VATICAN II'S constitution Gaudium et Spes set the stage for a renewed dialogue between the Church and science, and Pope John Paul II has actively followed the Council's lead. He has sponsored a number of initiatives throughout his pontificate to help foster this dialogue. Perhaps the most important was his commissioning of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to conduct a 10-year study of the Galileo case, which concluded in 1992. The results of this study and the Academy's recommendations have had far-reaching positive effects, especially in the field of biblical hermeneutics.
However, according to Father William Stoeger, an official at the Vatican Observatory, the Church is only at the threshold. Catholic universities and seminaries have only recently begun to study the relationship between theology and science, he said. However, there are no required courses on this subject nor is it a permanent part of the theological curriculum, the priest-official said.
According to Father Stoeger, Anglican and other mainline Protestant Churches have largely taken the initiative in this dialogue, which in many instances, includes dialogue with Catholics as well as members of non-Christian religions.
The issue seems deceptively simple: Theology must continually adapt itself to the traditions, experiences, needs, and thought forms of a particular culture the experts say, and Western culture is permeated by science. Science cannot become a theology—but theology can search for modes of expression that correspond to science.
Certain definite trends in theology seem to be emerging. Theologians are discovering “evidence” of unity, diversity, and transcendence in science—at the bottom there need not be conflict with the Christian worldview.
In cosmology, this search for unity is evident as researchers close in on what is being hailed as the first verifiable creation theory, based on research of outer space as well as within the subatomic world through particle physics.
Physicists are delving deeper into the microscopic structure of matter. They hope to someday reach the so-called Planck length, 10 to the power -33 cm, which is well beyond the 10 to -17 cm now possible with the best microscopes. Current methods of observation allow physicists to study the tiny point-like quarks within the nuclei of an atom. This is the present limit of the so-called “standard model” of research.
For physicists, greater magnification or “shorter distances” reveal a greater unity of nature and more simplicity. Shorter distances also mean that the physicist penetrates further into the history of the matter. In theory, the history of matter is also the history of the universe.
The leap from 10 -17 cm to 10 -33 cm would be formidable. However, the so-called accelerators required are expensive and use enormous amounts of energy. Physicists have no intention of waiting for technology, however. Theoretical physics is already attempting to extrapolate what lies ahead by way of the String.
Theory, developed by David Gross of Princeton University and John Schwartz of the California Institute of Technology.
The String Theory may have placed theoretical physics in the forefront. “It used to be that as we were climbing the mountain of nature, the experimentalists would lead the way,” said Gross, adding that now “theorists might have to take the lead.”
Theologian Nancey Murphy, a professor at the Fuller Theological Seminary, believes there are certain parallels between scientific reasoning and theology. “Theological doctrines have the same epistemological status as scientific theories…. In the philosophy of science, there is nothing you can know for certain apart from theoretical interpretation, and so the process of developing science is always a process of working back and forth between theory and data looking for consistency between those theories and the data.”
Yet the search for unity is continually confronted by the mysterious, she added. What could possibly account, for example, for the complex large-scale structures and the flows of galaxies that have been observed in the universe, and their rapid movement? Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is part of a small group of galaxies on the outskirts of the large sheet of galaxies, the so-called local supercluster. There are millions of these superclusters, with great voids between them that contain hardly any matter. Gravity alone could not account for such a distribution.
Dr. Joel Primack, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, was one of the pioneers of the Cold Dark Matter Theory (CDM), which has helped to explain this mystery. Primack speculates that invisible CDM comprises 90 percent of the universe. He is currently testing a new theory, “cold and hot dark matter.”
The CDM theory led cosmologists to consider a pre-big bang event. In 1981-82, physicist Alan Guth from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Russian physicist Andre Linde, currently at Stanford University, independently worked out a theory of cosmic inflation.
The theory posits a blueprint for the universe caused by an exponential expansion. This occurred in an extremely minute fraction of a second prior to the big bang, causing the enormous complexities of structures and the vast differences in density that we see today.
Linde thinks of this process as occurring endlessly, producing not a universe but “universes:” The big bang is no longer seen as a singular event, but rather as one spark in an endless process.
Theology, then, must help humanity find its way back into the center of a vast and complex picture. For starters, however, the Big Bang has affirmed one important theological truth—there was a creation event, and the universe has a beginning, middle, and end.
Does the universe suggest intelligent design? Many theologians believe so. “Fine tuning,” as Murphy terms it, shows that if the mathematics had been off just a fraction, there would be no life as we know it today. All the things that came before the earth—those stars, galaxies, and super-clusters—were vital to our creation. Science cannot prove the existence of God, but the numbers certainly make the case for it.
Gary Griffith is based in Page, Ariz.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gary Griffith ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: All Is Not Darkness As Africa Suffers Growing Pains DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:THE MEDIA portrait of sub-Saharan Africa often evokes the image of the biblical barren fig tree. The continent is endowed with abundant natural and human resources. She has received numerous generous supports from the international communities in forms of loans, aids, and expertise. Yet the continent has miserably failed to utilize these and other past opportunities to develop and prosper. She boasts of a litany of woes; more than half of the world's illiterates, refugees, and AIDS victims live in the continent where malaria remains the greatest killer. The vast population lacks basic health care facilities, pipe-borne water, electricity, and modern means of transportation.
“In almost all our nations,” the African bishops at the April 10-May 6, 1994 Synod on Africa admitted, “there is abject poverty, tragic mismanagement of available scarce resources, political instability, and social disorientation. The results stare us in the face: misery, wars, despair. In a world controlled by rich and powerful nations, Africa has practically become an irrelevant appendix, often forgotten and neglected.” In light of these facts, the continent appears to have no future. In fact, “Africa is dying” The New Republic declared recently.
This conclusion seems indisputable when Africa is seen and presented as a tiny piece of land on the globe, with only a handful of inhabitants. Certainly, no small group of people can sustain such a considerable amount of tragedy? But with 54 countries in an area that is more than four times the size of the continental United States, Africa is a huge continent of tremendous diversity—it defies the media generalizations. And historical precedents suggest that continental crises do not spell demise.
The European continent, for example, has experienced predicaments similar to Africa'. Her present national political entities went through tortuous journeys before achieving modern statehood. During these periods, which modern historians designate as “Ages” and/or “Revolutions”—Medieval, Renaissance, Reformation, Absolutism, Enlightenment, Industrial, etc.—Europe was plagued with political, social, economic, and medical turmoil comparable in scale to that experienced by contemporary Africa. Similar patterns are discernible during the emergence of many modern states in the Asian and American continents. None of the countries became a peaceful, stable, prosperous, and fully democratic society within the first four decades of its foundation.
Contemporary African countries are no different. Currently they are scarcely nation states. As national political entities the majority of them are still in their teething stage. But this does not in any way justify the avoidable human disasters that are taking place in the continent, for Africa has models and tested ideas to follow. The fact, however, remains that for the emerging nation states the formation of national unity will continue to be an arduous process because of the extraordinary diversity of their constituencies—in ethnicity, language, traditions, cultures, and histories. Pope John Paul II articulated this point in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation to the Church in Africa: “To reconcile profound differences, overcome long-standing ethnic animosities, and become integrated into international life demands a high degree of competence in the art of governing.”
The first generation of African leaders, i.e., the immediate successors to the colonial administrators, lacked this experience of state-craft. Some still do. But overall the present successors are unquestionably a significant improvement compared to the despotic, apartheid regimes that previously littered the continent. This is obvious in Uganda, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Coté d'Ivoire, Ghana, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire), Namibia, and South Africa, to name but a few.
Other recent developments point to a continent undergoing construction more than destruction. The recent “miraculous” transitions from apartheid to democratic societies in both Namibia and South Africa have seemingly added momentum to the quest for democracy on the continent. There have been, within the past seven years, fair and free elections in 25 countries of the continent. Although far from being flawless— and though they have not made their countries truly democratic—the elections are indicative of the new dispensation that has set in on the continent. They are beacons of light and hope, not of darkness and death.
Surely, military dictators still abound, but they are ruling on borrowed time. A steady supportive call for change and a campaign for the recognition and respect of human rights by both the local and international communities will help to facilitate and consolidate an authentic and viable democratic tradition on the continent. But it will be an “inculturated democracy”—a system adapted to the African context—and not necessarily a clone of the West.
The Organization of African Unity (OAU), the continent's political body, appears to have begun to come to terms with the emerging new dispensation. It lately dawned on the members of the body that to have a stable, peaceful, and prosperous continent, Africans must be their brother's keepers. Thus, member states have begun to depart from the Organization's established principle and tradition not to “interfere in the internal affairs” of other members. This policy made silent spectators of the whole African continent while buffoon-harlequin tyrants and kleptocrats, like Obote, Idi Amin, Jean Bedel Bokassa, Macias Ngema, Siad Barre, Mengistu Haile Mariam, and Mobuto Sese Seko, to name but a few, oppressed their people and squandered their resources.
Recently, however, the OAU, through its West African member states, has restored a high degree of order and sanity in Liberia, and is unanimous in not recognizing the military junta in Sierra Leone. By endorsing the Nigerian government-led effort (through ECOMOG—the acronym for the intervention force) dedicated to restoring democracy in that country, the OAU closes a sad chapter in the continent's political history.
Beyond the trendy negative political and economic issues that make the headlines, one finds on the vast African continent more ethnic groups or tribes in harmony than at war with one another. In these communities, which often face overwhelming adversities, one finds resilient, improvising, and joyous spirits that disperse the clouds of despair. For these communities, a profound sense of the sacred, an acute sense of solidarity and community life—with the family at the center—a deep appreciation of human life as a gift received and to be cherished and respected in its various stages, are all beliefs fundamental to human survival.
It is these traditional African values, inter alia, that best explain the remarkable growth Christianity is experiencing today in the continent. This phenomenon is not lost on the present Pope who enthusiastically encouraged the process during his 11 trips to more than 35 African nations. It is not an exaggeration to argue that John Paul II sees the future of Catholicism as coming from the African continent. He is not the first one to think this. The German Capuchin missionary priest, Wëlbert Bulhmann, in his seminal work, The Coming of the Third Church, had already asserted this.
Priestly and religious vocations are blooming on the continent. In Africa, religious orders and congregations that are dying out in “Christian and civilized” Europe and America are thriving. New congregations and societies springing up to replace dying communities. This phenomenon has turned Africans into missionaries to themselves, and to some others as well. The Pope said in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation to the Church in the continent: “The missionary Institutes founded in Africa have grown in number, and have begun to supply missionaries not only to the countries of the continent but other areas of the world. Aslowly increasing number of African diocesan priests are beginning to make themselves available, for limited periods, as fidei donum priests in other needy dioceses in their countries and abroad.”
Considering the historical precedents of other nations and continents, as well as Africa's burgeoning political and socio-economic renewal, and her strengths and growth in other spheres of life, it is difficult to conclude that Africa is a dying continent. One cannot ignore or deny the considerable problems of the continent, but it is a greater disservice to deny the positive transformation and growth that is taking place. The anguished face of the African continent we see today is one engendered by birth-pangs—not death throes.
Nigerian Father OkeChukwu-Nwosuh, a member of the Missionary Society of St. Paul of Nigeria, is a graduate student at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cosmas Okechukwu-Nwosum MSP ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Egypt's Christians Huddle, And Wait for Better Times DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:CAIRO, Egypt—Thirty-year-old Maurice abandoned everything—beautiful women, a comfortable expatriate lifestyle, and a promising business career—for Egypt's wild and isolated desert plain. And waves of his peers are doing the same.
“Thirty years ago, there were six monks here,” says Maurice, who joined his 1,000-year-old monastery last year. “Now there are 150.”
Infatuated by the solitude of the desert, Egyptian Christians in their 20s and 30s are clamoring to join ancient monastic orders— and renounce their secular environment that offers few opportunities for an ambitious younger generation. Most of the country's Christian population of 8 million belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church.
The trend is a measure of a broader Christian movement in Egypt—a quiet but steady return to religion despite harassment from state officials and Muslim extremists.
For some Coptic Christians, it's a quest to redefine their religious identity, blurred by decades of secular values and social conduct. For others, it is a search for space in the overwhelmingly Muslim country of their birth. Copts represent a cross-section of the Egyptian population, from the poorest rag-clad garbage collectors to powerful landowners who own construction companies and fast-food franchises.
