.”
He has a point. There is legitimate space for scholarly dissent on some matters of doctrine. And one can hardly fault Scalia for voicing his dissent in Chicago, in an academic forum that was set up specifically for scholars to debate such things.
But Justice Scalia must realize that the kind of public dissent he voiced at Georgetown — in answer to a student's question after Scalia's personal testimony for Jesuit Heritage Week — wasn't an example of appropriate dissent.
It was an example of a powerful man persuading a crowd of people that the Church is wrong — and obscuring the obligations of Catholics in the process.
Scalia's comments had several things in common with the words of the Massachusetts lab scientist who recently created the first clone. The scientist also claimed a deep Catholic faith; he was also dealing with a teaching that wasn't defined ex cathedra (there is, of course, much more to the magisterium than the two dogmas that have been given that special treatment) and he also selectively quoted St. Paul.
And, like the clone-maker, Scalia was wrong.
“I have given [Evangelium Vitae] careful and thoughtful consideration and rejected it,” Scalia said. “I do not find the death penalty immoral.”
Neither does the Church. The 1995 encyclical — The Gospel of Life — spells out in great detail what makes the death penalty just. If instead of supporting the death penalty Scalia had wanted to ban it altogether, he would have had just as much trouble assenting to Evangelium Vitae as he does now.
But, in the encyclical, the Pope isn't interested in the death penalty as a merely abstract concept. He's concerned with what Catholics should do to help reverse today's culture of death, and how best we should love our neighbors as ourselves. And so he teaches that the cases where the death penalty must be used are extremely rare, practically nonexistent.
That's why scholars like Thomist Steve Long (who set out to write a critique of the Pope's position but ended up adopting it), theologian Cardinal Avery Dulles (who points out that the Church's teaching hasn't been reversed, but merely applied to new circumstances) and Law Professor Charles Rice (who calls the teaching on capital punishment “conservatives’ Humanae Vitae“ because it is difficult for them to accept) are supportive of the Holy Father's teaching. It's a teaching, after all, that has been incorporated into the catechism and so deserves more than “serious consideration.”
Scalia rightly points out that Church teaching has consistently held that the state has the right to execute criminals. That teaching has been voiced by popes, saints and doctors of the Church around the world. But how does that teaching apply in a situation like the one we face in today's West?
Today's judicial community (as Scalia has noted) acts as though it has jurisdiction over the right to life — as though the state can simply give people “permission” to abort children or to commit various types of euthanasia.
This is completely contrary to the view of legal authority and just penalty that the Fathers and Doctors of the Church had.
If a state denies a transcendent moral order and denies that its authority over life is delegated from God, how can it justly apply the penalty? Would St. Thomas Aquinas look at the Supreme Court Scalia sits on and blithely hand it more power over life? Not likely.
Aquinas said, “It is permissible to kill a criminal if this is necessary for the welfare of the whole community.” He would probably agree with the catechism's teaching that when non-lethal means better serve the common good, then that's what judges should use.
----- EXCERPT: Scalia's Dissenting Opinion ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion ------- TITLE: LETTER DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:Simply Mad at the Mouse
Regarding “Disney at 100: Not Quite So Wonderful” (Jan. 27-Feb. 2):
Sometimes, when the Mickey Mouse Movie Company tries to do the right thing, they still mess it up.
WI teach Alexandre Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo to my freshman English class and was eagerly awaiting the movie. I was thoroughly disappointed to hear the tale as told by Disney from many of my students who saw it on the opening weekend.
I admit to having a purist streak when it comes to making movies of novels, but, in this case, Disney took out the most meaningful, and the most Christian, aspect of the novel. In the book, the count becomes distraught when his quest for vengeance unexpectedly results in the death of the child Edouard. He realizes that he has gone too far and, in response, he allows his third (for in the book there are many villains) enemy to live.
In news reports about this movie, Disney spokespersons said they had eliminated much of the violence contained in the book. The lead actor, Catholic James Caviezel, said his primary problem with the movie was that the remaining violence still seemed rather gratuitous. If Disney had stayed more true to the story, it would have been able to depict a clear example of repentance.
It is Dantes’ quest for revenge that often appeals to ninth-grade readers, but it is his recognition of the evil he has done and his repentance that lead me to teach it each year. Disney chose to skip that part.
CHRIS MOSMEYER Temple, Texas
The writer teaches at Holy Trinity Catholic High School.
Wicca Watch
Regarding “Catholic College Hires Pagan Witch,” Inbrief, Feb. 3-9:
That witch hired to lecture at the Jesuits’ Heythrop College of the University of London isn't just any old pagan witch. Vivianne Crowley is a long-time leader of British Wicca. She is reported to be a woman of considerable charm, and a highly gifted speaker and writer.
Among the things she'll probably tell her audiences is her theory that Wicca, like many other religions, is a “homeward journey” to reunite with the ultimate source of spirit. Her lectures are almost certain to leave a more positive and creditable view of paganism with her hearers.
So what did the Jesuits think they were doing when they invited her to speak?
But, after all, she did once perform a pagan ritual in public at Canterbury Cathedral.
SANDRA MIESEL Indianapolis
A Tolkien Purist Speaks
Thank you for printing John Prizer's review of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (“Frodo Lives!,” Jan. 6-12).
I enjoyed the review and agree with a lot of it, but I would change the article's subhead to say the movie “does Tolkien almost right.” The Middle-Earth of the movie is a more pessimistic one than the book's. For that reason, I would urge anyone who sees the movie to also read the book, or at least volume one, before drawing final conclusions about Tolkien's world.
I enjoyed the movie more than I expected to. The film makes some improvements in order to convey the story to a modern audience, but still shows the disappointing limitations of translating into a movie any book that deals with an interior struggle.
The book is brightened by the gentle, yet strong characters of the leprechaunish Tom Bombadil and his wood-nymph wife Goldberry. The ring has no power over them. Because there's no poetry in the movie (one of my favorite aspects of the book), we can't hear Sam sing the “Song of Gil-galad.” The bad guys in the book are less exteriorly repulsive and more inwardly corrupt: Orcs are not superhuman monsters. They are corrupt gnomes. The Black Riders don't need to be the movie's sword-wielding fencers. They scare people by the very evil that's in their hearts, even before they are seen physically. And where is Glorfindel, the elf lord whose horse can easily outdistance the Black Rider's and at whose glorious manifestation of his true nature they flee into the river in terror? Actually, the larger role played by Arwen is a nice touch. The book is a bit too masculine.
Prizer is right to highlight the shocking, momentary transformation of Bilbo into a vampire-like creature when, in Rivendell, he sees the ring again. I have a different take on this from the review. This is the only place that I felt that the movie betrayed the book. If you read this passage, you'll see that Bilbo does not physically, literally transform. Instead, Frodo momentarily sees Bilbo as a covetous, orc-like creature. The director could have handled this better without sacrificing any excitement.
The flight choreography could have been improved by slowing it down a bit. Jackson's slashing cuts with the angle of the camera are more deadly than the swordplay they depict.
There were ways that the movie improved on the book for a contemporary audience. Arwen adds some feminine balance. The hobbit characters are particularly well-cast. Seeing hobbits played by humans made me identify more with them than with the outwardly homely creatures described in the book, as did the more accessible Gandalf and Aragorn. The heavier emphasis on Aragorn's kindly nature gave the movie a more contemporary political tone. It would be nice to have leaders who don't pursue office for its own sake, but to serve.
MARK OSBORNE Montgomery Village, Maryland
Crisis in New York
Regarding “New York Targets pro-life Pregnancy Centers” (Jan. 20-26):
New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, with the endorsement of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), are initiating convoluted legal allegations to eliminate all pro-life crisis-pregnancy centers. These esteemed personages allege that such centers are engaging is misleading advertising, and the unlicensed practice of medicine. It should be noted that they turn a blind (politicized) eye to the sordid lucrative abortion industry.
Nationwide, on a daily basis, 4,000 innocent unborn children are aborted. Our taxes end up in the deep pockets of abortionists. This is compounded by the fact that better specimens of aborted babies are “recycled” and their body parts sold for profit. All other aborted babies are unceremoniously thrown in dumpsters or shredded in garbage disposals. Compare this daily loss of life to the Twin Towers disaster.
Last year, in California, Planned Parenthood alleged that a major abortion-clinic chain was guilty of “unethical business practices.” In reality it was a turf fight by (human?) vultures fighting over the profitable bodies of aborted unborn children.
Thank God that, in New York, the American Catholic Lawyers Association, the American Center for Law and Justice and the American Family Center for Law and Justice, along with others, will defend all pro-life crisis-pregnancy centers. They will defend and reiterate the fact that all human life is a gift from God.
STEPHEN J. CONWAY Banning, California
Three Wise Readers
I thoroughly enjoyed Tim Drake's wonderful article on G.K. Chesterton, Frank Capra and Charles Dickens (“Our Three Wise Men,” Dec. 23-29) in the Register. He is such a fine writer.
Our family have become old movie buffs since we turned off the TV years ago and decided we'd rent or buy the oldies that had a story to tell without the sex, profanity, vulgarity and violence. Frank Capra films are always our favorites and now we know why after reading “Our Three Wise Men.” Oh that more families would turn to these oldies — they are so much more entertaining, and often leave viewers with a good moral lesson for life.
MARY ANN KUHARSKI Minneapolis
I apologize for the tardiness of this compliment on your fine article (“Our Three Wise Men”) in the Dec 23-29 Register. I receive the Register from a friend who is kind enough to let me enjoy a very well thought-out Catholic newspaper. This article kept to the point and brought out its meaning clearly and precisely. Not having heard or read anything by Frank Capra, I feel I have missed something in not having viewed his films, or if I have, not knowing the credit belonged to a man of humble and conscientious fidelity to the two great commandments.
In bringing the article to an end, I thought of Chesterton, when he said “It is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something.” Then I remembered the “Yes” that would bring man back, and forever open the way for him to return, from whence he came, through the new Eve, Mary's freely said Yes to God.
I hope I get the opportunity to enjoy more of Drake's writings.
THOMAS JORDAN Seekonk, Massachusetts
To paraphrase Frank Capra, “It's a wonderful article.” We loved it.
LOUISE AND GUIDO PINAMONTI
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion ------- TITLE: Jim Caviezel's a Class Act DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:While you are undoubtedly flooded with letters commending the interview with actor James Caviezel (“This Star Wants Heaven,” Inperson, Feb. 3-9), I'll add my gratitude for his public witness. I particularly appreciated Mr. Caveziel's insight as to “indifference” being a most challenging sin for us as Catholics today.
Not only has indifference affected some of us laity, but it has also threatened to suffocate many religious orders, and some Catholic publishing concerns, too. Thankfully, the Register, an inspiring, truthful, and non-indifferent publication, is fulfilling Jesus's statement: “I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already!” (Luke 12:49).
Mr. Caviezel's personal emphasis on prayer as the antidote to the sin of indifference, as well as for the deepening of the soul's love for, and eventual union with, God, is a treasure to be not only stored but put to immediate practice. We can begin by praying for Jim Caviezel and so many others (including the Register) who bring Christ's fire to the earth in word and action, as there are those whose lukewarm, watery lives attempt to douse Christ and his Church at every opportunity.
Count me with you, in just adoring God and in gratitude for fervent followers.
JOAN MCCLURE Huntington, Indiana
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion ------- TITLE: U.S., Strengthen Your Friends To the South DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:During the 1980s, left-wing organizations in Central America frequently referred to El Salvador as “another Vietnam.”
This was part of their ploy to deter the United States, which sought to prevent the Marxist guerrillas of the Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional (FMLN) from taking control of the government.
We all know what happened next. El Salvador never came close to becoming “another Vietnam.” Instead, thanks to U.S. intervention, the FMLN failed in its attempt to take power and a peace agreement was signed. All that — and the fall of the Soviet Union, too.
In a very similar way, there are not serious chances of Nicaragua becoming “another Afghanistan,” the contrary claims by some notwithstanding. This small Central American nation will never become the harbor of anti-United States terrorists.
Unlike Afghans, most Nicaraguans — indeed, Latin Americans in general — like Americans. When expressing their solidarity with the United States after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Latin Americans were unambiguous in their support as well as in their condemnation of terrorism. Unlike some countries which the United States considers “strong allies,” there was no emphasis on ideas such us “understanding the root causes behind the bombing” or on any other kind of “counterbalance” to an adamant condemnation of the attempts.
Unfortunately, since the countries of greater Latin America do not count for much economically and militarily, the United States in general cares very little if these countries are supportive or not to its policies. The call of the poor cousin is never as urgent as the call of the rich neighbor.
This approach lacks vision.
When Pope John Paul II called for a Synod of the Americas in 1997, he was making a very specific choice, one with geopolitical consequences as well as religious ones. The Holy Father saw that the United States and Canada had more in common with Latin America than with other Western countries. That is why he did not call for a synod of western nations or one of highly developed countries.
Despite the obvious differences, as the secretary for the General Synod of Bishops, Cardinal Jan Schotte, said: “Latin America and North America share a common Christian identity and both share a vibrant concern for keeping that identity … and make it evident not only in private life but in the public square.”
To the Bush administration, led by a man who lives Christian values to the best of his understanding, Nicaragua, for example, represents a good opportunity. The Bush administration could show its concern in building not only a political or military alliance, but a moral friendship as well among nations willing to defend freedom of religion, the right to life from the moment of conception to its natural end and the monogamous married family as the key cell of society.
The call of the poor cousin is never as urgent as the call of the rich neighbor.
Nicaraguan President-elect Enrique Bolaños is a strong pro-lifer, and he has shown his willingness to fight for life at international forums. At the United Nations, for example, he has faced down those who would bring contraception and abortion to Nicaragua. Unfortunately, Nicaragua is a debt-ridden country and its weak economy makes it vulnerable to the kind of economic pressure Northern European countries and the United Nations use to enforce birth control and anti-life policies.
In this scenario, an international policy consistent with Christian principles should lead the United States to invest in a “moral coalition,” by helping Nicaragua to be capable of standing firm to its principles. In the case of Nicaragua, it would be a fairly inexpensive investment.
In fact, Nicaragua's international debt is currently around $6 billion, less what the United States plans to invest in the recovery of Afghanistan. Nevertheless, this amount is completely unreachable for Nicaragua, since it is equivalent to 10 years of its trade surplus.
The idea is not to have the United States paying the bill of corruption or ill administration in Central American countries. It is, instead, to launch a morally inspired version of the Marshall Plan, which brought prosperity and strength to Western Europe in the wake of World War II's devastation.
Why did the United States invest in the Marshall Plan? Because a strong Western Europe had a practical, measurable value for America. By comparison, investing in more than regular food-aid in Latin America seems not to have a “practical” value, or a short-term benefit, for the U.S. foreign policy.
The United States, especially under the new administration, cannot make the mistake of asking how much military or economic might Nicaragua has — or Honduras, or El Salvador — as it evaluates ways to strengthen the hemisphere and keep it safe for freedom and democracy.
This time, the United States would pay a much smaller price than it did after its victory in the Second World War. And it would send a clear and inspiring message to the world: Our only superpower is willing to pay what it costs, and do what it must, to bring Christian values and virtues to the public square.
Alejandro Bermudez, the Register's chief Latin America correspondent, writes from Lima, Peru.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary ------- TITLE: Lent Has Always Been Counter-Cultural DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:Christian, recognize your dignity and, now that you share in God's own nature, do not return to your former base condition by sinning. Remember who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Never forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of the Kingdom of God.”
These magnificent words of Pope St. Leo the Great begin the third part of the “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” “Life in Christ,” where we Christians are taught how to become good. They are, accordingly, magnificent words with which to begin Lent, reminding us not only that we have been snatched from the jaws of death and darkness, but also that our Lenten goal is to rise to the light of Easter.
Nearly two millenniums ago, the first great catechetical manual, the Didache, warned the earliest converts from paganism: “There are two ways, the one of life, the other of death; but between the two, there is a great difference.” Today, living amid a culture of death, Christians find themselves having to make that same stark choice. For, between the culture of death and the culture of life, there is a very great difference.
In order to understand that difference more clearly, we return to the pagan world in which Christianity arose, the moral world of the Roman Empire, of Emperors Augustus Caesar and Tiberius. In doing so, we will see something both startling and quite illuminating for our own moral situation.
When we visit this pagan world, and examine its characteristic views of the moral life — as it was actually lived, not as it existed in the books of a few moralists — we find that it looks all too familiar. The pagan way of life, which the Didache called “the way of death,” seems suspiciously like our contemporary culture of death. Different time, much the same battle.
Where Are the Children?
If we look at sexuality, for example, we find that, for the Romans, erotic pleasure was the defining goal. Given pleasure as the goal, obviously sex was not confined to marriage; marriage was simply one more place where sex occurred.
As a result, other avenues of sexual pleasure were freely explored and gradually became part of the ordinary social fabric. Married men had concubines and visited prostitutes; men courted young boys; masters had their way with slaves. The socially defining restriction was not set in terms of male and female, but active and passive, superior and inferior. It was good to be a social superior in a sexual relationship — a man rather than a woman; a man rather than a boy; a master rather than a slave — and bad to be the passive inferior. Given this view of sexuality, it is not difficult to see the results in regard to marriage, contraception, abortion and infanticide.
Marriage, for Romans, was merely the locus of bearing legitimate children.
Concubines were therefore quite common. Having children by one's concubine was not frowned upon. Such children simply lacked any claim to the rights and estates of the familial household. Thus, marriage entailed no sexual exclusiveness except on the part of the woman (and the higher the woman in social ranking, the more inclined she was to act with the same sexual freedom as her husband).
Defining sexuality in terms of pleasure had another important effect. When we look back over the records of the Roman Empire at the number of children born to the upper classes, we invariably find that most had only one or two, and many none. Indeed, the situation became so bad that the emperors themselves felt called to urge the aristocracy to bear more children. The cause of such small families? The prevalence of contraception, abortion and infanticide.
HHaving been snatched from the jaws of death and darkness, our Lenten goal is to rise to the light of Easter.
At the other end of human life, we find that euthanasia was also a part of Roman culture. For the Romans, it was not a question of whether euthanasia, or suicide, was bad or good, but of the reason one committed suicide. To end one's life rather than submit to an enemy or a tyrannical emperor was honorable. Avoiding unbearable pain or the ravages of old age, while less heroic, were also legitimate reasons to take one's life. But killing oneself to avoid mild humiliation or debt, or killing oneself impulsively, were considered shameful.
Enough has been said about the moral views of the Romans for us to see this obvious point. In regard to sexuality, marriage, divorce, contraception, abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, we are not altogether in a foreign land when we visit ancient Rome — the Rome into which Christ and Christianity were born. It was converts from this pagan way of life which St. Paul reminded, “once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8).
We live in a culture today that seems to have been, for whatever historical reasons, re-paganized. Of course, western culture could not have been re-paganized if it had not been first Christianized. Such is the history of the first 1,000 years of the Church as it spread over Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa. During this time as well, for Christians, becoming good meant shedding pagan ways, the ways of death — and accepting Christian ways, the ways of life. Essential to this conversion was the embrace of the Christian view of sexuality and marriage, and the rejection of contraception, abortion, infanticide and suicide.
As Christianity's hold on society became more firm, the views of sexuality and marriage — and the prohibitions against contraception, abortion, infanticide and suicide, which existed in the Church's penance manuals and canon law in the first 1,000 years of the Church's history — found their way into civil law during the second millennium. The historical lesson should be clear. Such civil laws against sodomy, divorce, contraception, abortion, infanticide and suicide in the West exist only because of this long period of Christianization. (Perhaps it is better to say “existed,” since almost all of them have already been struck down.)
That such laws have been removed is the surest sign that, to a great extent, the West has already been re-paganized, a process that began all the way back in the Renaissance. The Christians who now remain are, by a strange historical irony, in nearly the same situation as the first Christians, facing a culture defined, in large part, by a revived paganism treading the way of darkness and death.
To say the least, such an analysis should add a sense of urgency to every Christian's quest to become good. Christianity has lost its hold on the minds and hearts of much of Europe and America, and been displaced by the very alien way of life into which it had originally been born, and from which it sought to rescue its converts. We have come full circle: from dark, to light, to dark again.
Old Light, New Darkness
If we really understood how dark our times are, we would most likely be paralyzed. And then, not just for this Lent, but for once and for all. But for Christians of any time, all the way back to those first converts, despair is a sin. Hope, its contrary, is the virtue we must embrace when faced with such darkness.
The most hopeful words for us now are those trumpeted by Pope John Paul II: “Be not afraid!” By this, the Pope does not mean that there is nothing to fear, or that the culture of death will slip away of its own accord, but that we must have the same courage as the first Christians.
The first Christians had the courage, by grace, to seek goodness as defined by Jesus Christ himself. “It is in Christ, Redeemer and Savior,” the catechism tells us, “that the divine image, disfigured in man by the first sin, has been restored to its original beauty and ennobled by the grace of God” (No. 1701).
Such is the goodness that we, as Christians, properly seek. Such is the goodness that shall lift us from the culture of death. And such is the goodness after which we should strive this Lent, so that we may approach Easter “rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of the Kingdom of God.”
Benjamin Wiker teaches philosophy of science at Franciscan University of Steubenville (Ohio).
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary ------- TITLE: Culture of Death Stands No Chance Against 'Feminine Genius' DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:Mary Cannon could have taken on any number of stimulating challenges in the heady political world of “inside-the-beltway” Washington, D.C.
In years past, Cannon served as a top political advisor to former congressman and presidential candidate Jack Kemp, then as a high-ranking political appointee in the elder George Bush's administration, then as a corporate executive. She's got a husband, two children and a résumé to envy. Venturing into the working world again with remarkable political expertise and credentials, as well as corporate experience, opportunities for wealth and position were wide open for her.
Such opportunities for place and prestige might appear irresistible from a worldly perspective. But a different perspective motivates Cannon. She wants to do what most needs doing.
Last year, she resolved to take on an immediate, almost hidden and yet eminently menacing threat to the culture.
So it was that she accepted the decidedly unlucrative challenge of serving as director of the Bioethics Project.
Cannon and many women like her, while they may not get the media attention they deserve, are stepping up to the plate. They are sharing the responsibility with their male counterparts, diagnosing threats to human dignity and entering into public life to address problems strategically.
Cannon noticed that there were many organizations doing good things to defend the human person against threats to human dignity. But, because of the extreme and insidious nature of biotechnology's threat to human life, Cannon sees this issue as a top, single-focus priority. She sees that there is a need for one group, focused solely upon informing public opinion and building a diverse coalition of citizens opposed to the specific threats cloning and stem cell research pose. Cannon became an organizational entrepreneur in order to accomplish just that.
She and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol teamed up and gathered a group of national leaders to found the Bioethics Project. The group of intellectual and political heavyweights includes former education secretary William Bennett, Robert George of Princeton, Leon Kass of the University of Chicago, Kate O'Beirne of National Review, Adam Wolfson of The Public Interest, Gilbert Meilaender of Valparaiso University and Wesley Smith, author of Culture of Death. (Dr. Kass has since left the board of the Bioethics Project to serve as chairman of President Bush's advisory council on bioethics.)
It's a formidable team of high achievers, all united behind the idea that science should serve humanity rather than the converse.
The group secured seed money from a grant-making foundation and is now focusing its efforts upon the issue of human cloning. They're pushing hard to get media outlets to cover the story fairly. They are successfully building a broad base of liberal, conservative and diverse religious groups who disagree on many issues while agreeing that “we must draw a bright line between a better human world and a new inhuman one,” as Cannon puts it.
