WASHINGTON — For the third time in four years, the Senate has voted to ban partial-birth abortions. This time however, abortion-rights supporters passed a resolution affirming the “constitutional right” to abort a child as recognized by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade.
The ban on partial-birth abortions passed 63–34. President Clinton has vowed to veto the bill as he has all previous bans on the procedure.
Under the procedure, a baby is partially delivered and then has her skull punctured and brains vacuumed out while her head is still inside her mother.
“To allow this to continue unchecked violates every principle of human rights and decency this country has always stood for,” said Cardinal William Keeler, archbishop of Baltimore. “So unique and brutal is this procedure that the majority of those Americans who are pro-life and those who describe themselves as pro-choice agree that it ought to be banned.”
“This crosses the line, this is infanticide,” said the bill's sponsor, Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa. “Surely the Senate can draw the line here.”
A presidential veto will likely be upheld as pro-lifers will remain two votes shy of a two-thirds vote necessary to overturn, a gain of one vote from last year. Two pro-life senators were absent from the vote on Oct. 21.
“If these 34 senators, Clinton and Gore get their way, thousands of babies will continue to be pulled feet-first from the womb while alive, and then brutally killed,” said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee.
For the first time, the Senate voted 51–47 to approve a nonbinding resolution affirming the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which opened the door to the deaths of more than 36 million unborn children.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who authored the amendment, told his fellow senators to be proud of advocating abortion. “Don't be afraid of this issue,” said Harkin, who nearly lost his Senate seat in 1996 because of his militant support of all forms of abortion.
Only two Democrats voted against the Harkin Amendment, Sens. John Breaux of Louisiana and Harry Reid of Nevada.
Eight Republicans agreed to the Harkin's affirmation of Roe. They were Sens. John Chafee, Rhode Island (who died Oct. 24 of heart failure); Ben Night-horse Campbell, Colorado; Susan Collins, Maine; James Jeffords, Vermont; Olympia Snowe, Maine; Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania; Ted Stevens, Alaska; and John Warner, Virginia.
Pro-lifers contended that the slim-majority vote to affirm Roe was no large victory for abortion advocates.
“I'm surprised they did as well as they did,” Santorum said. Observed Johnson: “The Harkin Amendment has no legal effect — it simply expressed the position of a bare majority of 51 senators, which is hardly a ringing endorsement of legal abortion on demand. The Harkin Amendment will not likely pass House and Senate conference committee action on the bill.”
Extremists?
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., a strident defender of abortions, looks forward to raising the issue of the abortion votes during the 2000 elections.
“This is going to be an absolutely huge issue next year,” said Boxer. “Now we see the extremists in the United States Senate.”
Proponents of the partial-birth abortion procedure believed that the Senate's ban was a direct assault on Roe. “This is just another attempt to undermine that decision,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
Santorum, on the other hand, noted the failure of some partial-birth abortion supporters to address directly the issue of whether the procedure should remain legally protected.
“Because on its own merits, they have nothing to stand on,” Santorum said. “It's not medically necessary, never medically advisable and is much more dangerous to the woman. It borders on infanticide.”
Santorum told the Register that this specific abortion procedure is not respected in the medical community. “It's not done in hospitals, not taught in medical school or found in medical literature,” he said. “It's a barbaric act done just in abortion clinics.”
On the Senate floor, Santorum mentioned that twice in 1996 his pregnant wife rejected a late-term abortion even though they knew their son had a defect and would die shortly he left his mother's womb.
“My son, who died, was not perfect in the eyes of the world,” said Santorum, a Catholic father of six. “But he was perfect to me. He was perfect to my wife. And, most importantly, he was perfect in God's eyes.”
‘My son, who died, was not perfect in the eyes of the world,’ said Sen. Santorum, a Catholic father of six. ‘But he was perfect to me. He was perfect to my wife. And, most importantly, he was perfect in God's eyes.’
Shift in Opinion
Public opinion appears to be shifting away from permitting an abortion at any time during the baby's stay inside her mother's womb.
A May 1999 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found that 58% of American believe either that abortion should be “illegal in all circumstances” or “legal only in a few circumstances.”
A poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates for the pro-abortion Center for Gender Equality shows that woman are becoming more pro-life as well. It found that 70% of American women favor “more restrictions” on abortion and that 53% believe that abortion should be legal (at most) in cases of rape, incest, or to save the mother's life.
“Some of the 51 senators who voted to endorse Roe may find that the vote returns to haunt them politically,” said National Right to Life's Johnson.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: An Eve Haunted By a Pagan Past DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:MASHPEE, Mass.-'Tis the season when the line between Christian and pagan practices seems to blur.
Halloween, derived from All Hallowed's Eve, refers to the night before All Saints' Day. But it comes from the Celtic pagan feast Samhain, when spirits from the Otherworld (which should not be confused with either heaven or hell) were most able to enter the regular world through a fairy mound, called in Irish síd. On this day, Nov. 1, more than any other the Celts believed they were most likely to be accosted by foreign spirits, who could influence their lives.
This feast, though probably older than Christianity, lent itself to the Christian idea of communing with the dead through prayer and sacrifice, now especially marked by the Church on All Saints' Day on Nov. 1 and All Souls' Day on Nov. 2.
This year's is the 1,001st celebration of All Souls' Day, according to medievalist Sandra Miesel, of Indianapolis, who said that St. Odo of Cluny popularized the idea of having a special Mass for the dead on that day.
Union with the dead was reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium: “This most sacred Synod accepts with great devotion the venerable faith of our ancestors regarding this vital fellowship with our brethren who are in heavenly glory or who are still being purified after death” (No. 51).
Catholic history is full of examples of departed brethren making return visits. Most of these come from private revelation, which Catholics are not required to believe. But some come from Scripture, suggesting that exiting this world is not irreversible for God.
Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead in John 11:43–44, and restores to life a 12-year-old girl (Matthew 9:25, Mark 5:41–42, Luke 8:54–55).
Praying for the Dead
Living with the dead was not a strange idea for Christians of the Middle Ages, as a similarly titled book by Patrick Geary suggests.
“The living had an overwhelming obligation to pray for the dead,” Miesel said. “The continuity between the dead and the living, the ties of family and friendship, persist despite death.”
The faithful were inspired partly by charity, but also, Miesel said, by the “hope their descendants would do the same for them.”
That same spirit, so to speak, animates devotion to the dead from the current crop of those living on earth. And then, when the souls in purgatory finish their sentence, Miesel noted, “They'll become our patrons in heaven.”
The imperfect Christian living here on earth can hope the cycle will continue.
“And when we die, we'll be part of our descendants' lives in the same way,” Miesel said.
But while that's the ideal, some say the living aren't doing their part.
Father Benjamin Luther, pastor of St. John the Evangelist parish in Paducah, Ky., said many funerals nowadays are framed in the language of unofficial canonizations, with nary a mention of purgatory.
“People don't pray for the dead,” Father Luther said. “And of course, it's a big mistake.”
Ignoring the dead has affected Catholics' perspective on the culture.
Father Luther said Catholics don't seem to have a different perspective on Halloween from anyone else, which he finds disapponting because the celebration can be a catechizing tool. Several years ago, he said, one family in his parish held a “saints' party” at Halloween time, where kids dressed up as saints.
What the Church once borrowed from the pagans to make a point can still be useful, the priest said, but that requires making the point.
“We need to complete the process of truly Christianizing the observance,” Father Luther said.
Matt McDonald writes from Mashpee, Massachusetts.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Matt McDonald ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'Baby Step' In Direction Of Unity DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Lutherans and Catholics plan to make history Oct. 31 by agreeing on one of the principal disagreements that led to the Protestant Reformation.
The Lutheran World Federation and the Vatican are scheduled to sign the Joint Declaration on Justification in Augsburg, Germany. Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to Wittenberg church door 482 years ago, changing the course of a millennium of Christian history.
Ishmael Noko, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, will sign for Lutherans, and Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council for the Unity of Christians, will sign for Catholics.
The Lutheran World Federation represents 124 member churches in 69 countries, including the 5.2-million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Not all Lutherans, however, are represented by the federation.
“The understanding of the doctrine of justification set forth in this declaration shows that a consensus in basic truths of the doctrine of justification exists between Lutherans and Catholics,” said a common statement issued at the June meeting where the details of the agreement were finalized.
The agreement, the result of Lutheran-Catholic dialogue since the Second Vatican Council, was the focus of much theological debate in the past few years.
The dispute over justification — particularly over the place of a person's response to God's offer of salvation — was a key factor in the division of Western Christianity at the time of the Reformation.
‘ ... there is no reason to believe that the planned signing ceremony will be called off because of this criticism,’ said Udo Hahn, who represents the Lutheran World Federation.
The Vatican felt it necessary to issue a clarification about the joint declaration in 1998 that focused on its difficulties in accepting the way the document explained Lutheran teaching about the baptized being “at the same time righteous and sinner.”
According to Catholic doctrine, “in baptism everything that is really sin is taken away and so, in those who are born anew there is nothing that is hateful to God.”
The inclination to sin — or “concupiscence” in theological terms — is not the same thing as sin, the Catholic clarifications said.
Lutheran teaching, as explained in the joint declaration, holds that “believers are totally righteous in that God forgives their sins,” but when they look at themselves “they recognize that they remain also totally sinners.”
The new statement reconciles Catholic and Lutheran statements by explaining that although sins are wiped away in baptism, Christians continue to sin and continue to need forgiveness.
The new statement also clarified the place of good works in the faith life of believers.
While grace is a gift freely given and not earned, it said, “it is nevertheless the responsibility of the justified not to waste this grace but to live in it. The exhortation to do good works is the exhortation to practice the faith.”
Controversy
Controversy regarding the declaration surfaced again as recently as late October when more than 240 Protestant German theologians signed a petition criticizing it. Ecumenical News Service reported that the theologians believed that the document “explains only the Catholic interpretation of this central Protestant belief” and that by signing it, the Lutheran federation “would be giving its assent to this interpretation.”
Federation representative Udo Hahn, rejected the criticism, citing Hans Christian Knuth, the Lutheran bishop responsible for relations with the Roman Catholic Church. “The LWF will remain in dialogue with the critics,” Hahn said, “but there is no reason to believe that the planned signing ceremony will be called off because of this criticism.”
Despite criticism that also has arisen in Catholic circles, Father Arthur Kennedy, ecumenical officer for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, greeted the decision.
The declaration represents a significant step, which once was impossible due to “religious, sociological, and political reasons,” said Father Kennedy, who is also a theology professor at St. Thomas University. “The declaration affirms the unity that Lutherans and Catholics have already sensed has existed. The change now becomes part of the institution. It becomes part of our shared reality.”
Bill Cahoy, dean of the School of Theology at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., agreed. “While theologically significant, the declaration will have little impact on the daily life of both Lutherans and Catholics. ... “Time will tell if it represents the end, or simply the first step.”
Theological Baby Step?
Pat Keifert, theology professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, called the agreement a “baby step,” but said that even a baby step is significant, going further than any other document since 1531.
Keifert said the declaration represents only 40% of the gains which had been made by the U.S. Lutheran-Catholic dialogue over the past 30 years. “In the declaration, they are agreeing about how they disagree over salvation by justification,” Keifert told the Register. “This document achieves ecclesial diplomacy more than it achieves theological insight.”
Asked whether the agreement should have been made at all, Keifert responded, “A part of a loaf of bread is better than none at all, for someone who is hungry. What you hear is grief from someone who is hungry for the unity of the Church.”
American Lutherans, for the most part, are not represented by the Oct. 31 agreement. The 2.7-million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and 500,000-member Lutheran Church-Wisconsin Synod are neither Lutheran World Federation members, nor signa-tories of the accord.
They are also more critical of the document.
Missouri Synod President Dr. A.L. Barry said the declaration contains significant “remaining differences” that cannot be reconciled. “The document is a very carefully worded statement that makes it possible for the representatives of the Pope to sign it without changing, retracting, or correcting anything that has been taught by the Catholic Church since the time of the Council of Trent,” said Barry. “The claim ... that Lutherans and Roman Catholics have now reached agreement on the doctrine of salvation, thereby ending the centuries-long dispute about how sinners are saved, is unfortunately not yet true.”
Nondenominational minister Herman Otten has been the pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in New Haven, Mo., for 42 years and is the editor of the independent publication Christian News. He agreed with Barry, saying, “On the surface it appears as if Rome now accepts justification by faith alone, but Rome does not. There is no agreement.”
Cause for Celebration
“The Joint Declaration represents one issue on which we can agree, and that should be celebrated,” said Father Gerald Dalseth, chair of the St. Cloud Ecumenical Commission and pastor at Christ the King parish in Browerville, Minn.
Father Dalseth related a question he had received from a parishioner on the issue: “She asked, ‘Does this mean that we will now have intercommunion?’” Father Dalseth responded in the negative and said, “The declaration simply means that Lutherans and Catholics now agree that we are justified by faith, and that our good works give evidence to our faith.”
Father Dalseth cautioned that before the declaration has any impact on the parish level, people need to be educated about it. To that end, he has recommended that all priests and deacons in central Minnesota obtain a copy of the documents and study them. “This provides a good opportunity for us to teach,” said Father Dalseth. He hopes that the declaration will give the ecumenical movement a new push.
Philip Gray, director of information services at Catholics United for the Faith, of Steubenville, Ohio, agreed. “Much doctrinally legitimate common ground has been forged. We ... hope and pray for full, unequivocal agreement between the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation, not only on other issues related to the doctrine of justification, but on all doctrinal issues that impede full communion between Catholics and Lutherans. We affirm the prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Father, ‘that they may all be one ... even as we are one.’”
Tim Drake writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
----- EXCERPT: Lutheran-Catholic Agreement ------- EXTENDED BODY: Tim Drake ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Lay Preachers Take to the Streets DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:NEW YORK-Hundreds of people were hanging out in New York's Washington Square Park on a recent Saturday, watching street performers, enjoying the sunshine ... and debating with the Catholic Evidence Guild.
That's right, the Catholic Evidence Guild — the lay organization dedicated to teaching the faith on street corners. The guild has been enjoying a revival in the 1990s after a hiatus of some 20 years.
The late Frank Sheed, who was a member of both the London and New York chapters, called it “teaching the faith under the open sky.”
“They are trying to do what the Church has always encouraged, which is to share the faith with others,” observed Karl Keating, president of Catholic Answers, the apologetics apostolate based in San Diego.
Chapters are flourishing in New York, Michigan and Arizona, while others are being started around the country.
The six speakers who took to the podium recently in New York gave 15-minute presentations on subjects such as original sin, salvation and the Mass. Each one entertained questions from listeners, keeping as much as possible to his topic.
That's not always easy. Misconceptions about Catholic teaching and personal agendas abound, and New Yorkers want answers now.