Older members of the community say they are shocked by the religious fervor of their sons and grandsons. “We (Copts) wanted to have a secular state where citizenship comes before affiliation to religion,” said Dr. Milad Hanna, a prominent intellectual in his 60s. “But the younger generation is now fundamentalist just like some Muslims, except that the Christian way of being fundamentalist is more introvert than extrovert.”
Many call it a natural reaction to Muslim fundamentalist movements sweeping Egypt and the rest of the Middle East. Despite periodic attacks by militants on Coptic churches and villages in the south, observers say native Christian zeal grows stronger every year. Since 1992, militants have targeted government officials and Copts alike in their quest to establish an Islamic state.
The worst terrorist attacks in Egypt this year so far have been directed against Copts. In mid-February, gunmen killed nine Christians attending a youth meeting in a church in Abu Qurqas, 160 miles south of Cairo. On March13, attackers believed to be Muslim militants opened fire in the main street of another predominantly Christian village in the south, killing 13 men in only a few minutes.
“The Church is caring for young people in particular in its efforts to foster the awakening,” said Dr. Gawdat Gabra, the director of the Coptic Museum in Cairo. He says the combination of a highly charged sectarian religious environment and a highly organized Church eager to guide impressionable youth is responsible for the current Christian renaissance.
Holding mass meetings for almost 10,000 faithful Copts, Pope Shenouda III uses his down-to-earth, almost evangelical preaching style to beguile his listeners in Cairo's gargantuan Coptic Orthodox cathedral every Wednesday evening. He is the first pope in this once ritual-bound Church to hold such gatherings. Clerics credit him for his efforts to guide young people and foster a blossoming Coptic youth movement that encourages lay participation among its members.
At the beginning of every gathering, he answers written questions from his audience, many of whom look to be in their 20s and 30s. One young woman says she has fallen in love with her Muslim neighbor, a taboo in most Coptic families. “Don't let life make you forget your religion,” he admonishes the masses, raising his aged hand for emphasis. “Pray that God sends you someone else.”
Other members of the clergy have eschewed ritual in favor of spreading a populist message, though in recent years the Church—once known only for its elaborate incense-perfumed masses—has excommunicated some self-styled preachers with huge popular followings for their radical ideas.
But others are officially permitted, like one Father Semaan, who fascinates thousands from his stage in a newly-built coliseum towering over a desperately poor neighborhood of Cairo.
“Do you love Jesus?” he cries to the crowd, his figure highlighted on huge video screens and his voice amplified by Japanese speakers.
“Yes,” his fascinated listeners shout back in reply.
At the heart of the revival is an ongoing monastic renaissance in the Coptic Church's 12 functioning monasteries—some of which date from the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. Egyptian Christians consider monks to be the holiest living members of their ancient Church.
“It is partly a reaction to the materialism that has prevailed in the world over the past 50 years,” said Dr. Gabra. Those joining the monasteries come from both rich and poor backgrounds, from Egypt and expatriate communities in the United States, Australia, and Canada.
There are few Copts in the upper echelons of the political and military establishment. Many Copts feel they have been denied the political participation they once enjoyed before Gamal Abdel-Nasser came to power in the ‘50s. Several million left Egypt in the ’70s and early '80s before many Western countries tightened restrictions on new immigrants.
But the Church offers talented young Copts a career ladder like no other. Sister Demyana, a translator for the pope who is in her early 30s, says “almost all of the Church's 12 monasteries have doubled or tripled in size [during] the past decade.”
The growth has been so remarkable that the Church has founded a new monastery, Mar Girgis, to accommodate the increase in numbers—a difficult feat in a country where building new churches requires special permission from the president.
Almost all of the monastery's hundred students are in their 20s and 30s. Clad in light blue cotton robes, novices intent on performing their duties scurry silently down newly-laid concrete paths shaded by fast-growing grapevines.
The Church has also resorted to buying pre-existing churches—abandoned buildings left behind by Greek, Italian and Armenian communities who left Egypt in the '60s—so as not to excite Muslim militants, who closely monitor priests in the south to prevent them from making repairs to Church property.
However, the high fortress-like walls of the monasteries conceal their inner goings-on—and free their inhabitants from current Christian difficulties. For young Egyptians, those isolated but peaceful holy sites have become the focus of large-scale group pilgrimages.
“In my mother's day, no one was interested in visiting the monasteries,” said 24-year-old Neveen Kamal, an office worker in Cairo who spends many of her weekends at the desert sites. “Now young people are much more interested in religion.”
Fifty miles northwest of the city, monks at the St. Bishoi monastery claim they welcome 3,000 visitors—most of them Egyptian—on a daily basis.
“There are no recreational areas where they can go as Christians. It's their only outlet for a day's retreat—and an opportunity for them to renew their faith,” says Father Maurice.
Inside the stone chapel, pilgrims sit for hours, their bodies protected from the cold floors by plush oriental rugs. They sing hymns in Arabic and chat softly with family members and peers. Before leaving, they kiss their palms and press them against the glass-protected coffins of Coptic saints.
Jessica Jones is based in Cairo, Egypt.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jessica Jones ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Priest-Scholar Celebrates Free Market DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:FATHER ROBERT SIRICO, a critic of the welfare system who advocates free market principles as a better means of meeting the needs of the poor, gives a mixed response to President Bill Clinton's promise that he will “end welfare as we have known it.”
“I wish it were true,” the priest told the Register in a recent telephone interview from his office in Grand Rapids, Mich.
He reported spending some time in Washington testifying before congressional committees during the welfare debate last year, and finding that Administration officials “wanted to dress welfare up in a different outfit, but not change it substantially.”
Father Sirico, a Paulist priest, was not totally discouraged. “We have made some positive moves in the right direction.” But he immediately added that those were “not substantial enough to affect the well-being of the poor.” More basic, structural changes must come, he said, though he did not hold out much hope for them until after the next presidential election.
The plan to make bloc grants to the states and let them handle welfare according to their 50 perspectives and judgments has not touched the root of the problem, in Father Sirico's view. That “devolution,” he said, still assumes that it is the responsibility of the federal government to meet welfare needs, and that it might decide to delegate some of its responsibility to state governments.
Father Sirico insists that any valid and effective approach must start at the other end—with the principle of subsidiarity. That means responsibility originally and properly belongs at the individual and community level, and only when “a manifest failure” occurs there, should a larger governmental authority enter in and even then only as an aid, not a replacement, and only as a temporary expedient, not as a continuing program.
For an alternative, he proposes a program of “tax credits, not tax deductions,” that would allow individuals to give part of what they are assessed in federal income taxes to a charity serving people below the poverty level. The government would reduce its welfare spending by a corresponding amount and, he predicted, the result would be a “renewal of philanthropy” in America and a more careful oversight of charities by those contributing to them.
Father Sirico, 46, said he had reached his current outlook through a couple of “conversions.” A native of Brooklyn, he left the Catholic Church in his teens, tried out some other Churches, and for a time involved himself in left-wing politics in California. He also worked in television.
But along the way he was given some literature on economics, and was led to the conviction that “the best way to incorporate the marginalized in society was through a free economy.” With this political “conversion,” he has become an advocate of the approach to economics and politics commonly called neo-conservative.
In recognition of his standing among people of this outlook, he has been accepted as a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, an organization founded by Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992), an economist who was born in Vienna and became known as a free market advocate at the London School of Economics.
Father Sirico's second “conversion” was a religious one—a return to dealing with the deeper questions of theology and philosophy, and then to the Church. After a year as a Benedictine novice, he studied for the priesthood with the Paulist Fathers and was ordained as a member of the order in 1989.
However, he said he is currently on leave from the order and is thinking of becoming a diocesan priest in Grand Rapids. The Paulists sent him to Grand Rapids to serve in their information center there. But with a lay friend, Kris Alan Mauren, he established an institute to “educate the religious and business communities on the moral virtues of a society with limited government and a free market economy.” He later began to work full-time as president of the institute and left the information center.
Father Sirico said he got funding from grass roots donors, corporations, and conservative philanthropists and foundations. He named it for Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834-1902), an English Catholic historian who was known as an advocate of liberty.
Acton was also a critic of the papal exercise of temporal power, and a leading opponent of the definition of the dogma of papal infallibility, though he accepted it after its promulgation by Vatican I. He was in Rome during the Council, and read much of the material about it published by the historian Johann von Dollinger under the byline Quirinus.
Father Sirico has in some similar fashion become a critic of the Church on temporal matters. His Washington testimony on the welfare issue last year put him at odds with the bishops and the position they have been advocating through the U.S. Catholic Conference.
In the interview, he identified himself with the position of Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). At a fund raising dinner held by the Catholic Campaign for America in New York this past February, Santorum was honored as Catholic American of the Year for his Senate fight against partial-birth abortion. In an address, he talked about that issue, but went on to attack the stance of the Church, with attention directed particularly to Catholic Charities, on the welfare debate.
“We have a system in welfare today that destroys the spirit, and we have a Church that stands up and defends it,” Santorum said. And he asked, “Why?” The answer, he suggested, lay in the fact that government provided most of the income of Catholic Charities.
“I agree with Sen. Santorum that Catholic Charities is excessively dependent on the government,” the priest said. The fact that the bishops take a different position does not make him feel obligated to change his. “Let's be clear about what the bishops' teaching authority is. It does not extend to prudential policy statements. In their pastoral on economics, and in the earlier one on peace, they invited disagreement. I am accepting their invitation to disagree with them.”
Father Sirico emphasized that he does not disagree on the necessity of concern for the poor, or on the declaration that an economy should be judged on what it means for the welfare of the poor. In reference to his earlier days in leftist politics, he said: “My concern for the poor has not changed one bit. It is the means [to help them] that have changed.”
The poor should be served primarily through local efforts, he now believes, and they also stand to benefit by measures that stimulate business, such as tax relief. Government, even at the local level, is often more a hindrance than a help, in his view. He said a local feeding program in Grand Rapids was blocked by the county government on the basis of health regulations. But the deeper spiritual problem, he said, was the damage to Christian life when individuals and the Church turned responsibility for serving the poor over to government.
He had preceded Santorum in critique of Catholic Charities with an oped article published in The Wall Street Journal in 1995. The direction of Catholic Charities has been affected by the types of government funding it has taken, and this dependency relationship “colors” its public policy positions, he wrote. He cited references in the mission statement of Catholic Charities to helping “shape federal social legislation” and monitoring “the public budget process to ensure economic justice…. That, of course, is a political mission that may or may not have anything to do with actually helping people,” he told the Register.
He finds the entire welfare mentality lacking. In an article published by Forbes magazine in 1994, he advocated policies that upheld “the virtue of work” and warned against the kind of charity that “encourages indolence.” Recalling time he spent during seminary days helping a nun who ran a soup kitchen, he said that he began to think they were engaged in a questionable enterprise. They were functioning as “competitors” of a seafood pub down the street, he said, and making the pub proprietor's “efforts to provide for his own family more difficult.”
But from the standpoint of the Church and its charitable programs, government aid is dubious because of the restrictions imposed, the priest said. The idea of a “partnership” between government and the Church brings the danger that Church agencies will come under pressure to implement policies contrary to Church teaching. “We have to be very, very careful.”
An article by Joe Klein in the June 16 issue of New Yorker magazine reported the view of a number of people who contend that Churches show better results than government in helping people deal with poverty, substance abuse, juvenile delinquency, and other social ills. Klein argued that the strict insistence on Church-state separation be relaxed so government can fund Church efforts without requiring suppression of the religious dimension that is central to the motivation and effectiveness of the best programs.
Father Sirico said he agreed that the emphasis on Church-state separation had produced a “ridiculously thick wall between religion and society,” and that this tradition could be modified without violating the constitution. But he said it would be dangerous to work for that goal as a “preamble for government subsidies to religious institutions.”
It is not just a matter of officials deciding they can let churches keep their crucifixes on their walls when they get government money. “There will be no way that a government funding agency will give money without some kind of reporting and control,” he said.
Father Sirico contends that charitable agencies can do their work without government help. The Acton Institute picks out 10 model programs each year for recognition through its Samaritan Awards. These are agencies that do not receive any direct government aid, and whose programs “empower people to take charge of their lives and break the cycle of dependency.” Those chosen get a $1,000 prize, and a top winner is given $10,000. Last year, the top honor went to Interfaith Housing Coalition, a Dallas agency that “addresses the root cause of homelessness, empowering families with job placement, living skills, lessons in budgeting and three-month transitional housing.” It reports that 70 percent of its clients complete the program successfully and all get a job.