This past July, Cannon, Kristol and other Bioethics Project leaders and allies were instrumental in influencing public opinion to the extent that the U.S. House of Representatives passed an outright ban on human cloning. Prospects for success in the Senate, where the bill is due to be considered early this year, are less certain.
But Cannon understands pressure politics. She has strong words for the biotech industry: “They entice people with promises of miracle cures and confuse them by redefining terms — for example, they no longer use the word cloning; instead they call it ‘nuclear transplantation.’
They want the American people to conclude that these issues are so complex and technical that they are better left to the scientific ‘experts.’ But the truth is that this debate isn't really about science at all; it's about what it means to be a human being, created in the image and likeness of God.”
Such “global thinking” assumes the complementary talents of men and women. Thus is Cannon an example of the feminine genius at work. Participating in the “mystery” to which the Holy Father alludes, she is bringing her unique talents to bear against a serious threat to human life.
I know Cannon personally, and can bear witness to the fact that her impressive political credentials and management expertise are matched by her sincere modesty. This unique combination makes her a standout among successful Washington women. But, more importantly, it is humility — the ability to know one's place in relation to God — that allows the feminine genius to thrive.
Mary could have chosen the road most traveled. Yet she, like so many unsung women in our time, has turned her “feminine genius” to combating the culture of death.
As a woman of faith engaged in politics, Cannon shows the possibility of following Pope John Paul II's clear call to women to bring what he calls the “feminine genius” to bear on cultural ills. Speaking to women preparing for a 1995 conference on women in Beijing, he said: “Politics … geared as it is to promoting the common good, can only benefit from the complementary gifts of men and women.”
Such contributions from women are “proving particularly significant, especially with regard to the aspects of politics that concern the basic areas of human life,” the Holy Father continued. Since the beginning of his pontificate, he has explained how cultural activity calls into question the human person as a whole, in the two-fold complementary sensitivity of man and woman. Offering Mary, the Mother of God, as the ultimate example, he praises woman's ability to see the whole person with wisdom and sensitivity.
The lesson: The culture of death can best be countered by a team that includes both men and women, each responding to their unique calling.
The culture of death should be scared. It should be very scared.
Marjorie Dannenfelser writes from Arlington, Virginia.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary ------- TITLE: Positively Polish, Faithfully Franciscan DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:New England may be known for its Irish and Italian character — but its three basilicas (all in Massachusetts) aren't.
Two have strong Polish roots. One of them is the Basilica of St. Stanislaus.
It was with that equation in mind that I headed off for Chicopee, a small city next door to Springfield, for “St. Stan's.”
I soon learned that Chicopee had attracted many Polish immigrants who came to work in the area's booming mills in the late 1800s. (Neighboring Holyoke was the first planned industrial center in the country.) They founded St. Stanislaus parish in 1891 to help keep alive their spiritual and ethnic identity, naming it after their cherished saint, the principal patron of Krakow and the symbol of Polish unity.
By 1908, this grand brownstone edifice became the focal point in a residential neighborhood located a short walk from Chicopee's downtown. Driving within sight of the Baroque Revival structure, with its soaring twin towers, I marveled to think how much the immigrants must have sacrificed to build such an impressive church. It turns out the structure was designed and built by the Franciscans of the Order of Friars Minor after the local bishop invited them to administer the parish.
Powerfully Polish
The friars remain a strong presence here to this day. When Pope John Paul II raised the church to a basilica on July 7, 1991, St. Stanislaus became one of 19 basilicas staffed by the Conventual Friars throughout the world. Two orders of nuns — the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Assisi and the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph — are also very active in a variety of parish duties, especially in the parish's large school.
In the basilica's vestibule, a life-sized crucifix gave me cause to pause before I entered the nave. But three sets of glass doors, etched with symbols of the sacraments, through which unfolded an enticing “preview” of the wonderful interior, bid me enter.
Completely renovated in the last decade, this majestic sanctuary is an inspiring place to pray and worship, as the 3,000 families registered here know quite well. Yet all the splendid liturgical art must lead to something beyond admiration alone. And so it does here.
Overall, the interior struck me as unmistakably Polish, distinctly Franciscan and powerfully reverential.
A beautiful San Damiano crucifix is centered on the reredos, above which is a riveting icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa, the Queen of Poland. The Polish revere Mary in this title as a central part of their spirituality.
The basilica's rector, Franciscan Father Michael Kolodziej, explained to me that the icon was painted in Czestochowa, touched to the original, and blessed in Rome by Pope John Paul II. The Black Madonna, as the icon is also called, wears a crown made from donated jewels. The crown was placed by Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, the current archbishop of Krakow and direct successor to St. Stanislaus. Bishop Joseph Francis Maguire, Spring-field's bishop at the time, was present for the crowning.
From above the icon on this restored original altar and reredos, which shines with a marbleized finish replicating the real Sienna marble found elsewhere in the church, the statue of St. Stanislaus, the basilica's patron, looks over the congregation. It was hand-carved in Italy, as were all the statues in this upper basilica, including Sts. Peter and Paul on the main altar, the Sacred Heart above the tabernacle of reservation and the Virgin Mary with the Child Jesus.
Marian Might
So many rich helps to contemplation, so little time! The magnificent Stations of the Cross pulled me like a magnet to walk with Jesus to Calvary. Each sculpted station is detailed in very high relief and painted in the same way; the figures are about one-third life-size. Like all the basilica's statues, windows and paintings, the figures of the stations are very Franciscan in that they depict a very earthy, human Christ.
Two added stations surprised me.
The one in front of the 14 usual stations depicts the Last Supper. The one after the regular 14 portrays the Presentation of Mary in the Temple. Time has erased the reason for adding them. I speculated their position on the walls close to the sanctuary might be the key. They relate to the sacrifice of the Mass and to the honor given Mary in this basilica.
Along the nave, 16 massive, yet delicately decorated, Corinthian columns of light yellow Sienna marble, each 20 feet tall, aren't just architecturally striking — they also draw our gaze toward stories of Jesus and several saints. First, the arches spanning the columns outline the big, stained-glass windows. Then, as we look up to see the glistening blue and gold capitals of the columns, our attention is directed into the lofty, curved ceiling that's covered by wondrous murals.
Two of these are outlined by ornate frames that seem to open into cerulean skies with puffy clouds. They're “bookends” for the central mural: St. Stanislaus glorified in heaven. Admiring angels and the four Evangelists surround this 11th-century martyr, while people pay homage. Blue and gold rosettes in relief vivify the colorful scene.
Below Stanislaus along the clerestory, other Polish saints and blessed — men on one side, women on the other — are highlighted in several stained-glass windows. Humansized angels and ornate pastels of urns cascading with flowers turn the entire clerestory into a heavenly garden.
On the first level, the original stained-glass windows from Mayer in Munich captured my attention with richly detailed scenes of events and parables like the Prodigal Son, the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The strong devotion to Mary in the basilica shines even to the very top of the apse high over the altar, where the Immaculate Heart is honored in a brilliant, half-round window. Nearby, in a mural in the apse dome, tall angels attend Our Lady of Czechtochowa.
In the lower basilica, Mary appears as Our Lady of Guadalupe in a reverent painting done by Mexican Carmelite nuns. The lower basilica is the site of daily Masses, confessions and morning exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. And a collection of more than 60 first-class relics.
Like other visitors and parishioners, I was drawn to contemplate them. They include the True Cross, several Apostles, Sts. Paul, Stephen, Luke, Martha, Mary Magdelene, Anthony, Francis, Joseph of Cupertino, Sixtus, Clement, Augustine and, of course, the Polish saints Maximillian Kolbe, Faustina, and Stanislaus. In this basilica, Polish heritage is a special blessing to every nationality.
Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: Basilica of St. Stanislaus, Chicopee, Mass. ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: Travel ------- TITLE: Get CCD on a Music CD DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:He rocks for Jesus.
As the first cradle Catholic signed by a major contemporary-Christian record label, Tom Franzak has spent nearly 20 years singing rock and pop songs that inspire and challenge his listeners to respond to God's call on their lives. He spoke with Register correspondent Dana Mildebrath.
What has it been like for you as a Catholic in the contemporary-Christian music world?
Where I grew up (in Nazareth, Pa.), all the different churches cooperated and did a lot of things together. I didn't experience any prejudice because I was Catholic. When I signed with Word Records in 1983, it brought to the fore different opinions on the Catholic presence in that market. Some people were very affirming and said, “It's really great that Catholics are using contemporary music to evangelize and teach.” Others had a hard time accepting that Catholics could be, in their terminology, “saved,” or that the company should even be engaged in helping Catholic artists for that reason. I'm not so sure that, even all these years later, that community has gotten beyond that conflict.
How did you get started?
On my mom's side of the family, everybody could sing. My grandparents would always sing to me when I was small, and my mom and I would sing together in the kitchen. On my dad's side, there were a lot of musicians. So, when my parents got married, it was the merging of the singing family and the playing family.
I'm an only child and, when I was very young, my parents owned a music store. I was doomed, because I'd go in and see all those instruments hanging on the wall, and I'd want to play every one of them. I knew from a very young age that I would not be able to escape music. I was just engrossed by it.
I was playing rock ‘n’ roll in nightclubs when I was 16 and, by the time I was 21, I was living in southern California and hadn't been to church for at least three years. My manager was a former Benedictine nun, and she encouraged me to make a retreat. That experience blew me away. The hardest part was when I realized my talent wasn't mine — that it was a gift — and I was responsible to use it in different ways.
I walked away from music and was trained as a youth minister in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. I started writing songs again as a way to make the lessons with my kids a little more special. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a contemporary-Christian music industry.
Your first four albums weren't explicity Catholic. Why did you choose to go in such a specifically Catholic direction with your current album,
The great thing about the Church is that it has survived with a large body of believers lumbering along for 2,000 years. Some things become anchors for which we are grateful because they are solid and have a history. The saints are like that. The accounts we have of some of these people are an awesome testimony and legacy that are important for us to celebrate in any age. Whether you can relate to all of them or not, there's someone there that everyone can relate to. It represents the vast diversity and richness of our tradition.
What advice do you have for young Catholic musicians who want to “make it” in contemporary Christian music?
I usually just tell people to sing as much as they can and pray as much as they can, and let God take it wherever he wants to.
If “making it” means becoming the next Amy Grant, and you're Catholic, that carries a lot of challenges. If you encounter resistance or prejudice because of your Catholicity, you're faced with the challenge of standing up to that and convincing people that, yes, you can indeed have a deep, profound relationship with Jesus Christ within the Catholic tradition.
Unfortunately, what I see some very talented young Catholic artists choosing to do is play down their Catholic faith. My encouragement for young people would be: “Don't play down your faith to the point where you lose the wealth of your Catholic identity.”
There's so much that we can explore in our own Catholic experience, and then share with others, that I'm at a loss to understand how someone would feel that they wouldn't want to do that, unless of course if “making it” means simply having economic success and whatever fame and recognition that brings.
What do you have in mind for future projects?
I'm looking at doing another show that, like Saints, will have a cohesive theme, with a focus and shape to it. I'd also like to devote some time to developing a venue for Catholic artists to be able to get their music out there in live performances and on recordings, and be able to see the time when there is more access to radio air play and a more visible presence in the contemporary-Christian music market.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts ------- TITLE: Weekly Video Picks DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:Matthew (1997)
Christian joy is one of the delights experienced by believers as they walk with God.
This blessed sensation animates Matthew, a four-hour version of the Gospel produced for video release by the Dallas-based Visual Entertainment, a Protestant company. It is the first installment of an ambitious effort to film every word in the Bible. In the bottom right-hand corner of every frame is the chapter and verse of the passage being dramatized.
Jesus (Bruce Marchiano) is neither the ethereal, detached figure of Italian paintings nor the serene stoic of later great-master characterizations. Instead he's presented as a warm, earthy personality who laughs with children and rolls up his sleeves to play with the disciples. Peter and Andrew are persuaded to leave their nets by the simple radiance of his smile. South African director Reghardt van den Bergh depicts Jesus’ miracles as real occurrences, expressions of his great energy and joy. The pain of the cross and the glory of his resurrection are realized with equal sincerity and conviction.
The Longest Day (1962)
Recent World War II films (Saving Private Ryan) and TV miniseries (Band of Brothers) have highlighted the Allies’ June 6, 1944 landing at Normandy. The most epic presentation of this decisive event is The Longest Day, based on Cornelius Ryan's compilation of interviews and produced as a labor of love by golden-age mogul Darryl Zanuck. The action is divided into three segments. The first chronicles the Allied preparation for the invasion and the wait for the weather to break; the second presents the massive movement of ships across the English Channel and the behind-the-lines maneuvers of paratroopers and commandos; and the third dramatizes the landings and assaults themselves.
The movie has a documentary feel, with few personal stories that are not directly related to the combat operations. Particularly outstanding are the sequences that feature: Col. Benjamin Vandervoort (John Wayne), a paratrooper who hobbles through D-Day with a broken ankle; Brig. Gen. Norman Cota (Robert Mitchum), who leads his troops onto bloody Omaha Beach; and Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt (Henry Fonda).
The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)
Flashing sword-play, witty dialogue and breathtaking royal balls are the staples of golden-age Hollywood swashbucklers about courage, honor and true love.
The Prisoner of Zenda, produced by David O. Selznick (Gone With the Wind) and based on Anthony Hope's novel and Edward Rose's play, is the genre at its best. Major Rudolf Rassendyll (Ronald Colman) is a straight-arrow Englishman who travels to a mythical Balkan country to hunt game. There he's drawn into a dangerous court intrigue that requires him to pose as his dissolute cousin Prince Rudolf (also Colman), who's been poisoned by his enemies.
The perpetrators of these crimes are the dastardly villains Black Michael (Raymond Massey), the prince's wicked half-brother, and the suave Rupert of Hentzau (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), who schemes to take the throne away from Rudolf. There's also a romance with the beautiful Princess Flavia (Madeleine Carroll) and a foul kidnapping of the ailing Rupert to the sinister Zenda dungeon. If viewed in the right spirit, this is still great fun.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts ------- TITLE: Weekly TV Picks DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:All times Eastern
SUNDAY, FEB. 17
American Icons: Structures of Glory Travel Channel, 9 p.m.
This new two-hour, two-part special travels to many of America's most cherished structures and explains their design, construction and lasting significance.
MONDAY, FEB. 18
Stealing the Superfortress
History Channel, 9 p.m.
In this new documentary we learn how the U.S.S.R. in the late 1940s was able to design and build the TU-4, a virtual copy of the B-29, a giant U.S. bomber. B-29 crewmen whom the Soviets imprisoned provide insights, as do U.S. and Soviet designers.
TUESDAY, FEB. 19
Bulletproof
History Channel, 10 p.m.
This new documentary tracks scientists’ progress in developing bullet-stopping materials for use in body armor, vehicle armor plating and wall layering.
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 20
Places for All-American Animals
Travel Channel, 9 p.m.
This new special looks at the habitats of 10 popular American animal species.
THURSDAY, FEB. 21
Justice and the Generals
PBS, 10 p.m.
Communists murdered untold thousands of Catholic priests and religious in the 20th century; this 90-minute documentary deals with religious and a laywoman murdered by other hands. Sisters Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel and lay missionary Jean Donovan were raped and murdered in Dec. 1980 during El Salvador's fight against communist guerrillas. When two generals from El Salvador retired to the United States, they became liable to civil lawsuits by the victims’ relatives. In 2000, a U.S. jury found the generals not responsible for the crimes, for which five Salvadoran national guardsmen were convicted earlier. The generals’ case is on appeal, and they face a separate suit by torture victims. Advisory: Exhumation scenes and accounts of torture.
FRIDAY, FEB. 22
Super Saints
EWTN, 5 a.m. and 6:30 p.m.
“I have set thee as an example for sinners,” Jesus told St. Margaret of Cortona (1247-1297), “that in thee they may behold how My mercy awaits the sinner who is willing to repent.” After living with a nobleman out of wedlock until his murder, St. Margaret, whose feast day is Feb. 22, did heartfelt penance, joined the Third Order of St. Francis, founded an order of nursing sisters and got her Tuscan town of Cortona to build a hospital for ill poor people. Jesus gave her locutions and revelations from 1277 on.
SATURDAY, FEB. 23
Firefighter School
A & E, 8 p.m.
In this exciting installment of “Behind Closed Doors,” Joan Lunden joins rescue, emergency and firefighter recruits in training exercises at a huge mock city whose practice facilities include houses, refineries, a ship and an airplane.
Dan Engler writes from Santa Barbara, California.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dan Engler ----- KEYWORDS: Arts ------- TITLE: How to Acquire Self-Esteem The Old-Fashioned Way DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:One of the most dominant articles of faith pervading the modern curriculum is the notion that children can't achieve and won't succeed unless they have high self-esteem.
In parochial as well as public schools, in reading and writing, in health class and on the sports field, making students feel good about themselves has become a foundational goal in the modern classroom.
Yet thousands of psychological studies have failed to demonstrate that high self-esteem reliably causes anything — or, at least, anything desirable. In fact, some researchers are even suggesting that the “I love me” movement has done real harm to kids, families and education in general. Having seen the effects at close hand, I tend to agree.
So does Paul Vitz, professor of psychology at New York University, the most authoritative Catholic voice on the new psychological faiths. With regard to self-esteem, Vitz believes educational psychology has the cart before the horse.
“Self-esteem should be understood as a response, not as a cause,” he wrote in Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship (Eerdmans, 1994). “[L]ike happiness, and like love, self-esteem is almost impossible to get by trying to get it. Try to acquire self-esteem and you will fail — but do good to others and accomplish something for yourself, and you will have all the self-esteem you need.”
In the Catholic school where I taught for seven years, our staff regularly commented on the fact that, every new school year, the kids coming in seemed less able to work in a sustained and concentrated manner and, by and large, exhibited poorer self-control and less civility. Because of this, teaching was becoming more difficult — class-management and behavioral problems were stealing a larger and larger amount of time and energy from instructional time. In addition, a number of previously unheard-of problems were cropping up.
Probably the most difficult of these was that of “problem parents.” In previous times, parents almost always supported teachers in their administration of discipline. Now, more and more, parents were raising strong objections to the entirely appropriate and relatively mild disciplinary efforts of teachers and administrators to bring unruly children into line.
One didn't have to listen long to realize that the natural instincts of parents were being overridden and corrupted by the ideology of self-esteem. Parents of some of the worst-behaved kids we had were insisting that their child's acting out was the result of poor self-esteem and required not discipline — what in a saner age was called “tough love” — but more support, encouragement and “understanding.”
As anyone who works with kids will tell you, it doesn't take long for some kids to figure out the lay of the land and begin working the system.
I remember one little girl I had in grade four. Let's call her Shelley. Despite the fact that Shelley was blessed with above-average intelligence and ability, she had failed two tests in a row in social studies. I watched her response as I handed back her third test — also with a failing grade marked on it. Without a word, tears filled her eyes and Shelley ran into the cloakroom, crying. I went after her, spoke to her gently and, after a minute or so, led her back into class. I told Shelley I wanted to speak to her and her mother during the lunch period.
After the bell rang, Shelley stood with me outside my classroom as the girl's mother walked up and greeted me warmly. Shelley was still upset as I explained to her mother what had happened.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Mom asked her daughter.
“I don't know what to say,” said Shelley. “Somehow I just don't feel good about myself these days. I don't seem to like myself anymore.”
“That's a bunch of nonsense,” said Mom. “You didn't study.”
A parent with proper perspective — what a relief! “Your daily work hasn't been up to the standard I know you're capable of,” I said when the mother turned to me as if giving me permission to continue her point. “If you had felt good about yourself even though you hadn't done your job I would say you have a serious problem. Now why don't you get down to business, do the job you're capable of, and get a good mark on the next test?”
Good teachers and good parents show their love by caring enough to use discipline and by telling kids the truth. That's what kids need and that's what kids ultimately want. That's also why, in many high schools, the most-admired teachers, and the best-respected, are the athletic coaches — the authority figures who expect performance and rarely worry about self-esteem.
With a Godly context, a little “reality therapy,” some encouragement and the firm refusal of both her mother and her teacher to let her off the hook, I believe Shelley learned an important lesson that day.
I remember her looking excited and a little anxious as I handed back her fourth test. Then Shelley looked up at me from her desk, beaming and proud, as she saw the mark and realized she'd “aced” the test. Her good work had resulted in a natural sense of pride in her hard-earned accomplishment — in other words, a rightly ordered sense of heightened self-esteem.
J. Fraser Field is executive officer of the Catholic Educator's Resource Center (www.catholiceducation.org)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: J. Fraser Field ----- KEYWORDS: Education ------- TITLE: Weekly Book Pick DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:Pope Pius XII once called Dietrich von Hildebrand “our 20th-century Doctor of the Church.” More recently, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger referred to him as “one of the great Catholic philosophers of the 20th century.”
Although his numerous books have been highly regarded in Catholic intellectual circles, little has been written about von Hildebrand's inspiring and courageous life. Until now: Alice Jourdain von Hildebrand, Dietrich's widow, has written a marvelously evocative biography covering the first five decades of the man's life. Von Hildebrand was born in 1889 into a loving, artistically gifted and thoroughly secular family in Florence, the only son and youngest of six children born to Adolph and Irene von Hidebrand. His father was a renowned sculptor; he and Irene often entertained such artistic notables as Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner and Henry James.
Dietrich was only 15 when he determined to pursue philosophy as his life's work after reading Plato's dialogues and realizing “that he had an innate talent for detecting errors and equivocations in arguments and for unraveling a confused line of reasoning, and he set his mind to develop this gift.”
At Munich University, he met the brilliant but thoroughly undisciplined Max Scheler, who became his close friend. From the moment they met, Scheler's limber mind and dazzling personality captivated von Hildebrand. But he was indebted to Scheler above all else for the latter's intricate Catholic analysis of philosophical and theological questions, which eventually convinced von Hildebrand that the Church had received, and still retained, the fullness of revealed truth.
Mrs. von Hildebrand insists that her husband's conversion to the Catholic faith in 1914 was the most important and the most decisive moment of his life. “Every time he mentioned this event his face lit up with joy,” she tells us. “Beautiful and rewarding as his life had been … he was now entering into a radically new world, the world of the supernatural whose radiance, sublimity, and beauty were such that all his previous experiences paled by comparison. He was overwhelmed by a light, the existence of which he had never suspected previously. He could not learn enough; he could not read enough. Every day brought new discoveries; every day was more uplifting than the preceding one. Every instruction was received with attentiveness and gratitude.”
Purely philosophical questions continued to interest von Hildebrand, but he delighted much more now in meditating on the transformation that occurs in one's life when thought is illuminated by revelation. This spiritual transition became the theme of his masterwork Transformation in Christ, first published in 1940 under the pen name Peter Ott, because the publisher could not market the book in Nazi Germany under von Hildebrand's own name, since he had been sentenced to death in absentia.
Von Hildebrand had courageously denounced National Socialism from its earliest days. Much of the second half of Soul of a Lion concerns his terrifying flights and repeated narrow escapes from his Nazi pursuers in Germany, Austria and France until, at the book's conclusion, he and his wife arrive, at last, in New York. They were greeted on the pier by a fellow refugee from Nazism, Msgr. John Osterreicher, with the welcome news that a professorship awaited von Hildebrand at Fordham University.