So Greg Kelly's talk about Mary was largely lost on a group of smart teen-agers from the prestigious Bronx High School of Science who were more interested in challenging the Church on premarital sex and the more embarrassing moments of papal history, such as Avignon.
And Christian Leth, a tourist from Copenhagen, Denmark, did not have the patience for Don Murray's talk on hell and God's mercy. Leth had already accepted the Catholic interpretation of the Bible and was not interested in hearing “from the basic word up.”
The current guild revival began in Ann Arbor, Mich., by Thomas O'Brien and Joseph Campbell. O'Brien and London Guild master Leonard Sullivan reprinted Sheed's “Catholic Evidence Training Outlines,” which members rely on heavily for training and preparation of talks.
Soon after, Friar of the Renewal Father Benedict Groeschel, noted preacher and author, got a group started again in New York.
Cardinal John O'Connor, who had been a guild member in Philadelphia in his seminary days, gave his approval for the move. And two years ago, Deacon Bill Starrs of Sacred Heart parish in Prescott, Ariz., started a chapter in that predominantly Mormon town.
Father Robert Quarato, who assisted in the New York revival, has received inquiries from all over the country for help in starting new chapters. He warns that since the guild is a public apostolate, it needs the guidance of a pastor and approval of the bishop. “People shouldn't go out and try to represent the Church in some way without some oversight,” he said.
Members are given intensive training in theology and apologetics and give practice talks in front of classmates, who pepper them with tough questions. They have to speak before a certification board before being allowed to teach on the street.
The guild has always laid a heavy emphasis on spiritual preparation, and members are required to spend an hour before the Blessed Sacrament before
One-on-One Encounters
Speakers have found that, as much as people stop and listen to the talks, the really interesting things happen in oneon-one conversations after the formal presentations.
“The real work of the guild is not in giving talks,” said Lucy Tucker of New York. “They're the bait. We are fishers of men. What we hope will happen is that people come over and ask questions and be interested enough so they really want to stay and talk to us.”
Such encounters have led to confessions with a priest on the scene, and people have been directed to their parishes to have marriages reconciled.
In Michigan and Arizona, too, members find that one-on-one encounters are more effective. Joseph Campbell mans a free literature stand in front of the graduate library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor every Wednesday for three hours and is ready to dialogue with any interested student or professor.
Wherever it operates, the guild's street style has made a difference in the lives of people who went out for a walk and never thought they would see such a group.
“It's opened up my eyes,” said William Barrera, an unemployed furniture mover who hangs out in Washington Square Park and has heard the guild there for the past two years. They've opened up my eyes to more things about the Church. They've enhanced my life, helped me understand why I'm here and what life is all about.”
John Burger writes from New York.
The guild's Web site is www.catholicevidence.org.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: John Burger ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Euthanasia and the 'Brain Death' Lie DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:To meet our “inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life,” as Pope John Paul II called for in Evangelium Vitae, we must oppose all euthanasia without compromise or exception, and we must expose it in all its forms.
Of course, doing so will put us at odds with much of the medical and cultural establishment of our day.
Standing counter to the popular tide, we must frequently reiterate that death ought to be declared only after the fact — never before. As the Holy Father has said, to declare death prematurely is to commit a fundamental injustice. “Brain death” is not death, and to say that a person with a beating heart, normal pulse, blood pressure, color, and temperature is “dead” is simply a lie, however cunningly packaged.
Some say that a person who cannot breathe without the help of a ventilator is already dead. Yet, often, after “brain death” has been declared, the ventilator and other life support are continued until it is convenient to harvest the “donor's” organs.
If he is alive when his vital organs are cut out of his body without the benefit of anesthesia, will he not feel pain, as does the baby in an abortion? It has been reported that when the incision is made to harvest the organs, there is an increase in the heart rate and blood pressure. Corpses, of course, have neither heart rates nor blood pressure, and after the removal of the beating heart or other vital organ, there will be no further heartbeat, breathing, or circulation. Deprived of the organs needed to sustain life, the “donor” will be cold, blue, pallid and stiff — in short, dead.
Because many physicians have been led to accept the lie of “brain death,” and because some are transplanting vital organs — even within our Catholic hospitals — I dare not remain silent but rather join our voices to those consistently raised by opponents of euthanasia.
We simply must not let this misleading phrase win a place in our lexicon.
In Favor of Life
In the past everyone knew who was dead and who was alive. If there was any doubt, it was resolved in favor of life, according to right reason and sound morals. If a hunter was even a bit uncertain whether his target were a deer or a man, should he pull the trigger? Of course not. That is why the Church has always given the benefit of the doubt to life, as shown by her traditional practice of providing the sacrament of the anointing of the sick (extreme unction) unless the signs of death are unmistakable.
We, the faithful, rely on the Holy Spirit to protect our families. We pray that he will guide those charged with grave responsibilities within the Church to make the right decisions, as well as empower them to act upon them — and oppose such egregious assaults on our God-given right to life and on the dignity of our persons.
Life is the substantial fact of the union of soul and body, for God has created man in his image and likeness. Death is the separation of soul and body.
A person is entirely alive until completely dead. Physicians, nurses and all others ought to protect life, preserve life, prolong life, and enhance the sanctity and quality of life.
“... nor can we remain silent in the face of other more furtive, but no less serious and real, forms of euthanasia. These could occur, for example, when, in order to increase the availability of organs for transplants, organs are removed without respecting objective and adequate criteria which verify the death of the donor.”
The dire consequences that would ensue were Church officials to endorse “brain death” are incalculable. Persons with disabilities, especially those whose organs are wanted by others, would simply be the first victims.
And there would certainly be grave implications for the anti-abortion cause in bandying about the term “brain death” in our dialogue promoting life. After all, to confuse the brain for the soul as the essence of human life has grave implications for the preborn baby, for the human brain does not begin to develop until several weeks after conception (i.e., fertilization) and requires additional weeks to complete its development.
Such a catastrophic error would be used to rationalize abortion and every sort of nontherapeutic experimentation on the preborn child, denied recognition not only of his personhood, but also of the very fact that he is alive.
“Brain death” makes a convincing case for “brain life” and the culture of death needs little convincing. As one consistent euthanasia advocate concludes: “human life may be seen as a continuous spectrum between the onset of brain life in utero (eight weeks gestation) and the occurrence of brain death” (Goldenring, J.M., “The Brain-Life Theory: Towards a Consistent Biological Definition of Humanness,” Journal of Medical Ethics, 1985, No. 11, p. 198).
Seek True Wisdom
The principles underlying the Holy Father's call to defend life in all its forms emanate as much from natural law as from the commandments given by God to man through Moses. Natural law speaks to all men in the quiet of their hearts, but it would seem those who have not stilled the whispers of conscience through pride are more likely to hear it. Perhaps that is why the poor and marginalized — the nomadic herdsman of the African plains, the peasant in the Asian village, the migrant in the South American favella — would never think of burying a brother with a beating heart. Meanwhile, the rich and powerful would cut that same beating heart from his body if it meant improving some stronger person's life (or building some unprincipled medical professional's bank account).
To be educated is not necessarily the same as to be wise. Those who confuse the brain with the soul exaggerate the importance of the former as they denigrate the worth of the latter. This extends, not surprisingly, to the limits of their own intellects. Science is no more a substitute for common sense than it is for religion.
While authentic science affirms the truths of the universe and its divine Creator, its practitioners often usurp his prerogatives. It is a fatal mistake to leave moral questions, such as the determination of death, to a declaration by a doctor corrupted by the culture of death.
The culture of death masks its genocide with lethal language (“artificial nutrition,” “fetal reduction,” “futile treatment” and so on) while redefining the meaning of other words, such as “conception,” to serve their ends.
“Brain death” is just another weapon in their arsenal — a weapon used to increase the availability of organs for transplantation without respecting objective and adequate criteria which verify the death of the donor.
As the Holy Father reminds us, there are many kinds of euthanasia. These include, alas, even “Catholic” euthanasia, which is, of course, no more
Catholic than the “science” behind “brain death” is science. What is Catholic is to defend God's gift of life, with equal fervor, against abortion, infanticide and euthanasia — including the furtive form masquerading as “brain death.”
Mercedes Arzú Wilson is president of Family of the Americas, a pro-life organization in Dunkirk, Maryland. Elizabeth A. Hoag is a member of that group's board of directors.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Mercedes ArzÚ Wilson and Elizabeth A. Hoag ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Greetings from the Church in Hollywood DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Christians often complain about Hollywood's excesses. This Catholic screenwriter wants them to do something about them. She started “Act One: Writing for Hollywood,” a nonprofit program based in Los Angeles dedicated to training a new generation of Christian writers. Fresh from Act One's just-completed inaugural session, Barbara Nicolosi spoke with Register correspondent Greg Erken.
Greg Erken: How did the idea of a scriptwriting school for Christians originate?
Barbara Nicolosi: The idea was born in three people around the same time. Coleman Luck, who has been in the business for 20 years, had decided this was a necessary thing. And David Schall, the head of Intermission, the largest Christian networking and fellowship organization in Hollywood, recognized that everything starts with the script. Meanwhile, I had written an article for Crisis magazine saying that Christians shouldn't complain that there is some big conspiracy in Hollywood against us. The fact is we're not giving Hollywood anything to work with. We're expecting non-Christians to write Christian themes, when we ourselves are not willing to roll up our sleeves, write the scripts, and learn the business.
David read the article, and last summer, he asked me if I would be interested in running a program to train screenwriters who come from a Christian background, if they could secure funding. Having read so much schlock written by Christians, and having said publicly many times that I was sick of seeing that kind of work coming out of our community, I felt like I had to say “Yes” and put my money where my mouth is.
What are you trying to accomplish with Act One?
Our plan for Act One is to every year pump into the [film] industry a group of talented writers who are writing with a consideration not only for technical proficiency but also artistic excellence.
It's not so much that they are going to be writing stories with overtly Christian themes, because we're not writing in a Christian culture anymore. Those would be largely unmarketable. But as believers, they would be overflowing with whatever is in their heart. We are trusting that the stories that come out of that place would have a different look than what we're seeing out there currently. They might handle the same material, but the way they would handle it would be different than a nonbeliever.
You talk to Christian writers every day. What are the biggest challenges they face?
They are largely the same as those facing non-Christian writers. They are entering a terribly difficult business, which takes a complete commitment. Many secular people in Hollywood do it for money, and I see many of my Christian friends not willing to make the sacrifices just for money, so they drop out. So I say, “OK, you see through all of this, but will you do it because it's a mission field? Will you do it for God?” Because if you aren't willing to make the sacrifices that these secular people make, we're not going to have a voice, and we're passing up the most powerful pulpit on the planet.
That reminds me of when Christians beginning in the late 1970s decided they no longer wanted to be outside of the political process. Slowly, over 20 years, they have learned to roll up their sleeves and get organized at the grass-roots level. It sounds like what you are launching is another step toward cultural renewal.
Definitely. Hollywood is not going to be reformed from the outside. We must have a heart for popular culture, and recognize that we Christians are not on a mountain looking down. We are part of this culture. Either we are going to be representing ourselves in the culture, or we're going to be represented by others who don't understand us. That's what's happening right now. I have so little patience when I hear Christians sit around critiquing the media, and then feeling like they've done something. It doesn't accomplish anything; it just gets our frustration out of our system for a while. I would much rather see people from the Church getting together and saying, “What's a great project we can do? Let's make A Man for All Seasons for this generation.”
How might a script like that be written from a Christian heart without consigning it to only the religious market?
First of all, when it's done well, you don't have to worry about [being ghettoized]. Any [major] film that has dealt with strong Christian themes in the last three decades has received either the Academy Award or tremendous critical acclaim. Think of Ghandi, Chariots of Fire, or The Mission. I think you have to understand who you are pitching to, and who is in control [of the filmmaking process]. You have to be smart. You have to find a way to deliver the truth of the Gospel, without getting people's back up.
There is money in the Christian community to make productions, but let's face it, how much money is going to Church communications projects, which could be put toward a feature film that could be seen by 50 million people worldwide, who are outside of the Church. And we're making the easiest kind of projects, which are documentaries and talking-head stuff. Narrative is very, very hard.
Sometimes it seems like the Church has gotten out of the business of using narrative — stories — to communicate.
And isn't that a tragedy? Stories are, after all, the way Jesus taught. Flannery O'Connor, perhaps the greatest Catholic storyteller of the last 50 years, said that the challenge for Catholic artists is to try to compel people to look squarely at reality, which nobody wants to look at. This is the essential difference between Christian art and what passes for most entertainment these days. Secular Hollywood is into the business of escapism — to separate the viewer from reality. But Christian artists believe that all reality flows from the heart of a loving God and that if people penetrate reality then they will encounter the Divine at its core. We have to be so good at what we do as artists that we will draw people into the uncomfortable place of looking at themselves. They will be compelled to enter into this kind of study because our characters and stories are well drawn and fascinating.
That sounds like John Paul II's insistence that we confront the true nature of man and the human condition, rather than escaping from it or averting our gaze.
There are a lot of Christians who are scandalized by the incarnation, by Christ's humanity and our potential for darkness and evil. We don't want to see movies with violence or intense themes. But Flannery O'Connor noted that violence is one of the most effective methods for an artist to rivet the attention of a reader. She said moments of violence uniquely prepare us for the action of grace.
As a screenwriter, I'm not interested in returning to the days of Father Knows Best, even though that kind of program is what many of our Christian people are clamoring for. That kind of entertainment isn't really good for us. It may be just as bad as programs full of gratuitous sex and violence — just another fantasy to escape into.
What kind of reaction has Act One received from the Hollywood establishment so far?
We were written up in a positive way by [key Hollywood observer] Howard Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times, who in the past has not always been gentle with religious projects. Howard said that the idea of [the Christian community] always being defined from the outside has not been a good thing for Hollywood. We approach much of the industry by saying that we're another cultural group with a distinct voice, and just as you need women and African-Americans in Hollywood, you also need Christians.
How about from the Christian community?
When I go around and speak to Christian writers groups around the country, I always say “Greetings from the Church in Hollywood,” and they all laugh. Christians have bought into the idea that Hollywood is the throne center of the Devil, and there is no Church here. Then I ask them, “How many of you in the last month have complained about something in the movies or on TV?” And 300 hands go up. Then I ask them, “How many of you in the last month have said a prayer for those Christians laboring in Hollywood, or that God would send more Christians to Hollywood?” and I get maybe three hands.
Act One Faculty and Mentors
Act One's students are taught by leading Hollywood producers and writers, including:
Ron Austin (Mission Impossible, Matlock, Fr. Dowling Mysteries)
Dave Allen Johnson (High Incident, Against the Grain)
Coleman Luck (The Equalizer, Gabriel's Fire)
Dave MacFadzean (Home Improvement)
Karen Hall (M*A*S*H, Moonlighting, Northern Exposure)
Ken Wales (Christy, Cagney and Lacey)
Michael Warren (Family Matters, Two of a Kind)
So this is the problem: Not only are we trying to do something that is terribly difficult, but if the Church is not praying for us, it's impossible. Hollywood and television are tremendously powerful means that God has given to mankind. The Pope is saying they are tools to help unite human beings. But the devil has convinced the Church that they belong to him, and that they are intrinsically evil.