Father Sirico observed that the Shriners maintain a high-quality children's hospital without government funds, and wonders why the Catholic Church could not do the same. The government gets its money from the people, a significant percentage of whom are Catholic, he noted. If these Catholics were allowed to direct their money to causes they chose, then it could come to the Church.
But meanwhile, Church agencies have to keep paying their bills month by month. Is the change Father Sirico advocates likely in any foreseeable future? “It will be further off if the bishops don't ask for it,” he said. “I don't hear them lobbying in that direction.”
Tracy Early is based in New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tracy Early ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Good Shepherd in the City of Brotherly Love DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:Joop Koopman: You signed the July 4 statement,We Hold These Truths, prepared by Father Richard John Neuhaus and Charles Colson, which indicts the nation's High Court. What prompted you?
Cardinal Bevilacqua: Colson and Neuhaus are pointing out something that is not particular to them. They're reflecting what many analysts are saying about the United States: Our culture is on a slippery slope; the morals of our nation as reflected, in particular, in the media culture and many aspects of government life, are creating an erosion of our American way of life—our traditional way of life— and are affecting so many aspects of family life. This is portrayed in the media culture, but it has its origins in many of the Supreme Court decisions.
The statement seeks to reclaim, as it were, some of the nation's highest goals.
It calls us back to the truths that made our Founding Fathers—such outstanding protagonists of a moral way of life. They said that we can't have a nation that isn't founded on the Ten Commandments—on God. That's reflected in the Declaration of Independence, and even in the Constitution. The First Amendment is a support for religious life, not an attack on it. What the statement is calling for, and what so many are calling for now, is the moral renewal of the whole nation. It is a hope-filled declaration.
What do you make of the Supreme Court striking down the Religious Freedom Restoration Act?
I was very disappointed. It is another reflection of some of the ideology of the courts. I strongly disagree, for example, with Justice Antonin Scalia, both morally and legally. Until 1947, the Court had maintained that in order to restrict any kind of religious activity, there would have to be a very compelling interest; and when we did restrict it, it had to be the least restrictive act possible. Now, why Scalia and others have lowered the criterion, I don't know. It exposes all of us.
They might outlaw wine in some counties!
That's right. Theoretically, they could do so many things and say: “We have a reasonable cause to restrict—nothing very compelling, but we have good reason for it.” That's not enough. There was the Texas case of the church being a historical monument, and the ordinance forbidding expansion. It could easily spread into other areas. The first part of the First Amendment says you don't establish one religion; the second part says you promote religion. There's to be no law against religion. The First Amendment is not protecting government from religion, it's protecting religion from government.
There is a school of thought embodied by David Schindler, for example, that argues that the nation's very founding was flawed, that the seeds of this present derailment were always there.
I can't say that this is a phenomenon that just began, but I don't know if it was there from the very beginning. The critics say that even our Founding Fathers based their teachings on a flawed philosophy—John Locke, the Enlightenment, for example. But there's a lot in John Locke, and there's a lot of things in the Enlightenment that are very good. Equality, fraternity, and liberty…. That's wonderful. The abuse of it is what should be attacked.
I can't go all the way back and say the seed was there. You can go back if you want to do that. The seed goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. You have secularism with Adam and Eve—“I want to be God.”
Could you describe your road to the priest-hood?
You have to understand my personal vocation did not involve any special enlightenment. Almost every priest will say that. Some will say they had a very strong religious experience, but most won't. No angel appeared to me. I didn't get a letter from God. It happened in a very providential manner thanks to a priest who moved to a neighborhood that was not Italian. It was completely German-Irish. We were a very poor family, and this priest came over for a visit. I was only five years old. I use the expression that spaghetti and meatballs were a sign of my vocation because my mother asked him: “Do you like spaghetti and meatballs?” He said, “I love it, but the cook is a German, so I never get it.” She said, “Come over.” And that's how it began. He changed our whole family. We were not going to Church. We were raised in an Episcopalian church without knowing it wasn't Catholic. My mother didn't know; she had met a nun—someone who looked like a Catholic sister to her.
She looked like the real thing.
Yes. So, when we did go to church it was an Episcopalian church in Brooklyn. But we moved to Woodhaven, N.Y., and again my mother met a nun, but it was a Catholic nun this time who sent this priest and that's how it happened. My family took a liking to the priest, and he took a liking to me. I said: “I want to be like you,” not knowing what a priest was. I was transferred to a Catholic school, and then I went to the minor seminary, and later to the major seminary, and here I am. I don't know when I received the vocation. It's a process—for me, at least, it was.
Any doubts and fears along the way?
It's hard to imagine anyone who doesn't have doubts, fears, and obstacles. One of the obstacles from the very beginning was poverty. I didn't know I was poor at the time, but there was the matter of tuition for the minor seminary. We couldn't afford it. So this priest paid for the first year, and I got a scholarship for the remaining years.
There was another obstacle in the attitude of my father. He had grown up in a kind of anti-clerical environment in Italy. He couldn't understand why I would want to become a priest—not that he fought me, though.
The war presented another confrontation. I was in seminary during the war. People wondered why we were not in the service. A number of us were bothered. But, actual crises of vocation—no.
What role did the Eucharist play for you?
When I was growing up and wanting to be a priest, everything centered around the Mass. In fact, it was kind of a myth. I believed that in seminary you did two things: You learned to say Mass, and you read the lives of the saints. That's what you did for six years. But we never studied the lives of the saints. We did study the Mass, but it was only in the year before ordination. Yet the center of everything was the Mass, even in the minor seminary. Even though you were commuting, you were expected to go to Mass every day.
Mass was considered a very, very sacred act. I remember a certain anxiety about it as we were approaching the last year. We spent one full year on learning how to say Mass, and go through dry runs, waiting for the day that this acting would become a reality.
Studies today show that belief in the Real Presence is down.
At that time, there was none of that doubt. Everyone believed in the Real Presence—everyone. It was also devotional; emotional in a very good sense. It was part of your very nature. It's like the relationship with your parents. How do you express that? It's very intensely emotional, in a very good sense. The Eucharist was very dominant in our lives.
That's a loss, wouldn't you say?
The whole atmosphere of the Church was strong on the Eucharist. The 40 hours were very popular devotions, and large crowds came out. There was a lot of the symbolism, children's processions, and so on. Corpus Christi was a very big day for us. All of that enhanced the fact that everything centered around that one sacrament. Even as a child, I knew a lot of the eucharistic hymns of St. Thomas. We knew them in Latin. We didn't know what we were saying, but they sounded good. People knew them by heart.
Do you think we can ever recover some of that?
I would say it would be very good. That's not going backwards. That's going forward. There should be a great focus on the Eucharist and also on the Blessed Mother— but the Eucharist has its own particular priority.
That is at the heart of your renewal program here in Philadelphia.
The two major devotional pillars of our renewal are the Eucharist and Mary. That has been, I think, one of the major reasons why we are seeing so much progress.
There are so many programs, so many specialists. What makes yours successful? How do you touch people?
We didn't follow any program. There are many programs, and many of them are good. If you compared ours to some of these more formal programs, there'd be a lot of similarities. Ours is a little bit different in the sense that we began six years ago. Ours is a nine-year renewal.
Up to the millennium.
Up to the millennium. It's a novena of years. Each year has its theme, and these last three years connect with the universal celebration. It fits in perfectly.
This is the year of Jesus.
Jesus and evangelization. We felt very strongly that three years would not be enough to really renew. We felt that there was a danger that if we waited to the end, we could end up with a series of celebrations preparing for the year 2000. What I wanted was an internal, spiritual renewal and that's why we started early. It took several years before it actually caught on. It's like the seed you plant. For a long time, you don't see anything, but, all of a sudden, a little piece of green comes up. That doesn't mean the entire process begins then. A quiet time— that's very necessary—preceded it, and so it is with us. Our first year was one of prayer. The second year was one of listening.
You involve the parishes?
Oh, yes. The major course was directed at the priests. That keeps it going, because without the renewal of the priests, you're not going to have renewal. But, everything is done locally, in the grassroots, in the family of the parish. It's primarily a spiritual renewal, but also a structural renewal. We had to begin a lot of programs, like parish pastoral councils. Most parishes did not have them.
You have to have an infrastructure before you can have a renewal of the whole body of the parish, which in turn renews the archdiocese. The people had to learn. They didn't know what a parish council was and they had to learn, and priests had to learn. They had to consult and to listen. That was a difficult adjustment, but it began to work and, after a while, the priests who were not used to this began to appreciate it.
Don't misunderstand me, don't think this is perfect. It isn't that everyone was wonderful. It isn't that. Some parishes do not cooperate as much, but that's to be expected.
Each parish had to come up with a complete self-evaluation. What are your high points? What are your weak points? What do you think you can accomplish? I'm putting it very simplistically. It went through a series of categories: liturgy, social programs—can we do everything with the resources we have? Some had to say: “No. We can't do everything.” Then, what should we concentrate on?, etc. That's all been completed.
A self-examination.
That's right. It's like when an accreditation team comes in to a university. To prepare for that, you better study yourself. That's what each parish did. Sometimes it was difficult, because parishes were afraid to admit certain things. But when they finished, it was like taking pride: “Look what we did.” They prioritized. They've become realistic, acknowledging that they can't do everything.
Some parishes could do more than others, based on personnel resources, the makeup of your parish, the poor, the finances. What started to come out was one dominant theme—spirituality. That's the most important thing. We have to become spiritual and we have to do things. We have to do it together—clergy and laity. That's the beginning of the true concept of Church. The priest is not the Church, the lay people are not the Church—but together we are. Evangelization is becoming more and more the priority. A word that many never heard of before. Funny thing is, it's a Protestant term, but now they began to get used to it. Now, we've moved to a cluster plan—another step.
Are parishes combining?
Not necessarily combining. It has primarily nothing to do with closing parishes and merging. That could happen after the cluster comes up with its recommendations.
We try to answer this question: “What do we have in this community in which we are all involved?” In most communities, there are four or five parishes. Sometimes there were overlaps. Which cluster should this parish belong to? We worked it out. What can we do together in this community, while maintaining the autonomy of each parish?
Avoiding duplication.
That's right. Certain things we can do together. Other things we cannot do together because it would destroy the autonomy of the parish, just as any family can do a lot of things together with other families, but there are a lot of things they better not do together. That's what the parishes are learning.
Some, especially in poorer sections, unfortunately see it as heralding their closure. That could be part of the resolution or the recommendation on how to become more effective as a Church in a particular community. There can be difficult recommendations. Overall, communio is one of the major goals of the whole renewal. We are all individuals—but we are one at the same time.
That reality has both practical and spiritual dimensions.
That's right. Just think of the derivation of the word. Very few people understand it correctly. You would think it comes from cum and unio combined together. It doesn't. It comes from cum and munos.
Meaning?
Responsibility. Munos is one's charge or responsibility. How do we carry out our common responsibility together? First we must know our responsibility. What's our goal? That's why communio is so important in the Church—it makes for unity, but also for diversity. That's what people have to learn, gradually, and every parish and diocese too.
Later this year you'll take part in the Synod of the Americas. What are your expectations?
The word that comes to me immediately, again, is communio. That's going to be a dominant aim of the Synod, as with every synod. How do we carry out the mission of the Church together? We were asked to submit themes for the Synod. The first one I proposed dealt with pastoral care among Hispanics in all the Americas. We could all be called Latin America in the year 2050. A second suggestion I made was to put a premium on the renewal of Christian family life in the New World in the 21st century. A third was promoting the Gospel of Life.
We're learning more and more about each other, but we need greater solidarity. We're going to learn that we've got the same problems. We are going to be involved together in carrying out the evangelization of the Church in both North and South America, and combat the breakdown of the family, particularly in our country. Latin America is not immune to this, but maybe a little bit behind us. Then there is the issue of proselytizing. What is common to both of us, too, is the tension between individualism versus concern for the common good. But we have to be people of hope. I hope that that's what comes out of the Synod—that we look forward to the third millennium, not with an abstract hope, but with concrete plans on how to live the life of Jesus Christ and to renew society.
Not just the Catholic community?