One reservation: The book ends too soon. Von Hildebrand was only a little over 50 when he landed in the United States in 1940; he continued to live a productive and eventful life until his death in 1977. Much detail is excluded from the present, excellent work. Where are the firsthand insights on his distinguished career at Fordham, his marriage to Alice Jourdain following the death of his first wife, Gretchen, and his founding of the Roman Forum? One hopes that Mrs. von Hildebrand is at work on a second, equally absorbing, volume.
Carroll McGuire writes from Wayne, New Jersey.
----- EXCERPT: The Lion That Contemplated Christ ----- EXTENDED BODY: Carroll Mcguire ----- KEYWORDS: Education ------- TITLE: Campus Watch DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:School Role Models
The curriculum is “best described as meat and potatoes,” says the Monitor’s Craig Savoye.
The newspaper reports that a church-school organizer in St. Louis was receiving more than a dozen calls per day “from groups that want to duplicate the effort in their communities.”
“Similar church-inspired schools already are taking shape in states from Georgia to California,” says the Monitor.
Nice Gift
‘Coercive’ Prayer?
VMI says it will appeal the ruling, which was rendered in response to a suit brought by the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
PC in NJ
TOWNHALL.COM, Jan. 31 — Columnist Suzanne Fields reports that the New Jersey Legislature recently nixed a requirement for students to daily recite the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Civil-liberties groups questioned the phrase “unalienable right” to life, suggesting it was a sneaky euphemism for “anti-abortion” sentiment; one legislator objected to the word “creator” because it would force students to accept a “state-sponsored religion.”
Vineyard Workers
An annual practice at the school through the 1960s, the tradition had faded. Parents who remembered the event brought it back three years ago and hope to restore it as a tradition.
Church-State Charters
Some accuse religious groups of advancing non-sectarian charter schools in the inner cities because it is “their only means of obtaining public education dollars,” writes the Times’ Richard Fausset. Advocates say religious groups can be ideal sponsors because they have classroom space, provide social services, and have “a strong sense of community and mission.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joe Cullen ----- KEYWORDS: Education ------- TITLE: Cross International Builds Hope In Haiti With Help From American Catholics DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:As the dawn breaks, a rooster crows and the bitter smell of smoke rolls through the gorge. In this rocky and barren scar in the landscape of Les Cayes, Haiti, the outcasts and homeless have come to find each other and seek shelter from the elements. Among them are a shocking number of widows with families, including a 48-year-old woman named Monica.
“When we met her, I could see the years of suffering in her eyes, and my heart went out to her. She obviously cared deeply for her children and she was enduring extraordinary things to give them the best life possible,” said Jim Cavnar, president of Cross International. On behalf of Cross International's ministry to the poor, Cavnar was visiting Les Cayes, meeting with local parish leaders and seeking ways to help families there. Again and again, Cavnar heard about requests for help in providing better housing for single mothers living in poverty.
“I met Monica as she was preparing to cook breakfast in a little lean-to shack. It was hardly more than a few sticks covered with a patchwork of discarded plastic, wood and palm fronds. There were a few worn pots, a couple of crude wooden benches and some tiny bags of rice — just a few possessions and enough food for a couple of small meals,” Cavnar related.
“In spite of their extreme poverty, the children were very tidy, and I asked my pastor guide how Monica managed to keep them so clean. He smiled and explained that the Haitians are proud and hardworking people. They make the most of what little they have, and they try very hard to give their children a sense of dignity.”
Cavnar then learned more about the hardships Monica's children were facing. Without help, it was likely the little ones would follow in the statistical footsteps of other Haitian children living in poverty — most of whom are malnourished and uneducated. It was also likely that at least one of them would die prematurely.
“As I looked at those children, I knew how much was stacked against them, particularly with the family living in these deplorable conditions,” Cavnar said.
…what begins as an inspired act of mercy in the U.S. ultimately becomes a spiritual sign of hope among the poor.
Fortunately, the parishes in Les Cayes have established a plan to help Monica and the other poor families in the area. They are able to construct a concrete block home with two or more rooms for between $3,500 and $8,000. The homes are simple, but they represent a dream come true to the families blessed enough to receive one.
To fund the cost of these homes, Cross International depends on contributions from American Catholics who sponsor a house on behalf of a poor family. Some sponsor an entire home, but most give toward the total cost of the home, combining their gift with those of other donors.
“We'll be sent a gift for $250 to do the foundation or $800 for the roof or $150 for the door and windows — a dozen families pitching in from different parts of the U.S. to achieve a common goal. It's a wonderful and heartwarming thing to see. These people feel blessed by the Lord because they enjoy the comforts of home, and they want to bestow the same blessings on a family in need,” Cavnar said.
And what begins as an inspired act of mercy in the U.S. ultimately becomes a spiritual sign of hope among the poor.
“When a family moves into one of these homes, there are tears of joy and prayers of thanksgiving. I've experienced it. You really feel as if the Spirit of God is there among you, and that the Lord is showering you with His blessings,” Cavnar said.
“I look forward to the day Monica feels that new hope,” he added. “I look forward to seeing her children sleeping safe and sound in the comfort of a real home.”
To contribute to Cross International's home-building ministry in Haiti, Belize and other destitute Third World countries, either use the envelope portion of the black and white brochure enclosed in this issue of the National Catholic Register or mail your gift to: Cross International, Dept. AW00115, PO Box 63, Akron, OH 44309-0063.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ------- TITLE: Poverty's Terrible Impact On Three Young Families -- And the Hope Your Compassion Can Give Them DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:Little Maria, like many of the children in Haiti, knows the daily fears of poverty. She has known days without food. She has seen the anxiety in her mother's eyes when she asks about going to school.
Maria's body also tenses when she hears a storm moving in at night — she fears the winds and rain. When storms come, the patchwork shack she lives in literally shakes and rain leaks in from above. Like many Haitian children, she prays for a safe place to sleep at night.
Julianne knows the terrible, crushing weight of poverty. She is still haunted by the day it claimed her baby, Haul. When his illness came, there was no way to fight it. No money for medicines. No transportation to reach a clinic. Isolated and desperate, she did everything she could to stop his convulsions. Even before God took Paul away, Julianne knew her efforts to save him would be in vain.
Too often, the poor are forced to live in desolate areas, cut off from the help and support they need. Julianne knows the price of this isolation, and it will haunt her for the rest of her life.
Like his mother before him, Jon lives in one of the poorer areas of Haiti. His home — a crumbling mud-patched shack — rests precariously on an outcropping of rock above a ravine.
“I hope to leave this place someday. I hope to have a real home for my son,” Jon said as he lovingly hugged the boy in his arms. The humble home Jon yearns for is a small cement-block house with two 12 by 12 foot rooms.
Jon is like thousands of poor parents living in the undeveloped countries ofour world. He has simple hopes to live in a simple home. But even those meager hopes are far out of reach.
“As Jon told me about his dreams I prayed to myself— ‘God, please help us make this poor man's dream come true. A little house would give him a chance to rebuild his life, and it would give his children a real opportunity to break out of this cycle of poverty. Please, Father, help us,’” related Jim Cavnar, president of Cross International. Through the church in Jon's village, Cavnar has been working out a program to provide housing for families like Jon's, Julianne's and Maria's.
“As the Scripture clearly says in James 2:15, it isn't enough to give the poor words of encouragement — we need to act in love on their behalf. These people desperately need a house that provides safety, security and support,” Cavnar said.
“The cement homes we construct in Haiti range in cost from $3,500 to about $8,000, depending on the number of rooms and other features it includes,” Cavnar explained.
Even at that relatively low cost, the homes being designed are too expensive for Jon, Julianne and other poor families to afford without help from the church. Less than 20 percent of Haiti's population is employed and most of those who are lucky enough to have a job earn less than $400 U.S. dollars a year.
To provide housing for these families, Cross International has developed a relationship between American Catholics and parishes working with the poor overseas.
“Parishes in Haiti and Belize have house-building programs, but they need funds to buy the lumber, cement and other materials. It's our role to find sponsors for those costs,” Cavnar said.
During his 30 years working in Christian ministries, Cavnar has seen hundreds of homes built for the poor in this way, and he has found American Catholics to be very generous in their response.
“As a Roman Catholic, I have always been uplifted by the people I meet through this program. A man or women will say to me, ‘A priest told me about your efforts to build homes for poor families and I want to help. 1 know how much it means to have a house — this is the most meaningful thing I can do. It's wonderful to see American Catholics reaching out to their brothers and sisters in these Third World countries,” Cavnar said.
He added that these simple homes have a far-reaching impact. In addition to providing security, they help parents maintain steady employment and make it easier for them to send children to school.
“When you contribute toward a house, you are literally changing a life forever — sometimes impacting a family's position for generations to come,” Cavnar pointed out.
Contributors and churches that want to sponsor a home for a poor family through Cross International can contribute any amount to the program. Gifts will be combined together to sponsor individual homes for a families currently on the waiting list. The sponsorship of an entire house is also possible.
“A surprising number of contributors choose to sponsor a complete home because they realize the huge impact their gift will have,” Cavnar said. “For example, someone may sponsor a home for Jon, Maria, Julianne or one of the other desperately poor families in Haiti or Belize. That gift will changed a family's life forever. That sponsorship will have made it possible.”
To contribute to Cross International's home-building ministry in Haiti, Belize and other desperate Third World countries, either use the envelope portion of the black and white brochure enclosed in this issue of the National Catholic Register or mail your gift to: Cross International, Dept. AW00115, PO Box 63, Akron, OH 44309-0063.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ------- TITLE: Special Outreach During Lent Has Inspiring Impact DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:With these words, Most Rev. Sam Jacobs, touches on the incredible truth and challenge we experience during this holy season of Lent.
At this time of year, we marvel at Christ's incredible depth of love for us. We recount how He suffered and was crucified for us. And, as modern Christians living in our modern world, we consider how He would have us respond to this amazing act.
One powerful passage of Scripture that immediately comes to mind is 1 John 3:16-18. It both magnifies Jesus Christ's sacrifice and points us to a practical path for our Lenten observances. It reads — “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”
This passage has become a cornerstone of Cross International, a ministry founded to support church-based programs helping the poorest of the poor in the underdeveloped nations ofour world. Bishop Jacobs, who serves on the ministry's board, has encouraged Catholics to respond to Jesus Christ's love by imitating it when we find others in need.
“We definitely see our ministry as a response to Christ's love, and that does become a very powerful spiritual inspiration for us during Lent,” explained Jim Cavnar, president of Cross International. “How can you contemplate Christ's overflowing mercy and not feel His Spirit stirring within you — calling you to respond to others with that same love.”
Through our acts of mercy, Cavnar added, the impact of Christ's sacrificial love lives on and on.
“Our outreach to the poor during Lent can be seen in the smiling face of a hungry child eating a meal or in the tearful face of a parent who has just been given the shelter of a home. Every day, the mercy of God is revealed and repeated. It is the light that our Lord asked us to shine in the darkness. It's the hope that Lent itself represents,” he said. “Isn't that what Christ's sacrifice was for? Isn't that the life-changing truth that burns in our souls during Lent? I believe it is.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: ------- TITLE: Monsignor Michael Flanagan Joins Cross International DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:Monsignor Michael Flanagan has joined Cross International to support its outreach to the poor in Haiti, Trinidad, Latin America and Africa.
For years, Msgr. Flanagan has spoken nationwide on behalf of the poor and the Catholic parishes that are doing social ministries overseas. It is, he says, God's purpose for his life.
“People often say they are searching for God's purpose for their lives. When I hear that comment, I point them to three scriptural passages — Isaiah 58:6-8, James 1:27 and Matthew 25:31-46. Look there, and you may find what God is calling you to do. 1 think it's clear that our Lord wants us to respond to people in need.”
In response to Christ's call to help the poor, Msgr. Flanagan works to forge relationships between parishes in the U.S. and their counterparts overseas. The American parishes are asked to pray for and assist struggling Third World parishes operating feeding centers, clinics, housing projects and other ministries for the poor.
“The priests, nuns and pastors working overseas are dedicated and they are doing a great work, but they lack resources and need our help to do more. What a wonderful goal for us to champion! Working together, we can lift up the dedicated missionaries already working in the trenches among the poor,” Msgr. Flanagan said.
“We call our outreach to U.S. parishes the Missionary Preachers Program, and it's a very positive and uplifting experience. It celebrates the good work being done by Catholic ministries overseas and encourages a spirit of unity and teamwork.” To obtain more information about the Missionary Preachers Program, call 1-800-391-8545.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ------- TITLE: Family Matters DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:When You Can't Agree
Q Recently my husband and I reached a stalemate over which house to buy. Disagreement seems to be a recurring theme in our marriage. Could you offer ideas for resolving our differences?
A Conflict is a familiar foe to anyone who has been married for more than five minutes.
One good way to begin dealing with it is adopting Ephesians 5:21 as a family motto: “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Put aside the desire to win every argument. The guiding question must be: “What is best for my family?”
It can be helpful, for example, to defer to each other in areas of recognized expertise. One couple we know agreed that the wife would have final say over decisions about the interior of the house, while the husband would have final say about the exterior. Of course, each of them consults the other and carefully considers whatever is said.
Because we're so comfortable with our spouse, it's easy when arguing to lash out or be short — treating our spouse in ways we'd never dream of treating a friend or co-worker. We cannot allow ourselves to be grumpiest toward the person we love the most.
Even if we get these basics in place, however, and even if we add prayer, there can be times when we don't reach a meeting of the minds. These can be some of the hardest parts of married life.
Ephesians 5 offers more guidance, first to the wives: “Be subject to your husbands as to the Lord” (verse 22). When deadlocked, it may be time for the wife to defer to her husband. It's not that the wife isn't an equal partner; rather, she acknowledges that God has given him a role of leadership for the family. Every corporation needs a CEO, a place where the buck stops. The husband is like that — the family's CEO.
For the husbands, Ephesians 5 continues: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her” (verse 25). The family CEO doesn't spend all day golfing, and he'd be crazy not to listen to his closest partner in the firm. Husbands instead are called to make great sacrifices for the family. So while the wife bears the cross of submission, the husband too bears a cross of headship, often dying to his own wishes.
We know it's tough. Early in our marriage, Caroline supported Tom through graduate school. Near the end of his coursework, when doctoral exams were looming, Tom considered postponing them for several good reasons. Caroline was bitterly opposed; it meant she would have to teach another year. The debate seemed endless, but finally Caroline resolved to defer to Tom's leadership.
“God blessed me for that decision,” Caroline now says, “I had my best year of teaching ever.” Tom made a special sacrifice too. When it was time for the next round of exams, he had pneumonia. He was sorely tempted to throw in the towel, but knew it would be devastating to Caroline. So he completed the three-day ordeal for the good of his wife — and thankfully passed!
Tom and Caroline McDonald are family life directors for the Archdiocese of Mobile, Alabama.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tom And Caroline McDonald ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ------- TITLE: Patriotism Catechism DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:Thomas Spence, a Dallas publisher and father of eight, didn't use to be very patriotic. “I was pretty disillusioned, particularly as a Catholic, as a Christian, with the American experiment,” said Spence. “All of the things that critics of America say I guess I was believing to some extent; I do believe it still.”
Then, “just a few days after Sept. 11 we went to a concert of the Dallas symphony,” he said. “Andrew Litton was conducting and he opened with the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’ It was very emotional. Then he went into the program, a Mozart violin concerto.
“I was sitting there, listening and thinking, we are fighting for Mozart just as surely as we are fighting for McDonald's franchises around the world or Coca-Cola. We have all these flaws; our popular culture is so debased. But if anybody is going to defend Mozart, it's America. I have tried to impart to (my children) a sense of that.”
In days of flag-waving and stadium chants of “U.S.A! U.S.A!” Catholic parents and teachers are looking for ways to properly express — and morally deepen — patriotism.
Gratitude
Jacquelyn Dudasko has a way. The home schooling mother of three in Richardson, Texas, leads her children in singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and the pledge of allegiance before morning prayers.
“God has blessed our country,” Dudasko tells her children. “We have many sins in our country, but look at everything we have, the bounty. Walk into the grocery store.”
That message is a concrete example of what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches about patriotism and gratitude, in No. 2239: “The love and service of one's country follow from the duty of gratitude and belong to the order of charity.”
For Patty Donovan of Plano, Texas, whose four sons attend Catholic schools, “America the Beautiful” helps form her patriotism message.
“One phrase from ‘America the Beautiful’ sums up, for me, America's ideal: ‘liberty in law,’” she said. “We find our freedoms within our laws, including the freedom to worship.”
Donovan said the primary source for her gratitude is America's commitment to religious freedom, which Pope John Paul II has called the fundamental freedom.
“We're so very fortunate — and we remind our children often of this — to live in a country that not only tolerates but encourages religious freedom,” she said. “I've felt especially thankful since the September attacks that our children's school is also a place of prayer.”
Respect for Authority
Donovan raises the other dimension of patriotism mentioned in the catechism — the responsibility to ensure that a nation's laws accord with God's laws:
“Those subject to authority should regard those in authority as representatives of God, who has made them stewards of his gifts,” teaches the catechism (No. 2238). “Their loyal collaboration includes the right, and at times the duty, to voice their just criticisms of that which seems harmful to the dignity of persons and to the good of the community.”
But how does one respect a system of laws that is sometimes terribly unjust?
Indeed, as St. Thomas Aquinas taught, if a law is not in harmony with God's law, it is no law at all, said Father Stephen Zigrang, pastor of St. Andrew Church, Channelview, Texas.
“All authority has its authority from God,” he said. As such, the catechism teaches that while Catholics are bound to offer prayers for and obedience to those in authority, if civil authority conflicts with moral demands, “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
“On the one hand we [in America] do the right thing,” said Father Zigrang. “We have democracy, we let people decide the leadership. But then it comes to issues of human rights — the elderly, the disabled, the unborn — the strong win out. It's financially motivated.”
Many Catholics, who have felt that they live in a kind of exile within a materialistic culture, nevertheless see the need to rally behind their country, which is still, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “the last, best hope of earth.”
Even the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, sounds as patriotic as the most red-white-and-blue American in many of his statements, including this on Dec. 31, 1999: “The discovery of America, which opened a new epoch of the history of mankind, was, without any doubt, the most important element in the balance of the past millennium.”
There is a difference between being a patriot and a nationalist, and as a Catholic you can be one and not the other.
Yet the Pope never misses the opportunity, when addressing this nation, to call it to live out its own ideals, especially in regard to the sanctity of life: “America will remain a beacon of freedom for the world as long as it stands by those moral truths which are the very heart of its historical experience. … If you want justice, defend life” (Evening Prayer at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, January 27, 1999).
Patriotism, Not Nationalism
Brad Birzer, a Catholic father and an assistant professor of history at Hillsdale College in Michigan, agreed that America is the best guardian for the West, from which it has received “a sacred trust.” But, he cautioned, there is a difference between being a patriot and a nationalist, and that as a Catholic he can be one and not the other.
“I have a real loyalty to what the country stands for, such as republican virtue, doing these things for the common good. It's a Catholic understanding, that we're really one body,” he said. “But I think there's a danger in holding too much to ‘Well, I'm an American and therefore …’ I don't like the sound bites and the knee-jerk reaction. We need to have a long discussion about it.”
Some schools are paying special attention to Catholic patriotism. One is Providence Academy, a pre-K through grade 9 Catholic school that opened its doors this year in Minneapolis.
“In its proper form American patriotism ought to be associated with ideas; it's something other than blind patriotism,” said headmaster Todd Flanders. “Americans have the opportunity to go deeper than this, and certainly Catholic Christian Americans do. [There] are interesting ways to bring our civic history and our patriotic involvement into conversation with larger themes of our religious commitments.”
For example, he said, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, students examined how, in his “I Have a Dream” speech, King used the American propositions of equality, liberty and justice to advance greater opportunities for all.
“There's something in the way our country was founded, our founding principles, that help us [Catholics] make our argument in the public square,” he said. “We Catholics unabashedly talk about a right to life. That's language that was first used in the Declaration of Independence.”
Alongside love of country, its history and its ideals, Catholics are also finding a newfound respect for their fellow countrymen, Flanders said.
“My heart is filled with hope,” he said. “We have seen what the soul of our fellow citizens can rise to. Not in my lifetime have I seen a time when there seems to be such a broad understanding of the possibility of good in our people and in our principles.”
Ellen Rossini writes from Richardson, Texas.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Rossini ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ------- TITLE: LIFE NOTES DATE: 02/17/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 17-23, 2002 ----- BODY:Lawmakers Want Ultrasounds
Abortion rates in Wisconsin dropped by more than half after the state offered the so-called look-and-listen option, officials said.
The Indiana Senate Health Committee currently is considering the proposal.
Protests Move Speech
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Jan. 19 — New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey, a Catholic who supports abortion, moved his first public town hall meeting from a Catholic university after pro-life Catholics objected to his plans.
McGreevey moved the meeting from Seton Hall University to Montclair State University. pro-life advocates were angered not only because McGreevey was going to have the town hall meeting at the Catholic school, but also because it was scheduled for Jan. 22, the 29th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Abstinence Funding
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Jan. 30 — The Bush administration is asking Congress for a 33% increase in funding for sexual abstinence education programs. In the budget the president proposed a total of $135 million for abstinence-only programs, an increase of $33 million over this year.
The request fulfills a pledge Bush made while campaigning for president — to spend as much promoting abstinence as some have calculated the government spends educating teens about contraception.
Teen Promotes Unborn Bill
Smith is arranging to address Idaho legislators in favor of a law protecting children from people who would hurt or kill them before they're born.
The Idaho teenager was starting her ninth month of pregnancy when she was attacked July 8 in her home. Hit, kicked and stomped, Smith sensed the beating had hurt her baby and was rushed to the hospital. Noah was stillborn.
Pain Relief Discovery
In the latest finding, Dr. Khem Jhamandas of the department of pharmacology and toxicology at Queen's University, concluded that tiny doses of opioid antagonists — drugs normally used to block the toxic effects of opioids — actually enhance the pain-killing qualities of morphine.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: In Shadow of War and Scandal, Bush Visits Pope DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY —President Bush has met with Pope John Paul II for the second time in less than a year.
Last July, in what seems like a different world, the stem cell debate was the highlight of a wide-ranging conversation. On May 28 it was war, peace, terrorism and the crisis in the Church.
It was Bush's first visit to the Vatican, making it the first visit by a U.S. presidential motorcade to the Vatican since 1994. When the two last met, it was at Castel Gandolfo, the Pope's summer residence.
“I will tell him that I am concerned about the Catholic Church in America, I'm concerned about its standing,” Bush told reporters before the meeting. “And I say that because the Catholic Church is an incredibly important institution in our country. I'm also going to mention the fact that I appreciate the Pope's leadership.”
After the meeting, presidential aides confirmed that Bush had raised the issue with John Paul. Papal spokesman Joaquŕn Navarro-Valls said that the Pope, “despite the difficulties of the moment, wanted to express his trust in the spiritual resources of American Catholics committed to giving witness to Gospel values in society.”
According to aides, the two also discussed tensions in the Middle East and the war on terrorism. The Holy Father spoke specifically about the plight of Christians in the Middle East and “expressed again his closeness to the American people following the events of last Sept. 11.”
Bush briefed John Paul on the NATO-Russia summit, which was the principal reason for his trip to Rome. Presidential planners had originally not requested a papal audience during Bush's hectic visit, but it was subsequently added. Both sides clearly wanted the meeting, as Bush was received at 4 p.m., a highly unusual time for papal audiences.
“The Pope wanted to thank President Bush for his deference in coming to meet him on a day already full of duties and before his return to the United States,” Navarro-Valls said.