I've gone to many conservative conferences where they say “throw out your televisions.” But this is not what the Church is saying. The Church is saying that these instruments have the power to bring the human family together on a global scale. You definitely have to educate your children so that they are critical consumers, but also tell your children to be artists, producers and journalists.
One of the big challenges facing Christians in any endeavor is working together on an ecumenical basis. How does that tension play out with Christians in Hollywood?
Well, there's nothing like the great equalizer of persecution to get us Christians beyond our personal issues and prejudices. Let's face it, the Romans didn't ask, “Now, which side of the Arian heresy are you on?” before they threw the Christians to the lions. If you call on the name of the Lord, the powers of darkness label you all Christians. The devil is an equal opportunity opponent. We Christians in Hollywood are so much the minority that we have to work together to accomplish anything. I will work with anyone who is sincere and good-hearted and loves Jesus.
What kind of help is Act One getting from established Christians in Hollywood?
We had 52 faculty members and mentors from the Los Angeles entertainment community, all fervent Christians from all different denomination who have been on the front lines for many years. For example, Martha Williamson, executive producer of “Touched by an Angel,” spoke at our closing dinner. Our mentors met with their students for an hour each week on a one-to-one basis to provide feedback on whatever project the student was working on. And now our students have friends in Hollywood who can introduce them to contacts, be reference points, and encourage them — but not carry them.
Act One also has relationships with several production companies who have asked us to pass on the best scripts that come out of the program. We don't hand on anybody's work just because they happen to be Christian. I get deluged with scripts, and I know this interview will result in another hundred coming my way. So those of you are reading this, before you send me a script, make sure you know what you are doing. Read Syd Field's Screenplay, know the three-act structure, your characters better be developed, and the format better be industry standard.
How many students did you have for your first program?
Twenty-nine — 13 men, 16 women, 6% minorities, and various denominations. We had 300 to 400 people request applications, and 100 actually replied. From that pool, we accepted 30 (one student dropped out). We didn't have any money to advertise the program, so we used word-of-mouth and Internet mailing lists. I also went to about five or six writers conferences.
Can you point to any impact Act One has had already?
The last two days of the program we had five production companies come in and listen to our students pitch their work. Each of these companies asked to read at least four scripts when they are finished, which is terribly impressive for this industry. To have a script “read” is the first step, meaning a producer will look at your screenplay and consider developing it. It means circumventing the need to get an agent, and getting it right into the hands of a decision-maker. This is a huge opportunity for these students.
We have also started our script-critiquing service. Our faculty and mentors will be reading scripts and asking, “Is this story commercial, and is it a good vehicle for the Christian world-view?” If we get a script that is really great, I'll be happy to pass it on to the production companies we are working with.
What does Act One need to keep going in the future, and where are you looking for support?
Right now we have enough funding for one more program in L.A. But because of the tremendous response we've received, we want to have an East Coast version, which will cost about $50,000 to $75,000. We want to expand our promotion, and we would love to have two or three sessions every year instead of just one. So we need support from the Christian community. You can't do anything without money. We also need students. If you know talented writers, challenge them to write for a mass audience, and send them our way.
We also need prayer for the people in Hollywood, for the students, and for a renewal of the culture. Never before in history has a culture renewed itself, but maybe we can be the first. Our people have the “Jonah syndrome”: They want to get gourd plants and sit up in the mountains and watch God vent his wrath. But we have not yet received a divine commission that its time to head for the hills. That would be too easy — but it might make a great movie!
•••
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Barbara Nicolosi ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Get Into Politics, Bishops Urge Laity DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON-America's bishops want Catholics to vote not just with their wallets, but also with their hearts.
The U.S. bishops will mail the Oct. 20 document “Faithful Citizenship: Civic Responsibility for a New Millennium” to every parish in the country this November. The booklet outlines voters guidelines for America's 61 million Catholics.
“While many Catholics, like others, have retreated from the political process, our faith calls us to engagement ... to get more involved in not only our own interests, but in moral principles as well,” said John Carr, spokesman for the conference.
The bishops have released such documents every four years since 1976, but this time “it's shorter more direct, in some ways more urgent,” Carr told the Register.
“We have a responsibility to try to reform and to renew this tradition,” Carr said of the political process. “We need to use this opportunity to shape this world to a greater respect for human life, human dignity and justice.”
“This is about more than our pocketbook, this is about whether we protect human life,” said Carr.
Father Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the monthly First Things, agreed in the sense of urgency. He told the Register that now more than ever, Catholics must bring their convictions to the ballot box.
‘We're really trying to reach the folks in the pews, not just the leadership people or the social justice people’
— Cardinal Mahony
“On the crucial issue of the day, between the culture of life and the culture of death, I think there will be a clear and drastic difference between the two parties and the two candidates” in the presidential election for 2000, Father Neuhaus said.
The document outlines the Church's stances on social and economic issues, from abortion to helping the poor.
“As Catholics we need to share our values, raise our voices, and use our votes to shape a society that protects human life, promotes family life, pursues social justice, and practices solidarity,” the bishops say in the document. “We believe every candidate, policy, and political platform should be measured by how they touch the human person; whether the enhance or diminish human life, dignity and human rights; and how they advance the common good.”
While the bishops do not intend to create a Catholic voting bloc and will not endorse candidates or political parties, they encouraged Catholics to affirm their faith in the political process.
“The title really says it all,” Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, told the Catholic News Service. “Catholics really have a great responsibility to be active members of society, to really be informed.”
According to some, Catholics have fallen well short of voting in accordance with the Church's stances on such issues as abortion.
“When I think about a Catholic vote, I think of what Stalin said, ‘How many legions does the Pope have?’ You mean there is a Catholic vote?” syndicated columnist and vice-presidential candidate Joseph Sobran told the Register. “Some Catholic vote. We just aren't acting like serious Catholics.”
The bishops hope to change that.
“We're really trying to reach the folks in the pews, not just the leadership people or the social justice people,” said Cardinal Mahony, who is co-chairman of the U.S. bishops' Domestic Policy Committee.
Carr said, “The statement makes clear that in our tradition, citizenship is a virtue and participation in the political process in a moral obligation.”
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Questions for the Campaign DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Following is an excerpt from the Oct. 20 document “Faithful Citizenship: Civic Responsibility for a New Millennium,” by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops:
Politics is about more than our own pocketbooks or economic interests. Catholics, other believers, and men and women of good will raise different questions for ourselves and for those who would lead us:
1. How will we protect the weakest in our midst — innocent, unborn children?
2. How will we overcome the scandal of a quarter of our preschoolers living in poverty in the richest nation on earth?
3. How will we address the tragedy of 35,000 children dying every day of the consequences of hunger, debt and lack of development around the world?
4. How can our nation help parents raise their children with respect for life, sound moral values, a sense of hope and an ethic of stewardship and responsibility?
5. How can society better support families in their moral roles and responsibilities, offering them real choices and financial resources to obtain quality education and decent housing?
6. How will we address the growing number of families and individuals without affordable and accessible health care? How can health care protect and enhance human life and dignity?
7. How will our society best combat continuing prejudice, bias, and discrimination, overcome hostility toward immigrants and refugees, and heal the wounds of racism, religious bigotry, and other forms of discrimination?
8. How will our nation pursue the values of justice and peace in a world where injustice is common, destitution is widespread, and peace is too often overwhelmed by warfare and violence?
9. What are the responsibilities and limitations of families, voluntary organizations, markets, and government? How can these elements of society work together to overcome poverty, pursue the common good, care for creation, and overcome injustice?
10. How will our nation resist what Pope John Paul II calls a growing “culture of death”? Why does it seem that our nation is turning to violence to solve some of its most difficult problems — to abortion to deal with difficult pregnancies, to the death penalty to combat crime, to euthanasia and assisted suicide to deal with the burdens of age and illness?
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:College Woman Speaks Out Against Pornography
Porn consumption has its immediate effects, Palmer said. Women begin to sense men treating them as objects, and men find it difficult to enter into relationships without perverse expectations and disordered impulses. Palmer noted the ease with which filth now proliferates by way of the Internet, and called on men to take control of themselves for their own sake and for sake of the women they court.
Splinter Group to Build Church in Denver
Its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, was excommunicated by Pope John Paul II in 1988 for ordaining priests without the blessing of the Church, Members of the Church, which will be named St. Isidore the Farmer, have raised $800,000 for the project. The cornerstone was laid on Oct. 17, and workers plan to finish the large cruciform Church by next summer.
Society priest Joseph Pfeiffer, the pastor of St. Isidore's, says the Society will eventually open a primary education school on the site. The original Church is located in downtown Denver, which claims 300 Society members.
A spokesman for Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput has reaffirmed the Church's condemnation of the Society, which chooses to operate outside the control of its local ordinary and refuses to accept the validity of the revised Mass. Masses at St. Isidore's will be said according to the Tridentine rite exclusively.
Feminist Atheist Blasts Brooklyn Exhibit
The exhibit has been criticized by the Catholic League and others for an image that denigrates the Blessed Virgin Mary, scattering her image with elephant dung and pornographic images.
Paglia, a lesbian and an atheist, teaches art history at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
“The rote attacks on [“Sensation” opponent New York Mary Rudolph] Giuliani have been deafening,” Paglia said. “While the mayor certainly exceeded his authority in demanding that the entire show be stopped … I am frankly enjoying his assault on the arts establishment, which is in dire need of a shake-up. …
“And I'm just as sick of ‘Catholic-bashing’ as Giuliani himself. I may be an atheist, but I was raised in Italian Catholicism, and it remains my native culture. I resent the double standard that protects Jewish and African-American symbols and icons but allows Catholicism to be routinely trashed by supercilious liberals and ranting gay activists,” Paglia said.
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Sources ------- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Hate Crime Act's Demise Prompts Catholic Questions DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON-The effort to include homosexuals as a specially protected group under federal hate crime legislation has prompted Catholic observers to revisit the question.
The latest attempt to extend hate crime sanctions to protect homosexuals law failed this month as a congressional committee stripped any hate crimes legislation from the final version of a spending bill moving through Congress.
A Catholic attorney and professor of human life issues at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio called hate crimes legislation “classic examples of how hard cases make bad law.”
Professor Brian Scarnecchia sounded the warning as lawmakers in Washington sought legislative recourse to a recent string of crimes around the nation which included school, work-place and other mass slayings — some of them apparently motivated by objections to religion, national origins and sexual conduct.
He conceded that people should be “shocked and angry and want to do something” about such hate crimes, but he called on federal lawmakers and other officials to “back off a bit and take another look at what we have here” to determine just how far to go with such legislation at the federal level.
Sponsored by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., the Hate Crimes Act of 1999 would have added “sexual orientation” to existing federal hate crime laws, and would have greatly expanded federal jurisdiction over hate crimes. It passed a voice vote in the House this summer. An alternative measure by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, offering a state-level solution to the problem, passed in the Senate.
Both measures were rejected by conferees Oct. 18.
Said Scarnecchia, “First of all, every crime that is committed is motivated by hatred or contempt of the common good or the dignity of the human person or the solidarity among people. Even every petty thief displays contempt against those from whom he or she steals and even a huckster shows contempt for those who fall for his sales pitch.”
Then he pointed out that every crime committed already sends a message to an entire community and usually causes people to be more careful to lock their doors or to look over their shoulders more carefully.
“So, there already is a chilling effect that comes with every crime committed,” he added.
The professor quoted St. Thomas Aquinas in noting that “good law shouldn't try to prohibit every vice, nor to promote every virtue. It is enough that it forbid the most grievous vices.”
The proposed inclusion of homosexuality in the hate crime legislation seemed to place many Catholic bishops on the horns of a dilemma.
Asked about the Catholic hierarchy's view on the overall hate crime legislation, a spokeswoman for the U.S.
Catholic bishops, Sister Mary Ann Walsh, said, “The idea that people should not hate and discriminate against other people is the position that the Church has taken.
“At the same time, the Church has a very strong opposition to any legislation that condones or promotes a homosexual lifestyle. Therefore, the homosexual aspect makes legislation more of a challenge for the bishops.”
Bishop William Friend of Shreveport, Pa., was one of the prelates who expressed misgivings about the Kennedy bill.
“We ought to teach very strongly on the social issues and ‘Love thy neighbor’ themes,” the bishop told the Register, “and reject very thoroughly racism and every other kind of ‘ism’ that demeans human dignity and human values.”
However, he expressed “great concern that we too often legislate ourselves out of freedom in this country.” “The general pattern seems to be that any issue that comes up today, we are going to have legislation that becomes restrictive in nature and more importantly places government in the role or decision-making relative to guilt or innocence,” Bishop Friend warned.
Thought Police
Rick Hinshaw, of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said:
“Our inclination would be to say that when people commit violent acts against anybody, they should be prosecuted and punished to the full extent of the law because of the harm they've done, regardless of the reason they did the harm.
“But, when you get into adding punishments for the thought that might have been behind the violence, you get into … ‘thought police,’ and start meting out harsher punishment.”
There is no clear evidence that hate crime laws prevent hate crimes, according to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama.
However, he conceded that such crimes target more than the individual hurt by the attacked, leading his group to the assumption that “although hate crime laws may not deter such crimes, they do provide a way in which Americans can make a statement that such crimes are intolerable.”
As to hate crimes against homosexuals, Potok said, “It is absolutely required that such crimes be included with hate crimes.”
Father Jack Kelley, retired Marianist professor of philosophy at the University of Dayton, said he believes the government has not only the power but “the duty with respect to the common good to define certain crimes as hate crimes. And it also seems to me that it still would be morally correct that when a person is abused because of his lifestyle, the abuse should be listed as a hate crime and dealt with that way.”
In a final plea, professor Scarnecchia said, “Hate crime federal legislation must be resisted while there still is time.”
Asked it he felt such federal legislation would eventually be enacted by the Congress, he said, “Yes, there is a good chance it will be passed unless people of a more farsighted and higher principled conviction make their voices heard.”
Robert Holton writes from Memphis, Tennessee.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Robert Holton ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Martyrs Are a Sign of Hope For Europe, Synod Contends DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY-The Special Assembly for Europe of the Synod of Bishops closed Oct. 23 on a note of hope.
The synod, which began three weeks ago stressing the dire straits in which Christianity often finds itself in Europe, chose to conclude by proclaiming a “Gospel of hope.”