I mean everyone—evangelization in the broad sense of the term. In the strict sense, it's conversion, missionaries, and so on—and that's fine. But, in a broad sense it's what Paul VI said about bringing the Gospel message to all the strata of society, all of them, wherever you go. It's really trying to apply what the Holy Father is calling for with his insistence on the new evangelization. It's an echo of Pius X, who said to renew all things in Christ.
You have to renew all the culture. You have to renew the media. You have to renew the legislators. Everyone has to be renewed. And what is new, though it's not really new, is that everyone must be involved in it, not just the bishops, the Pope, the religious—but particularly the laity, who form 99.99 percent of the Church.
Recently the bishops came out against Timothy McVeigh's death sentence. The Pope seems to be against capital punishment. Why can't the Church just come out against it?
We have not yet reached a point where we say that if you believe in the death penalty, you're not a Catholic. I don't think the teaching has gone that far. It's not anything defined. We're just saying that we have learned a great deal. It took me a while to adjust to it too. Many, many years ago, it was part of the whole environment. When you hear some of the cases, you almost think the death penalty is not enough. It takes an act of great faith to realize that even a murderer is a human being. Our support—especially ardent support—of the death penalty is a revenge complex. It's not because it's a good deterrent, because too many studies show that it doesn't deter. Is it a satisfaction? No. It's not enough. Some people see it as closure. You can have closure in other ways. So, from a practical point of view, it doesn't make sense. But much more important is the fact that a human life is at stake. A human life is always a great value.
There was Dutch Schultz, a notorious mobster and murderer, who lay dying and a priest heard his confession and anointed him. People didn't like that. It's often within human nature to be very selfish. “He doesn't deserve it.” They were playing God. That's so often what we want to do. We want to play God. We do not like that God is infinitely merciful. We want him to be infinitely merciful to us, but we play a vengeful god when it comes to someone else. I thank God every day that none of us is God.
We'd be in trouble.
We'd be in a lot of trouble. Only God can be God. Because it's incomprehensible for us to imagine that infinite mercy. That's what we have to convey to our people. Being against the death penalty is a sign that we have to become divine. It's a sign of infinite mercy that we can never reach ourselves.
Bishop Donald Wuerl recently called for closer collaboration with theologians. What's your take on this?
Ex Corde Ecclesiae brought that out very strongly—and there are a number of documents, going back many decades, that speak about the collaboration between the Magisterium and theologians. Theologians must get involved with the day-to-day issues of the Church. They can't confine themselves to abstract theories and principles. We have to deal with the environment and culture of today; the poverty of today; the justice issues of today. We have to deal with all the questions of human life, whether it be cloning, in vitro fertilization, or partial-birth abortion. We need theologians.
It's not just a matterof bringing them in line.
It shouldn't be. It should not be an authoritative relationship. That's not collaboration. Ex Corde Ecclesiae brings it out indirectly in saying that it falls on universities to become involved in the life of people.
With the local Church?
Yes, but it's hard to collaborate unless you're very clear on what the role of the two parties are. You have to have something in common and you have to have something that distinguishes you. Otherwise, you don't have collaboration. What the two have in common is that they are Church. We both—bishops and theologians—have the responsibility of preserving the revelation of Jesus Christ and passing it on. The whole tradition of the Church has been revealed by the Father through Jesus Christ and entrusted to the Church. We both have to safeguard that. But one does it officially, and is the final determinant—the bishop, with other bishops and the Pope. This is the official teaching. The theologian assists that process by explicating, by researching, by expanding, by getting new insights in what is still the same truth.
Theology, for the most part, is too abstract, academic, removed.
The abstract is very important. But, how do you concretize it? How do you apply it? There are two analogies that strike me, although both of them limp. One is the United States government. We have a Constitution, which is like Revelation. Here's the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, the deities if you will, and this is what we're handing on. If you follow this Constitution, the United States will be a civilized nation. Now, how do you apply it each day? Well, you have your legislators. They're the ones who take the Constitution and apply it by way of individual laws. In the case of confusion, the Supreme Court steps in as the official teacher. I say the analogy limps because the Court does not always give the correct teaching.
But, here is an analogy with the Magisterium and the bishops. Another image involves the university world. The professors are very powerful people. Even though they deal largely in the abstract, they have influenced a whole civilization in this country. Why? Because there's something different about them. They have a following—much more so than theologians—that attends their classes. Students get absorbed in what these intellectuals are saying in the abstract and they apply it when they go out into the world. They bring it into the courtrooms, into the halls of Congress, into the hospitals, and into the corporate world. All this humanistic secularism is given practical expression. There's a whole “army of evangelizers”—and I put those words in quotes—that take abstract ideas and they live them out.
Unwittingly.
Oh yes, but, they do apply them. What I'm saying is that theologians don't have that gift. They don't have the resource of literally millions who come into their classes and apply their teaching.
Is there a remedy?
Theologians have to show us the meaning of Church teachings; they have to form our laity. That is the most critical thing today, and in the next millennium— that our laity realize it must be formed intellectually, and then go out and live it. They have to go into every place where they work, teach, and play. I'd tell people even in the beauty parlors. I don't care where you are. In the diners, in the offices, at the truck stops. You have to bring your faith wherever you are.
That's what we're trying to do in the renewal. People can't keep their faith at home. In Congress? You better live the faith. If you're in the operating room, you live your faith. Wherever you go, you have to live it. I'm not saying you get on a soap-box, but you must witness your faith by the way you live.
—Joop Koopman
----- EXCERPT: Archdiocese of Philadelphia sets standard for spiritual renewal ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Dialogue DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:Current Post: Archbishop of Philadelphia, Pa., since February 1988; made a cardinal in 1991. Recently named to head bishops'commission charged with reviewing the relationship between Catholic institutions of higher learning and the local ordinary in accordance with principles set forth in Pope John Paul II's apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae. Member of Pontifical Council Cor Unum, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Congregation for the Clergy, and the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People. Civil lawyer before the courts of New York, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
History: Consecrated in 1980 as auxiliary bishop of Brooklyn, N.Y.; served as bishop of Pittsburgh, Pa. Former chairman of U.S. bishops'Committee on Canonical Affairs.
Vision: Puts premium on the spiritual renewal of the archdiocese by way of an ambitious and highly successful program founded in 1991 and due to culminate in the Jubilee year 2000.
Personal: Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., June 17, 1923, one of 11 children of Luigi and Maria Bevilacqua. Ordained in 1949.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Feast DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:MSGR. ROMANO GUARDINI pondered the reality and ramifications of the Transfiguration—liturgically commemorated by the universal Church on Aug. 6—in his classic work, The Lord (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1996).
For a brief moment, Jesus Christ—the Incarnate Son of God—allowed his divinity to pierce “the gloom of fallen creation.” Peter, James, and his brother John witnessed an incredible sight. “[T]he logos blazes celestial light,” says Msgr. Guardini.
But this forceful revelation didn't last long. In his inimitable style, Msgr. Guardini wrote: “But the dark asserts itself… ‘grasped it not,’as John says in the opening of his Gospel. Thus Christ's truth and love, which long for nothing but the freedom to spend themselves, are forced back into his heart—sorrow God alone can measure and comprehend.”
This observation—that evil will fiercely contend against good and feverishly attempt to nullify its effects—is not novel; others have suggested the very same. Yet, it is critical for all disciples of Christ again and again to hear this truth to which Msgr. Guardini so strongly adheres. Why? Because our personal transformation that Christ desires is threatened by temptation and sin.
Nevertheless, the glory of the God-Man is superior to the merciless havoc wreaked by Beelzebub. We, like Jesus, can persevere and overcome the incessant wiles perpetrated by the underworld's demons.
Msgr. Guardini puts it thus: “The Transfiguration is the summer lightning of the coming Resurrection. Also of our own resurrection, for we too are to partake of that transfigured life. To be saved means to share in the life of Christ. We too shall rise again, and our bodies will be transformed by the Spirit, which is itself transformed by God.”
Having acknowledged evil's persistence, the author quickly points to our future resurrection which—with a relentlessness all its own—will squash the lingering residue of evil to which we so easily succumb. In each member of the faithful “blissful immortality will once awaken.”
However, we don't have to remain in anticipation of this unfathomable gift of “blissful immortality” to commence. Again, Msgr. Guardini: “[T]his eternal life does not wait till after death to begin. It already exists. The essence of Christian consciousness is founded on its presence—through faith. The degrees of that consciousness are limitless and dependent on many factors: its clarity, strength, and 'tangibility'[the depth to which it is actually experienced and lived].”
Imagine the depth of gratitude that every follower of the Savior should be enjoying! God permits us in a real sense even now to know the joy of heaven. What Jesus showed those three Apostles on Mt. Tabor we also can see now. That “flaming arc, which broke through for the first time on Tabor” and that will “reveal itself victoriously in the Resurrection” is already ours for the asking. The Messiah and Lord of all glory is “captured” now by way of our faith, which will itself give way, in Paradise, to the beatific vision.
As Jesus was transfigured 2000 years ago, so we too are transformed. Not only do we look forward to our resurrection—pre-figured by the Master'—but we also savor Christ's undeniable presence in our lives today. Certainly, as in him we move and have our being, we needn't wait for a taste of eternity. The Evangelist exclaimed: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory; The glory of an only Son coming from the Father, filled with enduring love” (Jn 1, 14).
Father Charles Mangan is a priest of the Diocese of Sioux Falls, S.D.
----- EXCERPT: The Transfiguration ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Faculty: Check Your Faith at the Door DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, 142 pp., $22)
SOME 40 YEARS AGO, a friend of mine, finishing up his graduate studies at a world class university, was interviewed for a teaching job at a large midwestern school.
The interview went well. My friend was encouraged. The department chairman even offered to drive him to the airport for the trip home.
They got there early and went to the coffee shop to pass the time. There, the department chairman asked a question that apparently had been bothering him.
“I know you're a Catholic, but … you don't really believe all that stuff, do you?”
“You bet your life I do,” my friend replied. “Then I'm sorry,” the chairman said, “but there isn't any place for you here.”
Shocking, to be sure. But that was a long time back. An extreme case. Not typical—perhaps not even then, and certainly not now.
Indeed?
George Marsden has no anecdotes of this hair-raising sort to tell, but his conclusion isn't very reassuring: Religious believers may be allowed into secular academe these days, but at the price of keeping their faith to themselves. It seems that the tolerant, broad-minded, academic community can find a place in its ranks for just about everything except the open profession of Christianity.
Marsden, a Protestant who teaches history at the University of Notre Dame, caused something of a stir a few years back with a book, The Soul of the American University: From Establishment to Established Nonbelief. There he examined the process by which, in only a century or so, mainstream American higher education, Protestant in origin and sponsorship, turned resoundingly secular.
In The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship he returns to a theme touched on but not developed in the previous book. It is not just, as he puts it here, that “contemporary university culture is hollow at its core” but that, more specifically, this dominant academic culture “trains scholars to keep quiet about their faith as the price of full acceptance.”
This is less surprising than it might seem. As Marsden and many others point out, the much-prized commitment to “diversity” on the part of our multi-cultural university world can actually work as a powerful stifler of dissent and enforcer of conformity.
Especially that is so where religion is concerned. Marsden writes: “Peoples of diverse cultures are welcomed into respectable academic culture, but only on the condition that they leave the religious dimensions of their cultures at the door. The result is not diversity, but rather a dreary uniformity. Everyone is expected to accept the standard doctrine that religion has no intellectual relevance.”
Ironies abound in the resulting state of affairs. In the contemporary academic environment, Marxists, feminists, gays, lesbians, deconstructionists, African-Americans, and other groups celebrate—indeed, flaunt—their identity and ideology. Questioning that is simply not allowed.
But Christians are easily hushed. “Separation of faith and learning is widely taken for granted in our culture,” Marsden remarks.
Even so, some readers who agree with his analysis of the problem will find his prescription for dealing with it rather too soft.
Marsden is concerned to find a way for Christians to win acceptance in academic culture without ceasing to be visibly Christian. His aim is not to challenge the “pragmatic liberalism” of that culture but to avoid absolutizing it; that goal achieved (if ever it is), he has no difficulty with accepting pragmatic liberalism as “the modus operandi for the contemporary academy.”