Days earlier, during his visit to Russia, Bush took a particular interest in the situation of Catholics asking for a one-on-one meeting with Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz of Moscow. The two met at the U.S. ambassador's house on May 24, where Bush pulled Archbishop Kondrusiewicz aside for a 10-minute conversation during a reception for religious leaders.
“The president was very worried about the situation of the Catholic Church in particular and in general with the situation of religious freedom in Russia,” Archbishop Kondrusiewicz said.
Given the sensitive nature of the Catholic question in Russia, neither side confirmed whether the issue was raised during Bush's papal audience, but he was expected to have done so.
While heads of state visit here on an almost-weekly basis, the arrival of an American president was an extraordinary event, principally because of the staggering number of people who accompany him.
Visiting dignitaries are received into the papal palace from the San Damaso Courtyard.
While spacious enough, it could not accommodate the usual presidential motorcade, which can top 50 cars. So the Bush team squeezed themselves into 30 cars, which meant that the president rode in the same car with U.S. Ambassador James Nicholson, Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who wore a mantilla for the visit.
Secret Service agents indicated that once out of the Vatican confines, the dignitaries would be able to return to less-cramped conveyances.
During the meeting, Vatican security chief Camillo Cibin, who has accompanied both Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II on every single foreign journey, took the opportunity to inspect the armored presidential limousine, a stretch Cadillac Fleetwood; the papal Mercedes is understated by contrast. Meanwhile, eager junior officials from the State Department were busy posing with the car parked under the Vatican flag.
Inside, the number of photographs at the meeting even prompted the Holy Father —the world's most photographed man —to feign annoyance, shielding his face from the cameras.
“They'll make you look good,”
Bush said jokingly.
At the conclusion of the meeting, there was an exchange of Marian gifts. The president gave the Pope a silver oval medallion with a hand-painted image of the Blessed Virgin Mary and received in turn a carved coral statue of the Madonna.
John Paul, remembering the early years of his pontificate, asked Bush about Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. Brzezinski, a Polish-American, had been a key player in the early days of the Solidarity trade union, with whom John Paul had spent several hours in private conversation during his October 1979 visit to Washington.
“He is retired now, but I am sure that he consulted you [before],” Bush responded.
“God bless America,” said the Holy Father in closing, adding, “I hope to be able to meet you again.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond J.Desouza ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Court Upholds Calif. Nurse's Right to Say No DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:RIVERSIDE, Calif. —When California nurse Michelle Diaz showed up for work one Monday morning in June 1999, her supervisor fired her as soon as she walked in the door.
Now, three years later, Diaz says justice has finally been done.
A nurse for six years, Diaz, 29, was capable, hardworking and conscientious —too conscientious for her county public health clinic employers. Diaz was one of five nurses at the Riverside Neighborhood Health Clinic who refused to sign a form saying they would prescribe the “morning-after pill” —a drug that induces early abortion if a woman is pregnant —as part of their duties at the clinic, saying it violated their Christian beliefs.
The other four nurses left the job rather than sign the paper. But Diaz, four months pregnant with two young children at home and providing half her family income, was expecting to be transferred to another department where the pill issue wouldn't arise when she was abruptly fired.
On May 24, a U.S. District Court jury of eight in Riverside determined that county public health clinic officials had wrongly discriminated against Diaz because of her born-again Christian religion and had violated her constitutional rights to free speech and religion. They awarded her $19,000 in back pay and more than $28,000 for emotional distress damages.
“This is a tremendous victory for our client and for all health care professionals who want to do their jobs without violating their consciences and religious beliefs,” said Francis Manion, senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, which represented Diaz. “Pro-life people in health care don't have to feel like second-class citizens.”
Diaz, who started work at the public health clinic in January 1999, said the morning-after pill first surfaced in March that year. “I recall just the subject coming up,” she said.
Ends Early Pregnancies
Diaz was unfamiliar with the pill and looked into it. In the 1970s, she found, Dr. Albert Yuzpe observed that concentrated doses of birth control hormones make the endometrium (the lining of the womb) a hostile place for a newly fertilized embryo.
Doctors began giving women super-high doses of birth control pills within 72 hours of sex to delay ovulation (which would prevent conception) or to prevent a tiny human life from settling into the womb. The Yuzpe Regimen, as it was called, was unofficial and sporadically practiced until birth control manufacturers decided to market it in the late 1990s.
Just like the Yuzpe Regimen, the repackaged morning-after pill will make women vomit, bleed, and feel sick and dizzy. And, if a woman is pregnant (and no one can be sure if she is not, since 72 hours is too early to confirm a pregnancy), she will shed an unwanted fertilized egg, effectively aborting a pregnancy in its first days. The drug's overall effectiveness in preventing pregnancy or ending one that has just commenced is 75%, according to information on one manufacturer's Web site.
“Once I understood how it worked and understood that it could cause an abortion, I didn't want to be a part of ending a new life,” Diaz said. She and her husband were both raised Catholic but had fallen away from the faith and were not attending church. In 1999 they were baptized in the nondenominational Pathways Christian Church.
Family planning was routine at the Riverside health clinic and Diaz did not object to counseling women to use birth control pills (which she was unaware also can be abortifacient) and even the morning-after pill.
The Catholic Church teaching on birth control, outlined by Pope Paul VI in his 1968 encyclical on the regulation of human birth, Humanae Vitae, condemns “any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation —whether as an end or as a means” (No. 14)”
Diaz arranged with her supervisor to have the pharmacist at the large clinic dispense the morning-after pill rather than hand it out herself.
“It's not like it happened every day,” Diaz said. “Probably in the six months I was there, [dispensing the morning-after pill] came up four or five times.”
But some nurse practitioners and doctors in the clinic heard about the arrangement Diaz and other nurses had worked out to skirt dispensing the pill and “they made clear they didn't like it,” Diaz said.
Diaz said the work atmosphere became charged with tension over the issue. “They were mean to me,” she recalled. “I think they were trying to make me quit.”
A Higher Authority
Soon an ultimatum came down from administration in the form of a paper outlining the duties of professionals at the clinic, including the obligation to prescribe the morning-after pill. It was to be signed by all employees.
The nurses were upset and the story leaked to the Sacramento Bee. Diaz was quoted in the local paper, saying, “I have someone to answer to, and it's not the county.”
When she showed up at the office the next work day, she was unceremoniously fired.
Diaz contacted the ACLJ and the lawsuit was launched. Two issues were considered at trial: Diaz's right to conscientiously object to dispensing the pill and her right to speak out publicly against policy at her work-place.
Federal law obliges employers to take reasonable steps to accommodate employees' religious practices and beliefs and to respect their wish to conscientiously object to specific duties, explained the ACLJ's Manion.
“Obviously the jury didn't think they tried to accommodate her,” he said. Rather, he said, it was a case where the clinic operators “didn't want people with her beliefs working there.”
The jury also found the clinic administrators had violated Diaz's freedom of speech. “It's not like she bad-mouthed anyone at the clinic,” Manion said. “She has a right to speak to the press and she did.”
Diaz said the counsel for the Riverside County officials repeatedly highlighted her quote about answering to someone besides the county, but she thought the strategy backfired. “I think [the jury] kind of agreed with it,” she said.
Dr. Gary Feldman, director of the Riverside County Health Department, who was a named defendant on Diaz's lawsuit, declined to comment on the case on the advice of the county, he said.
But Bruce Disenhouse, attorney for Riverside County, said the county would file two motions this week against the ruling. One will ask District Judge Virginia Phillips to overturn the jury verdict as a matter of law, and the other will seek a new trial. Disenhouse said the motions should be heard within 30 to 45 days.
Abortion advocates were angered by the verdict. Kathy Kneer, president and chief executive of he Sacramento-based Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, said the nurses had their biology facts wrong. “A fertilized egg in medical literature is not a pregnancy until it is implanted,” she said, echoing the morning-after pill's manufacturers (but not embryology or obstetrics textbooks).
Kneer said she feared the verdict set a precedent that would pave the way for religiously divided public health care. “You won't be able to get the health care you need unless you are a certain religion,” she said.
“Health providers are there to meet client needs first,” Kneer said. “They have a right to their own religious beliefs, but the patient has a right to service.“
Manion countered: “Michelle Diaz didn't say, ‘Shut this place down. You can't do this.’ She said, ‘Don't make me do this.’” The clinic could easily oblige clients without forcing her to violate her conscience, he added; they just didn't want to.
Key Precedent
Manion said he believes the Riverside verdict could be a key precedent. The ACLJ is also representing Cincinnati pharmacist Karen Brauer, who was fired from her seven-year job at a Kmart pharmacy in 1996 after she declined to fill out a prescription for an early chemical abortifacient drug and then refused to sign a paper stating she would dispense any drugs prescribed to her. The trial is pending.
Cases like those of Diaz and Brauer will increase in number as abortion is further chemicalized, Manion predicted. As well, decisions rendered in pharmaceutical cases could influence the law in cases of surgical abortion and euthanasia.
Beginning in July, approximately 150 obstetrics and gynecology residents in New York City's 11 public hospitals will be required to undergo abortion training, including lessons about the administration of mifepris-tone (RU-486) for chemical abortion, as part of their standard medical training. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg authorized the abortion training requirement.
Federal law allows for the residents to “opt out” of such training on grounds of conscience, but the law on paper and in practice are often at odds, Manion warned.
The pro-life legal counsel expects to see more cases of medical personnel being pressured into various abortion jobs. Pro-abortion advocates have for years been lamenting the “graying” of abortionists and the dwindling pool of practitioners willing to replace them, Manion noted, and they are pushing aggressively to make participation in abortion a routine component of medical training and practice.
Celeste McGovern writes from Portland, Oregon.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Celeste McGovern ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Closing Ground Zero DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:NEW YORK —The cleanup at Ground Zero is complete after eight months of heroic labor, but the wound is far from healed.
As New York officials decide what to build on the gaping 16-acre hole in lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center stood, thousands who were touched directly by the violent events of Sept. 11 seek to fill the void left by the loss of loved ones. And all Americans struggle to make sense of the day that changed the way they view the world.
On May 30, at 10:29 a.m., the time the north tower collapsed, a solemn ceremony marked a new stage in the history of Ground Zero. A folded U.S. flag was carried silently on a stretcher by an honor guard of city police, firefighters and Port Authority officers from what they have come to call “the pit,” symbolizing the remains of the 1,092 victims who have not been recovered among the 2,823 individuals who died.
Then the last steel beam from what were once the tallest buildings in the world was trucked slowly away.
A tragic gravesite had now become, in the words of Franciscan Father Brian Jordan, a shrine to the office workers who were killed and the rescue workers who sacrificed their lives. A constant presence at Ground Zero, Father Jordan months ago blessed the steel beams that were found standing in the perfect shape of a cross amid the ruins.
There were no speeches, no closing prayers. The only sounds were a firehouse bell ringing out the code for a fallen firefighter, the skirl of Police Department bagpipes playing “America the Beautiful” and buglers sounding taps. After the site was empty, a crowd of thousands who ringed the area on a beautifully clear morning —not unlike that of Sept. 11 —began clapping and chanting “USA, USA.”
The removal of the last beam was particularly meaningful for Port Authority Police Officer Ed Smith, who helped build the World Trade Center as a young construction worker in 1969 and who cleared wreckage and searched for bodies after the terrorist attacks. “I've always told my kids they are Dad's buildings,” he said, “so besides losing friends, I've lost something I put my blood and sweat into.”
A Catholic Moment
The ceremony also marked the end of an extended Catholic moment in the city's history. The overwhelming majority of the 343 firefighters and 23 police officers who died Sept. 11 were Catholic. The site will remain a perpetual memorial to the faith founded on sacrifice and self-giving.
Father Robert Romano, chief police chaplain, was part of the honor guard that marched in the closing ceremony. He had spent countless hours at the site since day one, counseling the grieving and administering the sacraments, and celebrated Mass there every Sunday for rescue workers and families of the victims.
As Father Romano followed the stretcher in procession from the site, he felt “Ground Zero withdrawal.” The workers and the families had formed a tight community of faith, hope and friendship. “There was an incredible bond, and now we won't see one another as often,” said Father Romano, a pastor in Brooklyn. “There's a separation anxiety.”
He recalled a mother who was not Catholic who attended his early morning Mass every Sunday “to pray for her son. He was a police sergeant who was never found. She wanted to let him know that she was there and would never forget.”
The morning of the closing ceremony, Father Romano offered his final Mass at Ground Zero for fellow police officers and their families. He called the rescue efforts that turned sadly into recovery and cleanup efforts “one extended labor of love. Everybody gave of themselves totally and completely. Against incredible odds and hardships, they worked to bring our 23 officers home who heroically lost their lives. We all felt that those 23 families wanted us to bring them home.”
‘My priorities have definitely changed. Everything is family now.’
Firefighter Ed Murray, who worked the early days in the rescue effort, when hopes were high that some victims could be found alive, expressed similar sentiments. “We'd find small parts —a hand, a foot, fingers,” he said. “You'd feel incredibly sad at first, but you knew that you could bring another one home.”
Murray, part of a ladder company in Queens, attended most of the funeral Masses for the firefighters who perished. “It was important for me to be there, to stand with my brother firefighters and to be with the families. Sometimes I'd work a 24-hour shift at the fire house, put on my dress uniform, go to one or two funerals, catch some sleep, then go back to the firehouse.”
Changed Priorities
These days, Murray is spending more time with his wife, Donna, and their two daughters, ages 15 and 11. “My priorities have definitely changed. Everything is family now,” he said. “We were always close and this brought us even closer.”
Michael Sialiano, who retired as a lieutenant from the Fire Department last July, expressed the same view. “It changed all our lives spiritually, our attitudes, what's important, what's not important,” he said.
He lost six men from the Brooklyn company he headed. “Four of them I broke in personally,” he said sadly. On a Long Island golf course the morning of the attacks, he grabbed his retired fire helmet, drove to the Brooklyn fire house, then went to Ground Zero. He told his wife on the phone, “My men are down there. I have to go down and start digging.”
Deacon Jerome Dominguez, a Manhattan physician, lost his policeman son, also named Jerome. The 37-year-old Dominguez was engaged to be married last December.
“From what I've been told, my son was in the south building, and when there was a call for all to evacuate, he and his friends kept going up because there were people trapped,” Deacon Dominguez said. “He went up so high, he got to heaven. We are giving thanks to God that he fulfilled his life on earth. My goal in life now is to help people get to heaven.”
Two days before the Ground Zero closing, Father Romano celebrated 25 years as a priest. At Mass, he told congregants, “I've seen the goodness of God manifested to people in very strange and beautiful ways. I've seen people who took their faith for granted who are now so much stronger and closer to God. I've seen great good come out of this horrible evil, and I've come away renewed in my faith —faith in God, but also in people.”
Brian Caulfield writes from West Haven, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: Trade Center Is Now Shrine to the Fallen ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Culfield ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Catholics Are 'Blogging' On the Internet...to Evangelize DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:ST. CLOUD, Minn. —If you haven't yet heard of blogging, you soon will. The latest Internet trend in personal journalism, it is currently undergoing an explosion among Catholics, connecting lay Catholics, priests and seminarians across the country.
Blog —short for Web log —is a cross between a traditional Web site and an online diary. Web logs allow individuals or groups of users to post news, links and commentary on an hourly or even minute-by-minute basis —free-of-charge and without the need to understand complex HTML language. The ease of the technology makes it possible for almost anyone to publish.
“It's impossible to keep up with them all, but we estimate that there are more than 500,000 Web logs,” said Evan Williams, CEO of Pyra Labs, the San Francisco-based company that designed the Blogger Web-based software in the fall of 1999. “There are approximately 1,000 new Web logs created every day,” he noted.
In the beginning of the year, a couple dozen self-identified Catholic blog sites existed. That number quickly escalated following a news story on Vatican Radio. The Catholic Blog for Lovers lists three times the number that existed a month ago —blogs with appropriate Catholic names such as Nota Bene, Annunciations and Gregorian Rant.
Why the recent upsurge? In addition to the attention from Vatican Radio, many think the clergy sex abuse scandal is a primary factor contributing to the increase in Catholic blogs and has contributed to the majority of the Catholic blog chatter.
“People are feeling a lot of strong emotion about the clerical sexual abuse scandal and people want to speak up,” said Catholic blogger Peter Nixon of Concord, Calif. He oversees the Catholic blog site Sursum Corda.
Kathy Shaidle of Toronto is one of the pioneer Catholic bloggers. She started her site, Relapsed Catholic, in 2000. She said she has seen a 30% increase in the number of visitors to her site since the clergy sexual abuse stories broke. “I've been told that I've inspired others to take up blogging, to express their thoughts on the scandal,” Shaidle said.
Beyond the scandal, however, individuals are finding distinct ways to use their blogs. Some use them to advance their work. Kathryn Lively of Come On, Get Lively uses her blog to highlight publishing projects of her FrancisIsidore Electronic Press. Amy Welborn uses her blog to work out ideas for her writing. Pete Vere, a defender of the bond for a diocesan marriage tribunal in Florida, uses it to address readers' canonical concerns on his site, Clog.
“In a time when the Church is experiencing a shortage of canon-ists, blogging allows me to interact with average Catholics and address their concerns pertaining to canon law. It allows me to clarify certain rights Catholics have within the Church, correct misconceptions and show the faithful they have nothing to fear from canon law,” Vere said.
Others, such as Tom Kreitzberg of Silver Spring, Md., use their blogs to offer political or social commentary. Kreitzberg quoted P.G. Wodehouse by saying that “people become authors when their hopes of getting letters to the editor published are frustrated.” This explains the motivation behind his own blog, Praying the Post.
“There are people who blog to promote themselves professionally, there are people who blog to promote themselves personally, there are people who blog to promote their ideas or perspectives,” Kreitzberg said.
While Catholic blogs might not be receiving the sort of numbers advertisers notice, the statistics are still impressive. Emily Stimpson of Fool's Folly receives as many as 500 hits per day; Mark Shea receives upwards of 800 visits per day.
In spite of the trend, not everyone is enamored with blogging. “There seems to be a lot of narcissism,” explained blog reader Tara Conway, a communications consultant in Washington, D.C. “Some of the posts are so mundane that a reader is left with a ‘Who cares?’ reaction.” Other bloggers are so prolific, she said, she wonders when they get their day-to-day chores done.
Yet they cannot be ignored. Mainstream media have even begun quoting blogs. “I check what they are saying before I check the Washington Post,” admitted Rod Dreher, a senior writer with National Review Online. “I trust their insights more than I trust the insights found in most secular newspapers.”
Still others think blogging is building a virtual Christian community —one that Catholic bloggers themselves have taken to calling “St. Blog's parish.”
“What a blessing and inspiration Catholic blogging has been,” said Jeanine Webb, a 70-year-old grandmother from Eugene, Ore. “Eugene is the capital of alternative-lifestyle types, so it's been reassuring to be able to read and communicate with faith-filled, active, intelligent people of my faith. It's helped me to be more active too,” said Webb, who after reading a suggestion from a Web log decided to call her local parish to schedule a prayer vigil in mid-June.
Conway conceded that reading others' blogs has helped her to feel as though she “knows” them. “I can foresee the day when bloggers might well hold mini-conferences just to get together to meet one another and talk in person,” she said.
Said Kreitzberg: “Catholics always have something to say to the world —and lately about what the world is saying about Catholics —and there is a great deal of what Catholics have to say being said in the Catholic blogging community.”
Tim Drake writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tim Drake ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Broncos Owner Defends Priests DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:As owner of the two-time Super Bowl Champion Denver Broncos, Pat Bowlen knows the value of prayer and priests.
He considers Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput a close friend and has welcomed him as a special guest at his team's two Super Bowl victories. Bowlen attributes much of his success in life to the influence of priests, in his childhood and as an adult. He spoke recently with Register correspondent Wayne Laugesen.
You signed your name recently to a full-page ad in the
Because I have some idea what they're going through with all of this stuff. It has been hard on them. They've had some problems among some of their peers, and they are serious problems, but you can't paint the whole Catholic clergy with the same brush.
Every organization, whether it's the Denver Broncos, the Colorado Rockies or any other organization of any kind has its problems with certain people within the organization. You can't, in fairness, let them color the whole organization. But how you keep the public and the media from doing that is another question.
Tell me a little about the role of priests in your life, particularly when you were growing up.
I was born and baptized Catholic, so my religious roots go way back. I went to an all-boys Catholic Jesuit residential high school in Wisconsin. I think four years with Jesuits is an experience all kids should go through. I've also been around priests most of my adult life because I have some close friends who are priests, so perhaps I see them a bit differently than the general public sees them. In my youth I saw them as teachers and counselors and adult role models. They played a pretty dramatic role in pointing me in the right direction.
How much of your personal and career success do you attribute to your lifelong associations with priests?
Certainly I attribute my ability to get through high school, college and law school to the discipline I gained from the priests who taught me. They were responsible for getting me the kind of education I needed to get to the position I'm in now.
How about prayer? What role does that play, if any, in your everyday life as an NFL franchise owner?
I pray all the time, yet sometimes we lose. Sometimes he listens, and sometimes apparently he does not [laughs]. I suppose the owner of the other team might be praying too, which might explain some of those losses. I suppose sometimes they're praying harder than I am.
All the evidence indicates that this is no more of an abuse problem in the Catholic Church than anywhere else —probably less. Why do you think the media has latched on to it?
That's the media for you. I deal with the media every day, and a story is a story. Obviously this is a story with some serious ramifications and some very serious aspects to it, but it has become a full-fledged feeding frenzy now, and based on my own experience with the media, somehow that just doesn't surprise me too much.
Is the unfortunate misrepresentation and distortion of facts working on the public? Is this creating an image problem that will cause long-term harm to Catholics and the Church?
I don't know. I mean, I think perhaps people who are not connected with the Catholic Church —or people who have become disconnected for whatever reason —could be duped into thinking that priests are dangerous and the Church is some kind of unsafe environment.
But anyone who spends much time around our religion and its institutions would know that what has dominated media attention are a few isolated incidents that are not a true insight into what our religion and our priests are about —not at all. The problem is, the media treatment of this will have a potentially lasting impact on people who are not active in any religion or faith, or who have fallen away from their Catholic roots for whatever reason.
As one who deals with the media frequently as part of your job, do you have any advice for pastors, bishops and other priests?
That's a tough one to answer. Like I said, I deal with the media every day. But we're talking sports here, not other people's lives. I've been through showdowns with the press, obviously with controversy surrounding the new stadium and whatnot. And I think at some point you just have to put all the noise out of your mind and do your job to the best of your ability. Of course that's easy to say, and hard for an archbishop right now because he's right there on the firing line all of a sudden.
It's hard for me to counsel someone in that position as to how to react, as opposed to how I react regarding a business that I own. If a player gets drunk and falls down in the driveway, well that's what some players do and society knows that. If I have players with very serious problems —such as the player in [North] Carolina who murdered somebody —well that's very difficult. We're talking about stories in the media now that affect the entire Catholic Church, and that's serious stuff that's very difficult for anyone to deal with.
You've had Archbishop Chaput come to at least one of your winning Super Bowls. Does his presence help you through what's quite obviously a stressful situation?
He's been to both Super Bowl victories, and I hope he goes to the next one, too. It's helpful to have a priest at the game, and it's especially helpful if the archbishop is there because I suspect he has a little closer communication to God than I do. I'll tell you this —it did not hurt at all to have the archbishop along at those two Super Bowls.