“Man cannot live without hope,” began the official message of the synod participants that was released on the synod's penultimate day. “But every day this hope is weakened, attacked and destroyed by so many forms of suffering, anxiety and death that cut through the heart of many Europeans and throughout the whole continent. We cannot ignore this challenge.”
“Enlightened by faith in Jesus Christ, with humble certainty, we know that we are not deceiving you when we say that hope is possible even today and that it is possible for all,” continues the message.
The synod made it clear that this hope was not a matter of mere willful optimism in the face of a bleak European scene. Indeed, the first sign of this hope highlighted by the synod was the numerous martyrs of modern times, which gave witness with their lives to a hope that “is stronger than death.”
Other “signs of hope” identified include the hidden “holiness of so many men and women of our time,” “the rediscovered freedom of the Churches of Eastern Europe,” “the Church's increased focus on its spiritual mission and its commitment to making evangelization the priority,” and “the presence and the flowering of new movements and communities.”
The synod participants spoke favorably about the process of European unification, especially in comparison to the violence and war experienced in the Balkans.
“As Christians,” they wrote, “we wish to be committed Europeans, ready to make our contribution to the Europe of today and tomorrow, treasuring the precious heritage left us by the ‘founding fathers’ of the united Europe.”
Pope John Paul II spoke of the hopes he shared with the synod participants during his homily at the closing Mass in St. Peter's.
“If we look to past centuries, we must give thanks to the Lord because Christianity has been, in our continent, a primary factor of unity among peoples and cultures and of the integral promotion of man and his rights,” he said. He spoke also of his “firm conviction that there can be no true and fertile unity for Europe if it is not built on its spiritual foundations.”
The Holy Father's ongoing reflection on the European question was symbolized in the gift that was given to all synod participants at the end of the synod. They all received a volume containing all of John Paul's interventions on Europe through almost 21 years of his pontificate — 669 audiences, homilies and addresses altogether.
That “European magisterium” will be added to in a year or two, when the final postsynodal apostolic exhortation will be written, signed by the Holy Father and released publicly.
These long documents synthesize the deliberations of the synod into a coherent whole produced by the Holy Father and his collaborators from the synod. Last January, on his pastoral visit to Mexico, the exhortation Ecclesia in America was released, completing the work of the Synod for America, and next month in India, the Holy Father will issue Ecclesia in Asia, completing the work of the Synod for Asia.
The European Synod concluded the cycle of regional synods of bishops established as part of the preparation for the Jubilee Year. Synods were held in 1994 (Africa), 1995 (Lebanon), 1997 (America), spring 1998 (Asia) and fall 1998 (Oceania).
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond J. De Souza ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Papal Trip to Iraq Still On, But Date May Change DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY-The Vatican has decided to go ahead with plans for Pope John Paul II to make a controversial pilgrimage to Iraq but may change the date from December to January, Vatican sources said Oct. 21.
The resumed planning indicated that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has provided the guarantees demanded by the Vatican that the Pope's presence would not be politicized.
The Vatican canceled a planned trip to Baghdad by Father Roberto Tucci, the Jesuit who acts as the Pope's advance man, and announced a “pause for reflection” earlier this month after a group of Iraqi scholars leveled sharp criticism at a spiritual pilgrimage by the Pope.
The Iraqis said the Holy Father would be welcome only if he denounced the economic sanctions the United Nations imposed on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Iraqi Caldean Patriarch Raphael Bidawid, who is mediating between Baghdad and the Vatican, met in the Vatican Oct. 20 with Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, and officials of the Secretariat of State.
Bidawid's brief visit stirred speculation that he carried a response from Saddam's regime to the Vatican's demands.
Asked at a Vatican news conference today whether the Pope would travel to Iraq, Silvestrini said: “I continue to have faith. And I really think he will make this trip although the date has not been fixed.”
Vatican sources said that because of the delay in planning, the visit probably would have to be moved forward from early December to mid-January.
John Paul hopes to travel to the site of the ancient city of Ur of the Chaldees in southern Iraq, home of the Prophet Abraham. Ur, located in the desert 240 miles south of Baghdad, would be the first stop on a series of papal pilgrimages to Old and New Testament sites in Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Palestine Authority territory and Syria to mark the start of the thirdmillennium of Christianity.
The U.S. and British governments strongly oppose the visit to Iraq on thegrounds that Saddam would try to exploit it politically.
Iraqi officials have begun renovating Ur, and the Vatican's envoy to Iraq, Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto, met Saturday (Oct. 16) with Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf to discuss the papal trip, Reuters reported from Baghdad Thursday, quoting embassy sources.
The news agency said an advance team headed by Tucci was expected to visit Iraq to lay the groundwork but no schedule had yet been set, they said.
In a separate development, ZENIT, the Rome-based news agency, reported that the U.S. government's lobbying against the papal trip has intensified over the last weeks. Opposition to Saddam has led the U.S. to exhort John Paul II to “reconsider his decision” so as not to reinforce the dictator's position.
(From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:But America's editors backpedaled after airing what some might have viewed as strong support for Pius, recommending, for instance, that in the wake of suspicions raised by the book about Pius’ actions during the Holocaust, the Vatican should establish an international commission of Catholic and Jewish historians to review them. The editors also recommended that Pius's beatification process be stalled until Pius is cleared by the court of popular opinion.
Meanwhile, Inside the Vatican in its October issue provides several articles delineating the great help Pope Pius XII was to Jewish friends from his boyhood and then throughout his pontificate.
Relics of St. Luke Found in Padua
Research on the sarcophagus was directed by anatomy pathologist Vito Terribile Wiel Marin, a professor of Anatomy and Histology at the University of Padua. After removing the heavy marble slab that covered the sarcophagus, researchers discovered a large lead box which was held shut by two red wax seals. The box rested on a wooden board, the magazine reported.
One of the researchers, Father Daniel Libanor, wrote that the skeleton inside the box was missing a cranium, a right elbow and a right anklebone. According to the study, the bones are those of a man who died in old age, somewhere between 70 and 85 years old.
This data confirms what Christian tradition teaches us about the evangelist, and it adds to the record that the Evangelist suffered from acute, diffused osteoporosis, grave arthrosis of the spinal cord, and pulmonary emphysema.
The bones were arranged with great care, reflecting the honor in which the Evangelist was held in antiquity. Vessels were also found in the sarcophagus attesting to the authenticity of the relics, the magazine said.
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Sources ------- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: 'Our Era Is Not Capable of Transmitting its Spiritual Heritage' DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Synods of bishops are long affairs, in which hundreds of speeches are given one after another, for up to six hours a day.
It can be tedious, and difficult work. Cardinal Joachim Meisner, archbishop of Cologne, Germany, and one of three president-delegates of the European Synod, confessed that “we bishops, dedicated to the magisterium and immersed in the mandate of preaching, almost tend to lose the attitude of listening. On the occasion of this synod, we feel the weight of listening.”
After the main speeches are given, participants break into smaller groups by language to continue discussions. Those discussions are then reported back to the entire assembly. What follows are quotations from some of those reports. The “language-group” sessions are the most freewheeling part of the synod, and therefore give a flavor of the matters discussed.
Cardinal Godfried Danneels, archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, Belgium, reporting on one French working group: “The problem of transmission is not only of the Church: Our entire era is not capable of transmitting its spiritual, moral and cultural heritage (value of marriage and the family, meaning of good and evil, sense of duty, of honor, of truth) to the following generation. If the Church could transmit values the following generations, she would heal our entire era.”
Cardinal Danneels, again, on marriage: “Some present themselves to the Church [for marriage] without or almost without faith. Some priests are content with minimum of requirements, marriage being a right of all men and the sacrament being the only valid marriage for the baptized. Others are more rigorous. But all of them have a problem of conscience that is a type of ‘martyrium’ in their lives as ministers.”
Archbishop Benigno Luigi Papa of Taranto, Italy, reporting on one Italian working group: “Europe, the first continent to be evangelized, more than a merely geographical location, is a cultural and historical concept. It was born from the Christianization of the Germanic and Slav peoples and their fusion with the Mediterranean peoples. In the history of Europe, we must remember three divisions that we still show the wounds of: that of 1054 that separated the one faith between the Byzantine and Latin culture; the Reform movement that lacerated the Western Church; and the later separation of reason from Revelation that opposed science to faith. To these divisions, the self-laceration of the two world wars must be added. Europe, that was born and grew in possession of a common faith, today suffers because of the division of Christians.”
Bishop Bellino Ghirard of Rodez, France, reporting on another French group: “Considering the reality of Islam in Europe, the Church sometimes has no other alternative to proposing sincere dialogue and she must make every effort to start it up and continue it, without being naive but also without prejudice. She must demand respect for the freedom of the Christian communities living in countries with a Muslim majority.”
Bishop Juan María Uriarte Goiricelaya of Zamora, Spain, reporting on the Spanish language group: “The laity are called upon, by their state, to be active and responsible members in the life of the Christian community. The reason for this active participation is by no means the lack of priests. Formation is required to provide basic and specific training to the laity to undertake their ecclesial responsibilities. Priests, on their part, must avoid a double risk: they must not retain responsibilities that can be undertaken by the laity, and they must not abdicate their own responsibilities with the justification of a democratic attitude, blurring the different function each has in the Church. All the laity, by their vocation, are called upon to participate actively in public life. In order to respond correctly to this vocation a Christian formation is necessary, and in which the social doctrine of the Church must have a special place. Greater attention must be paid to the lay persons who take on important responsibilities in the field of culture, the economy or politics, people who are often subjected to more pressure and temptations than ordinary citizens.”
Father Heinz Wilhelm Steckling, superior general of the Missionary Congregation of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, reporting on the German language group: “This very synod is an expression of our concern for the spiritual unity of Europe. On our continent we wish to transmit once again the hope given to us by Jesus Christ. The effects of the domination of totalitarian ideologies, the consequences of world wars and of the civil wars, and finishing with the defeat of European institutions faced with the horror of the so-called ethnic cleansing, even today darken the hope of people in Europe.
These events represent a pressing appeal for the Church to promote a new culture of encounter. Even today, the peoples of Europe are suffering from the consequences of collectivism in the East and the social security ideas of the welfare state in the West. This is why we ask for new forms of solidarity and participation.”
Bishop Donal Brendan Murray of Limerick, Ireland, reporting on the English language group: “The decline of the sacrament of penance is a very disturbing phenomenon. One of the most fundamental difficulties is that there is insufficient awareness that what comes first in the process of reconciliation is the merciful forgiveness of God. The revised rite of penance has not been celebrated in a way that draws out its full richness. It is first of all, like all liturgy, praise and thanksgiving to God. The large numbers receiving the sacrament in places of pilgrimage is related to the atmosphere of worship and praise which these places provide. The loss of the sense of sin, to which many point, may, paradoxically, be related to ‘enormous remorse.’ The problem may be that people are overwhelmed by a sense of helpless guilt which they do not understand and cannot express.”
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond J. De Souza ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:New French Law Allows Gay Unions
“The new law makes France the first traditionally Roman Catholic nation to recognize same-sex unions. The decision came nearly two years after the Socialist government proposed the law, touching off protests by “conservatives” and the Catholic Church.
“The law allows couples, whether they are of the same sex or not, to enter into a union and be entitled to the same rights as married couples in such areas as income tax, inheritance, housing and social welfare,” the article reported.
Worldwide Christian Population Dips
“According to the UK Christian Handbook, 28.3% of the world's population identified itself as Christian in 1990,” Religion Today reported. “The percentage of Christians will drop to 27.8% in 2000 and to 27.1% in 2010,” it said.
The primary reason? A lower birth rate among Christian families. The report added that about 85% of the world's non-Christians live in Asia.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: From Selected Sources ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Editorial DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:The U.S. Senate, in a 63–34 vote, once again made its view on partial-birth abortion clear: The frightening practice should be outlawed.
The often-repeated details of the gruesome procedure are numbing: An almost full-term baby is partially pulled from her mother's womb and stabbed in the skull with scissors. The baby's brains are then vacuumed out to allow an easier delivery of the body.
The Oct. 21 Senate vote is good news (despite the fact that a later, nonbinding vote that showed support for Roe v. Wade). For one thing, it shows that new Sens. Evan Bayh, R-Ind., and Blanche Lambert Lincoln, D-Ark., can be counted on to vote against the procedure.
Yet a black cloud looms over any pro-life victory celebration. President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore are both committed to keeping the grisly practice legal. Clinton has pledged to veto the Partial Birth Abortion Act of 1999, and a Senate override of a veto is unlikely.
“There's no such thing as partial birth,” argued Sen. Barbara Boxer on the floor of the Senate. A baby's rights begin “when you bring your baby home,” the California Democrat added.
The notion that an infant's rights don't begin until she's at home seems odd. But then nothing is too odd nowadays in a country that re-elected a president who vetoed the partial-birth abortion ban twice before. Certainly, the rights-begin-at-home-and-not-before argument would appeal to institutions such as Christ Hospital in the Chicago area. There, a nurse recently revealed that babies are starved or asphyxiated in what the hospital euphemistically calls “therapeutic abortions.”
Evil this deep requires much prayer and sacrifice to combat it. A call or letter to your senators and congressman would also help. Let them know that partial-birth abortion has no place in this one nation under God.
***
To forward its worldview, the population control movement has long held out the carrot of liberation to women through control over their bodies and “reproductive freedom.” Frustrated with the slow advance of its agenda, however, it is turning more and more to wielding the stick of fear to make women fall in line.
Wildly bloated figures of maternal mortality through “unsafe, illegal abortions,” neo-Malthusian doomsaying of dizzying population growth and diminishing resources, and warnings of widespread environmental devastation are churned out wholesale by the controllers' propaganda machine in an attempt to batter women into submission.
And what of those who won't conform to the prescriptions of the social engineers? They are stigmatized as irresponsible and selfish, and now, dangerous.
In a bizarre article in a recent issue of Time magazine, Lisa Beyer makes the incredible claim that deaths of babies locked in cars are linked to family size. “The best parents with the best intentions are simply incapable once they have too many kids,” writes Beyer, quoting an outspoken critic of large families. “It's easy to understand how in this total havoc, a child is left in the car.” Conclusion? Parents that have many children risk negligent homicide. “Accidents can happen,” we read in Beyer's essay, “but when we see a pattern like this, it should ring a big alarm.”
In what does this ominous “pattern” consist? The death of two orthodox Jewish children in Israel over the course of last summer, and the near death of a third, all of whom came from families with six or seven children. In other words, on ridiculously scanty evidence, Beyer spins a fantastic theory of correlation between the likelihood of infant death through negligence and family size.
As Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon wrote recently in The New York Times, at this point “purely voluntary programs will do little to reduce fertility; only those population programs that override parental preferences through bribes, bullying, threats or outright coercion will lower birth rates significantly.”