Others do. This is an old problem for Christians: Fit in or fight? But of course, given pragmatic liberalism's lock on academic hiring and tenure decisions, Christian academicians who reject fitting in are unlikely ever to enjoy the option of fighting. In any case Marsden's way would be, at the very least, a large step in the right direction.
To what end? Ultimately, to the end of showing how faith and scholarship interact to the benefit of each. Marsden writes: “Many particular aspects of a Christian scholar's work will look much like the work of a colleague with another monotheistic set of commitments.
“Yet the relative importance that we assign to things, the central questions we ask about them, and the assumptions that lie behind these questions will all vary according to what makes up our larger picture of reality. The differences in the larger picture for the religious person … are beliefs about God and how God relates to us and the rest of reality.”
On any genuinely multi-cultural campus such beliefs would deserve and receive at least as fair a hearing as many others currently welcomed and cosseted by academe. Marsden finds Christian scholarship to be alive and well at some Protestant liberal arts schools. As for Catholic institutions of higher learning, his assessment is unsettling.
In the last half-century, he says, while becoming academically stronger, the Catholic schools also have become “much more like their non-Catholic counterparts,” and now the meaning of their identity as Catholic is “sharply debated. These Catholic institutions have “considerable potential,” he concludes, but it is “a potential that will have to be mobilized if they are to continue to be havens for Christian intellectual life.”
Russell Shaw is based in Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Russellshaw ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Paul's Vision Makes Him Obvious Target DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:There's no doubt about it. Today's American publishing industry has discovered religion. Alerted by savvy marketing staffers to the sales potential of religiously oriented titles, mainstream publishers are pushing out a perhaps unprecedented flood of books on biblical and other spiritual topics.
That's the good news. The bad news is that a large number of these new titles are often rehashings of the old historical revisionist school which, since the late 19th century, has aimed at debunking the historicity of the Gospels—the idea that the New Testament contains the essential facts about Jesus and the apostolic age. It was only a matter of time before the industry discovered the Apostle Paul, the near-contemporary of Jesus who is often called Christianity's “second founder.”
Now, to be fair, A.N. Wilson, British author of Paul: the Making of the Apostle, a well-known biographer and novelist and current literary editor for the London-based Evening Standard, is no mere sensation-seeking demythologizer. He uses a wide and often informative historical sense in examining his subject, his writing is careful as well as vivid, and he has a true historian's sense of prudence about his inevitable (and abundant) speculations—an occupational hazard in a book that purports to get inside the “mind” of one of history's most complex thinkers.
There are rewards here. Wilson's background material on Tarsus, Paul's birthplace, is illuminating, as is his convincing portrayal of the biblical motivation for Paul's epic mission to the Gentiles—namely, Isaiah's prophecy that, in the messianic age, the Gentiles would join the people of Israel in the worship of the one true God. In this sense, as Wilson rightly stresses, Paul should be seen not as one breaking with Judaism in order to evangelize non-Jews, but, like Jesus himself, fulfilling and upholding the Torah's ultimate purpose.
Nevertheless, Wilson's treatment, for all its elegance, exhibits the old debunker's tendency to mistrust (and bypass) the only historical sources we have for the life of Paul (namely, the New Testament), and construct a portrait of the Apostle based largely on negations of Christian tradition.
According to Wilson: Paul was not a student of the Pharisee Gamaliel, a “Jew's Jew,” as the Apostle himself asserts in Galatians, but a Diaspora Jewish businessman of highly dubious religious credentials, who does not seem to have read Hebrew.
Paul's conversion to faith in Christ a few years after the crucifixion was not so much the result of a vision on the way to Damascus, but triggered by his guilt as a member of the Jerusalem-based Roman temple police force that arrested Jesus (this, on the basis of a single ambiguous phrase in Galatians).
His often acrimonious relationships with Jewish authorities and even other Apostles had less to do with his theology than with the fact that he was a well-known collaborator with Palestine's Roman occupiers.
Paul did not, as tradition attests, die in Rome at the end of a long imprisonment, but probably died alone in Spain—the stated goal of his last missionary journey—still waiting for the end of the world.
Wilson's Paul is not without interest, mind you. He's something of a novelist's dream: a renegade self-hating Jew who turns the tables on the religious establishment of his day, a guilty bystander to a judicial murder who ends up worshipping his victim, a religious genius who wrests the remnants of a failed messianic movement from its narrow nationalistic preoccupations and turns it into a wildly successful mystery religion, a shrewd businessman who was also a Blakean-style mystic, dreaming of universal salvation.
Like most revisionist readings, Wilson's account has precious little to do with the figure of Paul that comes to us from the New Testament—the single contemporary witness to the life, thought, and character of the Apostle. What Wilson and his colleagues in crime have done, and continue to do, is like a historian who decides to reconstruct the life of Socrates in direct opposition to Plato's dialogues, our only source material on the philosopher's life. It might be fun, it might be interesting, but, absent any solid evidence, it would hardly be Socrates.
And there is an agenda here. Most revisionist readings of Paul, from Joseph Klausner's 1939 From Jesus to Paul on, have had in common a clear and concerted effort to rescue Jesus from Paul, his principal ancient apologist. In these accounts, Jesus is some kind of charismatic Jewish sage. Paul, on the contrary, is the “evil” inventor of the “Christ ideology” that became orthodox Christianity.
Christianity without Paul is quite literally nothing. Jesus, with the layers of exegesis, scholarship, and ceremony stripped away, is a Jew, a fastidious and fervent Jew who wanted to lead his followers into a stricter, purer observance of Judaism. It is Paul who claims divinity for him, and makes him the center of an entirely new religion.
This adds up to the repudiation of the reality of the Church. Modernity has long hoped to have Jesus in some way without the bother of the Church—to appropriate aspects of the Nazarene's heritage into the evolving general consensus by bypassing all that two millennia of faith in him has taught. Paul, clearly, is the figure that stands directly in the path of that attempt. For Paul, Jesus and the Church are inseparable.
More than any other single insight, it is the vision of the Church (the ekklesia, the “assembly”) as the body of Christ, his physical continuation on earth, that stands as Paul's unique and irreplaceable contribution to Christian thought.
After a dose of Wilson's speculations, it's surely in order to let the Apostle speak for himself: “There is one body and one Spirit,” Paul writes in Ephesians, “just as you were called to the one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift…. The gifts he gave were that some would be Apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. Speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building it up in love” (4, 4-16).
Gabriel Meyer, a Register contributing editor, is based in Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gabriel Meyer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Letter DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:Disney's Revisionism
When “Catholics Assess [the] Baptist Disney Boycott” (July 20-26), they should keep in mind the success that anti-Christian groups have had in turning the Magic Kingdom into an anti-Christian propaganda machine.
Disney's “adult” productions, such as the movie Priest and TV program Ellen, are just the frontal assault. Even the cartoons are rewritten to satisfy folks who hate Christianity. The historical Pocahontas gladly left a religion that used human sacrifice and ritual torture to appease what even they considered to be the devil to embrace Episcopalianism and the world-view of the metaphysical poets. Disney gave us a Pocahontas who preached the glories of paganism, a paganism of a New Age sort that gave her super-powers. They promoted the movie as a good example of how sensitive they were to the fact that their heroes were role-models.
Victor Hugo told us in The Hunchback of Notre Dame that Esmeralda finally found peace during the weeks she spent seeking sanctuary, soothed by the sights and sounds of the liturgy at the cathedral. Among the changes that Disney made to the book was to turn that role-model into a “tough broad” who couldn't stand to be inside a church. While Hugo's Esmeralda lived unmolested until she was accused of murder, Disney told us that Catholic France practiced genocide.
Disney does care what people read into its movies—as long as they're not Christians.
Don Schenk Allentown, Pennsylvania
Catholic College Dilemma
I whole-heartedly agree that philosophy and theology must play a crucial role in education at a Catholic college, as Dr. Timothy O'Donnell writes in “A Plea for Restoration of the Queen of the Sciences,” (July 6-12). While I support his vision of the Catholic college, I wonder how Catholic colleges can approach this practically.
As a student, I cannot help noticing an apparent divide between two types of Catholic colleges, those that bear a Catholic name and demand rigorous academic work and those that place an emphasis on the Catholic identity of their students but require a lesser degree of academic intensity. At the former, the students seem to think more critically and to garner prestigious fellowships more often. Yet for these students philosophy and theology provide an interesting but completely secondary alternative perspective. In the other type of Catholic college students may begin and end class with a prayer and discern their major with the guidance of a priest. Meanwhile, they seem much less inclined to challenge a professor's viewpoint or to pursue an academic question beyond the classroom. Both of these types of colleges seek to impart a Catholic education, but in each case an emphasis on one dimension of education results in a lack in another part of students'education.
If a Catholic college offers the fullness of truth, intellectual rigor and spiritual truths ought to go hand in hand. How can we bridge this apparent gap, and how can we do it without diluting the strengths of the various Catholic colleges as they already exist? There should be no division between Catholic college education's spiritual and academic dimensions.
Theresa Urbanic Ann Arbor, Michigan
Clarification
Avrahim Benjamin, featured in last week's “Dialogue” is a career diplomat who joined the Israeli Foreign Ministry in 1975. He has served at Israeli missions in Malta, San Francisco, Calif,. Washington, D.C., and Bonn, Germany. Benjamin has held his present position as director of the Division of Interreligious Affairs for the last two years. He will soon assume a new post, deputy chief of the Israeli mission in Moscow.
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----- EXCERPT: Letters ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: What a 'Public Church' Would Look Like DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:ADOZEN years ago, Martin E. Marty published The Public Church. As the title suggests, the book is concerned with the privatization of religion in America under the impact of pluralization and secularization. The publication of the volume initiated a decade of debate about what constitutes an appropriate strategy for the Churches in a new, more secular and less cohesive public order. With reference to Supreme Court decisions of the ‘60s and ’70s, Marty measured the extent to which “the civil religion was becoming so diffuse that it was ungraspable.” And the collapse of the American consensus on fundamental values within the legal realm reflected a growing fragmentation and pluralization in the culture at large.
Marty looked back to John Courtney Murray's classic statement on the American consensus We Hold These Truths (1960) as an anchor and marker for possible courses of ecclesial and public life. He made the case for a new reading of Murray that stressed not so much his theory of consensus and effort to develop a public theology as his vision of disparate but potentially collaborative religious communities. That is to say, Marty emphasized Murray's pluralist impulse; he argued in effect that Murray had anticipated the present cultural moment of centrifugal pluralism. The dangers of such pluralization were privatism and tribalism at one extreme and the “administrative despotism” of which Tocqueville warned at the other extreme. Marty proposed that the most effective way to counteract sectarianism and administrative despotism would be to gather together in a “communion of communions,” or a “public Church.” Participating Churches and denominations would get the opportunity to join with others in a common worldly Christian calling without having to sacrifice their unique traditions. Moreover, the public Church did “not await discovery”: it already existed in the network of voluntary and benevolent associations and ecumenical bodies that the Protestant Churches had created during the 19th and early 20th centuries. During that period, the constituency of the “communion of communions” had expanded to include not only the old mainline Churches but “the newer evangelization and Catholicism” as well.
In the past decade, others have endorsed this vision of a public Church. Dennis McCann, for example, has argued that the public Church is a “more modest and more promising” strategy than outright calls for a restoration of moral consensus through a public theology. In continuity with Murray and Marty, McCann focuses his advocacy on the concept of civility. “The ‘public Church’ is less a strategy for coalition-building,” he says, “and more a collective learning process for cultivating the Churches ‘common ’faith in civility.’” He goes on to say:
“Pluralism may exist without ‘civility’ but a pluralistic society cannot, if it lacks the sense of social interdependence which this virtue fosters among diverse communities who, both because of and in spite of their differences, remain pledged to one another for the sake of the common good.
“The ‘public Church,’ then, is merely the process that institutionalizes the practice of civility within the Christian “communion of communions” in order to promote ‘the harmonious exercise of the [nation'] social life.’”
Whether civility as a virtue of the public life has a future is an open question. There is nothing that guarantees its survival. With the breakdownof the synthesis of Christian piety and enlightenment republicanism that historically engendered civility in the American citizenry, tribalism or administrative despotism are real possibilities. I am sympathetic with McCann's contention that the public Church is less ideologically charged than certain versions of public theology issuing from the right and the left and that it is “more faithful to Toqueville's pioneering insight into the relationship between religion and democracy in Americas.” Nevertheless, I remain skeptical about the public Church proposal because of the ways in which shifts along the fault lines indicated by Robert Wuthnow and James Davidson Hunter have reconfigured religion in America and the roles that it is possible for Churches to play in the culture. If Hunter is correct, we are witnessing the end of the symbiotic relationship of biblical faith and society that Tocqueville described.