Wayne Laugesen writes from Boulder, Colorado.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Pat Bowlen ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Nebraska City Ignores Court Ban on Ten Commandments DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:PLATTSMOUTH, Neb. —A monument containing the Ten Commandments still stands in a public area in Plattsmouth, Neb., even though a U.S. district court last month ordered it removed or relocated.
“It's still there,” city administrator John Winkler said. “We're not going to remove it until it's through with the appeal.”
And Winkler said he thinks the courts might ultimately side with the city, arguing that its presence does not represent a constitutionally prohibited public establishment of a particular religion.
“The city did not place the monument and say, ‘This is the religion of the city, you have to pay homage,’” Winkler said.
The Fraternal Order of Eagles gave the monument to the city in 1965. The Eagles placed more than 4,000 such statutes across the country, including at least four others in Nebraska.
Cultural History
The Ten Commandments have become part of our American cultural history and have a right to be displayed in the town square, Winkler said.
The American Center for Law and Justice, based in Virginia Beach, Va., will help Plattsmouth make that case.
The public interest law firm asked a federal appeals court to overturn the lower court ruling that prohibited Plattsmouth from publicly displaying the Ten Commandments.
“We are appealing this important case because nothing in the Constitution prohibits government from acknowledging the important role the Ten Commandments has played in the development of our culture,” said Francis Manion, senior counsel for the Virginia-based firm.
“The people of Plattsmouth understand something the courts apparently do not —that is, the difference between an acknowledgement of religion and the establishment of religion,” Manion said.
The U.S. District Court for Nebraska ruled May 3 that the display violated the establishment clause of the Constitution and ordered Plattsmouth from “retaining the Ten Commandments display in Memorial Park as it is now situated.”
But Manion said the display is consistent with other public expressions of faith.
“Accepting a fraternal group's gift which happens to contain a text from a religious source is no more an establishment of religion than is our national motto, ‘In God We Trust’ or the phrase ‘One nation under God’ found in the Pledge of Allegiance,” he said.
But the American Civil Liberties Union disagreed with the monument's display and any public endorsement of religion.
“We see no difference between prayer in public schools and these monuments. They are government endorsements of a specific religion,” said Tim Butz, director of the Nebraska chapter of the ACLU.
“It sends a message to people in the community: either you subscribe to the beliefs or you don't belong to this town,” Butz said. “Government bureaucrats make horrible teachers of theology.”
Butz refused to predict whether the Eighth Circuit would overturn the May 3 ruling, but he said the court would likely grant a hearing to the American Center for Law and Justice. Ultimately, Butz said, he believes the Supreme Court will strike down public displays such as the one in Plattsmouth.
“The ACLJ is losing these cases,” Butz said of his rival.
Father Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things, said he thinks Butz and his cohorts represent an outdated and “overly narrow” interpretation of the establishment clause.
“It gets sillier and sillier as courts tie themselves in convoluted knots,” Father Neuhaus said. “The courts are trying to pass selective amnesia on the American public. ‘Let's pretend the Ten Commandments are not really essential to Western legal and moral history.’ It becomes ludicrous.”
He said courts have said recently that while the Ten Commandments are impermissible, moral sayings similar to them are acceptable.
“If you have 10 nice sayings, that's OK. That's analogous to saying, ‘Be nice to your parents,’ but you can't say, ‘Thou shalt honor thy father and mother.’ Or you can say, ‘Respect other people's property,’ but not ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ It's silly,” he said.
Contradictory Rulings
Although the Supreme Court has passed on taking such a case for two consecutive years, court watchers believe the justices will hear the dispute because of a discrepancy in rulings in lower courts.
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that such statutes were forbidden. But both the Tenth Circuit and the Fourth Circuit have ruled that such public displays did not violate the establishment clause.
While it might take a few years, Father Neuhaus remains convinced the Supreme Court will eventually allow the Ten Commandments to be displayed in towns like Plattsmouth.
“The ACLU is not on the cutting edge. They are gnawing on an old bone,” Father Neuhaus said. “They are not nearly as strong as they were 20 years ago and certainly not as strong as they were 50 years ago.”
Joshua Mercer writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joshua Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:Priest Plans Center to Heal Abuse Victims
Himself the target of abuse by two priests in high school, Father Hayes said he feels the devastation such molestation can cause, and he wants to help his fellow victims heal.
“We've got 14 treatment centers around the country for priests, but the bishops have set up nothing for survivors, which is astounding,” Father Hayes told the paper. “I'm trying to interest a number of therapists.”
Father Hayes aims to raise $500,000 to buy a 75-acre parcel of land with a 40,000-square-foot house and to pay for operating expenses.
A spokesman for Father Hayes' Diocese of Owensboro, Ky., said that Bishop John McRaith supports Father Hayes' project, agreeing that “[the victims] need spiritual care from the Church.”
Stealing From the Poor?
While Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill toured Africa with rock star/philanthropist Bono of the Irish band U2, observers worried about the impact of the $190 billion agriculture bill President Bush recently signed.
“This farm bill, I think it's fair to say, will put millions of small farmers out of business in Africa,” warned agriculture analyst Mark Ritchie. “They will have to move to cities and become part of unemployed labor pools.”
Ritchie feared that the large subsidies given to farmers in the United States would cause overproduction of corn, wheat, cotton and other staples, which represent up to half of the output of some African countries.
“Commodity prices will probably sink lower on a global basis,” said Neil Harl of Iowa State University. “For countries that do not subsidize their farmers as well as we do, that will mean economic and financial trauma.”
Homeless Men Used as Gladiators
BRITISH BROADCASTING CORP., May 25 —Two graduate school filmmakers in the United States have made money for their next cinematic project by plumbing new depths of so-called “reality TV”: encouraging homeless people to fist-fight, undertake dangerous stunts and humiliate themselves for gifts and food —on videotape.
The result is Bum Fights, which its 24-year-old creators, Las Vegas-based Ray Laticia and Ty Beeson, claim is a socially useful picture of homeless life.
The video has already sold more than 200,000 copies, bringing in revenues of more than $1 million. Its ads promise “drunk bums beating each other silly,” and the tapes deliver, according to the BBC, which reported that the hand-held video “shows homeless men fighting, sometimes resulting in serious injuries.”
Donald Whitehead of the U.S. National Coalition for the Homeless condemned the video: “It's clearly exploitative. It's clearly cruel. … People are being forced to do things under various conditions of substance abuse and mental illness … by people that clearly just are absolutely uncaring, unfeeling.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Cloning Ban Supporters Say Senate Must Act Now DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON —While Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, DS.D., continues to delay the vote on a human cloning ban, eager scientists have said that the first human clone will likely be born within a year.
Infertility researcher Panos Zavos made international headlines when he told reporters May 15 that his Kentucky-based cloning team will produce a human clone this year, with the delivery of a cloned baby in 2003.
Testifying before a congressional subcommittee, Zavos said the cloning genie has escaped and is getting bigger every day. “There is no way that this genie is going back into the bottle,” he said.
The words and deeds of researchers such as Zavos are proof to cloning opponents that time is critical.
“Sen. [Sam] Brownback has been ready since February,” said Erik Hotmire, the Kansas Republican senator's spokesman. Brownback's bill, S. 1899, is identical to the cloning ban passed by the House. It would make all forms of human cloning illegal.
Initially Daschle had promised a vote on all cloning bills in February, but then postponed the vote until June.
Molly Rowley, spokeswoman for Daschle, told the White House Bulletin in late May that a vote on cloning would likely occur in June.
“Between next week and the Fourth of July, Sen. Daschle hopes to get to minimum wage, cloning and possibly in conjunction with that, genetic discrimination,” Rowley said.
‘Clone and Kill’
Other cloning bills, such as one offered by Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, would allow researchers to create cloned humans, but only if they promised to extinguish the life before it got past the embryonic stage.
Pro-life activists have called the Specter-Harkin bill the “clone and kill” bill because it would force certain humans to be killed once they reached a certain age.
“The Brownback bill is the only one that truly bans human cloning,” said Cathleen Cleaver, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Every single other bill —and there are maybe four others —allows cloning, but [they require] that you have to kill them. They are literally creating a class —really a subclass —of humans that must be killed before they grow too much.”
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, calls himself pro-life but supports research on embryonic humans and recently supported the Specter-Harkin cloning bill.
“I come to this issue with a strong pro-life, pro-family record. But I also strongly believe that a critical part of being pro-life is to support measures that help the living,” Hatch said April 30.
But Hatch did not call the procedure cloning.
“As I considered the ethical appropriateness of nuclear transplantation in regenerative medicine research, two facts stand out,” he said. “The egg, with its nucleus removed, is never fertilized with sperm. The resulting unfertilized, electrically activated embryo will not be transplanted into a woman's womb so there is no chance of birth.”
An organization called CuresNow has brought back the famous couple “Harry and Louise,” who became minor celebrities with their ads opposing President Clinton's health care plan. The new ads are in support of the Specter bill.
“How can we explain to our children that our own government is now the greatest obstacle to a cure for their disease?” said Lucy Fisher, who served as a vice chairman of Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group and now is co-chairman of CuresNow.
Fisher claimed that the Brown-back bill would “decimate the hope of millions of Americans, including children afflicted with degenerative and debilitative conditions.”
But syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, who is not pro-life yet supports the Brownback bill, said that Hatch, Fisher and other cloning supporters are playing word games.
“It does no good to change the nomenclature. The Harry and Louise ad asks, ‘Is it cloning?’ and answers, ‘No, it uses an unfertilized egg and a skin cell.’ But fusing (the nucleus of) a ‘somatic’ cell (such as skin) with a enucleated egg cell is precisely how you clone,” he wrote in his May 10 column for the Washington Post.
Doug Johnson, legislative director of National Right to Life, called the Specter bill a “phony ban” designed to give cover to politicians back home.
“It's so that [South Dakota Democrat] Tim Johnson can say, ‘Look, I voted for a ban on human cloning,’” he said.
Doug Johnson warned that a recent Gallup Poll showing 61% of Americans opposing the cloning of human embryos, even for research, is not enough to stop cloning.
“Regardless of the 61% opposition to human cloning, the biotech industry might get its way if the public doesn't get active in this debate,” Johnson said.
Sen. Brownback's spokesman Hotmire said that only a full ban on human cloning would prevent the “commodification” of human life that he said would be inevitable if Specter's bill allowing research on cloned embryonic humans becomes law.
“Once they are created, who owns them? Can they patent them? Can a research company own someone's DNA? As we know, they are trying to create cloned human DNA. Is it legal to own a human?” Hotmire asked.
Hotmire said these concerns transcend the pro-life community. He cited the support of Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, who has co-sponsored the Brownback bill. In addition, environmentalists such as Brent Blackwelder of Friends of the Earth also oppose the “genetic manipulation of humans.”
Bush Backs Ban
Currently neither side has the necessary 60 votes to end cloture and bring the bill to a vote. But pro-life activists are pleased that President Bush has again made his opposition to the Specter bill known.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson wrote a letter to Brownback on May 15 stating, “The administration strongly supports a complete ban on all human cloning.”
He added, “As the president has stated, anything other than a total ban would be both unethical and ineffective, a ban on the implantation of cloned embryos being virtually impossible to enforce. Moreover, a law that authorized research cloning would likely result not only in the creation of human embryo farms but also in international trafficking in human eggs.”
Thompson said the president does not support Specter's bill, and suggested Bush would likely veto it if passed by the Senate.
“I know that the president would very much like to sign a comprehensive bill that unequivocally bans all human cloning,” Thompson said. “I am equally certain, however, that the administration could not support any measure that purported to ban ‘reproductive cloning’ while authorizing ‘research’ cloning, and I would recommend to the president that he veto such a bill.”
Joshua Mercer writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joshua Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Abortion Clinics Accused of Rape Cover-Up DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:DENTON, Texas —Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation abortion affiliates across the United States responded to a caller claiming to be a 13-year-old girl impregnated by a 22-year-old man by advising her to hide the man's age when seeking an abortion, the Texas-based Life Dynamics Inc. charged in a report released in late May.
Sexual activity between an adult man and a 13-year-old girl is a serious felony offense everywhere in the United States.
Life Dynamics said that its report, entitled Child Predators, was based on nine months of covert investigation of facilities affiliated with Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation. According to Life Dynamics, the young female caller informed the facilities that she was seeking to obtain the abortion in order to conceal her sexual activity with the adult man from her parents.
Life Dynamics alleged that in 91% of cases, workers at the clinics contacted by the female caller agreed to keep her sexual relationship with the 22-year-old man secret. As well, many clinics counseled her to be more careful in what she said when she went to obtain an abortion, so as not to raise suspicions that could generate criminal charges.
On May 22, WITC-TV in Hartford, Conn., aired excerpts of tape recordings of calls between the female caller and abortion clinics in Connecticut. It is legal to tape calls without the other party's knowledge in Texas, where the Life Dynamics calls originated.
An employee of the Willimantic Planned Parenthood clinic was recorded telling the caller not to mention her adult sex partner when she sought her abortion.
“They won't ask anything about him?” she asked.
“I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that, OK?” the employee responded. “Don't even bring that up, OK?”
On another taped call, an employee at Planned Parenthood's New London facility coached the female caller on what to avoid saying when calling a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Norwich to arrange an abortion.
“When you go to Norwich, you're going to want to give them a call. Don't tell them that information,” the New London Planned Parenthood employee said.
Responded the girl, “Then it will be OK?”
Replied the Planned Parenthood employee: “If you do not say the age of your partner … otherwise there's going to be a lot of stuff going on that you're probably not going to want to have happen.”
WITC-TV contacted Planned Parenthood for verification of the authenticity of the taped calls, but said it received only a brief statement challenging Life Dynamics' credibility. “Planned Parenthood questions the reliability of staged tapes of supposed telephone conversations surreptitiously prepared by Life Dynamics, an organization with a notorious anti-Planned Parenthood agenda,” the Planned Parenthood statement said.
The television station said that it also contacted every Connecticut facility Life Dynamics claimed to have taped. In each case, the station reported, the dial tones heard on the tapes matched the tones heard by WITC's reporter. As well, the station requested to speak with employees with the names used by those heard talking on the tapes. In each case, employees by those names existed, even though some names, such as Glenda and Heidi, were not common ones.
In a May 22 press release, Life Dynamics charged that “American abortion clinics and family planning organizations are knowingly violating state and federal laws that require them to report the sexual abuse of children.”
Said Mark Crutcher, founder and president of Life Dynamics: “No matter how someone feels about abortion, most people will agree that the abuse of these young girls needs to be reported. The fact that these incidences are not reported is bad enough, but the fact that they are not being reported simply to protect a financial and political agenda is even more reprehensible.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:Bulgarians Welcome Pope, But Rift is Still Bitter
ASSOCIATED PRESS, May 18 —Even as the 70,000 Catholics who live in the majority-Orthodox Bulgaria thronged Masses to celebrate Pope John Paul II's visit and 82nd birthday, posters denouncing the Holy Father also went up around the country, inspired by nationalists and anti-papal elements in the country's Orthodox Church.
For instance, as reported by Associated Press, the town of Veliko Tarnovo, 156 miles from the capital city, Sofia, saw dozens of signs on walls of homes with slogans such as “A Pope —A Heretic,” and “Never a papal visit to Bulgaria.”
At the Mass in Sofia, John Paul beatified three priests murdered by communists in 1952 and paid honor to Orthodox faithful persecuted by the fallen atheist regime. The Bulgarian government, eager for Western good will —and an end to rumors that the old Bulgarian secret service fomented the 1981 attempt on the Pope's life —sent police to look for the source of the posters.
“I am convinced that the Christian and universal values and ideals which you preach so dedicatedly will contribute to building a peaceful and better world,” Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov told the Holy Father.
Pope May Sacrifice Juan Diego Rites to Failing Health
But papal spokesman Joaquŕn Navarro-Valls told The Times that the Holy Father would attend World Youth Day. “Toronto is certain,” he said. “As for the others, we shall see.”
The Pope, who is suffering from effects of Parkinson's disease, had difficulty celebrating Mass in Bulgaria and Azerbaijan, but The Times noted that this was “the first time Vatican officials had acknowledged that he might have to curb his travel.”
The paper noted that Mexico is a favorite papal destination, “the first country he visited after his election in 1978.” Only twice before has the Holy Father canceled travel plans because of his health.
Navarro-Valls pointed out that the Pope's intellectual powers remain undiminished by illness, telling the paper: “His memory, his ability to plan the future, his sense of humor are all intact. I can tell you that in the daily work of the Curia, he is the one with original ideas, pushing toward the future.”
Pope Offers His Suffering to Cause of Ecumenism
CWNEWS.COM, May 24 —Despite the suffering imposed by his illness, Pope John Paul II will continue to travel and work in the cause of ecumenism —especially his long-deferred dream of reconciling Eastern Orthodox and Catholics, Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Christian unity, told CWNews.com.
Cardinal Kasper acknowledged that he was personally “very concerned” about the Holy Father's health and attributed the current trip to the Pope's embrace of sacrifice for the sake of Christian solidarity.
“We are seeing, at each ceremony, that he has an iron will,” Cardinal Kasper said.
He reminded leaders of the long-estranged Eastern churches “that we want to have fraternal and amicable relations with the Orthodox Church and that we will not impose anything on them.”
Optimistic about the outcome of the trip, Cardinal Kasper said: “This suffering Pope has brought us one step closer to Christian unity.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Pope's Health Status on Display at Corpus Christi Procession DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY —Pope John Paul II presided over the traditional Corpus Christi procession on May 30, his first liturgical event since returning from his trip to Azerbaijan and Bulgaria.
He appeared so weak on that trip that a German journalist traveling on the papal plane said the press corps was on constant “red alert” for a medical emergency.
Returning to Rome apparently had a restorative effect. John Paul was able to read his full text at the Wednesday audience and then his homily for Corpus Christi —the solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ.
When speaking Polish or Italian the Holy Father is clearer and his voice is stronger; in other languages the slurring of his speech sometimes renders his words unintelligible. On his recent trip, where the discourses were in Russian and Bulgarian, he had an aide read his texts for him.
“The days, the years, the centuries pass, but not this most holy act, in which Jesus condensed the whole of his Gospel of love,” John Paul said during his homily at the Corpus Christi Mass. The words were poignant, given the toll the passage of time has taken on their speaker.
Corpus Christi —observed by the Vatican on the traditional date of the Thursday after Trinity Sunday —is celebrated with an evening Mass at the basilica of St. John Lateran (the cathedral of Rome), followed by a candlelight procession with the Blessed Sacrament to the ba-silica of St. Mary Major, shorter than a mile away. The traditional procession was halted in 1870, when republican forces seized the Papal States. It was only in 1979 that John Paul revived the custom.
Until 1994, the Holy Father used to walk the route, sometimes carrying the monstrance himself. Since then the monstrance has been placed upon a stand upon a canopied flatbed truck, before which the Holy Father kneels in adoration. This year he knelt for the first half of the procession and then sat in a chair.
Continuous adaptations have to be made by the papal ceremonial officials to respond to the Holy Father's deteriorating health. This year, after arriving at St. Mary Major, John Paul gave the Benediction from the truck itself, eliminating the need for him to descend from the truck.
During the Mass, celebrated by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the papal vicar for the Diocese of Rome, John Paul remained seated, standing only for the Gospel and kneeling for the Eucharistic prayer. He required the assistance of his aides to stand and move short distances.
In his homily, the Holy Father encouraged new priestly vocations, saying that without them the Eucharist could not animate the Church.
“[The people of God] need the Eucharist,” he said. “In fact, it is the Eucharist that makes the Church missionary. But is this possible without priests, who renew the Eucharist mystery?
“Young Romans! I repeat to you what I said to you at Tor Vergata, during the World Youth Day of 2000: If one of you feels in himself the call of the Lord to give himself totally to him, to love him with an undivided heart, do not allow yourself to be restrained by doubt or by fear,” the Pope continued. “Say with courage your own Yes without reserve, trusting yourself to him who is faithful in all his promises.”
After the homily, during the offertory John Paul earned the applause of the crowd —reported at 20,000 for the procession —when he summoned a young couple with two young children, whom he greeted and kissed.
This year's feast of Corpus Christi came amid unconfirmed reports in both the Italian and international press that the Holy Father is preparing an encyclical on the Eucharist to be released later this year.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond J.Desouza ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: New Roman Missal Restores Sense of Sacred, Professor Says DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:ROME —The new Roman Missal for the Celebration of the Eucharist in Latin will foster a sense of the sacred, a liturgy professor said.
Father Edward McNamara of the Legion of Christ's Regina Apostolorum Pontifical Athenaeum explained recently some of the most interesting characteristics of the third typical edition of the “Missale Romanum,” which was approved by the Pope and prepared by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments. The missal will be the basic text for all translations.
A Zenit interview with Legionary Father McNamara follows.
What has impressed you most?
An important feature is that, unlike the former editions of the Latin missal, this version is clearly intended to be used at Mass with an assembly.
The former editions at times gave the impression of being designed more for study than for practical use, sometimes obliging the celebrant to turn a page in the middle of a prayer or sending him to an appendix if he wished to use an alternative formula.
The new missal is handsomely designed with clear legible typeset, a very practical distribution of the prayer texts and the inclusion of accents so that those priests whose Latin has become a little rusty —or perchance was never burnished at all —can make it through the Mass without any major phonetic blunders.
What are the most important novelties?
The most important and novel characteristic of this version, and the principal cause of its bulk, is the inclusion of abundant musical settings so as to encourage the singing of those parts of the celebration where singing is recommended.
Thus melodies are provided for the entire ordinary of the Mass, including five different intonations for the “Gloria in Excelsis,” two for the “Credo” and even settings for singing the four principal eucharistic prayers. Furthermore, all of the major feasts include the musical text of the preface. In order to facilitate singing, the major musical texts are located in their proper places in the missal and not exiled to an appendix.
The fact that the missal actively promotes and favors singing, both by the celebrant and the congregation, shows that the Church considers that this may be one of the most important means of restoring a sense of the sacred to the celebration.
Other additions have been the inclusion of the 10 celebrations of saints, which have been added to the Church's calendar over the last 20 years, to which the Holy Father decided to make a further contribution just before the new missal went to print by appending another 11 celebrations.
Some of these are new celebrations; for example, recently canonized saints like the Chinese martyrs and St. Josephine Bakhita, a former slave from Sudan who later became a nun. Others, such as the Virgin of Fatima, are especially significant to the Church's experience of persecutions in the 20th century and, indeed, have a special place in the life of John Paul II.
Other celebrations restore older celebrations from the Missal of St. Pius V, such as the Holy Name of Jesus, the Holy Name of Mary and St. Rita of Cascia.
Furthermore, many other new prayers have also been added, either taken from ancient Roman manuscripts or recovered from the Missal of Pius V, as well as several new votive Masses in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary and a new votive Mass “De Dei Misericordia.”
What is the meaning of these celebrations?
Today's society has more need than ever for mercy, compunction and continence, and the inclusion of these themes as Mass formulas is a boon for preachers who can use them in homi-lies and on retreats.
The new missal, both the prayer texts and the renewed general introduction that gives precise rules for the celebration, enhances and enriches the existing body of liturgical norms and merits close study on the part of all priests.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: The Door Between East and West DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:Register Summary
More than 11,000 pilgrims from around the world attended Pope John Paul II's general audience on Wednesday, May 29, in St. Peter's Square. During the audience, the Holy Father recalled some highlights from his visit during the previous week to Azerbaijan and Bulgaria.