As the population controllers get more desperate, parents of large families should prepare for more bullying.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: John Michael Talbot's Rocky Road to Peace DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:It was in the tumultuous 1960s that John Michael Talbot first appeared on the American music scene. With his older brother Terry and their country-rock band, Mason Proffit, he entertained huge crowds and shared top billing with such established secular performers as John Denver, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and the Grateful Dead. It wasn't unusual, in fact, for critics to write that the Talbots' band had stolen the show from those other acts.
But, while they were all hitting the big time, Mason Proffit was coming apart. There was substance abuse in the group (not involving John) and growing disagreement as to goals and creative directions. In 1973, sitting on the edge of superstardom, the band disintegrated.
Yet the music went on. John and Terry, undergoing Christian conversion experiences, became part of a new phenomenon — contemporary Christian music. They began to find an audience eager to hear a blend of modern sounds and explicit proclamations of the Gospel.
In 1977, John's wife, Nancy, bewildered by the intensity and single-mindedness of his conversion, found herself seeking Christ along a divergent path. She pushed for divorce, and years of soul-searching followed for John. At Alverna, a Franciscan retreat center two miles from his parents' home in Indianapolis, he found his vocation. Baptized a Catholic in 1978 by Franciscan Father Martin Wolter, John lived at Alverna in solitude, prayer and study, alternating with periods of writing books, counseling and recording religious albums. He gradually emerged as “the holy man of the woods,” ready to found, in 1980, “The Little Portion” hermitage in Arkansas. Two years later, his Secular Franciscan House of Prayer community settled definitively on 97 acres in the Ozark Mountains.
That's the place “The Music of Creation” comes from. This is the work of a musician who has discovered, through his extraordinary endowment of talent, the God of music and the music of God. Overjoyed by his discovery, he is impelled to share his insights with all his fellow Christians, and particularly with the young. “The Music of God,” he writes, “is an exploration of this inward voyage of discovery, which prepares us to go back, outward and forward to bring goodness and love to all creation.”
Still very popular on the contemporary Christian charts, this monk-musician is, first and foremost, an apostle of Jesus Christ. Reading this work, one gets the sense he is also something of a scholar; it's clear he has pored over the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, including St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and St. John of the Cross, as well as the documents of Vatican II and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. But he has not merely read these sources. High in his hand-built hermitage, he has absorbed them until they have become an essential part of him. Obviously, he has prayed them.
Catholic to the core, Talbot is ecumenical in his evangelism.
Catholic to the core, Talbot is ecumenical in his evangelism. “The Music of Creation” is addressed to all who seek God in the midst of a secular cacophony telling them to turn away.
Beginning with the Blessed Trinity, Talbot lays out truths of the Catholic creed. But he doesn't explain them; rather, he holds them up for wonder in a way only the creatively gifted can. The depths of Catholic doctrine are presented as if observed with the clarity and simplicity of a child's gaze. Central is the incarnation, with Jesus as the living paradox of God's self-emptying. “Let us look seriously to his parables,” he writes. “They speak of his mystery that is yet accessible to all. They speak with words the truth beyond all telling, the truth of Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God.”
And of paradox: In the Incarnation, “glory takes on humility as a way to lead all to glory. Light takes on darkness as a way back to the light. … The full communion with the Trinity takes on the solitude and separation of the fallen human condition in order to lead all back into full communion, or common union, with and in the Trinity. Thus the path of emptiness is the way to fullness. Darkness is the way to light. Silence is the way to the Word. Solitude is the way to true community. And so goes the paradox into almost every aspect of human life.”
Mary's cooperation with God is brought out in the three-part harmony of the immaculate conception, the assumption into heaven and Mary's status as Ever Virgin. As Talbot notes, these three concepts teach us much about how we can work in harmony with God. For example, a lesson our souls can learn from the Ever Virgin is that “we are called to have virginal hearts, minds, and souls, so that this pure spirit within us all can be set free from the prison of sullied desires and lusts and be reborn of God.”
The themes of discipleship, community and docility to the Spirit lead to considerations on prayer, liturgy and the sacraments. Notable is the understanding Talbot tenders to all believers, whatever their communion; also, his writing is accessible to a wide range of readers, yet deep enough in doctrine to engage even rigorous intellectuals.
In prose that is both simple and profound, Talbot teaches us how to hear God's music — the only music that can transform our lives and open them to the joy of being entirely God's.
Dominican Sister Mary Thomas Noble writes from Buffalo, New York.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Sister Mary Thomas Noble ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: When Seminarians Meet Psychologists DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:An interview of Father Benedict J. Groeschel, CFR (Crisis, October 1999)
Father Benedict J. Groeschel, psychologist and director of the Office for Spiritual Development of the Archdiocese of New York, tells Crisis magazine that he has administered “the standard battery” of psychological tests to almost 1,600 vocational prospects over the past 30 years.
In a cover interview, Father Groeschel defends, in his own words, the careful use of psychological testing to help evaluate who should be admitted to an order or seminary. “Those who entered the seminary before testing began, as I did, will often remember that during the first days or weeks after their arrival it was clear that some people did not fit,” he says. “Often it became apparent only after their arrival that some applicants were acting in a seriously disturbed way or were, at least, ill suited. With the advent of testing, much of this turmoil has dissipated. Many candidates have been spared the pains of being rejected. Having spent thousands of hours doing evaluations, let me tell you that sparing many this disappointment is worth all the effort.”
But Father Groeschel, a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal, points out the limitations of the evaluative tests, and the special requirements of those administering them: “Psychological tests that evaluate the person from a variety of different perspectives will indicate serious problem areas as a rule. But the usefulness of the testing is entirely dependent on the honesty of the subject and the skill of the person administering and evaluating the results. … For example, on one of the most popular psychological instruments there is an indication for psychopathic personality, really a dishonest person who has been involved in considerable wrongdoing. A rather innocent and naive person who is accustomed to recognizing and confessing his own faults, as one does in an attitude of contrition and penance, is likely to appear on this test to be a psychopath. This is referred to as a false positive. I answered the questions keyed on this test to the psychopathic personality as I think St. Francis would have answered them and he came out a crook. A psychologist who knows his stuff and is willing to take the extra time to evaluate individual responses could easily make such adjustments. This is why I avoid computerized analyses of test results, which are widely used today.”
Both the tester's good faith and his religious credentials are crucial, notes Father Groeschel. “Any psychologist should be able to determine who is mentally ill or on the border, but when it comes to qualities like the ability to live within a community, to live a life of constant availability to others, and to maintain total sexual abstinence — it's obvious that only [someone very experienced in the components of religious vocations] can do this. Or if a psychologist is not experienced, at least one ought to have the intelligence and professional responsibility to ask someone who is.”
Another problem is that psychological tests “are standardized on samples of what are assumed to be normal or average populations. It is obvious in our declining society that norms for moral or ethical behavior are on an alarming downward slide. … This morally dissolute situation gets reflected in the norms so that the religious candidate is far outside the norm, as one might expect,” and thus he appears literally “abnormal.”
Father Groeschel also points out that some have abused results to prevent candidates with unpopular opinions from being accepted. “We all have some pathology. If a student is seen as too conservative or too liberal, he can easily be shipped off to have his head shrunk, to use the consecrated phrase. I have been invited into this kind of operation in the past. I fly from it because I suspect that I have enough time coming to me in Purgatory already. … If you want to do so, you can piously sink anybody's boat with a psychological report. This is unethical and probably an illegal abuse of power.”
Despite the drawbacks, Father Groeschel finds that “When I look back on it all, I feel [that, in administering psychological tests] I made a contribution to the Church, to many individuals, especially those who were spared the pain of failure. [Yet] I would have rejected my own patron saint, Benedict Joseph Labre. He attempted to join the Trappists eleven times and was never able to stay more than six weeks. When I have to turn someone down, I tell them about St. Benedict Joseph and his trust of God. I also remind them that God has another set of psychological norms. They are the Ten Commandments and the Eight Beatitudes, and you can pass them if you trust God and stay on the road that he has prepared for you. It may not be the road to the altar, but it is always the road to Heaven.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: Article Digest ------- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Schismatic Charity?
Your editorial “Radical Love” (Sept. 12–18), which repents for the sins of the Church's children, seems to fall into the factionalism it denounces. When you condemn “the Inquisition” and “the Crusades,” do you not become a faction? By the power of the keys they held from Christ, the supreme pontiffs granted indulgences for crusading. The papal inquisition was established by the supreme disciplinary authority of the Church, which is protected by the Holy Spirit, at the Fourth Lateran Council. There are canonized saints who were inquisitors, for example, St. John of Capistrano, St. Pius V and St. Peter Martyr. The Venerable Pius IX canonized the martyred Peter Arbues, inquisitor of Aragon, whose shed blood worked well-attested miracles, and he approved the prayer which says God raised Peter Arbues up to battle Jewish unbelief and Mohammedan superstition. Need it be pointed out that the pope is the supreme guardian of the Church's public prayer?
It sounds as if the Register is in danger of becoming schismatic, breaking communion with the Church whose supreme authority is one across the ages. Obviously you are not alone in this at the present time. I will be surprised if this letter is published.
Brother Ansgar Santogrossi, OSB St. Benedict, Oregon
Editor's note: There is no danger of schism in expressing solidarity with the Holy Father. Also, it should be noted that Pope John Paul II has expressed contrition for acts of uncharity committed contrary to the Church's mission — not as part of the Church's mission itself.
Wide Awake
I am writing in regards to the movie “Wide Awake,” recommended as a Prizer's Video Pick in the Sept. 19–25 Register. I beg to differ! My husband and I watched this movie with our children, 7 and 9, and found it lacking. There was bad language, immodesty and subtle Catholic-bashing — and Rosie O'Donnell as a nun? Well. Why would Catholics want to patronize Disney in any way, in light of their anti-family, pro-gay agenda, not to mention unfair labor practices and human rights abuses in Haiti and other places where their expensive merchandise is manufactured? Please direct us to truly good family films.
Rosemarie Denton Novi, Michigan
Editor's note: We urge readers to consider the Register Ratings on violence, profanity, nudity and sexual content, which follow our reviewer's opinions, to determine suitability for children before viewing. This film was given check marks in each of those categories, indicating that the movie contains instances of all four.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Whistling Past the Graveyard? DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:On his nightstand, St. Ignatius Loyola kept a skull marked with the words: “As you are, I was; as I am, you will be.”
A morbid fascination with death? No. Just a sure sign of serious Catholic spirituality in his time — a reminder to remain mindful of humans' inevitable date with their final earthly destiny. Memento mori!
Contrast that image with the average roadside cemetery of today, so common in a land whose highways and main roads sprung up long after most final resting places had already claimed their ground. The gravestones provide untold thousands of reminders of our final date with destiny — and yet thousands upon thousands of folks whiz past without so much as a glance in their direction.
My favorite cemetery is in Baltimore. I used to pass it on the way home from work in Washington each day. Spread across a small knoll next to the northbound lanes of Interstate 95, it's about a mile from the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, near the perpetually busy bus station. Stuck in this forgotten plot of land, across from a factory that makes ball bearings, it's all but invisible to the drivers and passengers who pass it by day after day.
I've seen it in the clear sunshine of a frigid January morning. I've seen it on the way back from the March for Life, snow reflecting the winter moonlight. I've seen it in the fall, leaves blowing between the gravestones, and on summer nights when the white markers, moist with the city's oppressive humidity, glisten against the sweltering skyline.
That cemetery witnesses to me in a powerful way. Alongside one of America's busiest thoroughfares, here lies a silent “community” whose inhabitants remind me to ask myself what all my activity is about. As motorists speed by, trying to get to their destinations as quickly as they can, the site reminds any who will listen that there will be a time for each of us when the hustle and bustle will all come to a final and everlasting halt.
The movers and shakers on their way to broker big deals in the capital of the most prosperous nation in history would do well to pause, look toward the cemetery, and note how difficult it is to distinguish the famous from the nameless. Or at least to consider a question Leo Tolstoy once posed in a short story. “How much land does a man need?” (Answer: About six feet.)
I've seen it in the fall, leaves blowing between the gravestones, and on summer nights when the white markers glisten against the skyline.
Yes, those who rest underneath that hill one day went to factories and offices with all the concerns of the day on their minds. They, too, made plans, closed deals and took journeys. Now they remind us that, wherever we're headed on that highway at the moment, it's eventually going to lead to another generation's forgotten hill.
Roadside graveyards are not the only memento mori American motorists encounter. Lately more and more small white crosses are popping up on the shoulders of highways and secondary roads where tragic car accidents have occurred, ending busy lives abruptly and unexpectedly. Some of these roadside shrines are elaborate affairs with photographs, letters, banners and stuffed animals.
And those who take the trouble to memorialize their lost loved ones do the rest of us a favor. By indicating the spot where their beloved entered eternity, they remind us of the patristic motto that it is a “holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead.” They remind us of the basic truth of the doctrine of the communion of saints: There is a chain of hearts that neither death nor the present nor the future can ever break.
Perhaps past generations of devout Christians were readier to embrace the reality of death than the present generation because they didn't place their faith in the “miracles of modern medicine.” Parents who had many children knew that not all would survive to adulthood, and they were highly doubtful about their own chances of attaining old age, too. And they certainly didn't know about experiencing at least five days a week as a race against a precise, digital clock.
Well, look around. Average life expectancy has certainly increased — but, throughout history, the death rate (except in the cases of the likes of the prophet Elijah and possibly the Blessed Virgin) has remained exactly the same for the entire human race.
For many, this is a reality too terrible to face; our popular culture encourages us to avoid it by putting it out of mind and doggedly clinging to our youth. But Christians are called to take a more hopeful outlook. “For to me life is Christ and death is gain,” as St. Paul wrote. “… I long to depart this life and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Philippians, 1:21, 23).
American culture may not be comfortable with the reality of death, but reminders of death are all around us — even along the transient paths that carry us through one rush hour after the next.
The Church's days of All Saints and All Souls are upon us. Have you taken a moment of late to remember that you, too, have a date with eternal destiny? Memento mori!
John M. Grondelski is a moral theologian currently living in London.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: John M. Grondelski ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Business Is Business, Within Limits DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:The nature of the relationship between labor and management has changed markedly over the course of this century.
At the end of the 1800s, as the base of the economy shifted from agriculture to industry, laborers moved in droves from the farms to the factories. There they found that wage labor meant menial work for little pay in often terrible, sometimes unsanitary and not infrequently dangerous conditions. The rift between workers and employers, already characterized by class struggle, only seemed to widen.
Concerned about this development, Pope Leo XIII spoke out in defense of the poor and working classes. In 1891 he wrote an encyclical, Rerum Novarum (On the New Things), addressing the rise of industrialization in reference to the economic systems of capitalism and socialism. The encyclical outlined what the Church, the government and the workers themselves could do to ensure respect for human dignity in all working situations.