Herberg accurately described the public Church more than 30 years ago, although he did not use the term then: “America has emerged as a ‘three-religion country,’ in which the Protestant, the Catholic , and the Jew each finds his place. Insofar as America knows of a Church in the Troeltschian sense—a form of religious belonging that goes along with being a member of a national community—it is this tripartite unity of Protestant-Catholic-Jew.” Neither Marty nor McCann would argue that this configuration holds as it did when Herberg wrote Protestant, Catholic, Jew, for example. As Hunter has pointed out, “Whether one is Protestant, Catholic, or Jew does not mean very much when attempting to explain variations in peoples'attitudes or values…. Evidence strongly suggests that the significant divisions on public issues are no longer defined by the distinct traditions of creed, religious observance, or ecclesiastical politics.” Herberg has monitored this trend during the 1950s, and he saw that the narrowing of the once-substantial theological and ecclesiastical gaps between Protestants, Catholics, and Jews left room for a common alliance in a communion of communions that fostered the American Way and the American national consensus.
Hunter teaches us a new lesson. He asserts that the impetus toward common alliance and consensus that Herberg described no longer obtains. Instead, the ideological divisions between “progressives” and “orthodox” cuts through the major communions and denominations. This is bad news for the advocates of a renewed public Church, because it means that the Churches and denominations themselves have become divided houses. On specific issues—abortion, say— conservative Catholics, Protestants, and Jews will join forces in opposition to more liberal Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. Marty's and McCann's broad vision of the public Church as a “communion of communions,” a proximate reality in Herberg's America, looks increasingly remote and unrealistic in the age of the culture wars.
Hunter has shown that the major historic faiths and their denominations have internalized the culture wars. They mirror the conflicted moral vision in American life within themselves and precipitate conflict elsewhere. Indeed, precisely because religious communities cultivate moral sensibilities and convictions, the conflict is often more intense and divisive within their ranks than it is within the public at large. McCann's more modest definition of the public Church as “a collective learning process for cultivating the Churches'common ‘faith in civility’” deals only partially with what Hunter uncovers. It is difficult to see how even a teaming process could be common to religious houses as resolutely divided against themselves as those in America today.
But why even argue that cultivating a “faith in civility” is what makes a Church public or that it should be the first priority for the Churches in America? I am inclined to think that the Churches have no more idea than the culture at large about what civility amounts to— beyond some form or other of “liberal” tolerance. Civil society has come to mean a “neutral” society, in which conviction and deeply-held beliefs (especially religious beliefs) that make claim to public profession are held in suspicion and viewed as candidates for “deconstruction.” Tolerance requires that belief and conviction be removed from public discourse in deference to “personal preferences” and “lifestyles.” “Preferences” and “lifestyles” are now acceptable because they are more easily negotiable in a variety of business, familial, artistic, educative, and therapeutic environments.
Marty argues correctly that the contribution that civility makes to the common good is less an offering of the Churches than of the Enlightenment spirit, which is itself in eclipse. Frankly, I think that if there were to be a restoration of faith in true civility that respected and left space for belief and conviction, it would be just as likely (if not more likely) to issue from secular sources as from within the religious communities. Certainly, there is no reason to presume that religious people possess the moral insight and means to accomplish such ends, whereas nonreligious people do not.
Dr. Vigen Gurioan is a professor of theology and ethics at Loyola College, Baltimore, Md. He is a member of the Armenian Apostolic (Orthodox) Church.
Excerpted with permission from Ethics After Christendom by Vigen Gurioan, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996; tel. 800-253-7521.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Vigen Guroian ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'Whether We Provide Enough for Those Who Have Too Little' DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:Archbishop William Levada delivered the following speech at the blessing of St. Joseph Village, a new homeless shelter in the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
In the New Testament, the Letter of James has challenged Christians for almost 20 centuries to put our faith into action: “If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (Jas 2, 15-17). St. Joseph's Village is about putting faith into action.
In Washington, D.C., when you enter the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, you read these words: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” St. Joseph Village is a community effort to meet that test of a just and free society, of America. In performing its task to provide basic food and shelter for homeless families and children and pregnant women here in San Francisco, together with medical and social assistance and job training, it will also challenge us as Christians and as Americans to live up to our national ideals. And it will challenge our political leaders to give us welfare reform which truly helps, not punishes, the poor, the jobless, the homeless, and the immigrant elderly and disabled people who are our neighbors in San Francisco's beautiful corner of the global village.
Today, as we ask God to bless this new community outreach on behalf of homeless families and children, we acknowledge with gratitude the support of the City and County of San Francisco, and the personal encouragement and support of Mayor Willie Brown, whose strong commitment to addressing the great needs of homelessness in our city recognizes the importance of partnerships between the public and private sectors to achieve hands-on results. St. Joseph's Village has grown and continues to grow out of a unique set of circumstances.
The Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco, which closed St. Joseph parish some years ago, has made these former parish facilities available at no cost to provide this program for homeless families and children. Catholic Charities has organized a program which provides not only food and shelter, but daycare, medical assistance, and tutoring for children; job training and placement, and social assistance for jobless adults; and longer-term residence and prenatal care for homeless women who are pregnant.
In other words, this is a program to help families become self-sufficient, to regain the dignity and self-respect which the crushing burden of poverty has robbed them of. To achieve this, Catholic Charities has received the active cooperation of St. Mary's Medical Center for medical assistance, and of Mercy Charities Housing for management assistance. In addition, the many Catholic parishes of San Francisco are organizing volunteer efforts to assist in many aspects of the programs here. This is truly a partnering effort which can serve as a model for other community programs. The City of San Francisco is a true partner here through its grants for building upgrades and program assistance.
St. Joseph's Village is a small effort to help meet a large challenge in our society. The capacity here is 50 persons at any one time. Over a year's time, the Village might serve up to 1,000 people. But St. Joseph's Village can and will stand as a reminder to our society that we must meet F.D.R.'s “test of progress” for a just and free society, and that we meet that test by helping the poor and disenfranchised, not by punishing them.
Welfare reform legislation, together with changes in immigration law, are currently on the agenda of our political representatives both in Washington and Sacramento. They will make a big difference in the lives of people like those at St. Joseph's Village, and they will make a big difference—either for better or for worse—in the City of San Francisco. We should let our legislators know that we care about what laws they create. We should make sure they hear what our concerns are.
We should tell them that we will not stand for welfare and immigration reform that removes the safety net of basic food and financial assistance, which provides sustenance and shelter to children, to families, and to the elderly and disabled. We see this as a matter of fundamental morality and justice in our society.
There are several key targets we should keep in mind:
(1) We favor legislation which helps people transition from welfare to work. People find dignity and meaning through work, and by it make their contribution to society. This means providing for job training and education, creating new jobs which pay a living wage, and ensuring medical care for workers and their families.
(2) We favor legislation which strengthens family life. Strong, intact families whose children can be brought up in an atmosphere of personal responsibility, discipline, and morality are the guarantee of the future of our society. Statistics indicate that 27 percent of children in California live below the poverty line—in a state which has the seventh largest economy in the world! Welfare reform should help parents meet the social, economic, educational, and moral needs of their children. We think that creative ideas like a children's tax credit for poorer families, earned income credit, and stronger child support enforcement can help families meet these goals.
This is a program to help families become self-sufficient, to regain the dignity and self-respect which the crushing burden of poverty has robbed them of.
(3) We must provide a safety net. The poor you will always have with you, Jesus said, and it is a truism which we need to remind ourselves of. There will always be some people for whom we will need to be neighbors by ensuring that they continue to have basic health, food, and shelter. In California in particular we must be especially attentive that immigration reform does not strip our neighbors of their dignity by removing S.S.I. benefits and food stamps even from the elderly and disabled. Some 2.5 million families in California could potentially be affected by new welfare legislation; according to the mayor's office, assistance could be cut off from 14,000 to 38,000 San Francisco residents.
Our Churches and private groups will continue to do our best to assist these people, but it is the solemn responsibility of government—which is of the people, by the people, and for the people—that is, us—to ensure that the public bear the cost of these basic needs—not of neighbors who will not, but of neighbors who cannot meet those needs by themselves.
St. Joseph's Village is a new sign of hope in our city. Let us make sure that the welfare and immigration reform underway in Washington and Sacramento support the concepts of hope represented here with such promise for a better future.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Archbishop William Levada ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: An Unusual Collection of Relics DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:FROM UP ON the hill, you have a perfect view into the past. Bend your ears back to the 1800s and you can hear horse drawn carriages clanking along muddy roads. Watch the paddle wheel boats puffing along the river banks, and catch the smell of horse radish drifting up from the Heinz plant. This was Pittsburgh, Pa., before the turn of the century—and it was the most unlikely place for one of the most fascinating treasures of the Catholic faith.
Into this rugged corner of western Pennsylvania came a man from Belgium. His name was Suitebert Mollinger, and though a Catholic priest, he was educated in medicine and dabbled in homemade potions. Since he was from the royal court of Belgium, he had money—and a desire to serve God in a most unusual way.
He was assigned to serve the Most Holy Name of Jesus Church in Troy Hill, a tiny community overlooking Pittsburgh. Since there was no rectory, Father Mollinger reached into his own pocket and had one built.
Relics were a fascination for this priest. He had an interest in religious artifacts. He began collecting these rare items from all around the world. When the collection grew faster than the parish and the rectory, Father Mollinger again used his own family wealth and had a small chapel constructed, naming it in honor of the great Franciscan preacher St. Anthony of Padua.
Inside the chapel he arrayed small bone fragments of saints, pieces of clothing from these holy people, and an assortment of other beautiful relics. The prize of the collection was a tooth—one of St. Anthony'—which was set in a case apart from the rest of the collection
In all there are 3,000 relics in this chapel, some allegedly dating back to Old Testament prophets, such as Elijah. They're housed comfortably in solid wood and glass cases that were custom made for the chapel more than 100 years ago. Some 500 cases house these sacred mementos. It boasts of being the second largest collection of relics in the world. Only the Vatican has more.
In one case is a series of relics depicting the passion of Christ. Several pieces are on display, arranged in the shape of a cross. Another contains fragments of clothing from the Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, Jesus, St. Mary Magdalene, and others. Each of the Twelve Apostles is represented in relics. Life-size representations of some of the saints depict the manner in which they died. There is even a calendar of relics from many of the saints.
But probably the single greatest element in this collection isn't an artifact at all. For years the church parking lot was home to several mysterious crates containing huge but unknown parts of the collection. They sat in the rain and snow, quietly enduring the rigor of the seasons. One day when there was enough space to display them, Father Mollinger revealed a life-size collection of the stations of the cross, hand-carved in Munich, Germany, specifically for St. Anthony's chapel.
Are all the elements of this unusual collection genuine? Though numerous items have supporting documentation, many others do not. However, visitors come not to challenge authenticity, but to become better connected to their faith and its history.
Those wishing to come should note that Troy Hill isn't easy to find. Some of the long-standing residents don't know about “the chapel on the hill.” In order to find it, you may to have to search a bit. The chapel's hours vary from season to season, so call ahead at 412-323-9504.
St. Anthony's is located near downtown Pittsburgh on the north side. From the city, take Interstate 279 to East Ohio St. and look for the H.J. Heinz plant (the ketchup people). From there, you must follow the blue road signs directing you to the chapel. Wind your way through the narrow residential streets keeping your eyes peeled for its handsome double spires.
Hotel rooms within a mile or two of the chapel are a little pricey. The better bargains are near the airport, just off Interstate 279 South, or along Interstate 376 near Monroeville, just off the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Both areas are 15-20 minutes away from the chapel, but you'll save a bit on your night's sleep.
You won't find too many of the usual touristy things in the vicinity of the chapel. Even the food is the mom-and-pop variety of pizza stands and convenience stores. But down the hill, in downtown Pittsburgh, food is abundant and reasonably priced. On almost every street corner you can get a different kind of meal to please the palette.