“I would like to thank the Lord, first of all, for granting me the grace to make the trip,” the Holy Father noted. He pointed out that Azerbaijan has the smallest Catholic population of any country he has ever visited. “Especially during the Mass in Baku, I clearly perceived that the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church is alive and well in Azerbaijan,” he told the pilgrims.
His visit to Bulgaria coincided with the feast of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, who evangelized the Slavic peoples, and who “managed to admirably combine faith and culture, thereby making a critical contribution to the formation of Europe's spiritual foundations.”
While Pope John Paul II was in Bulgaria, he beatified four priests who were executed 50 years ago by the communist regime. “Their courageous witness to the faith, as well as the witness of other martyrs during the last century, is preparing a new springtime for the Church in Bulgaria,” he said. Finally, he fondly recalled his meeting with the youth of Bulgaria.
Today I am pleased to reflect with you on my recent apostolic trip to Azerbaijan and Bulgaria. I was deeply touched by this trip. I would like to thank the Lord, first of all, for granting me the grace to make the trip. In addition, I would like to cordially thank all those who made this trip possible: the presidents of both countries and their governments, the civil and military authorities, and all those who collaborated in the preparations for the trip and its execution. I would especially like to thank the bishops of the Catholic Church in both countries, and I extend a heart-felt thanks to the bishops of the Orthodox Church as well as the leaders of the Muslim and Jewish communities.
The ‘Little Flock’
These great religious traditions are an integral part of the rich cultural and historical heritage of the Azeri people. For this reason, when I was in Baku, the nation's capital, it is significant that I met not only with political and cultural delegates and delegates from the arts, but also with delegates from these various religions. Furthermore, the Catholic community in Azerbaijan is one of the smallest that I have visited. This “little flock” has inherited a very ancient spiritual tradition that they peacefully share with their Orthodox brothers and sisters amid a predominantly Muslim population.
For this reason, harking back in spirit to the Assisi meeting [of world religious leaders to pray for peace], I renewed, from Azerbaijan, which is truly a gateway between the East and the West, my call for peace and insisting that the various religions frankly oppose any form of violence. Especially during the Mass in Baku, I clearly perceived that the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church is alive and well in Azerbaijan.
A Witness to Faith
My visit to Sofia coincided with the feast of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, who evangelized the Slavic peoples. From the very beginning of their evangelization, a solid bond has united the See of Peter to the Bulgarian people. This bond was further solidified in the last century thanks to the valuable service of the then-apostolic delegate, Angelo Roncalli, Blessed John XXIII.
The purpose of my visit, the first by a Bishop of Rome, was to strengthen the bonds of communion with the Orthodox Church of Bulgaria, which is led by Patriarch Maxim, whom I had the joy of meeting after my visit to the patriarchal cathedral.
Afterwards I met in Sofia with representatives from the sciences, culture and the arts, and recalled the example of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, who managed to admirably combine faith and culture, thereby making a critical contribution to the formation of Europe's spiritual foundations.
An eminent example of this synthesis of spirituality, art and history is the Monastery of St. John of Rila, which is the heart of the Bulgarian nation and a pearl in the world's cultural heritage. I went to this holy place as a pilgrim in order to pay solemn tribute to Eastern monasticism, which has illuminated the entire Church with its witness through the centuries.
The climax of my short yet intense stay in Bulgaria was the Celebration of the Eucharist in Plovdiv's central square, during which I beatified Kamen Vitchev, Pavel Djidjov and Josaphat Chichkov, Augustinian priests of the Assumption, who were shot while they were prisoners in Sofia in 1952 with Bishop Eugene Bossikov, whom I beatified four years ago.
Their courageous witness to the faith, as well as the witness of other martyrs during the last century, is preparing a new springtime for the Church in Bulgaria. It is within this context that my last meeting took place —a meeting with the youth —in which I reiterated Christ's ever-meaningful message: “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-14). Christ calls all of us to a heroic holiness. Thus, the end of my apostolic pilgrimage was marked by holiness.
Through the constant intercession of Mary, the Queen of Saints and Martyrs, may the Church in Azerbaijan and Bulgaria, as well as the Church in Europe and the entire world, spread the sweet fragrance of Christ's holiness in its many traditions and in its unity of one faith and one love!
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Campaign Attempts to Resume Forced Population Control in India DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:NEW DELHI, India —If the autonomous National Commission on Population (NCP) has its way, the target- and coercion-free population policy the Indian government adopted two years ago will be soon replaced with one that enforces sterilization and a target based on a two-children-per-family limit.
“The nation cannot wait for the people to be educated and reduce the size of their families themselves,” said NCP Secretary Krishna Singh in a May 10 interview justifying the intensive campaign the NCP launched recently, which she said is intended to make the public and the government aware of the urgent need to have clear targets to curtail population growth.
The impact of the NCP campaign is already visible in the Indian media. “The population time bomb: India has to curb the net reproduction rate if it wants to avoid disaster” read the headline of a May 19 feature article in the national English daily Indian Express. Similar stories have followed thanks to the NCP, created two years ago “to review and monitor” population growth in India.
The NCP's determined campaign for a review of the population policy is “certainly not a good sign as far as the Church is concerned,” said Archbishop Vincent Concessao of Delhi, the senior vice president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India.
“The people who treat human beings as mere numbers are now asserting themselves once again,” Archbishop Concessao said. In fact, he said, there is “scant respect for human life and human dignity” behind a population policy that would make officials duty-bound to realize sterilization targets and force couples to have only two children.
“We believe that the size of the family is a matter that should be left to the couple to decide,” the archbishop said. “Human beings should not be treated as commodities in a market, the entry of which is regulated by the government.”
More than 15 million babies are added annually to the Indian population, which crossed the 1 billion mark in May 2000. While the population growth rate in developed Indian states has reached replacement level (2.1 children per couple), in more populous states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar it is almost double, according to a recent countrywide population report brought out by the commission.
Focus on Development
Asserting that “development is the best means for population growth stabilization,” Archbishop Concessao cited the example of the southern state of Kerala, which has achieved the lowest population growth rate in India without any coercion or targets. The most literate state in India, with a literacy rate of 91%, Kerala's population of 29 million grew by only 9% during 1991-2001, compared with the national growth rate of 21%.
Instead of frittering away billions of rupees for population control for nearly half a century, Archbishop Concessao added, if the government had tried to ensure basic development of the people and equitable land distribution the population growth rate would have stabilized in all parts of the country.
Even NCP secretary Singh admitted that the 58 billion rupees ($1.2 billion) earmarked last year for promoting family planning through contraceptives had gone down the drain without much impact. In such a situation, Singh said, “the best option before the government is to set clear targets to stabilize the population growth.”
That viewpoint is precisely what worries the Church.
“Our joy has been short-lived,” said Father Alex Vadakkumthala, secretary of the Indian bishops' Commission for Health Care Apostolate. “We were quite happy when the government virtually reversed its earlier tough postures on population control with the policy of 2000. Now the situation seems to be going back to square one.”
The 2000 population policy was a total disappointment for the population control lobby. That policy, the government said, was based on “just, humane and effective development policies” highlighting the steps to improve the quality of life with better health awareness and by improving the national literacy rate, which at that time was more than 60%.
Abortion
Certainly the target- and coercion-free population policy was a “positive deviation” —as far as the Church was concerned —from the target-oriented family planning program India had followed for decades. The first country in the world to launch a full-fledged family planning program in 1951, two decades later India also legalized abortion under the euphemism “medical termination of pregnancy” with hardly any conditions attached.
Since then abortion has been promoted as a means for population control by the government and any pregnant woman —married or unmarried —can go to a private doctor for an abortion, while government hospitals will do one for free. That explains the numerous billboards on roadsides that advertise competitive rates for abortions by private medical practitioners. This practice culminated in the Indian parliament adopting in 1995 the Maternity Benefits (Amendment) Bill, which provides to government and industrial employees six weeks paid leave for those who have abortions after two children.
Since the late 1990s, several states have jumped on the bandwagon of adopting coercive measures to punish large families under pressure from population control lobbies. The western Maharashtra state enacted a bill last year imposing a ban on those with more than two children from becoming office bearers of the lucrative cooperative societies. Also, those with more than two children are ineligible to contest village and municipal elections.
Similar legislations in large and more populous states such as Gujarat, Rajastan and Madhya Pradesh have already stripped families with more than two children of their right to vote, housing loans, government jobs and even admission to government-run educational institutions.
“The Church in India has not made enough protests” over such anti-life measures by the government in the name of population control, Archbishop Concessao said. “We certainly need to do much more.”
The archbishop recalled the “black events” of the “national emergency” during 1975-77, when overzealous target-bound health officials forcibly sterilized thousands.
When asked whether the new policy would see a repeat of those events, NCP secretary Singh said India has moved forward since the 1970s, when gross human rights abuses were reported in the name of population control. However, she added that there was no point in speaking about rights when families keep producing dozens of children.
When the population control experts speak such language, Archbishop Concessao said, “we have the duty to make the people aware of the danger of following an anti-life population policy that would sacrifice human life under the false propaganda of economic prosperity.”
Anto Akkara writes from New Delhi, India.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Anto Akkara ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:Catholics of Cyprus Forgotten and Besieged
REUTERS, May 22 —For the past 30 years, conflict between Greek and Turkish residents has rent the island of Cyprus, resulting in a de facto partition of the island that still pits two NATO members against each other.
But one group left out in the cold is the small, Arab Catholic minority of Maronites, reported Reuters News Service. The Maronites of Cyprus fled Lebanon during the late Middle Ages to escape Islamic persecution and the wars of the Crusades. Fully accepted by neither side in the current conflict, Maronites are fleeing the island —just a part of the general exodus of Arab Christians from the region.
Antonis, a Turkish-speaking Maronite, complained to Reuters that Maronites who visit their family members in the southern Greek zone of the island are never allowed to come back, which leads many simply to leave the island altogether. Turkish law also forbids Maronites in the north to leave property to relatives in the south.
“We have paid the price, we have suffered for the problems between Greeks and Turks. Imagine coming to the house where you were born, where your mother still lives, but you cannot stay,” Antonis said.
“Maronites have not had a direct role [in the talks between the Turkish and Greek Cypriots], and they are concerned their positions are not taken into account,” said Madeline Garlick, a U.N. official working in Cyprus.
Fewer than 6,000 Maronites are left on the island, Reuters reported.
Panamanians Pray for Murdered Priest
ASSOCIATED PRESS, May 23 —As American seminaries attempt to filter out inappropriate candidates for the priesthood, one priest in Panama might have been a martyr to that cause, the news service reported.
Father Jorge Altafulla was murdered last week while preparing for Mass, allegedly stabbed by a man he expelled from the seminary he directed six years ago. Parishioners found the beloved, elderly priest in a pool of blood in the sacristy.
Archbishop Jose Dimas Cedeno called the murder a “strong blow against the clergy,” but called for people to forgive the killer. The suspect, Marcos Manjarrez, is now in jail awaiting charges.
Said Archbishop Cedeno in a homily, “Our attitude is to forgive and pray for him and his salvation.”
Pedophilia Not Widespread in Europe, Latin America ASSOCIATED PRESS, May 14 — In a meeting in central Spain beside the magnificent monastery-palace El Escorial, constructed by Spain's King Philip II, Catholic bishops from Latin American and European countries said that pedophilia and sexual abuse cases in their countries were rare, reported Associated Press.
The bishops warned against attempts to exaggerate the problem by anti-Catholic elements in society. Monsignor Baltazar Porras, president of the Venezuelan Catholic bishops' conference, told Associated Press, “This problem is marginal in Venezuelan society and in the Venezuelan Church.” He said that the “macho” culture of Latin America strongly discouraged such abuse and suggested that many of the U.S. cases recently reported need further scrutiny.
Said Monsignor Porras, “It's clear that in the United States there are law firms that are dedicated to this type of problem in order to win large sums of money.”
Archbishop Elias Yanes Alvarez of Saragossa, a former president of the Spanish bishops' conference, questioned why the press in Spain offered daily reports of abuse cases in the United States.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 20th Century Presidential Visits to the Vatican DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:Jan. 4, 1919
Woodrow Wilson
Audience with Pope Benedict XV.
Dec. 6, 1959
Dwight Eisenhower
Audience with Pope John XXIII.
July 2, 1963
John F. Kennedy
Audience with Pope Paul VI.
Dec. 23, 1967
Lyndon B. Johnson
Audience with Pope Paul VI.
March 2, 1969
Richard Nixon
Audience with Pope Paul VI.
Sept. 28, 1970
Richard Nixon
Audience with Pope Paul VI.
June 3, 1975
Gerald Ford
Audience with Pope Paul VI.
June 21, 1980
Jimmy Carter
Audience with Pope John Paul II.
June 7, 1982
Ronald Reagan
Audience with Pope John Paul II.
June 6, 1987
Ronald Reagan
Audience with Pope John Paul II.
May 27, 1989
George H.W. Bush
Audience with Pope John Paul II.
Nov. 8, 1991
George H.W. Bush
Audience with Pope John Paul II.
June 2, 1994
Bill Clinton
Audience with Pope John Paul II.
—Source: U.S.
State Department
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Springtime for the Bishops DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:It's hard to imagine a job more difficult than a bishop's.
The story is told of a lunch years ago attended by U.S. bishops and Pope John Paul II. A bishop sitting near the Holy Father asked him in an animated voice about the possibility that some people living even in today's Western cities might live and die without ever hearing about Christ in a compelling way. “When they die, can't they still be saved, on the principle of invincible ignorance?” he asked. After the question was repeated twice, the Pope put his spoon down and its clank silenced the room.
“Yes,” he said, or so the legend goes. “The man who dies in a state of invincible ignorance, he will be saved. But the bishop responsible for that ignorance, he will not be saved.”
If bishops are judged more severely in the eyes of God and the Church because of their responsibilities, they are judged more harshly in the eyes of the world, as well. Informal media and court searches suggest that there are far more clergy of other denominations and rabbis who have been charged with sexual misconduct since 1997 —and yet the headlines are dominated by the priest suspects, smaller in number even if you count decades worth of them.
This suggests that the anger directed at the Church and the bishops is caused by the relative importance of institutions. It's certainly not caused by the relative severity of abuse problems.
Does that mean that we should exonerate bishops? Alas, that's impossible. The media haven't invented the crisis, after all —they are merely exaggerating a real problem. And the bishops, whether their job is easy or not, were in a position to greatly diminish the problem in the seminaries. Many failed to do so.
For the past 20 years, too many seminaries have been contributing to the very problems they are supposed to solve. The bishops had fair warning that this would happen, in a 1961 document which Pope John XXIII gave his authority to. Called “On the Careful Selection and Training of Candidates for the States of Perfection and Sacred Orders,” the document spells out the dangers of allowing sexually incontinent candidates to become priests.
It adds: “Advancement to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers” (No. 30).
Does that sound old-fashioned and harsh? If it had been followed, countless victims would have been saved the severe trial of abuse by a priest.
Its teaching was left intact by the Second Vatican Council, which said in On the Training of Priests that the seminary's purpose is “to inculcate self-control.” The Vatican privately reiterated the prohibition against homosexual seminarians to bishops in the past 10 years, it has been reported. Finally, the prohibition was repeated in public by the Pope's own spokesman, Joaquin Navarro Valls, earlier this year.
Is it hopeless to expect this commonsense proscription to be followed in the future? We think not.
There are signs that a springtime of the bishops may be underway, and that a dynamic that is affecting the whole Church is transforming the bishops as well.
Pope John Paul II got it exactly right in his recent address to the U.S. cardinals. To be satisfied that all is well in the Church, Catholics in America “must know that bishops and priests are totally committed to the fullness of Catholic truth on matters of sexual morality, a truth as essential to the renewal of the priesthood and the episcopate as it is to the renewal of marriage and family life.”
What should the bishops accomplish this June?
Thinking Catholics expect something more than a reaction to media-generated anxieties for more procedures. At a minimum, they want a guarantee from their bishops that all our seminares will obey Vatican directives and stop creating future problems for all of us.
----- EXCERPT: Editorial ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Feeling Good About the Future DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:I want to thank 17-year-old Elizabeth Reynolds of Hudson, N.H., for her column “Stop Feeling Sorry for Yourselves,” which you reprinted in your letters section.
There is great hope for the future if we have young people of this caliber who are willing to speak out in such positive ways as she did on behalf of the good priests who are not defending themselves and the many bishops who might shout from the housetops about the many good things that the Church has done. She has some very powerful thoughts, and she articulated them very well.
MOTHER VIRGINIA MARIE, O.C.D.
Los Angeles
Headphones Off
Thank you for the great commentary & opinion page in your May 26-June 1 Issue. I thoroughly enjoyed your editorial “Going on Offense,” Alejandro Bermudez's column on dedicated priests (“The Church Is There Even for Those Who Despise It”) and, above all, Susan Baxter's column “The Teen Who Took Her Headphones Off.”
That one especially hit home, and reminded me we all need to “take off the headphones” so we don't miss a single word God speaks to our hearts.
FRED DI MARTINO
Mercer Island, Washington
Who Cares About the U.N.?
Regarding “White House Scores Pro-Life Win at U.N.” (May 19-25):
I congratulate the pro-life forces for deleting language from a United Nations document that could be construed to promote abortion.
But, in another respect, quite frankly, who cares what the United Nations has to say about anything? I suspect that if people paid less attention to the musings and meanderings of its self-promoting bureaucrats, with their secular, political solutions to the world's ills, the world would be a lot better off.
MATTHEW CAROLAN
North Babylon, New York
Gypsies and Nazis
Chuck Todaro makes in his article “Catholic School Brings New Hope to Romania's Gypsies” the following statement: “…they (the Gypsies) were the targets of Nazi genocide; close to 500,000 Roma from 16 different countries died in Hitler's death camps.”
Guenter Levy, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst writes in his book The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies (Oxford University Press, 2000) on page 222: “No sources or breakdown by country have been provided for this estimate (500,000), which renders it of questionable value.” On page 225 he states: “Most important, no overall plan for the extermination of the Gypsy people were ever formulated, and, as argued above, the evidence shows that none was implemented.” On page 227 he states: “The assertion, that a half million Gypsies died under Nazi rule is put forth regularly without any kind of substantiating evidence …”
Professor Levy has this to say on page 228: “Simplified accounts according to which ‘Gypsies … were persecuted and annihilated simply and solely on account of their biological existence’ are not only a distortion of the historical record but also a hindrance to progress in the relationship between Gypsies and non-Gypsies.”
Todaro writes: “About 6 million Roma live in Europe.” In reality, the number of Gypsies living in Europe in 1992 is more than 10 million as shown by the graph published by The New York Times on Sunday, Sept. 27, 1992 (attached).
Professor Levy mentions on page 222 “a prewar (Gypsy) population of close to 1 million.” Conclusion: There was no “Nazi genocide” of the Gypsies, no extermination of the Gypsies. There is just another anti-German propaganda exaggeration.
DR. OTWARD MUELLER
Ballston Lake, New York
Father Paul Weinberger and a young First Communicant.
Hail to the Priest
I wish to thank you for the wonderful article about our pastor, Father Paul Weinberger of Blessed Sacrament Church in Dallas (“Latin Americans Love the Faith, Busy Dallas Pastor Proves”).
At a time when there are so many scandals within the Church, and articles about the misdeeds of so many Catholic priests, it is refreshing to have the marvels of our joyful, dedicated young priest, Father Paul, extolled. We who attend mass at Blessed Sacrament (the oldest Catholic church in continued use in the Diocese of Dallas) know and appreciate Father's virtues. We are happy that you are introducing him to your wide readership.
Father Paul is not the only young priest in our diocese who is doing such a wonderful job of spiritual leadership, but he is the one we know best. Besides what is written in your article, your readers should know that the church is always adorned with pretty flowers and plants, inside and out. On special feasts, such as Christmas, Easter and the feasts of Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Joseph and St. Therese of Lisieux, there is a superabundance of flowers adorning altar and statues. These are always donated; there is never a collection taken up for flowers.
The parish is poor, located within the inner city. Many people live in apartments and can never enjoy flowers in their own yards. But at Blessed Sacrament Church, they can enjoy beauty in statues, flowers and church furnishings. The church is open every day from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. Security is never a problem. Father makes sure there are always courteous, helpful, friendly men around to assist those coming into the church.
I believe every spiritual advantage that a church can offer can be found at Blessed Sacrament, thanks to the leadership of its pastor. Father Paul is an example not only to his parishioners, but also to the entire community.
He is very visible in his black suit and Roman collar.
ED AND ALICE NICHOLSON
Dallas
----- EXCERPT: LETTERS ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Triumphs of a Man Called Spidey DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:John Prizer seems unable to make up his mind about what he wants to say about Spider-Man (“Spider-Morals,” May 26-June 1).
He makes a mistake when he compares Spider-Man to both Titanic and Lord of the Rings. To compare it with Titanic is an insult to the many morals that it promotes throughout. And The Lord of the Rings was written by a good Catholic who was a master of fantasy. Who can expect a comic strip written for kids to even attempt to reach the level of one of the greatest epic fantasies ever written?
Far from being a movie with “two hours of consumer fun that leaves no lasting imprint on our consciousness,” Spider-Man continues to provoke me to thought. The words of Peter Parker's Uncle —“With great power comes great responsibility” —frame the moral theme that runs throughout the movie. This line echoes the words of Jesus in Luke 12:48: “To him who is given much, much will be required of him.” Peter must learn how to apply this principle to his own situation.
Peter is also very humble. Despite his new power, he does not exploit it as a means to get to Mary Jane. Rather, his identity remains concealed, and he waits to pursue her when his friend breaks up. His hidden identity for the sake of the common good is more important that his personal interests. He also resists the urge to pride when he is offered power by the Green Goblin and, when the people of New York turn on him and do not appreciate his help, he does nothing to clear it up.
Finally, the end of the movie reaffirms something that the Catholic Church has taught for centuries, something that is under attack in our own times. Peter Parker walks away from Mary Jane, leaving her crying, as the words echo in his head: “With great power comes great responsibility.”
Because of his duty of service to the people, he cannot get caught up in a relationship outside of friendship. This hurts him and her, but there is no way around it, and he accepts this willingly. This is a great parallel to the celibate life of the priesthood. This is the reason that St. Paul recommends celibacy, for the sake of service. Thus, this movie that John Prizer says is so interested in the romantic aspect is willing to ditch a crowd-pleasing ending in order to opt for the harder route of virtuous service. This is a theme that should remain imprinted on our consciousness.
NATHAN HALLORAN
Vado, New Mexico
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Born Again in the Sweet By and By DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:I never planned to retire. Father Time, however, had other plans for me.
After carrying me forth to the overripe age of 65, he kindly deposited me on the threshold of retirement. But now that retirement is imminent, it no longer seems particularly dreadful. It feels, rather, like a birth.
Our initial birth was engineered by our parents. But we ourselves, at least to a certain extent, are responsible for the rebirth that is our retirement. Let me call our second parents “friendship” and “fortune.” They have been, in my case, rather benevolent parents. They have faithfully and fruitfully interacted with each other over a 65-year gestation period. I am more indebted to them than I can say. And I can't wait to begin sampling the harvest. What is past is prologue.
As a member of the teaching profession, to think of “retirement as a rebirth” is almost irresistible. Each spring, we hold commencement exercises for students who have completed their studies and are beginning a new chapter in their lives. Students graduate; teachers stick around. Yet the time eventually arrives for teachers to graduate and commence their own new chapters. But a lot more must go into teachers before they are ready to embark on their own new lives. It is not that they are worn out; it is that they are geared up. Or, at least, that's the way it should be.