Now, a century later, many of those recommendations have taken hold. In fact, there has been a virtual transformation of culture with regard to work and respect for the dignity of human labor. Of course, there are still situations where workers are under-paid and poorly treated, but these cases are much rarer now than they were 100 years ago.
For example, when the media revealed that Kathie Lee Gifford's clothing line was being produced under deplorable working conditions in developing countries — evidently this came as news to her — the nation was outraged and Gifford took her business elsewhere. In the 19th century, the same conditions would have scarcely raised an eyebrow.
Also frequently forgotten is that, a century ago, if you were a Catholic in the United States, you were almost certainly a laborer. Today, thanks in large part to the success of Catholic schools and the stability of strong families and parishes, Catholics are well-represented throughout all levels of labor and management — including at the very top of many companies and organizations. This is one of the “new things” in our day.
Of course, there are those Catholic business leaders for whom the faith is, if not a marginal factor in their lives, at least something to keep hidden while on the job. But there are also many who fully live their Catholicism on and off the job.
Following these two massive cultural changes, the social teaching of the Church now addresses itself more explicitly to owners and managers.
In contrast with Pope Leo's 1891 appeal to the Church, governments and workers, Pope John Paul II's 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus (On the Hundredth Anniversary) more directly addressed owners and employers. In fact, whenever our present Holy Father proclaims the social teaching of the Church, he makes sure to engage management in a discussion of a developing theology of business.
On Sept. 12 of this year, the Pope spoke to members of the Centesimus Annus Foundation on the topic of ethics and international finance. Addressing an audience of business leaders, he said, “Globalization will have very positive effects if it is grounded in a strong sense of the absolute character and dignity of all human persons and the principle that the earth's goods are for all.” He then asked them to consider: “What are the value judgments that should direct your choices?”
Are Catholic business executives listening to the questions raised by the Pope? Consider Ken Trupke, vice president of administration at Kalfact Plastics Co. Located in Michigan and employing about 100 people, Kalfact uses injection molding to produce small parts for automobiles. Ken has to make decisions about wages, the work environment, pricing, production and just about all it takes to run a company of that size. Ken is an active Catholic, and he and his wife have strong pro-life convictions. I asked him, “Do you ever bring those concerns about morality and human dignity into your work?”
“Every day,” he told me. “In every decision I make, I try to remember to think about human dignity. I ask myself, ‘Does this decision treat everyone involved with dignity as a human being?’”
Ken points out that the company president places a strong emphasis on running the company using several basic guidelines. First, treat everyone — not only customers, but also suppliers and employees — with dignity and respect. From this follows a commitment to safety and quality.
“I see the basic philosophy of the company as strongly compatible with what I believe,” says Ken. “I'm not trying to preach to our employees or our customers, but I do study the Catechism and the teachings of the Church.
I am trying to work in a way that promotes human dignity. When I face a hard decision, I ask myself, ‘What would Jesus do? What would the Pope want me to do?’”
At the end of the last century, the Church developed a theology of labor. During the pontificate of John Paul II, we have seen the development of a theology of business. And at the same time, more managers and executives are Catholics. As we move into a new millennium, let us hope and pray for a fourth development: that more business leaders might learn and live this developing theology of business.
Gregory R. Beabout teaches philosphy at St. Louis University.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Gregory R. Beabout ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Little Flower Power : The Grand Tour DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:More than 10,000 people laid siege to St. Patrick's Cathedral on a dark and rainy evening Oct. 18, to venerate the relics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
They also came, in the words of the event's organizer, Dr. Fran Renda, “to thank her for her help.”
What Dr. Renda meant — and what will become immediately clear to anyone who takes part in the tour — is that people are not visiting the reliquary tour to see a curiosity. They are, in a very real sense, coming to see a friend.
In any group of Catholics, you are sure to find at least one who has received some favor from St. Thérèse. Her extravagance in giving is evident in the crowds that are coming to greet her. The size of the crowd at St. Patrick's was astonishing; Dr. Renda said the numbers would only grow.
“The draw is that through the years people have felt the promise of St. Thérèse that she would spend her heaven doing good on earth,” Dr. Renda said. “It's like at the Olympics when the winner takes a lap around the arena for the crowd. They are out to thank her. “
The atmosphere at St. Patrick's was, in fact, comparable to that of a sporting event. When the relics, which will be traveling around the United States through January, pulled up in front of the cathedral in the back of a silver Chevy Suburban, the crowd shouted and cheered. “Praise Jesus! Praise Jesus!” one woman yelled.
“What we would want the relics to be is not a cult of worshipping bones, but a real focus on the life of St. Thérèse and her spirituality, on the merciful love of Jesus,” Dr. Renda said.
A psychoanalyst by profession, Renda said people need the concrete in front of them, to see and touch and feel, in order to understand that which they can't see — God. She added that the crowds that have come out to see St. Thérèse indicate that she continues to actively fulfill her vocation of “being love” in the heart of the Church.
The relics will be reserved for different amounts of time at different churches around the country. In some places, they are there for a couple of days. Often, they are reserved in the presence of the exposed Blessed Sacrament for an all-night prayer vigil. In some places, the crowds are so thick that people are turned away at midnight.
Organizers expect crowds in the Southwest to dwarf the New York scene. In Texas, stadiums have been rented out for tens of thousands of people to visit the relics.
Presentation of the Relics
St. Thérèse's bones are contained in a small cherry-wood casket with gold detailing. The casket is itself surrounded by a Plexiglas shell.
Typically, an honor guard will gather outside the church. The local chapter of the Knights of Columbus will probably be on hand; maybe even the Knights of Malta. One surprise is seeing so many religious in the same place at the same time.
For some, it will be somewhat reminiscent of the old May Day processions. If you can, try to make it to an evening welcoming ceremony. The candlelight vigil delivers the same warmth as it does at the Holy Saturday liturgy. The crowds exude the same sense of excitement and eager anticipation.
Standing outside St. Patrick's, crowds were able to see the lit sanctuary through the open doors of the church. No one was allowed in until the procession had made its way through.
It took a very long wait to have the opportunity to kneel before the relics. Visiting with St. Thérèse, one is forced to reacquaint oneself with the central mystery of the faith — that if a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it will bring forth much fruit. St. Thérèse was well aware of this reality and spoke of her “Little Way” with disarming frankness and simplicity.
She spoke openly about her desire for sanctity — “I don't want to be a saint by halves” — and never sentimentalized the path toward that goal — “I'm not afraid to suffer for You. I fear only one thing: to keep my own will; so take it, for I choose all that You will!”
A friend was asked by his ninth-grade class to explain the life of St. Thérèse. He responded with the simple, “All she ever really did was say her divine office and do the laundry.” That such a woman would be the object of so much attention and admiration is surely a case of a hidden grain bearing great fruit.
A Significant Event
Many people are calling the visit of the relics of St. Thérèse one of the most significant events in memory for the Church in America.
Dr. Renda explained it like this. She said that while the Pope's visits are always thrilling, he is never able to tour the whole country. Nearly every Catholic in America, on the other hand, will have the opportunity to visit with St. Thérèse.
The box carrying the relics is being transported around the United States primarily by car. After its time on the East Coast the reliquary moves on to the Midwest for a while before being flown to Miami. Then, it travels through the South to the Southwest and up the West Coast.
The great significance of St. Thérèse's grand tour is that she once confessed a desire to travel to all five continents proclaiming God's mercies until the consummation of the age. In life, she never left the confines of her monastery. In death, her wish is being fulfilled in an extraordinary way.
Thérèse is famous for using the image of an elevator to describe her ascent to God. A new technology in her day, the elevator seemed to her the perfect analogy for God's work of lifting man up from his lowliness to the heights of love. It is fitting that today, God continues to spread his Gospel of mercy through this young girl by means of a 747 jetliner and a Chevy Suburban.
It gives added emphasis to Isaac Bashevis Singer's quip that “God created man because he likes a good story.”
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Mcguire ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Barbara Nicolosi DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:‘The best preparation I had was an undergraduate degree from the Great Books program at Magdalen College in New Hampshire.
‘The liberal arts and especially philosophy gave me a sense of story and universal themes which is definitely a head start for a writer in any genre.
“On top of that, I have an MA from Northwestern University in film and television with an emphasis in screenwriting.
I was the director of development for Paulist Productions for two years. … I co-created a children's live action series currently being developed by Paulist, and am a consultant on a network midseason replacement series starring Joan Cusak.
“My own screenplay on the spiritual journey of Emily Dickinson was optioned by Reel Life Women Productions of Bel Air. It's currently making its way around the studios. For two years I was a reader for the Humanitas Prize (the “Pulitzer Prize” of screenwriting) and the coordinator of Open Call, a fellowship and networking organization of Christians in the entertainment industry.”
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Sweeps Month Doesn't Bring Out the Best DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Under normal circumstances, November is the time of year when you grab your TV's remote control and throw it out the nearest open window. It's a time of particularly egregious excess. Bad taste. Vulgarity. The reason is, it's a “sweeps” month — the time local ad rates are set in cities around the country. The more viewers they can draw in for any given show, the more they can charge advertisers for a “slot.”
This means it's also a time when financial interests take precedence over everything else. And that means everything else.
The good news is, this year sees a slight break from “normal circumstances.” It seems the networks — feeling pressured to present something valuable to families, overlooked in the mad rush to court younger viewers over the past several fall seasons — will actually have a few offerings that won't insult the intelligence or offend the moral sensibilities.
Let's not get too excited: The bulk of quality programming will air on PBS (as usual), which has some truly outstanding specials lined up to celebrate its 30th anniversary (which officially takes place Nov. 3). Also, one major network movie will be of interest to Catholics, NBC's “Mary, Mother of Jesus,” which will attempt to cast the Virgin Mary as something of a modern-day woman, burdened by stress and domestic concerns. “Mary, Mother of Jesus” is at the vanguard of a handful of upcoming network movies on Jesus, several of which will air early next year. The movie self-consciously tries not to offend, and many Catholics will be happy to see the language of the Hail Mary restored in Gabriel's greeting to Mary. But don't expect the show to be an inspirational accompaniment to your family rosary.
Also, network schedules will be given over to experimentation of sorts this month. ABC's summer hit “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?” returns on Sunday, Nov. 7, and will air week-nights at 8:30 (all times listed are Eastern) for two solid weeks (except Sundays, when it will air at 9). A programming stunt like this may be unprecedented in November. CBS, meanwhile, has filled its schedule with music specials and music-related miniseries. Of note, CBs' special on Latin pop sensation Ricky Martin (Friday, Nov. 26, at 8), Celine Dion (Wednesday, Nov. 24), and Shania Twain (Nov. 25.) There is also a musical miniseries — “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” (Sunday, Nov. 7, at 9, and Wednesday, Nov. 10, at 9).
But, if you choose carefully, you'll be able to find some programming of genuine interest. Here's a sampling:
MONDAY & TUESDAY, 7 & 8
The Magical Legend of Leprechauns NBC, 9–11 p.m.
And now for a miniseries offering something completely different. Robert Halmi Sr. (the veteran TV producer of mega-special-effects movies and miniseries like “Gulliver's Travels” and “Noah's Ark”) heads to Ireland this time, but this movie is more palatable to younger tastes than past efforts. Jack Woods (Randy Quaid) is an American businessman who goes to Ireland to scope out a major land development deal. His home away from home is a charming, thatched-roof cottage, without electricity (“too far to carry it,” his landlord informs him), but with other unusual qualities. Woods eventually meets the real tenants of the house, 5-inch-tall Seamus Muldoon (Colm Meaney) and his family. Woods saves Muldoon from drowning and the little guy is forever in his debt. And so it goes. As usual, there are wild and wooly special effects (check out the headless horseman), but for the most part, Halmi serves up mostly harmless fun. But be warned: There are numerous battle scenes and the occasional “romantic moment” (TV euphemism for sex), all of which may be inappropriate for younger viewers. But the miniseries is worth checking out if only to see the verdant glorious Irish countryside.
WEDNESDAY, 17
Canyonlands: America's Wild West PBS, 8 p.m.
And speaking of natural glories, PBs' superb nature series “Living Edens” heads to Utah's Canyonlands this month. For those unfamiliar with this landscape, it is a harsh, severe and little-known place. The Grand Canyon, a couple of hundred miles to the south, commands more attention, but to those who appreciate such marvels, Canyonlands is, in its own way, just as grand.
Meanwhile on PBS, the worthwhile “Nature,” entering its 18th season, began on Oct. 24 with a two-part special on Antarctica, which concludes Oct. 31 (both nights at 8 p.m.).
MONDAY, 22
Apocalypse! PBS 9–11 p.m.
The public-broadcast network describes this two-hour offering as a look at “the origins of the Book of Revelation and how it has shaped Western ideas of the apocalypse.” A review cassette was not available, but the special is clearly part of TV's ongoing millennial frenzy (CNN is also airing a Sunday 10 p.m. millennial retrospective this month and next). Naturally, if Christians tune it at all, they should do so with an awareness that PBS is ill-equipped to deal seriously with theological issues from a standpoint of informed faith and reason.
SUNDAY, 7
Annie ABC, 7 p.m.
Here is another rare all-family program that also happens to be solid and well-produced, with newcomer Alicia Morton playing the role of Annie. Producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron have dispensed with some of the more cartoonlike elements of the famed stage production, but the music (by Charles Strouse, with lyrics by Martin Charnin) remains the same.
SUNDAY, 14
Mary, Mother of Jesus NBC, 9–11 p.m.
This movie is a cherished project of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who has worked on it with son Bobby for three years. They're not generally noted as historians or theologians, let alone storytellers. In all likelihood, they'll try their best not to offend anyone except, perhaps, devout Catholics; don't be surprised if, in the process, they offer up some superficial blather that only serves to further confuse the masses about Catholic doctrine on the Mother of God.
As Kennedy Shriver said at a recent press event, “I think [Mary] has a message that she carries and I think she is a great symbol for the female side of the Church, the social activities of the Church. … But in all churches, I think she represents a common bond for women and she's very timely and very relevant to the young people who struggle with many of the problems she had.”
Bobby Shriver elaborated: “You've seen Jesus portrayed 5,000 different ways, but Mary is really generally portrayed in one way, and that's not the way it is in this movie.”
WEDNESDAY, 10
Life Beyond Earth PBS, 8–10 p.m.
This beautifully rendered production, written and produced by science writer Timothy Ferris, is well worth a visit, if only to catch the stunning, computer-generated graphics and photography of deep space. “Life” doesn't wander into the theological debate associated with its subject, but instead tracks the long scientific debate over life on distant worlds — whether it exists and, if so, in what variegated forms. Ferris, by the way, is an accomplished writer on the subject, and his book, “Coming of Age in the Milky Way,” remains popular a decade after publication.
SUNDAY-THURSDAY, 14–18
New York PBS, 9–11 p.m.