When you're done on the Hill, head down into downtown Pittsburgh and browse through the Carnegie Science Center. It's part of the Carnegie-Mellon University and worth a visit. In back of the museum is an old submarine anchored in the river waiting to be boarded by visitors to Pittsburgh. If subs are not your preference, travel down the river about a quarter-of-a-mile and board an old-fashioned paddle wheel boat for a cruise through Pittsburgh past.
In the vacation season, you can always head up the river three or four miles to Kennywood Park, a first-class amusement center just a few minutes from downtown. And right next door to Kennywood is Sandcastle, a summertime water park to soak away those hot days of summer.
If you have an affinity with relics, or want to share in the emotion of a man who did, come see St. Anthony's Chapel in Pittsburgh. Listen to the guided tours; stare into the faces of the stations of the cross; then sit alone for a while and surround yourself with saints.
Chris Winters is based in Pittsburgh, Pa.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Chris Winters ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Sweep of History Determines Lovers' Fate DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:THE EMERGENCE of China as a global power is one of the most important events of the last few years. The news media highlights this fact on an almost daily basis with headlines and TV sound-bites that pose questions about the moral legitimacy of the Beijing regime: Should the United States grant China Most Favored Nation status as a trading partner despite its continuing persecution of dissidents and other human rights abuses? What will happen to Hong Kong now that it's under mainland control?
But there are other developments behind the Great Wall to which Westerners should pay attention. In addition to flexing its economic and geopolitical muscles, China is also beginning to produce artists with expanded cultural horizons. Prominent among this group are the so-called “fifth generation” of filmmakers whose works have received international acclaim although often banned at home. Led by Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern and Shanghai Triad) and Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine), they have examined their country's recent past with ruthless honesty. In the process they have obliquely raised many of the same moral questions that trouble western observers.
Although the best of the fifth generation films are dramatically compelling to viewers everywhere, their view of history seems alien to most Westerners. It is depicted as a cruel, impersonal force, mercilessly grinding down those on the wrong side of it. Individual choices, while important to a person's moral development, are usually overwhelmed by larger political and cultural events, and evil often goes unpunished.
Kaige's most recent work, Temptress Moon, has been banned on the mainland because of its political and moral candor. The action begins in 1911, when a democratic revolt caused the abdication of the country's last imperial dynasty, and extends to 1921, the year the Chinese Communist Party was founded. It's a classic family saga about the passing of power from one generation to the next as told by an outsider whose behavior affects the outcome.
Thirteen-year-old Yu Zhongliang (Ren Lei) has been orphaned by the revolution as it engulfed Shanghai. He is invited to stay with his sister (Zhang Shi) who has married Zhengda (Zhou Yemang), the heir-apparent of the wealthy Pang family. Eager to help build the new society that will emerge after 2,000 years of imperial domination, Zhongliang aspires to be a scholar and study in Beijing. Instead he is treated as a servant by the Pangs and forced to prepare the daily opium pipe for his brother-in-law, an unbalanced addict.
Zhengda's pre-adolescent sister, Ruyi (Wang Ying), runs wild through the palatial rural estate, pulling the covering off mahjong tables while games are in progress and scampering into places where women have been traditionally forbidden. Zhongliang's happiest moments are his playtime with Ruyi and her loyal, not-too-bright cousin, Duanwu (Ge Lin). But Zhengda so degrades the young would-be-scholar that he runs back to Shanghai.
Ten years pass, and a grown-up Zhongliang (Leslie Cheung) has found profitable employment with one of Shanghai's most powerful crime gangs.
His boss (Xie Tien) orders him to return to the Pang estate and ingratiate himself with Ruyi (Gong Li) who was made head of the family after her father's death. Her brother, Zhengda, had degenerated into an opium-addled vegetable unfit to rule.
Individual choices, while important to a person's moral development, are usually overwhelmed by larger political and cultural events, and evil often goes unpunished.
The gang plans to manipulate Ruyi's trust in Zhongliang to gain control of the Pang fortune. An expertly trained blackmailer, Zhongliang seems perfect for the task. His hatred for the Pang family is a prime motivation. Unfortunately, he falls in love.
Ruyi quickly comes under his spell. Herself an opium user, she has preserved a kind of innocence that makes her unable to see the trap that's being set for her.
Zhongliang is torn between his feelings for Ruyi and obligations to the crime family. When he brings her to Shanghai as the gang ordered, his boss can see that love is blossoming between the two young people. So the older man stages a scene to reveal to the Pang heiress the sleazy way her lover has been making his living. Shocked, she flees back to her estate. Zhongliang chases after her and is forced to choose between his two loyalties.
On the surface, Temptress Moon is a highly charged melodrama of romance and revenge set against a background of great wealth. But Chaige's intelligent, passionate treatment of his material gives it a larger meaning. The opulent beauty of the Pang estate is documented in a way that reveals the social and moral decay on which it's built.
Indestructible as the Pang family seems to all who become caught in its meshes, the audience can see it won't be able to withstand the winds of change swirling so fiercely around it. The unnecessary but inevitable tragedy that results from Zhongliang and Ruyi's romance dramatizes why revolution will surely follow. While the movie's two lovers struggle desperately to assert their individuality and lurch towards freedom, the psychological and family backgrounds that fate has dealt them ultimately determine their destiny.
The West is going to have to come to terms with China in the next century. Epic films like Temptress Moonprovide us with clues as to how its understanding of the human condition is sometimes different from ours.
John Prizer is based in Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: Art & Entertaintment ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Parents Stand to Benefit from New TV Ratings DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:WHERE DO children learn their moral values? At home? In church? In school? Thirty years ago these would have been the answers. But today an increasing number of parents have reluctantly concluded that the primary purveyor of morality to their kids is television.
This perception was a key motivation for advocacy groups and politicians to pressure the entertainment business to agree to a TV ratings system, and, in this context, the industry's recent agreement to revise its system should be scored as a victory for parental empowerment. Five of the six networks and almost all the major cable programmers will now add content-rating icons to existing classifications that categorize programs according to their suitability for different age groups.
The new designations will be V, L, S and D—for violence, coarse language, sexual situations and dialogue with sexual innuendo. These will be added to the existing categories: TV-G (suitable for general audiences), TV-PG (parental guidance suggested), TV-l4 (parents strongly cautioned), and TV-M (specifically targeted at adults).
At first glance all these letters and numbers may seem confusing, but they are designed for parents to use on the V-chip, a thumbnail-sized device that Congress mandated be installed in all new TV sets beginning in 1998. The chip can be programmed to block out—by ratings—shows that parents don't want their kids to see.
As examples of what the changes will mean, the current hit series, NYPD Blue, will now be rated TV-14-S, V, L, and the popular sitcom, The Nanny, TV-PG-D. Cartoon shows will add the label FV, for fantasy violence to the existing categories of TV-7 and TV-Y7.
The deal would never have been cut unless both the Clinton administration and the Republican Congress had threatened the broadcasters financially. They issued warnings about possible punitive legislation concerning the stations'valuable licenses and their transition to digital broadcasting. At stake are tens of billions of dollars. So, as much as the industry hated the idea of any kind of ratings system, the conglomerates that own television— Westinghouse, the Walt Disney Co., Time Warner, the News Corp., and Viacom—decided that it wasn't worth the fight
The broadcasters also realized that despite their initial fears there had been no loss of revenue from advertisers since the adoption of the system in January. Their accountants have figured out that homes with pre-adolescent children constitute a small percentage of TV viewership and that it may be at least a decade before even a majority of these families own a V-chip.
NBC, the lone holdout, currently has the most successful programming line-up and hopes its position will attract top producers and writers to work for it. Citing first amendment concerns, it issued a statement that declared “as a matter of principle, there is no place for government involvement in what people watch on television.”
These views are shared by Hollywood's creative community. The Writers Guild, the Directors Guild, and the Screen Actors Guild published their own joint statement, saying they cannot support the new ratings system and fear it will have a negative effect “on television programming enjoyed by millions.” The guilds are considering a lawsuit on free-speech grounds.
This attempt to raise the red flag of censorship is based on a distortion of the facts. The industry agreement makes no promise to change programming content. It merely provides viewers with more information about what's being aired.
Initially all the broadcasters adopted the point of view of NBC and the guilds, but they couldn't sell it to the public. Instead they looked like the tobacco industry, damaging children in the pursuit of profit. So they tried to get a system that would harm their interests as little as possible.
The broadcasters negotiated the agreement with the National PTA, the National Educational Association, the American Medical Association, and seven other groups in response to lawmakers'threats to come up with their own ratings system if the industry didn't act voluntarily. In return for the deal, it expects an 18-month moratorium on new legislation regulating TV.
But some organizations aren't satisfied. They want changes in the permissive nature of the programming itself: “We're very concerned that it doesn't go far enough,” said Mark Honig, executive director of the Parents Television Council.
Tim Wildmon, vice president of the American Family Association, thinks things may even get worse. The ratings system merely gives the industry “more license to do whatever they want to do, under the guise of ‘Hey, we warned you,’” he told reporters
.
Afew lawmakers voiced similar fears. But Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who participated in the deal-making process, says any new legislative proposals will be killed by the congressional leadership who signed off on the moratorium.
The new system is really a truth-in-labeling agreement. Now parents will know in advance the kind of shows to which their children are being exposed. It may be a step forward, but it's a small one if you look at the big picture.
The permissive content of many shows isn't likely to be changed despite threats of consumer boycotts. Concerned citizens need to address other issues as well. Our culture's key non-government institutions— Churches, schools, and the family—need to be strengthened in their resolve to defend traditional values. Only then will our children have a chance to grow up in a morally positive environment.
John Prizer is based in Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Johin Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Holy Land Pilgrims & 'Living' Judaism and Christian-Jewish Dialogue DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:When a Christian comes to Israel, what are some considerations he or she must keep in mind?
Rabbi Rosen: There is absolutely no question that Jesus and the Apostles were good Jews. Therefore, to be in an environment where Jewish observance is the norm and the natural context should be an exciting experience for a believing Christian. But most pilgrims still evince a preconciliar mentality. There is still a residue of supercessionism, the notion that Christianity has taken the place of Judaism. In their experience, the holy sites are detached from their Jewish origins and context. That's still a problem. Obviously, 30 years [since Vatican II] does not wipe out 2,000.
However, John Paul II has stressed that the election of the Jews is permanent.
Indeed he has spoken in terms of the covenant never being revoked, which was his re-phrasing of Nostra Aetate. In Israel, moreover, pilgrims can experience what it is like, once again, to be a minority within a Jewish majority—as it was in the beginning.
An opportunity to rediscover their roots.
Yes, looking at it from a Christian perspective, I would say Israel offers a very special opportunity. After all those centuries of us being a minority, we can re-assert our own national dignity and independence from the gentile whim of pushing us from pillar to post. That's a very important component in the ethos of Israel. It's good for Christians to be exposed to this.
Is Israel doing enough to ensure that there is more exposure to living Judaism?
It's very difficult logistically and tactically to guarantee that if there isn't the willingness and the desire on the part of the Christian pilgrims. The majority of pilgrims, naturally, are connecting to their local Churches. These are Palestinian. The local Churches are not interested in them having contact with living Judaism or with Israel because it doesn't serve their interests. Many pilgrims don't even meet local Christians, either. The pilgrims come here purely to see the “dead stones” and not to see the living communities. Bishops in the home communities for example, could help in this regard through planning the pilgrimage program accordingly.
You've been in many negotiations with Vatican officials. What can you tell us about the status of Jerusalem?
The Vatican today isn't asking for international status [for Jerusalem]. It began to recognize the total lack of practicality of internationalizing the city. To some extent, it was the result of a more sanguine look at its interest and rights and how these can best be protected—recognition that, in the final analysis, Israel and the Palestinians must be able to give those kind of guarantees to the Church. Now the Church is asking for international guarantees for Jerusalem.
Even if it's under Israeli jurisdiction?
This is the interesting question. I'll give you my interpretation. What does this mean “international guarantees?” [The Church] has signed an agreement with Israel, one of whose major components is the recognition of the religious rights and of the integrity of the holy sites. No one has guaranteed freedom of access to the holy sites as much as Israel.
Even with the closures of the West Bank?
Israel is the only authority that's ever enshrined in law [access to the holy sites], a law she passed in 1967, after Israel took control of East Jerusalem. In the accord between Israel and the Vatican, Israel affirms that—and the Holy See acknowledges Israel's affirmation of the integrity of the holy sites, the guaranteeing of freedom of religion and the maintenance of the status quo.