Retirement is a rebirth and a commencement. But it is also an expansion of freedom. I do not feel old; I feel disencumbered. There is an exhilarating feeling to separating the gold from the dross. I look forward with youthful exuberance to time without the restriction of a schedule, to pensions without the requirement of a job, to activity without the annoyance of criticism, to discussions without the nuisance of exams, and to grandchildren without the burden of having to change diapers.
Retirement edges onto the future, though it is rich with sacred memories. But the good times augur more good things to come. The most interesting feature of “Grandma” Moses, who took up painting for the first time at 78, was that she had to reach that advanced age before she realized how young she was. Her gaily colored depictions of life that is eternally youthful hang in museums throughout the world. We must understand that life does not contract; it expands. Pre-retirement is a protracted period of positive preparation.
There are innumerable memories I cherish. Some are poignant, others slightly comical; but all are sacred. Escorting one of my former students down the aisle to give her away in holy matrimony shortly after her father had passed away. Visiting a student who lost his eyesight and discussing with him matters of ultimate significance. Being the sponsor for several students who, at different times, entered the Catholic Church. Being lavishly and lovingly introduced by former students while on the lecture circuit. Going to confession to former students who had become priests. Attending the weddings of former students and, in time, being introduced to their children —my spiritual grandchildren. Visiting students in hospitals. Playing the piano on request for an elderly student —a wife and mother —as she lay in bed in the next room, knowing that her days on this earth were numbered.
Yesterday I mailed a horde of thank-you letters to the many people who sent me their prayers and best personal wishes. It is appropriate, when a person passes away, to pray for the repose of his soul. But when he merely retires, it is most fitting to pray for his soul's activity.
A group of students purchased vouchers for me to use at a local bookstore. Their gift was both generous and propitious inasmuch as it indicates that I still have much to learn. Another group of students bought me a comfortable, high-backed chair. It will serve me well as I sit before my computer and continue to surf the 'Net and spin out articles. I am most thankful that these students did not get me a rocking chair. “Keep writing,” many have entreated. I will, and my new throne will function as ongoing encouragement.
Thirty-two years of teaching at St. Jerome's University in Waterloo, Ontario. Forty years of teaching altogether. Enough time to allow me to sit now with the children of some of my former students and read books with them.
Teaching is of the future. It is passing on something that has claim to enduring value. In teaching, one places himself in the stream of eternity. Compared to that, retirement age is merely the blink of an eye.
Retirement is the intersection of gratitude and hope. The former is for the past, the latter for the future. Gratitude is the memory of the heart; hope is the anticipation that the heart will have additional reasons for being grateful. It is easier to move confidently into the future when one can utilize the wings of gratitude and the courtesy of those two prolific and provident parents, friendship and fortune. Retirement is not a rendezvous with the grim reaper, but a chance to become a fruitful reaper.
Don DeMarco writes from Kitchener, Ontario
----- EXCERPT: Don DeMarco ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: The Problem With 'One Strike': The Expandable Strike Zone DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:In the classic short story The Monkey's Paw, W.W. Jacobs memorably warned of the unforeseen dangers of wishes granted. His warning should give pause to those now pressing Catholic bishops to adopt a “one strike and you're out” policy on sexual abuse. Such a policy, so attractive on first glance, could prove devastating —especially for the victims.
Put aside the easy cases. A minister who sexually molests a child unquestionably has one “strike” and should be “out.” The problem is that most cases are not easy.
Does a pastor who tells a dirty joke have a strike? One who ogles a teenager or gives an adult a “lingering” hug? How about a pastor who pats a child on the rear at a softball game? One who has pornography in his office? Or one who admits to a one-night stand with a stranger or to an affair with an adult parishioner? In hundreds of cases like these, people argue about whether the minister has a “strike.” But at least the argument is about sexual misconduct.
In recent years, though, the definition of “strike” has been expanded far beyond sexual misconduct. For that reason, a “one strike and you're out” policy will have consequences that even W.W. Jacobs could not anticipate. This expansion has been the work of plaintiffs' lawyers and sympathetic courts.
Following the Money
In most sexual-abuse cases, the Church had no prior knowledge of sexual misconduct by the pastor. Indeed, in many cases, there was no prior sexual misconduct by the pastor. The challenge for plaintiffs' lawyers in these cases is to figure out how to blame the church. Why? Because ministers don't have money; churches do.
One way that plaintiffs' lawyers try to meet this challenge is to argue that, although the pastor did not have a history of sexual misconduct, he did have a history of problems with alcohol or depression.
The lawyers argue that this was a “warning sign” showing that the minister was “vulnerable” and less likely to maintain proper “boundaries.” The church was obliged either to monitor the pastor closely or to remove him from ministry. Because, as a practical matter, it is almost impossible to monitor pastors closely, the only real option was removal.
Consider the implications of this argument. Alcoholism, depression and similar problems are occupational hazards in the ministry. If these problems are “strikes,” and if one strike means that a minister is “out,” then most ministers will be out. The ranks of the clergy will be decimated.
So will the ranks of a lot of other professions. There is no reason why pastors should be treated any differently than teachers or day care workers or psychologists or nurses or anyone else who has unsupervised contact with minors and vulnerable adults.
The problem is that most cases are not cut-and-dried. Does a pastor who tells a dirty joke have a strike? One who ogles a teen-ager or gives an adult a ‘lingering’ hug?
If one strike is all a pastor gets, then one strike is all anyone else should get. And if being depressed is a strike for a pastor, then it should be a strike for everyone.
Ironically, no one will be hurt more by the success of plaintiffs' lawyers in expanding the definition of “strike” than the sexual-abuse victims who are the clients of those lawyers. Such victims often suffer depression, addiction and other problems. More importantly, sexual-abuse victims are, according to many studies, at increased risk of committing sexual abuse themselves. In other words, according to the logic of some courts and lawyers, to be a victim of sexual abuse is to have a “strike.”
Black Holes
The Alaska Supreme Court said as much in Broderick vs. King's Way Assembly of God Church. A girl was allegedly abused by a volunteer who worked in a church nursery. There was no evidence that the volunteer had previously committed sexual abuse, but the court found that the church could still be held liable. Why? According to the court, the church should have investigated the background of the volunteer. Had the church done so, it might have discovered that she had been sexually abused as a child. And had the church discovered that, it would have been “alerted” to the “danger” that the volunteer would sexually abuse children herself.
Studies suggest that those who have been sexually abused are attracted in disproportionate numbers to the ministry and other helping professions. Many of these people are effective in ministry, psychology and other helping professions precisely because they have overcome such pain in their own lives. Yet combining a rigid “one strike and you're out” policy with an expansive definition of “strike” would effectively put these professions off limits to sexual abuse victims.
Do we really want to live in this kind of world? A world in which all who work with children or vulnerable adults must be investigated, not just to determine if they have abused children or ogled teen-agers or had affairs with adults, but to determine if they have been depressed, addicted or abused themselves?
A world in which everyone with one such “strike” is “out”?
The choices facing the Catholic bishops at this month's meeting are not as clear as they might seem.
Patrick J. Schiltz is interim dean at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Patrick J.Schiltz ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Six Ways to Drown a 900-Pound Gorilla DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:Remember the remarkable openness to God that pervaded American public life in the weeks immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks?
Wherever you looked, you saw “God bless America” signs. Whichever mainstream media outlets you got your daily news from, you heard about a “spiritual re-awakening” sweeping the nation.
I remember noting the moment in a column I wrote for a diocesan paper last October. My point was that, suddenly, we were living in a unique “moment of opportunity” —a great chance for the Church in America to present the faith to many who had been, until Sept. 11, indifferent or hostile to what we had to say.
How times change.
Today there's a 900-pound gorilla beating its chest and screeching crazily in the space between you and whomever it is you're seeking to evangelize. His name is Scandal. And you're going to have a hard time getting heard above his racket.
That's the bad news. The good news is the Holy Spirit is there to help you every time you share the Gospel. And he has a way when it comes to quieting savage beasts.
No matter how much conditions change around us, it is always incumbent upon us, the baptized, to tell the world about Jesus and his inseparability from his Mystical Body on earth, the Catholic Church.
How to cut through the pollution of the present environment and get the Gospel message in front of those who most need to hear it? Here are six suggestions.
First, stay faithful. Everyone knows it's unfair to kill the messenger who brings an unwelcome message. Neither can we toss out the message because a few of the messengers are themselves unable to live up to its contents. To leave behind the Church, the Eucharist, confession, and so much more that God offers us —all because we're ashamed of those who perpetrated the present scandals —would only hurt the one who leaves. It would be like refusing to take a prescribed medication because the pharmacist was rude.
This also means continuing to support the work of the Church. My wife and I have decided to continue to be as generous as we can afford to be when the collection plate comes around each Sunday —even though some of our gifts might end up going to settle lawsuits against the Church. Distasteful as that prospect is to us, we know that the sooner these debts are paid, the sooner our money can again go toward Catholic ministries, hospitals and schools.
Second, support priests. If even the good ones get discouraged by the negative publicity and the air of suspicion it has created, the work of the Church suffers still more and the tragedy is compounded. Let your pastor and other priests know that you appreciate the gift of his life to God's people. Let him know you trust him. Say Thank You. This has always been important, but it is more important than ever today.
Third, don't be ashamed of your faith in public. There is no reason to hesitate to let people know you're Catholic and proud of it. Our faith is and always will be the most beautiful and life-giving explanation there is of life, the universe and everything else you can wonder about.
That's not to say that you must defend what is indefensible or pretend nothing wrong has happened. Don't be afraid to express, too, your legitimate sorrow and anger at the failure of some who have made unfortunate decisions with grave consequences. Doing so shows a sense of reality. If I don't have that, why would someone want to listen to what I have to say on any religious matter? It also shows that a person can be upset about what some members of the Church have done but still treasure the Church herself.
Fourth, be convinced and explain to others that it is Christ who is the true “shepherd and guardian of our souls.” That is the reason the Catholic faith still stands strong and able to dispense and nurture the divine life that God offers to all.
If some who have been entrusted with the shepherding and the guarding have been more like wolves than shepherds, still we have Jesus. Indeed, he is all we ever had from the beginning. Everything else came from him. Everything else still does.
Fifth, talk about the good priests you know personally. The sad facts about a few very disappointing priests and bishops are well publicized. For many folks, these are the stories that will come immediately to mind when anyone mentions priesthood and the Church. How important it can be for people in your family or at work to hear about the beautiful or helpful homily your parish priest recently offered, how he went out of his way to offer comfort in some difficult moment, how much the kids in the youth group have grown from his guidance.
Finally: Pray. The root and foundation of evangelization has always been and will continue to be prayer. There is so much that demands the attention of our intercessions today. Priestly sexual abuse is not the only depravity being carried out in the name of religion in these dramatic days. It will be tempting for some to conclude that religion is a hindrance rather than the road to a peaceful world, while others will simply use the readily available examples as easy excuses to criticize and ridicule the faith they already despise.
Pray now, even as you finish up this column, for the Catholic faith in America —not simply that it survives, but that, watered by the tears of sorrow among her faithful members, she may become purified and grow, to bring the life of God to all who are open to his grace.
We can't turn back the clock to the time when all of this would have seemed unthinkable, let alone to the brief moment when the world seemed eager to hear the Gospel message straight from the Catholic Church's mouth. But we can —and must —soldier on, doing our part to let God bring healing through us. No matter how chaotic things seem to get, never forget that God is in control. If we share the Gospel through the words we speak and the lives we live, he'll take care of every 900-pound gorilla that comes our way.
Barry Michaels writes from Blairsville, Pennsylvania.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Barry Michaels ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: This, Too, Shall Pass DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:Dear Children,
Like you, I have been profoundly distressed by the current turmoil about sexual abuse. There is much about which to be distressed.
Some priests violated the sacred trust placed in them by the Church and its faithful followers. Some abuses were isolated incidents, moral slips by men who otherwise have lived good lives. Tragically, some were repeated violations that evidence a deeply flawed character. Perhaps the former can be healed and returned to useful service; for the latter, we require a strong criminal-justice system.
A few bishops failed to properly address the problem in their dioceses. I shudder to think that any did so willingly. More likely, they acted on the advice of “experts” who advised on the medical or scientific beliefs of the time. Some of these crimes happened years ago and we have learned a few things since then.
The media have pounced on the situation and there is a growing feeding frenzy of criticism. The general media are so engulfed by political correctness that they find it virtually impossible to understand the Church and its faith. What could be more politically incorrect than a faith that asks its priests to live a celibate life of service and sacrifice? And what could be more terrifying to politically correct libertines in the media than the possibility that problems of abuse may have something to do with homosexuality?
The media and much of the public (including, unfortunately, many nominal Catholics) don't understand why the Holy Father doesn't make decisions like a politician, following the majority will of the people as shown in the latest polls. Of course, there was a man who made a decision about the administration of justice by public poll that profoundly affected the Church. Pilate took a poll and, based on the results, released Barabbas.
Letter to My Children
People who don't much like Catholics are taking advantage of the situation to advance their own agendas. The crisis is painted in terms of liberals vs. conservatives, Americans vs. the Third World, men vs. women, gays vs. straights.
I saw a study that said priests abuse children no more often than other people. I'm not sure whether that somehow exonerates priests or simply condemns the rest of us. I expect it simply proves that something in our society has gone terribly wrong.
In fact, the problem is that we are humans. And ever since Adam, Eve, a snake and an apple got together, humans have failed. Most of us, I know, have not sexually abused a child. But all of us have had good reason to use the sacrament of penance.
I understand the Holy Father goes to confession nearly every day. By that measure, I expect most of us should be confessing hourly. Many have suffered from abuse. Many also have suffered from false accusations. There is much anger and hurt that the sacraments must transform into forgiveness and healing.
There will be much political posturing, analysis and gnashing of teeth in the near future. We would be better served by greater prayer and sacrifice. I expect an hour of adoration is worth more than the average piece of legislation. Judas, Nero, Hitler, Stalin and Luther failed to derail Christ's Church. She has survived sinful priests, inept bishops and greedy popes. Satan himself has been unable to destroy her. Neither will the current crisis.
The gates of hell will not prevail. I hope, with me, you remain eternally grateful to be a Catholic.
Love, Your Dad. Jim Fair writes from Chicago.
----- EXCERPT: Spirit & life ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jim Fair ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: In the Garden of the Little Flower DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:The sky was over-cast, gray and menacing the day we visited Lisieux.
We had driven for about an hour from the cottage we were renting near Bayeux, in the Normandy region of France. There were 12 of us all together: mother, father, eight children and two grandparents. I was the group's leader, having organized this mini-pilgrimage during our family's holiday to France. By now my children were used to this idea of going on pilgrimage while on vacation, but I wondered if their non-Catholic grandparents would find it a waste of their time.
I had a personal desire to visit the home of St. Thérèse, who has been a favorite of mine ever since I read her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, shortly after my conversion in 1988. The Little Flower, as St. Thérèse is known, is loved by many the world over who seek to follow her “little way” of love. She was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II in 1997, the centenary of her death. Pope St. Pius X called her “the greatest saint of modern times.” Her confidence in divine love, her abandonment to providence and her utter joy in life drew me to seek her out.
We began our pilgrimage at the lovely Carmelite convent where Thérèse lived and where her mortal remains are interred. In the chapel, we prayed near the wax model of Thérèse. It shows her as she appeared shortly after her death and now reposes above her tomb. The lovely white statue of Our Lady, who is credited with healing a deathly ill 10-year-old Thérèse with her smile, quietly looks down upon her resting place.
Next to the chapel is the Hall of Relics, where the Carmelites have a display of some of St. Thérèse's personal belongings, including her golden hair, cut when she entered the convent. They also have some examples of her paintings. One of these made a lasting impression on me. It is a chasuble she painted with an image of the Holy Face surrounded by a cascade of white flowers: five blooming lilies representing Thérèse and her four sisters who each professed religious vows, four unopened lily blossoms representing her brothers and sisters who did not survive childhood, and two white roses representing her mother and father, who are now declared Venerable by the Church.
A short walk up a hill and we arrived at Les Buissonnets. This was the Martin family home after St. Thérèse's mother died when she was only 4 years old. Inside the home we were treated to another audio presentation in English describing the home and Thérèse's young life there. We were able to see the rooms where Thérèse slept, played and ate her meals with her family. Her First Communion dress, along with her childhood toys and books, was also on display. Outside in the garden, I could almost imagine little Thérèse playing as my own children began a spirited game of hide-and-go-seek.
A Basilica Spared
The final leg of our pilgrimage that day took us up the avenue named for the saint herself, to the grand Basilica of St. Thérèse on the hill overlooking the quiet town of Lisieux. We were all amazed at the grandeur of this basilica after seeing the humble dwellings of her life. The non-Catholics in our party were perhaps even more amazed at this modern building, which displays crafts-manship worthy of a medieval cathedral.
The construction on this massive church was begun in 1929 under Pope Pius XI, who canonized Thérèse and considered her the star of his pontificate. He wished the basilica to be, “very big, very beautiful, and completed as quickly as possible!” His wishes were granted when the basilica was built and paid for in less than 10 years, thanks to the generosity of Christians around the world. In 1937 the future Pope Pius XII, Cardinal Pacelli, gave the basilica his solemn blessing. In June 1944, during the invasion of Normandy, the basilica suffered slight damage due to bombings. Thankfully, Lisieux was spared the brunt of the battle. After the war, stained-glass windows and mosaics were added. The basilica was consecrated in 1954 by Mgr. Martin, Archbishop of Rouen.
Inside is a plaque commemorating Pope John Paul II's visit in 1980 and another commemorating St. Thérèse being proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1997. The mosaics and stained-glass windows were made by Pierre Gaudin and were inspired by St. Thérèse's spiritual childhood and the beatitudes. They sing in harmony, telling us the story of this saint for whom they were created.
In the south transept, we marveled at the huge reliquary that holds two bones from the saint's right arm. A large black-and-white photograph of St. Thérèse in her habit of Carmel and another of Thérèse as a child flank the reliquary and seemed to smile mischievously at us when we stopped to pray. Around her shrine, hundreds of candles, offering up their myriad of prayers, flickered in the cool darkness of the basilica.
St. Thérèse, the Little Flower, bloomed in God's garden for a mere 24 years, most of which were spent in the small town of Lisieux. The convent she entered at age 15 is a short walk from the house where she grew up. She never went on a mission and never performed great works, yet she is a co-patron of the missions with St. Francis Xavier. She is an inspiration to millions of people trying to become holy leading ordinary lives. She shows us we don't need to be great on this earth to do great things for God's kingdom.
‘A Teacher for Our Time’
St. Thérèse's missionary work continues, as her relics have been on a worldwide tour since 1994. This year her relics will stop in Australia, French Polynesia and the Middle East. She will visit Scotland and Spain in 2003, then on to Africa in 2004.
Pope John Paul II, in proclaiming her a Doctor of the Church, said: “Thérèse is a teacher for our time, which thirsts for living and essential words, for heroic and credible acts of witness. For this reason she is also loved and accepted by brothers and sisters of other Christian communities and even by non-Christians.” St. Thérèse is not only the youngest and most recent saint to be made a Doctor of the Church, but she is also the third woman in a very unique, mostly male fraternity. She is truly a saint for our day and age.
As the day drew to a close, I breathed a sigh of relief, thankful the heavens had not rained down upon us that day. Perhaps St. Thérèse had worked her wonders and heaven had reigned down instead. We gathered up our rag-tag bunch of little pilgrims and headed back to our cottage. I don't know what sort of impression St. Thérèse made on my family that day, but I am confident the Little Flower planted her seeds and God will now tend the garden.
Debbie Nowak writes from North Yorkshire, England.
----- EXCERPT: Lisieux is vibrant with the spirit of St. Thérèse ----- EXTENDED BODY: Debbie Nowak ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Is the Force Still With Star Wars? DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:The Star Wars phenomenon is not a marketing concept in search of an audience.
George Lucas' initial impulse came from the heart —a quality rare in most big-budget filmmaking today.
The writer-director wanted to recreate the excitement he felt when watching the low-budget, Saturday-matinee sci-fi serials of his youth. He ended up reinventing our notions of heroism at a time (the late 1970s) when American culture seemed to be wallowing in negativity and deconstruction, a mood partly attributable to the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandals.
The first three films of the cycle are swashbuckling sci-fi fairy tales that result from a union of seemingly opposite virtues. They pushed the hitech special effects of their era to dazzling new heights while at the same time undergirding the action with a transcendent moral code in which good and evil are clearly defined.
The faithful should be alerted to the fact that the cosmology isn't Christian. Lucas, a student of Jungian mytholo-gist Joseph Campbell, forges a synthesis of the world's major religions. Buddhism and Hinduism seem to hold special sway. Nevertheless, the value system that results isn't relativistic. In current movie terms, it's closer to The Lord of the Rings than Harry Potter.
Lucas' influence on contemporary popular culture is profound. The unexpected success of the first Star Wars movie launched the present-day “franchise” strategy of event movies that all Hollywood studios now follow, and many of the past two decades' blockbuster films flaunt fantasy heroes and special effects also inspired by Lucas, including many of the 3-D animation hits.
Star Wars: Episode II —Attack of the Clones is the second of the prequels to the original trilogy. Clones does not hit the dramatic heights the first three films achieved, for, although Lucas' initial vision is in evidence throughout, it seems to have been drained of its passion. Lucas and co-writer Jonathan Hales introduce a host of new and important themes that most big-budget Hollywood product would-n't dare tackle, but the dramatic action plays as if executed mechanically by the numbers.
The story is crammed with thrilling action sequences: asteroid-dodging space chases; well choreographed, massive battles; lethal gladiator-like contests; and, of course, exciting light-saber duels. Sadly, most of the character scenes in between are leaden and flat, functioning merely as setups or pauses before the next big set-piece. Even the less ambitious, marketing-driven Spider-Man seems more energetic and alive.
Lucas wants to explore two parallel themes: how a democratic republic can degenerate into a repressive empire and what makes a hero turn bad. The story unfolds accordingly. A decade has passed since the action presented in the last Star Wars film, Episode I —The Phantom Menace. Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christ-ennsen) is now a Jedi knight-in-training under the supervision of Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor). Queen Padmõ Amidala (Natalie Portman) has become a senator who travels to the Republic's capital city-planet, Coru-scant, to lead the opposition to the creation of a clone army to defeat separatist rebels.
The president, Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) assigns the two Jedi to be Amidala's bodyguards after an attack on her life. They save her from some poisonous caterpillars, followed by a dangerous chase through space traffic 2,000 feet above the city.
During these adventures, Anakin continually disobeys Obi's instructions to achieve his goals. We learn that this is more than youthful ingenuity being reigned in by elders. The young Jedi violates one of his order's crucial tenets and falls in love with the beautiful woman he's protecting.
Most Hollywood movies celebrate this kind of maverick hero and would make us root for Anakin's romance to succeed. But Lucas realizes that his protagonist is a member of a religious order and thus on a spiritual journey under the guidance of others with greater understanding. This means that Anakin must learn to sacrifice some of his personal urges for a higher good. (The movie even includes a defense of celibacy.)
His mentor Obi's emphasis on “the difference between knowledge and wisdom” falls on deaf ears. We see the young Jedi's inability (or unwillingness) to grasp this principle as a hint of the darkness to come when he becomes the evil Darth Vader. It's made clear that Vader's evil grew out of his own will rather than external circumstance. This moment is a key turning point, and a thought-provoking development, in the overall moral and narrative structure of the Star Wars series.