And finally, the reason for keeping a TV handy this month, at least for lovers of America's biggest city. “New York” is said to be the biggest, grandest, most elaborate documentary on the city ever to be produced. At ten hours,
And finally, the reason for keeping a TV plugged in this month, at least for lovers of America's biggest city: “New York” is said to be the biggest, grandest, most elaborate documentary on the city ever to be produced.
At 10 hours, it is indisputably the longest. This program comes by way of Ric Burns, best known for being the brother of Ken (of PBs' “Baseball” and “The Civil War” fame). As it turns out, Ric is an excellent documentarian in his own right.
Verne Gay writes about television for Newsday.
----- EXCERPT: November TV Previews ------- EXTENDED BODY: Verne Gay ----- KEYWORDS: Arts & Culture -------- TITLE: Prizer's Video Picks DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:LITTLE WOMEN (1994)
Louisa May Alcott's popular novel has been adapted to the screen four times. The 1933 George Cukor production, starring Katherine Hepburn, is on the Vatican's list of 45 best films. This most recent version, directed by Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career), emphasizes the trade-offs between marriage and a passionate commitment to career — an important issue for many women today. But it also remains true to the spirit of the original in presenting family as the place where our basic values are formed.
Little Women's emotional spine is the coming-ofage of Jo March (Winona Ryder), an aspiring writer in New England during the Civil War. She and her three sisters are being raised by their mother (Susan Sarandon) in genteel poverty while their father is off fighting. They learn how to cope with illness, suitors and a mean-spirited rich aunt. Their deep love for each other sustains them through disappointments and success.
TENDER MERCIES (1983)
Most of us mess up our lives pretty badly at one time or another. Christianity teaches us that redemption is one sincere change of heart away, and God usually shows us the way if we're willing to listen.
Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall) is a talented country-western singer-song-writer who's destroyed his career and personal life through alcoholism. A relationship with a widowed motel owner (Tess Harper) and her young son offers him a chance start anew. But life's twists and turns have a few nasty surprises left. “I don't trust happiness,” the singer declares. “I never have, and I never will.”
Australian director Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy) and screenwriter Horton Foote (To Kill A Mockingbird) show that the path to redemption isn't easy but always worth the effort. The Oscar-winning Tender Mercies is filled with simplicity, grace and true-to-life emotions.
TO KILLA MOCKINGBIRD (1962)
People's values are usually formed in childhood, and a parent's influence is the determining factor. The Oscar-winning To Kill a Mocking Bird dramatizes a widowed father's attempts to raise two pre-adolescent kids in a small Southern town during the depths of the Depression.
Jean “Scout” Finch (Mary Badham) nostalgically recollects the summer and fall of 1932 when she was a 6-year-old tomboy. But the bitter is mixed with the sweet. When her lawyer-father, Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white girl, most of the townsfolk ostracize the family.
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view,” Atticus advises, “until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” The kindly patriarch walks the talk, teaching his children to always stand up for their beliefs and extend charity even to those who are different.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts & Culture -------- TITLE: Patron Saints of Halloween? DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Today's Halloween may not much resemble the old way of celebrating All Saints' Day, but some saints' stories fit well with the new emphasis on graveyards and ghosts.
St. Benedict (480–547) is widely reported to have inserted himself in medieval affairs. He appeared to a monk at Fleury during the 10th century, for instance, and threatened to leave the buildings of the monastery when the monks tried to thwart the reforms of Odo of Cluny, according to a story recounted in Thomas Head's 1990 book Hagiography and the Cult of Saints.
St. Joan of Arc (1412–1431) might be called the patron saint of Catholic apparitions, since she was burned at the stake at least partly because she refused to renounce that she heard the voices of St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret.
Several friends of St. Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) actually saw or otherwise experienced her going to paradise when she died Dec. 14, and her confessor had a clear vision of her sufferings on earth while celebrating Mass the next day.
In this century, Blessed Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938) reported in her diary seeing St. Joseph, St. Michael and St. Barbara.
Perhaps most fitting is the little-known St. Christina the Astonishing (1150–1224). She died three times, according to her biographer Thomas de Cantimpré's Vita Christina Mirabilis, written eight years after her (final) death.
The first time she died God asked her to take on suffering to save souls. She was reportedly resurrected during her funeral Mass and flew up to the ceiling of the church, apparently unable to stand the smell of sinful human flesh.
For years she suffered terrible pains, including coldness and burns, without visible damage to her body.
Later, when a dear friend of Christina's, Count Louis of Looz, was dying, he called her into his room and told her all his sins, hoping to move her to pray for him. After his death, he appeared to her to ask her for help with purgatory, and she agreed to suffer half his punishment.
“Having taken on these burdens,” writes her biographer, according to a 1986 translation by Margot H. King, “for a long time afterwards you might have seen Christina in the middle of the night being tormented with burning smoke and at other times with freezing cold. Indeed, she suffered torments in turn according to what the soul of the Count was suffering.”
The second time she died she was as an old woman living in a convent, but she returned when the superior of the convent upbraided Christina for not answering a question she had asked before she went. Christina answered the question, then died for the last time.
Anticipating skepticism, the biographer comments: “We admit — and it is true — that our account surpasses all human understanding inasmuch as these things could by no means have occurred according to the course of nature, although such things are possible to the Creator.”
—Matt McDonald
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Matt McDonald ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Notre Dame Mourns a Loss
NOTRE DAME UNIVERSITY, Oct. 21-Holy Cross Father Robert Griffin died on Oct 21. He was 74 years old and had been in ill health for some time.
“One of Notre Dame's most affectionate and affectionately regarded characters, the chain-smoking Father Griffin, invariably accompanied by a golden cocker spaniel named Darby O'Gill, was a ubiquitous campus presence for three decades,” said a Notre Dame press release.
U.S. Premiere of Pope's Play at Santa Clara
SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY, Oct. 8-The American premiere of “Our God's Brother” is coming to Santa Clara University, the school announced in a press release. Karol Wojtyla, now Pope John Paul II, wrote the play in 1947. It debuts on the Nov. 12, under the honorary patronage of Bishop Patrick J. McGrath of San Jose and the direction of Jagienka Zych-Drweski.
The play focuses on the life of Adam Chmielowski, a Polish artist and invalid who loses his leg in a war fighting for Poland's freedom.
After becoming a famous painter, Chmielowski realizes another vocation. With tremendous compassion for the impoverished, he transforms his studio into a shelter to accommodate the many homeless strangers he encounters on the streets.
“Our God's Brother” touches on the fundamental question of individual freedom vs. service to other people. Pope John Paul II has written six plays, three since his pontificate.
Drweski traveled to Rome and received the Pope's blessing to perform the play. Drweski, a Polish native, joined Santa Clara University in 1984.
Back to the Drawing Board
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, Oct. 18-The university announced that it has formed a committee to revise its mission statement, which was last rewritten in the early '80s. The mission statement is a document with legal ramifications, since it will clarify the school's position on implementing Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church), Pope John Paul II's 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic higher education.
New Law School Offers Millions In Scholarships
AVE MARIA LAW, Oct. 12-In preparation for the start of the class of 2003, Ave Maria Law, located in Ann Arbor, Mich., announced $5.1 million in scholarships over the next three years.
Bernard Dobranski, dean of Ave Maria Law, announced the annual tuition for the first students to be $19,750, placing a full, three-year scholarship at $59,250.
The law school also announced that 75% scholarships would also be available, worth $14,812.50 each year. Both scholarship packages are renewable, if the student maintains a 3.0 grade point average. As well, Ave Maria will not raise a student's tuition once he has entered the school.
Dobranski said that Ave Maria plans to start classes next fall with 40 to 50 students. The school has received more than 500 inquiries from 42 states and the District of Columbia.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: In Mexico, a Feisty Movement Works to Keep the Flock Intact DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:MEXICO CITY-The highly polite environment of the Church in Mexico was disrupted a few months ago when a popular priest addressed an open letter to Bishop Raul Vera López, coadjutor of the Diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas in the state of Chiapas.
“Your appointment was received with great signs of satisfaction, creating the hope that you would balance the situation,” wrote the priest. “But … your actions have totally disappointed me and many other people.”
“For what were you appointed coadjutor?” continued the letter. “You speak words in favor of the poor, but with your actions you are shattering them.”
Who was this fearless cleric, asked Mexico's secular media, to take such a stance with a bishop?
While a mystery to many in the media, the priest was well known in Mexican Church circles and among many in the laity.
The answer: Father Flaviano Amatulli.
The stocky 60-year-old Father Amatulli is a colorful figure with a long beard and thick Italian accent. But make no mistake: This dogmatic theologian is founder of a fast-growing movement dedicated to strengthening Mexico's Catholic roots through an effort of evangelization and apologetics.
The movement, known as the Apostles of the Word, also doesn't hide one of its principal goals — to so educate Catholics in their faith and spiritual lives that they will not be susceptible to enticements from evangelical Protestant sects.
“Catholics have a very weak faith; they are emotionally Catholic but don't know the answers that faith provides for doubts and problems,” Father Amatulli told the Register. “And since so many sects are out there trying to corral them, it is urgent that we start by evangelizing those baptized who are not living their faith.”
Father Amatulli's movement is centered on knowledge of the Bible and on Church teaching as articulated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In short, “the recovery of old apologetics in a renewed way,” said the priest.
‘Going Along’ Not an Option
Father Amatulli has been successful despite his sometimes aggressive style that is clearly at odds with the personable gentility that dominates Mexican society.
Father Amatulli's letter to Bishop Vera is an example of his approach: “Do you know that hundreds, even thousand of children are not baptized in your diocese because their parents don't want to make contact with your ‘liberationist’ priests and catechists?
“Has liberation theology become a dogma that has to be sustained by all means, even at the cost of seeing so many poor Catholics go away in search of peace in the numerous sects?”
“If that is the case,” Father Amatulli's letter continued, “we have nothing left but to pray God more than ever: ‘Oh Lord, liberate us from the liberators.’”
The Apostles of the Word are prohibited from working in the dioceses of Aguascalientes and Bishop Vera's Chiapas. Both Bishop Vera and the controversial ordinary of the diocese, Bishop Samuel Ruiz, have formally accused Father Amatulli before the Mexican bishops' conference of joining forces with Mexico's dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by the Spanish acronym PRI, to do them harm.
Bishop Ruiz will reach the mandatory retirement age of 75 later this year and it is assumed by most observers that he will not be replaced by Bishop Vera.
The idea that Father Amatulli would take up with the PRI — which he routinely and openly criticizes — has prompted most observers to dismiss the charge.
Mexican advocates of liberation theology, who tend to dwell on social problems more than evangelization, have depicted Father Amatulli as, in the words of one, “an ally of the imperialist forces with an ideological agenda.”
Nevertheless, the Apostles of the Word continues to grow.
Power of God's Word
The organization describes itself as “a group of men and women who have experienced the power of God's Word in their lives and feel a great need to communicate it to others without measuring the difficulties and sacrifices demanded by this mission.”
Their primary work consists of door-to-door evangelization, usually in remote regions of the country in order to reach Catholics who have not been well formed in their faith and who may not know how to defend their faith when it is ridiculed by the evangelicals.
Starting with the original group that gathered around the charismatic Father Amatulli, the Apostles of the Word have turned into a large organization with several branches.
The lay branch, which includes separate groups for men, women and married couples, is the oldest and largest section of the movement. Members participate in a week of Bible studies and catechesis every two months, and work full or part time in evangelization. The methodology is designed to counter Protestant critiques of Catholicism by training members to make extensive use of the Bible, which they must be able to quote in order to support doctrine.
The Apostles of the Word's mission also calls on members to build “true Christian communities that fully live the demands of the Gospel,” which also “reject vice and helps build a society founded on solidarity, justice and love.”
Leaders are identified and invited to undergo additional theological training before they are invited to take on lay ministries or even the permanent diaconate. It is through these leaders that the Apostles of the Word finds most of its new members.
The commitment of many young women led Father Amatulli several years ago to create a branch of consecrated women that he hopes will one day become a congregation of religious. After a year of formation, the sisters take private vows of obedience, poverty and chastity.
Because of their availability for full-time involvement, the consecrated women, including some former evangelicals, constitute the leading edge of Father Amatulli's movement.
Most recently, some male members have discerned vocations to the priesthood. Current plans call for the seminarians to become incardinated in individual dioceses while retaining close contact with the group's apostolic work, especially by providing sacramental and pastoral attention to their lay colleagues.
Father Amatulli said priest-apostles may soon become a clerical society of apostolic life, a means by which diocesan priests can ban together in the manner of a religious community for a common apostolic work.
Sister Juanita Rodríguez, who serves as the movement's secretary, told the Register that the organization has 399 full-time lay workers.
The sisters number 70, including nine who have made permanent vows.
The clerical branch includes three priests, nine seminarians and 15 students of philosophy.
“The [Apostles of the Word are] active in almost all Mexican dioceses, either as a movement or else as part of diocesan efforts to promote and defend the faith,” said Sister Juanita.
The group's presence has been extended to other Latin American countries and the United States, where they work in the South.
The group counts on the support of many of Mexico's bishops, including Cardinal Juan Sandoval of Guadalajara, said Sister Juanita.
While the movement's literature does not identify the evangelical movement as its main concern, Father Amatulli does not conceal the fact that the growth of fundamentalist Protestantism and New Age groups prompted him to found the Apostles of the Word.
“Despite the sects' exaggeration of their numbers, it is true that in many regions they comprise as much as 30%” of the population,” said Father Amatulli.
Style Over Substance
Many agree with him, but still raise questions about the priest's confrontational style.
The Apostles of the Word are “a new and energetic group, committed to the poor,” said Father Daniel Gagnon, director of REDIMIR, an organization that is also dedicated to counteracting evangelical proselytism. But, he told the Register, “they are too aggressive, and some of their evaluations of the sects are superficial.”
Father Gagnon disagreed with what he called Father Amatulli's tendency to “mock and attack” the sects, which only hardens relations with Protestants. “Nobody takes a positive attitude when he is being attacked,” he added.
Others, including Chihuahua Archbishop José Fernandez Arteaga, said that Father Amatulli's style has created division within the Church.
Father Amatulli said that division and tension within the Church has not been created by him, but by “those who have promoted a pastoral theology distorted by a political and ideological approach, thus generating a sort of Balkanization of the Church.”
Advocates for the Apostles of the Word note that the Protestants have been successful precisely because they are aggressive and are not afraid to attack their opponents.
They point to a recent episode in the town of El Pueblito, Guadalajara, where the presence of the Apostles of the Word persuaded an active group of Seventh-day Adventists to leave town.
Father Amatulli said he is not interested in debating points of doctrine with non-Catholics. He wants to prevent Catholics from becoming Protestants, “rather than converting them back to the Catholic faith after they have become evangelicals.”