But good filmmaking is more than noble intentions. As time passes, Lucas seems less and less interested in the relationships between people except as embodiments of the archetypes they represent. None of the scenes between Anakin and Amidala or Anakin and Obi spring from the characters' individuality. Everything is subordinated to Lucas's grand, conceptual designs.
We miss the macho griping of the smuggler Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and the arrogant sense of entitlement of Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher). The character flaws of these otherwise good people make us laugh and like them as human beings in a way we can't with Anakin and Amidala.
As a result, Attack of the Clones resembles a video game more than a modern re-creation of classic myths.
Its robots, droids and clones have more life than its flesh-and-blood characters. What's lost is the sense of wonderment found in the original trilogy. In those films we were presented with people and situations we might have seen before. But Lucas found a way to make them fresh, vibrant and compelling. Maybe now he should step back and give some younger film-makers a chance to re-animate his vision.
John Prizer write from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Weekly Video Picks DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:Ice Castles (1979)
In recent years female figure skating has become a high-profile sport whose major competitions consistently grab top TV ratings.
Ice Castles, directed by Donald Wrye, is a charming flashback to a more innocent time before the rise of the current celebrity shenanigans. It's a heart-warming yarn about triumph over tragedy and love conquering all. Alexis Winston (Lynn-Holly Johnson) is a figure skater from an Iowa farm whose goal is to win the Olympics. She is courted by Nick Petersen (Robbie Benson), a talented ice-hockey player. When a freak accident blinds her, she withdraws into herself, unwilling to accept her fate.
Nick still believes in her and, aided by her father (Tom Skerritt) and the owner of the local skating rink (Colleen Dewhurst), he coaxes Alexis to fight her way back into competitive skating.
The Roman Empire in the First Century (2001)
People often like to compare the early years of the Roman Empire to present-day America. After all, our political system and much of our culture was deliberately modeled on the legacy of the Caesars. The Roman Empire in the First Century, a four-hour PBS documentary series, intelligently examines both the major historical forces at work during that era and the colorful personal dramas of its best-known leaders. Producers Margaret Koval and Lyn Goldfarb combine stylized reenactments with period art and visits to authentic archeological sites and recreated locations to make us aware of the similarities and differences between our time and then.
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo(1944)
Many see parallels between the events of Sept. 11 and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Then, as now, America struck back quickly and decisively, inflicting devastating short-term damage on the enemy. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, directed by Mervyn LeRoy and written by Dalton Trumbo, is a documentary-style recreation of the 1942 American bombing raid against major Japanese cities. It successfully captures the courage and natural patriotism of our men in uniform during that time. We watch the charismatic Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle (Spencer Tracy) organize and train the fliers. During the raid itself, the focus is primarily on the crew of a single plane commanded by Capt. Ted Lawson (Van Johnson). Especially harrowing are his experiences after he crash lands in China, which is occupied by the Japanese.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Weekly TV Picks DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:All times Eastern
JUNE, VARIOUS DATES
Kids and Cars: Before the Crash PBS; check local listings
This special looks at why car accidents are the leading cause of death for kids and teen-agers. Emphasizing prevention, the show focuses on two themes: how to recognize and replace inadequate restraints for little ones, and how to deal with teen-age drivers' combination of inexperience and sense of invulnerability.
SUNDAY, JUNE 9
Volcanic Vacations
Travel Channel, 8 p.m.
“Best Place to Watch a Volcano” premieres at 8 p.m. with suggested vantage points and harrowing stories of volcano survivors. At 10 p.m., “Below the Volcano: Mt. St. Helens” tells the story of the giant eruption and of gradual recovery in the affected area.
MONDAY, JUNE 10
Journey Home
EWTN, 8 p.m. live
Is the Church doing enough to stop the hemorrhage of Hispanics to Protestantism? Marcus Grodi hosts Marty Franklin, who was an evangelical missionary in Central America. Rebroadcast Tuesday at 1 a.m. and 10 a.m., and Saturday at 11 p.m.
TUESDAY, JUNE 11
The Tackle Box
History Channel, 10 p.m.
This hourlong new special tackles (pun intended) fishing methods throughout history.
WED.-SAT., JUNE 12-15
USCCB Summer Meeting
EWTN, live daily
EWTN will provide full coverage of the U.S. bishops' summer meeting. A live preview show will air at 10 p.m. Wednesday and be repeated at 9 a.m. Thursday. On Thursday and Friday, EWTN will telecast the morning and afternoon sessions, which are to last four hours each and to start at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. respectively. On Saturday, a reprise of the meet-ing's highlights will be shown at 4 p.m. and 10 p.m.
THURSDAY, JUNE 13
Frontline: The Siege of Bethlehem
PBS, 9 p.m.
Palestinian civilians and some fighters took refuge in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem during the Israeli military incursion in the West Bank in early April. This program investigates what went on inside and outside the shrine during the subsequent 39-day Israeli siege of the holy place. Participants, eyewitnesses and key figures give their behind-the-scenes perspectives.
FRIDAY, JUNE 14
The World Over
EWTN, 8 p.m.
EWTN anchor Raymond Arroyo and guest analysts comment on the U.S. bishops' summer session in Dallas.
SATURDAY, JUNE 15
The Human Edge
National Geographic Channel, 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.
Topics on tonight's show include: causes and solutions of traffic jams, the need to protect ourselves from UV rays and why more than eight of 10 Finns use cell phones.
Dan Engler writes from Santa Barbara, California.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dan Engler ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: How to Pray and Love It, Too DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:PRAYER PRIMER: IGNITING A FIRE WITHIN
by Thomas Dubay, SM Servant/Ignatius, 2002 188 pages, $12.95
To order: (800) 486-8505 or www.ignatius.com
I remember, going back a few years now, setting out to explore the soaring interior trails blazed by the great Carmelite mystics, Sts. Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, only to turn back in dismay. It seemed as though Teresa's mansions and John's dark nights, at least as laid out by the prayer masters themselves, were beyond my reach. Was I not sufficiently spiritual —or just not smart enough? I didn't know. I just knew I wasn't getting anywhere with these two.
Not long after, I was browsing a relative's bookshelf when I happened upon a dog-eared copy of Fire Within, Marist Father Thomas Dubay's guided tour of the pair's writings. Specifically, it was the book's subtitle that caught my eye: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel —On Prayer.
Evidently, giving up on the Carmelite superstars hadn't set well with my ego. “Mind if I borrow this?” I asked. “Not at all,” my relative answered. Bad move on her part. By the time I finally found it within myself to part company with the book and return it to its rightful owner, she had tired of waiting and bought herself another copy. The “problem,” such as it was, was that Fire Within had given me one of the most sublime reading experiences I've ever had.
So it was that Father Dubay coaxed me far deeper inside the prayer lives of Teresa and John than the two ever could have brought me on their own. (In a way, I suppose, not unlike the manner by which the Blessed Mother shows us aspects of her divine Son we would fail to see without her help.)
And so it was that, when I saw that he had just come out with a new book intriguingly subtitled Igniting a Fire Within, I made sure to get my hands on a copy right away. I know a long-awaited companion volume when I see one.
Wrong. Prayer Primer isn't a follow-up to Fire Within. It's a brisk how-to manual drawing not only from that work, but also from Scripture, the Catechism, Vatican II documents and some of Father Dubay's other books.
Was I disappointed, given my expectations for another expertly guided trek up Mount Carmel? Sure, a little. But only until I started reading. Prayer Primer wasn't what I'd expected, but it did not fail to provide a bracing shot of motivation to my prayer life. I can always use one of those.
And what a strong shot it is. True to form, Father Dubay has meticulously organized rich and wide-ranging material, then seasoned it with his lively, twinkle-eyed insights. There are chapters on reasons for praying, meditation, contemplation, liturgical prayer, family prayer, prayer in a busy life and assessing progress. And the nimble, gnomic asides could only have come from a priest, spiritual director and long-traveled pilgrim of the interior life whose childlike sense of wonder only seems to increase with his years.
“It is extraordinary that the Creator of billions of huge galaxies, each of which on average contains more billions of enormous suns, should descend to the tiny detail of telling us to ‘close the door’ of our prayer place,” he writes. “This is an awesome tribute to our individual importance and that of communing with the Father: We and our prayer are more splendid than all the galaxies taken together!”
Judging by his writings, Father Dubay seems to enjoy the journey to God so much that you picture him arriving at the pearly gates and asking St. Peter for permission to go back and start the trip over again. His readers are the beneficiaries of his gentle, yet palpable, zeal.
For the beginning pray-er, here's a concise and engaging instruction manual. For the intermediate, a pep talk. For the advanced, a fine-tuning. Even if Prayer Primer doesn't scale the towering heights to which Fire Within ascended —what could? —it's a blast trailing this able and enthusiastic spiritual guide wherever he goes.
David Pearson edits the Register's commentary, arts, books and travel sections.
----- EXCERPT: Weekly Book Pick ----- EXTENDED BODY: David Pearson ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Campus Watch DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:Not So Liberal
Patrick Henry President Michael Farris complained of “discrimination” and said the college, which has 150 mostly home-schooled students, will appeal the decision by the American Academy of Liberal Education, which has been empowered by the Education Department since 1999 to accredit liberal-arts programs.
Farris told the Post that some of the accreditor's board members hold “views on diversity [that] just simply do not allow them to believe that someone who believes in creationism should be in the big tent of academic freedom.”
Homosexual Recruits
“We're a Catholic school, but we don't even ask about applicants' religion,” said Jacqueline Murphy, St. Michael's director of admissions. She told the Globe. “You just shy away from doing anything discriminatory.”
Her explanation for being at the fair? To attract students from Massachusetts, where the largest share of St Michael's students come from. The college is staffed by Edmundite Fathers.
Goodbye, Dr. Carroll
CHRISTENDOM COLLEGE, May 21 —Warren Carroll, founding and first president of Christendom College in Front Royal, Va., and chairman of its history department for 25 years, has retired from active teaching. The author of 10 books, Carroll is one of the few teachers who has taught almost every graduate and current student of the college, which is known for its strong Catholic identity.
Money Matters
CHRONICLE.COM, May 24 —The 15 American colleges and universities now conducting a billion-dollar capital campaign includes only one Catholic institution, the Jesuits' Georgetown University, which has raised $791.9 million toward a goal of $1 billion by 2003, reports the Web site for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
In a separate item, the Chronicle's May 24 edition reports a $500,000 donation to the capital campaign of the Irish Christian Brothers' Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y. The campaign, which has also drawn gifts of $6 million and $10 million, is working toward a goal of $55 million by 2004.
Black Studies
Dyson said he took the job because of Penn's “extraordinary commitment to revamping African-American studies.” The Chronicle noted that the move had none of the intrigue of the recent controversy that followed the departure of a black-studies professor at Harvard University for Princeton University.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Teacher Troubles DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:Q
All year our son complained about his elementary-school teacher and, frankly, we too had some concerns about the way he handled his classroom; we just never knew the right way to address the issue. What is the best way to approach the situation with the school in the future?
A
Tom:
As former teachers ourselves, we know how touchy a problem this can be for any parent.
Before even getting down to whether the teacher is in the right or not, it is vital that Mom and Dad present a united front with their child's teacher. Back up the teachers, whether you like them or not! Veteran parents know how important this is when it comes to Mom and Dad: Children quickly learn how to play one off the other when they sense disagreement. The same goes for the teacher-parent relationship. If your child sees that you will side with him instead of the teacher, that teacher's authority in the classroom is lost and, frankly, he or she won't be able to do much to help your child for the rest of the year.
But what if the teacher really is in the wrong? Of course teachers are human beings and will not handle every student perfectly every time. The point is that parents must work out the disagreement privately and keep the child out of it. Give the teacher the benefit of the doubt and calmly ask him or her to explain the situation.
Caroline:
A principal for whom we once worked announced to the parents at the beginning of every year, “Don't believe everything your children say about us, and we won't believe everything they say about you!” Wise advice. Children can be master spin artists. A parent upset about the amount of math homework Junior has and the lack of sleep he's getting may be surprised to learn that the teacher gives the students 15 minutes at the end of every class to start on their homework, but Junior chooses to play around. Rather than bad-mouthing the teacher's unrealistic expectations, a simple phone call could clear things up. If a conversation with the teacher doesn't resolve things to your satisfaction, a meeting with the principal may be necessary. This amounts to following the model set out by Jesus in Matthew 18.
Also, don't forget to pray for your child's teacher. This will help you to form a cooperative and positive frame of mind. And it will actually benefit the teacher! Always remember, teachers don't choose their professions because they enjoy inflicting misery on children. (Ask them —the pay is too low and the work too demanding.) The teachers we know stick with it because they have a genuine love for young people and want to help them. In our book, anyone who teaches long-term is on the way to sainthood. Of course, they aren't perfect, so let's pray for them and see them as our allies.
Tom and Caroline McDonald are Co-Directors of the Family Life Office for the Archdiocese of Mobile.
----- EXCERPT: Family Matters ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tom And Caroline McDonald ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: MARRIAGE AMENDMEN DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:Fox News recently conducted a poll concerning marriage. By a margin of 3 to 1, respondents stated that they support a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and woman.
Do you support a constitutional amendmendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman?
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Los Angeles Loves the 'Rosary Priest' DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:HOLLYWOOD, Calif. —Father Patrick Peyton, who gained international fame with his “rosary crusades” and radio and television programs, was remembered by hundreds of people in Hollywood on May 26 —a day set aside for his honor by Los Angeles Mayor Jim Hahn.
Born in Ireland, Father Peyton immigrated to the United States when he was 19. He was ordained in 1941 as a member of the Congregation of Holy Cross after receiving a miraculous cure that he attributed to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The healing catalyzed his desire to spread Marian devotion around the world.
During his life, Father Peyton was known worldwide for his rosary rallies, which drew millions of people to locations around the world. More than 2 million attended the events he put on in Brazil and the Philippines alone; in San Francisco, 500,000 turned out. Worldwide, more than 28 million people attended Father Peyton's rosary rallies in 40 different countries.
The May 26 memorial service, which consisted of a rosary and Mass, was held at Blessed Sacrament Church, a few blocks down Sunset Boulevard from the headquarters of Family Theater, which Father Peyton founded in 1947. Father Peyton and Family Theater Productions created Catholic radio, television and movie programs with help from some of the biggest names of the day, including Bing Crosby, Loretta Young, Ricardo Montalban and many others.
One of those in attendance May 26 was Racquel Zuckerman, a judge, who came all the way from Sao Paulo, Brazil, to remember Father Peyton. “I am Jewish,” she told the assembled crowd. But, she said, Father Peyton's message transcended religious differences. “We are all children of the same God,” she explained. “I was his friend and he was my friend for 30 years. I trusted him completely.”
Shining Sanctity
Also at the memorial service was Carl Karcher, founder of the Carl's Jr. chain of restaurants and a longtime friend of Father Peyton. Karcher said he came to the memorial service to remember his friend, who he says was a saint. “He was fantastic,” explained Karcher, whose son, a priest, concelebrated the Mass. “I loved him to no end.” Karcher said he met Father Peyton around 1960 and remained close to him until the priest's death in 1992. “Everybody melted when he prayed the rosary,” he said.
Oblate of Mary Immaculate Father James FitzPatrick, postulator of Father Peyton's cause, said that Father Peyton was a man of exceptional holiness. In his homily, he explained that a saint is a person “who lets the light [of God] shine through. To all the great lights of Hollywood, Father Peyton let the light of God shine through. And, with his radio and television programs, Father Peyton let the light shine through to millions more.”
“To be a saint and to be canonized are two different things,” added Father FitzPatrick, who has worked on 31 beatification and canonization causes. “I am convinced that Father Peyton was a very exemplary man, a very selfless man.”
Father FitzPatrick agreed with Karcher that the most striking thing about Father Peyton was his devotion to Mary. “He had a single-minded devotion to Our Lady,” he said. “He wore Mary on his sleeve.”
Father Peyton was also honored at the May 26 memorial by the City of Los Angeles. In a proclamation, Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn listed many of Father Peyton's spiritual and secular accomplishments, then concluded by proclaiming the day a citywide celebration of Father Peyton and his work. The mayor wrote in his proclamation: “I, James K. Hahn, mayor of the city of Los Angeles, do hereby proclaim that May 26, 2002, be Servant of God Father Patrick Peyton, CSC, Celebration Day in this the City of the Angels.”
This was not the first time Father Peyton has been publicly noted: Pope John Paul II has also commented on Father Peyton. In 1995, while speaking at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, the Pope remarked: “To use a phrase made famous by the late Father Patrick Peyton: ‘The family that prays together, stays together.’”
Living Legacy
Under Father Peyton's leadership, Family Theater produced more than 500 programs in its “Family Theater of the Air” series, which aired on the Mutual network between 1947 and 1961. The work he began continues and, to date, Family Theater has produced more than 10,000 broadcasts for more than 700 radio and television programs.
Father Peyton died June 3, 1992, in San Pedro, Calif. Last year, on June 1, Bishop Sean O'Malley of Fall River, Mass., opened the cause for his canonization. At that time, Father Peyton received the title Servant of God.
Father FitzPatrick and Holy Cross Father Thomas Feeley, vice postulator for Father Peyton's cause, are currently interviewing people who knew Father Peyton or received favors through his intercession as part of their investigation into his holiness. The results of their findings will be forwarded to the Diocese of Fall River, which can then forward them to the Vatican. The two priests encourage anyone with firsthand stories about Father Peyton to contact them.
In June the memorials dedicated to Father Peyton will continue: A rosary rally is planned in Knock, Ireland, and memorial Masses have been scheduled in California, New York, Massachusetts and Wembly, England.
Andrew Walther writes from Los Angeles
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Conceived in Rape, Loved by God DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:Rebecca Kiessling was 18 when she researched her adoption records and learned that her mother had been raped at knifepoint. She realized that had abortion been legal —Rebecca was conceived in October 1968 —her mother would have aborted her.
Today Kiessling, 32, a family-law attorney turned full-time mom, travels the country to speak in defense of life. She spoke from her home in Rochester Hills, Mich., with Register correspondent Dana Mildebrath.
How did you come to discover the truth about your conception?
I was born and raised in a Jewish home in the Detroit area. I was adopted at birth and I have an adopted brother who is a year and a half older than me. When I was 18, I requested my “non-identifying information.” It contains everything about your birth parents except their names.
The file contained tremendous detail about my mother —her eye color, hair color, age, height, weight, full medical history, religious background, nationality, educational level and occupation. However, all it said about my father was: “Caucasian and of large build.” It sounded like a police description. I waited a week and called my caseworker. I asked her, “Was my mom raped?”
She didn't want to tell me, but she said yes.
What effect did this information have on you?
You need to know some background to understand my reaction. My adoptive brother had been in and out of prison since he was 15. My parents couldn't understand how they could have a daughter who was going off to law school some day and a son who was in all this trouble. My dad picked up a book about the criminal mind, and it said that socially deviant behavior was genetic. When I found out how I was conceived, I thought, “I have these bad genes from my father. Who would ever love me? Who would want to marry me?” I felt ugly and unwanted. I ended up in some abusive relationships.
What was the turning point in your healing process?
When I was 23, one year before I graduated from law school, I was beaten up by a guy I went to law school with. He broke my jaw and stalked me. I had to have all kinds of surgery.
After that happened, a friend invited me to Mass. We sat down beforehand and he explained what everything at Mass would mean. I'd first heard the Gospel when I was 15, but this friend took the time to really share his faith with me. I realized that I am a child of God, and I became a Christian.
What made you decide to start telling people your story?
It wasn't me deciding. It was God deciding. I had wanted to be a lawyer since I was 11. All the years I was in law school, I said I'd never do divorce cases, and then God used my personal experience with domestic violence to give me a heart for families that were in crisis. So I became a family-law attorney, which means doing all the yucky stuff —divorce, custody, child support, paternity. Right from the beginning, women came in to see me who were pregnant and being coerced by their boyfriends, parents and husbands. These people told the women that they could force an abortion, force an adoption, block an adoption. I gladly represented these women for free. I have photos of babies God saved from abortion through my work in law. At the same time, I started speaking.
What are some of the other cases that you handled in your law practice?
Within a period of 14 months, I worked on four cases that made national and international news. It was totally God who made it happen. One was a frozen embryo case —the third such case in the United States involving a dispute between a husband and a wife.
I represented a woman who was sued for not aborting her baby. The judge dismissed that case and today the father is paying child support. I represented the family of a woman with the mentality of a 2-year-old who was raped in a group home and became pregnant. Today the woman is living safely elsewhere and her child is almost five years old, being raised by the child's grandparents. I also argued on behalf of an unborn child in a rape-incest case where the 12-year-old mother was raped by her brother. I was interviewed on Good Morning America and CNN Talk Back Live about that case.
How do you spend your time today?
My most important work is being a full-time mom. My husband Bob and I have an adopted son, Caleb, who turned two in February. Our adopted daughter, Cassandra Grace, died at 33 days in Bob's arms from genetic anomalies caused by DiGeorge Syndrome. I take Caleb with me wherever I go in the United States to speak and, when Bob can, he comes with us.
I speak at Right to Life and crisis-pregnancy center events, at churches, parishes, and public and private schools. I've averaged 50 talks a year since 2000. Also, I still do pro bono work if it means saving the life of an unborn child.
What is the heart of the message that you share with people?
One of the greatest things that I've learned is that the rapist is not my creator. I'm not a child of rape, but a child of God. Ultimately I know —and I'll be able to teach my children —that, if you want to know what your value is, all you have to do is look to the cross, because that's the value that God has placed on your life.
To contact Rebecca Kiessling, call (248) 650-8303 or e-mail rebeccatty@aol.com.
Dana Mildebrath writes from Chico, California.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dana Mildebrath ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: LIFE NOTE DATE: 6/09/2002 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 09-15, 2002 ----- BODY:Unborn Child Saves Mother
Breastfeeding a Lifesaver
Dr. Bernt Alm and his team reported in The Archives of Disease in Childhood that babies breast-fed for less than eight weeks were up to five times more likely to die from SIDS than those breast-fed for at least four months.
License Plates' Million
CHOOSE LIFE INC., May 16 —According to the Tallahassee Fla., Department of Motor Vehicles, the sales of the Choose Life license plate in Florida went higher than $1 million May 23.
The Choose Life tag is displayed on more than 30,000 vehicles in Florida. Every sale and/or renewal raises $20 to assist adoption efforts in crisis-pregnancy centers, maternity homes and certain non profit adoption agencies in the county where the tag was purchased.
Teen-age Chastity
ASCRIBE NEWSWIRE —Researchers have suggested that American teen-agers are becoming less sexually active, with rates of sexual activity, pregnancy and abortion all falling among 15 to 17-year-olds.
A study published in Context, a journal of the American Sociological Association, indicated that the number of boys aged between 15 and 17 who are sexually active has fallen by 8.5% in the past decade. The teen pregnancy rate is now at its lowest since 1975, and the abortion rate for teenagers fell by 31% between 1986 and 1996.
Lt. Gov.: Ban Cloning
SOUTH CAROLINA CITIZENS FOR LIFE, May 20 —Lt. Gov. Bob Peeler has asked all state senators to immediately support the total ban on human cloning in South Carolina.
“Today I am publicly calling upon each and every member of the Senate to come to Columbia this week and do what's right for our state,” Peeler said.
On May 1, the South Carolina House passed the ban by a vote of 77-15.
Peeler also challenged drug companies and the Medical University of South Carolina to drop their opposition to the ban.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life --------