Alejandro Bermudez writes from Lima, Peru.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Nazareth Mosque Ruling Irks Christians and Muslims DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:JERUSALEM-The Israeli Government has angered church leaders and Muslims by announcing approval for the construction of a new mosque next to a major Christian holy site in Nazareth, the town where Jesus spent his childhood.
There have also been suggestions that the plans for the mosque could affect a visit to Nazareth by Pope John Paul II, tentatively scheduled for next year.
The new mosque is to face the Basilica of the Annunciation, a church built on the site where, according to Christian tradition, the Angel Gabriel told Mary she would give birth to Jesus.
The plan is strongly opposed by some Christian leaders in the Holy Land, who have privately threatened to close churches at Christmas this year and force the cancellation of the Pope's planned visit during the year 2000.
The announcement follows a dispute which began when a plot of land, formerly the site of a school near the basilica, was designated by the Nazareth municipality to serve as a plaza for the large numbers of pilgrims expected to arrive in the Holy Land for celebrations to mark the new millennium.
More than a year ago, Muslim activists seized part of the land, claiming that the school, which had been demolished, once housed a mosque, and that the entire plot belonged to the Wakf, an Islamic religious trust. On Christmas Day last year and at Easter this year violent clashes erupted at the site between Muslims and Christians.
Israel's Public Security Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, released details of the new plan last week shortly after meeting Christian and Muslim groups from Nazareth. Ben-Ami said the mosque must be limited to 700 square meters. A large barrier would be built between the mosque and the church, a Muslim protest tent currently on the site would be removed next month, and extra police would be posted in the area.
He said a police station would be established in the location to provide security for tourists and pilgrims -whether they attend the mosque or the basilica.
“This is the basis of our resolution and we expect the two parties to accept them,” he said. “If they do not accept them, we will have to take unilateral steps.”
Ben-Ami said construction of the mosque would begin after planned millennium celebrations which may include a visit by Pope John Paul in March next year.
The announcement about the mosque also drew criticism from Muslim officials. While generally supporting the proposed size of the mosque, they immediately criticized other details of the plan and warned there could be violence in Nazareth if it was implemented.
Many Christian leaders in the Holy Land argue that it is not appropriate to build a mosque so close to one of the most important sites in Christianity.
Ecumenical News International has obtained a copy of a letter sent last month to the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak and signed by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Diodoros, the Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, the Armenian Patriarch, Torkom Manogian, and the Custos (Roman Catholic Custodian) of the Holy Land, Giovanni Batistelli.
“We believe that the place currently proposed for the building of a mosque — besides being a government-owned property — is not compatible with the larger vision of peace and harmony amongst all the faith communities in Nazareth, and will remain an unfortunate source of friction and dispute in future,” the letter states. “With the upsurge of Christian pilgrimages and tourism only a few short months away, we believe that Israel should act decisively in order to resolve once and for all this dispute so that Nazareth can regain its authentic character as the City of the Annunciation — an open and welcoming city for all.”
These sentiments were echoed by Wadie Abu Nassar, executive director of the office of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 of the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of the Holy Land. He said that the issue could affect plans by the Pope to visit the Holy Land in March.
Pope John Paul's envoy to Israel, Monsignor Pietro Sambi, has lashed out at the plan to build a mosque in the town where Jesus grew up, calling the idea “provocative.” If a mosque was needed, it should be built somewhere else, he said.
Another letter, also signed by Patriarch Michel Sabbah, has been sent to the Israeli President, Ezer Weizman, on behalf of church leaders in Jerusalem. In it the patriarch said that the plan to build a mosque near the Christian shrine of Jesus' boyhood home of Nazareth was an act of discrimination against Christians. “We deplore this decision,” he wrote. “It is the legitimization of and approbation of all threats, insults and attacks against Christians carried out to date by the Islamic group leading the campaign to build the mosque.”
The Vatican backed up the patriarch's complaint with strong statements of its own, saying the proposal to erect a mosque at the site is a hindrance to preparations for a visit by Pope John Paul to the Holy Land and Nazareth in particular. “It is not superfluous to observe that such a situation does not help in the preparation of a possible pilgrimage by the Holy Father to that illustrious sanctuary,” the Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls said.
A Muslim leader from Nazareth, Aziz Shehadeh, said: “There will be bloodshed.
There will be something which people will remember for the coming 50 years. There will be tension in the city ,and there will be tension with Israeli authorities, and this will create tension in the city among all the citizens.”
Salman Abu-Ahmad, a leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel and a member of the city council in Nazareth, he said. He objected to a police station being placed in the middle of the square.
“We are against putting a wall around the mosque. We are against a ‘Berlin’ wall in Nazareth,” he said. “We would also like to begin the building of the mosque immediately.”
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Ross Dunn ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Calif. Mandates Contraception Coverage DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:SACRAMENTO, Calif.-Gov. Gray Davis has signed into law dual provisions making California the 10th state to mandate contraception as a part of any prescription-drug package offered to employees by their employers.
Under the Women's Contraceptive Equity Act, employers will have to fund contraceptive benefits for their employees even if they have legitimate faith-based objections to artificial birth control.
A similar bill passed in 1998 included a “conscience clause” exempting religious employers and their subsidiaries. But the new conscience provision excludes only those organizations whose primary purpose is the inculcation of religious values and who primarily serve persons of the same faith. Many believe this will force Catholic hospitals, charities and parochial schools to provide contraceptive coverage since inculcating values is not their primary purpose, nor do they primarily serve Catholics.
The California Catholic Conference, along with Republicans, were rebuffed when they tried to reach a compromise with the authors of the act, Sen. Jackie Speier and Assemblyman Robert Hertzberg. Davis, Speier and Hertzberg are Democrats.
During the debate leading up to the final vote on the bills in the Assembly, Hertzberg was asked why he opposed the stronger conscience clause he had favored just the year before. He gave no reason other than to say, “There has to be a nexus between employment and faith.”
Republicans said this proved proponents simply want to force Catholic entities to go against the teachings of their faith. Indeed, Assemblywoman Audie Bock, an Independent from Oakland, and Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, a Democrat from Santa Barbara, said the bills were needed because they would essentially force Catholic employers to provide contraception for their employees. They argued that, absent these bills, employers could “impose their morality” on employees.
Both bills passed with Catholics providing the margin of victory. Speier and 10 other Catholics in the state Senate, along with 14 Catholics in the Assembly, voted for the legislation to mandate contraception coverage. All are Democrats, though some Democrats voted against the bills and others abstained.
In a statement after the signing ceremony, bill sponsor Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California said, “Today common sense has prevailed. Women in California will now enter the new millennium free from the long-standing gender discrimination that currently exists in insurance prescription contraceptive benefits.”
Opponents agreed that this was about discrimination, but not the kind of discrimination those in favor of the law had in mind.
“It's the responsibility of the government to protect religious freedoms,” said Assemblyman Roy Ashburn, a Republican from Bakersfield and a Catholic. “And yet on this very issue, the authors and majority party were more interested in imposing their views on people who have deeply felt religious convictions to the contrary.”
The California Catholic Conference's executive director, Ned Dolejsi, agreed with this assessment. “It's naive to think that this is not their agenda,” he said. “They talk about us imposing our morality on employees, but if you work for Catholic Charities, were you not clear what Catholic Charities believed and stood for when you came to work for them? This is them imposing their moral agenda on us.”
Skip O'Neel is a free-lance writer living in Sacramento, California.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Skip O'Neel ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:In the Plaza de las Americas in San Juan, Puerto Rico, John Paul II presided at a eucharistic celebration on Oct. 12, 1984. Long before partial birth abortion had become a legal issue in America, the Pope in his homily cited abortion and infanticide as both condemned by the Second Vatican Council.
Remember also in the words of the last Council — that life, from the moment of conception onwards, must be safeguarded with the utmost care; abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes (Gaudium et Spes, No. 51). Hence, no human law can morally justify induced abortion. Equally inadmissible from the standpoint of morality are any actions taken by public authorities which seek to limit the responsible freedom of parents to decide the number of their children.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Mission Means 8 Hours a Day Outside Clinic DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:He endures long fasts, works tirelessly and, after 33 years of pro-life ministry, is long-suffering.
But his practice of spending eight hours every day in prayer in front of abortion clinics has caught the attention of people in high places. Cardinal Francis George and other bishops have participated in the peaceful prayer vigils of Helpers of God's Precious Infants, which he founded. A June 30 Chicago Sun-Times editorial compared the apostolate to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful marches.
Msgr. Reilly spoke recently with Register staff writer Brian McGuire.
McGuire: When you approach the abortion clinics each day, what is your first order of business?
Msgr. Reilly: We go our there for the conversion of the heart of the mother and the abortionist. In other words, our first order of business is not to save the physical life of the baby. You see, before the baby is physically aborted, it is spiritually aborted. So our purpose is to pray for conversions of heart. You have to change the spirit of the mother and the doctor, and this change does come about through our fasting and our prayer.
Msgr. Philip Reilly Founder, St. Joseph's Helpers of God's Precious Infants
How is it that so many of us, and so many mothers, have become convinced of the worthlessness of unborn babies?
In Evangelium Vitae the Holy Father says that the root cause of the culture of death is the loss of the sense of God and with that comes a loss of the sense of who we are. The creature cannot understand himself apart from the creator. The infants are precious because they belong to God.
So, the first thing we are out at the clinics witnessing to is the presence and the reality of God.
You see, once you restore God to the discussion, the reality of the child as one of his creatures becomes more apparent. The infants are precious because they belong to God, not because they belong to the mother or the state. This whole discussion of the body and our rights to control it is horizontal and, in the end, fruitless. It doesn't take God into consid eration.
Once we can convince the woman that both she and her baby are precious to God, then we have circled around court decisions that ignore this reality — we have gotten to the reality that precedes court decisions.
Who is the “enemy” to the culture of life — abortion doctors?
God wants the salvation of the doctor, the child and the mother. They are not his enemies. It is we who turn away from God, not him from us. When we go to pray in front of the clinic our goal is to view the situation with the mind of God. We must make present his unconditional and everlasting love.
You can't lash out at people or condemn them and expect them to be converted. How could you ever sell your product by being nasty? We are called to be faithful witnesses to the truth, that's all. And so we must do it in a peaceful and prayerful manner. Again, to see with the eyes of God dictates that we be concerned primarily with the conversion of souls.
How would God treat those who kill?
God died for the conversion of those who put him to death. In the same manner, God's providence allows for the physical evil of the deaths of the unborn if that's what it takes to convert those who put them to death. If God permits abortion, it is to pave the way for greater conversions. And if those who today support abortion turn their hearts toward God tomorrow, then the victory is ours. God never forces us to love him. He had to hang on the cross there for awhile, and so do those in the pro-life movement.
People argue that it is important to save the lives of babies who are being killed right now.
Even if you feel justified in attacking the oppressor, if there is hatred in your heart, you are both destroyed by the evil. We have to practice the love of Christ if we want to be saved and help bring about the salvation of others. As Christians, we don't have the right to hate or even to be uncharitable.
This is called Christian love, and it's very demanding. I stress to people that God is calling them to holiness. You can't win the battle and lose your own soul. This struggle is a real source of sanctification for us.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Philip Reilly ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:The U.S. Senate, in a 51-47 vote, adopted an amendment expressing “the sense of the Congress” that “Roe v. Wade was an appropriate decision and secures an important constitutional right; and such decision should not be overturned.”
That means the U.S. Senate is more pro-abortion than the public at large:
• A May 1999 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll reported that 58% of the public believed that abortion should be “illegal in all circumstances.”
• A July 1998 survey of American women conducted by the Princeton Survey Research Associates for the pro-abortion Center for Gender Equality found that 70% of American women favor “more restrictions” on abortion and 53% believe that abortion should be illegal except in cases of rape, incest or to save the mother's life.
—National Right to Life Committee, Oct. 21
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ------- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:DesignerBabies.com
Fashion photographer Ron Harris launched www.ronsangels.com to cell the ova of beautiful models to infertile couples, reported a columnist in the Post.
“Natural selection is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful,” Harris said. “This celebrity culture that we have created does better economically than any other civilization in our history.”
Critics contend that this is simply taking sperm banks to their next logical step, the customization of our offspring.
“This Web site is the product of a materialist society that has decided pleasure and the avoidance of suffering are its highest virtues,” writes Post columnist Rod Dreher. “When life itself is not believed to have intrinsic worth, this is what we get.”
If the demands of consumerism are invited into the process of having children, we face a grave danger, Dreher writes.
“On what grounds will ethicists lecture parents that they must abort their unborn child becuase she is likely to be fat, or homely, or handicapped, or gay, or anything else that might disadvantage the child in the real world?”
Hospital Changes Policies, But Not Enough, Lawmaker Says
Starting on Jan. 1, only two hospitals under Advocate Health Care will perform the abortions, and then, only in the cases of rape, incest, when the child would not survive, or to save the life of the mother.
So-called therapeutic abortions occur when, after learning that a baby will be born with mental or physical handicaps, labor is induced and the child is born, only to be starved or asphyxiated.
Illinois State Sen. Patrick J. O'Malley resigned from the hospital's board saying that the hospital's new provisions did not go far enough.
“I'm a big cheerleader for Christ Hospital, but you have to draw the line somewhere,” O'Malley told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Hospital executives sent a letter to O'Malley in which they thanked him for four years of service and said they have “great appreciation of your personal views on pregnancy termination and respect your choice to resign.”
Congress Urged to Study Fetal Body Parts Claim
CNS-An official of the U.S. bishops' pro-life secretariat called for a congressional investigation and “in-depth investigative reporting” into claims by a U.S. senator that abortion clinics are selling fetal body parts.
Sen. Bob Smith, I-N.H., made the claim on the Senate floor Oct. 21 during debate on the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.
Helen Alvare, director of planning and information for the bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, said Smith had “produced credible evidence that some U.S. abortion clinics have worked hand-in-glove with wholesalers of fetal body parts.”
Smith said some clinics were committing infanticide and performing abortions in ways calculated to produce the maximum of fresh human body parts for sale.
“No matter if this is going on in one clinic or 500, it would be an intolerable situation, a statement that some children are worthless as persons but valuable as parts,” Alvare said.
“There ought to commence as quickly as possible extensive congressional hearings as well as in-depth investigation reporting on this unthinkable violation of the dignity of the human person,” she added.
Maine Voters Urged by Bishop To Be Faithful to Lord of Life
CNS-As Maine voters prepared to decide by referendum whether to ban partial-birth abortion in their state, Bishop Joseph J. Gerry of Portland has called on Catholics to be “faithful to the Lord of life.” Question 1 on the Nov. 2 ballot asks whether partial-birth abortions should be banned in Maine, except when necessary to save the mother's life. In a pastoral letter called “Faithful to the Lord of Life,” Bishop Gerry noted that Catholics in the state also are likely to face a vote next year on physician-assisted suicide and efforts in the state Legislature to reintroduce capital punishment.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life