The status quo being the administration of holy sites by various Churches.
In my opinion that is what guarantees, from the Holy See's point of view, her historical rights in Jerusalem. If the Church signed an agreement with Israel, it's assumable that there is faithful trust in Israel. If not, why sign an agreement? If she does have faith and trust in Israel, then why does she need international guarantees? What will international guarantees do? Again, if the Church doesn't trust Israel, then international guarantees aren't going to make Israel behave. If Israel is trustworthy, why do you need international guarantees?
How do you explain this then?
In my opinion the reason the Church is looking for international guarantees is not in relation to Israel at all. But it doesn't do any harm, from her point of view, for the world to think that Israel is the problem. In reality, however, for the Holy See, Israel is not the problem. The problem is the Arab world; the Church can never get from any Arab authority what she's gotten from Israel. The Church acquired from Israel the recognition of her inherent stake in the Holy Land. That is something she had never acquired before from a non-Christian power. She can't get that from any Arab-Muslim society. Because Islamic teaching would oppose it. If we were controlled by some of our rabbis, the Church wouldn't have gotten it either, but thank God—I say this as an Orthodox rabbi—thank God we are a secular democracy. Religion is always healthier within a democratic society.
Islam teaches that any area that has come under the control of Islam is “holy land,” which can never be considered as inherently belonging to anybody other than Muslims. You can come to an accommodation, out of political necessity, with a power that may control what was once Muslim land. But you can never say that the other party has an inherent legitimate stake in it because it' essentially Muslim land. As a result the Holy See can never get the same kind of accord from any Muslim authority or society, whether it's Jordan, the Palestinians, or whoever, in the way that they have arrived at an accord with Israel. However, the Church can use the agreement with Israel and its content as leverage in relation to the Muslim world within the context of an international framework. Everybody who has any interest in Jerusalem would acknowledge the Church's rights and interests—by virtue of international guarantees—and therefore her stake in the Holy Land.
What about the persistent accounts of a Christian exodus from Israel?
There has been a continued diminution in the number of Christians in East Jerusalem and the Bethlehem area (now under the Palestinian Authority) already since Turkish times. However the majority of Christians in this country live in the Galilee, and there they have multiplied by nearly five times their size since 1948. This is the only place in the whole of the Middle East where Christianity is growing. Most pilgrims don't go to visit the communities in the Galilee. They might be exposed to a Palestinian perspective, but not the Israeli-Christian or Israeli-Arab-Christian perspective.
What's the Christian population in the Galilee?
About 170,000. They have multiplied so significantly not because everybody loves Christians in Israel—I wish it were the case—but because they are the beneficiaries of a democratic society, with opportunities and educational facilities. They have done very well as a result of that.
Isn't there some discrimination, though?
Of course the situation is far from perfect and it could not be otherwise in the political context. Nevertheless their situation is still light years better than that of any other Christian community anywhere in the whole of the Middle East or North Africa.
Besides the Church's juridical status in Israel (see “Dialogue,” July 27-Aug.
2), there is the matter of taxation. Can you explain?
Christians in Israel enjoy a unique privilege that Muslims and even Jews in the Jewish state do not have with regard to taxation benefits for Christian institutions. This historic practice has continued to be part of the Israeli government's magna-nimity. But now the Holy See wants to formalize this matter and see these benefits enshrined in law.
Any other substantial matters that remain to be resolved?
Israel has a problem with the agreement that was made by previous governments with regard to pilgrimages and tour guides. Every country worries about the income of its own citizens first. No tour guide may work on a professional basis without being licensed by Israel. The Israeli Tour Guide Association wants all guides to be licensed, but, naturally, the different religious communities want their own personnel to be guides. The Israeli government of the time accommodated this demand. However it is still a source of irritation within the relevant quarters of Israeli society. But one thing is clear: The commitment on the part of the Church, the Holy See, and the State of Israel to recognize the importance of pilgrimages. In addition, the hope is expressed in the Fundamental Agreement that this will lead to a deeper understanding and knowledge of the local society and its communities.
The time appears ripe for theological discussion to complement the more technical, political accords. Father Marcel Dubois OP, a pioneer of Christian-Jewish relations, has spoken of the “Christic” dimension of Judaism. He suggests that, in some mysterious way, the faithful Jew is connected to God and doesn't need the “Christian way.”
Marcel is part of a select minority, which, please God, may grow. However for many Christians, the Jew is dear to God, but he really is Class 1-B without Jesus. Nevertheless, it still means that God does love him and therefore he has a status that other non-Christians don't have. That, I would say, is a predominant attitude within the Church. Christianity is about looking at life through a Christian perspective, of course. So, if Jews are upset about that, they are upset about the very existence of Christianity Catholics and Jews have an obligation to examine the nature of some kind of partnership here. I recognize that such words are unusual coming from an Orthodox rabbi, because most Orthodox rabbis are still very much under the impact of our historical tragic experiences with Christianity. They are not always aware of the changes that have taken place with the Christian world. Often, given the nature of Orthodoxy in facing the secular world, they also tend to be inward looking.
Martin Buber declared that “we share a book—that is no small thing.” In other words, Christianity and Judaism emerge from the same scripture of Revelation that Christians call the Old Testament; that is the Hebrew Bible, and its message for Humankind. In the United States, Rabbi Irving Greenberg has suggested that Christianity's message had to come about in a way that did not deny the covenant of the Jewish people with God, which is a covenant directed specifically at a particular people. Divine design allowed for the people of Israel as well as the more universal “people of Israel,” which follows the person of Jesus. It's a very interesting theory. You're talking about two parts of the one covenant, or the two-covenant theory.
Both could end up in the same place.
As Jesus himself says, “in my father's house there are many chambers.” Therefore, you can be in your father's house in different ways. There doesn't have to be one exclusive way to be with God.
Christians view Jesus as the Son of God. What does that mean to you?
That view is, and must be—because otherwise I would be a Christian—beyond my comprehension. But the fact that there are affirmations of Catholic faith that I cannot comprehend, does not mean that I cannot be respectful of my Catholic neighbors. The Incarnation, though, is beyond my comprehension. That's why I'm not a Catholic.
Christians accept it on faith.
Can you believe what you can't possibly understand? What is the nature of that kind of belief? The only way I can understand that that question is if someone has been through an experience that powerfully confirms a reality, which cannot necessarily be translated into intellectual language. That's what I understand to be the nature of the experience of the first disciples or the first Apostles. The issue of the messiahship of Jesus wasn't the question that led to the break between the first Apostles and their Jewish contemporaries. They were Jewish themselves—still worshipping in the same synagogues, still observing the Jewish way of life. That wasn't the issue. For example, there is a Jewish community today that believe their rabbi was the Messiah, and even though he's died, they believe he is going to come back again as the Messiah. Nobody says they have to be hounded out of the Jewish community because of that
But, the attitude of Jews to them at the time of Jesus has been that the Messiah— clearly according to biblical prophesy—is one who throws off the yoke of oppression and prevented the Romans from persecuting them. There would be an era of universal peace. And if this hasn't happened, then he can't have been the Messiah.
That's what you would believe today.
That's what I would believe today. So, the first Christians would have one of two answers. The simple answer is the answer the Jewish community gives today about their rabbi. “He didn't fulfill these things the first time when he revealed himself. When he comes back the second time, he will fulfill these.” Then, I believe, there was a more sophisticated interpretation that came on within Christianity, which was to say: “You Jews don't need to understand these concepts in such an earthbound way. Try and spiritualize them. If you have this faith that we have, then you are no longer in exile. If you have this faith that we have, then you are in a state of universal peace.”
The kingdom is within….
Within. So since these kind of comments came out of the personal experience, the sympathetic objective observer within the Jewish community would have said to his Christian contemporaries: “This is a matter of your personal experience. I haven't had that experience, therefore I can't say what you're saying. It would simply be false of me to say because I don't, at the moment, believe it. Because I haven't had that experience.”
For Catholics faith is a gift.
I believe my gift comes through being born into the people of Israel, and there are those who have this conferred on them as well. Of course, it's not a question of pure ethnicity. It involves those who have either been born into or have somehow accepted that particular gift that was given to the covenantal people. That's also mystery— why God particularly selects a particular people. Why does God need a particular historical paradigm?
Catholics think of Jesus as a personal God. You don't quite think of your God as intimately involved with your life.
We do, but, we do not think of a God whose intimacy requires some form of human intermediary—even though he is divine—such as the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus. From our point of view, it's much more simplistic. Each of us has a direct line to God. If we are sincerely contrite for everything we do wrong, God, in his abundant and unlimited mercy, accepts our contrition. Therefore, we all live in a continuous personal relationship with God.
And he guides every little detail of your life, protecting every hair on your head?
Indeed. The purpose of the commandments and daily observance is to be in living communion with God. The observance of commandments is a celebration of God's presence. Every time I eat, and drink, and make a blessing, I am conscious of God's presence. For me, this is the living dynamic of spirituality in my life as a Jew.
It's obviously not the “obsolete” old law. However, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, acknowledging the living old law, still speaks of Jesus as the fulfillment of the law.
He acknowledges that Judaism has a special place, but he doesn't go all the way. All the more reason for in-depth exchange between us.
So is that where the dialogue process will head?
The question of anti-Semitism and the State of Israel are no longer issues on the agenda. There is nothing further that the Jewish people can ask of the Holy See when it comes to condemnation of antiSemitism. The Vatican cannot be any more forthright than it has been. As to the role of the Church historically at certain times, like during the Holocaust, that's an internal matter on the part of the Church, though a real soul-searching in that regard would be greatly welcomed by the Jewish community. As far as Israel is concerned, we now have a full relationship. We now need to put the past behind us and address the future.
We should be doing two things. First of all, on light of our common sources and shared values, we should work together in response and action on many contemporary issues, even though there may be perspectives that differ. We should also be deepening the mutual understanding of the nature of our relationship, which means theological discourse.
—Joop Koopman
----- EXCERPT: Veteran of Vatican-Israeli talks thinks Catholics and Jews are ready to tackle theology ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Interview in Jerusalem DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:Position: Co-liason to the Vatican for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL); responsible for Inter-Faith Relations in Israel. Professor at the Jerusalem Center for Near East Studies, Mt. Scopus, Israel. Member, International Jewish Committee for Inter-Religious Consultations; member, State of Israel's delegation on the Permanent Bi-lateral Commission with the Holy See. Founder, Inter-Religious Co-Ordinating Council in Israel. President, World Conference on Religion and Peace.
Achievements: Chief Rabbi of Ireland (1979-1985); co-founder, with the Christian Primates of Ireland, of the Irish Council of Christians and Jews. Senior Rabbi (1975-1979) of the largest Jewish congregation in South Africa; rabbinic judge on the Ecclesiastical Court (Beth Din). Served as chaplain in the Western Sinai.
Vision: Forging deeper relationship between Catholics and Jews worldwide.
Personal: Born and educated in Great Britain; based in Jerusalem.
----- EXCERPT: Rabbi David Rosen ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: This Sunday at Mass: Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time DATE: 08/03/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 3-9, 1997 ----- BODY:TODAY'S GOSPEL meditation on the bread of life discourse focuses in a special way on the bread of life as food. Jesus instructs us: “You should not be working for perishable food but for food that remains unto life eternal, food which the Son of Man will give you.” At first glance, such a directive may seem illogical and extreme. It we do not labor for the food that keeps us alive, then what will sustain us so that we can work at all? Jesus the bread of life provides the answer.
In the Bible, the staple of bread is synonymous with food itself. Bread remains so essential to human subsistence that to lack bread is to lack everything. This identification between bread and our very existence hits home in the most profound way as we hear Jesus declare: “I myself am the bread of life.” To lack Jesus in our life is to lack life itself. Jesus capitalizes on our vital need for food in order to signal our crucial need for Christ. Only by consuming him do we receive the sustenance that not only preserves our life, but also fills it with meaning, insight, and goodness. We become what we eat.
The crowds remind Jesus that their ancestors had manna to eat in the desert, miraculously provided via the mediation of Moses. But Jesus corrects their perception: “It is my Father who gives you the real heavenly bread.” The bread of life does not come from a place but from a divine person. It is the blessing of a relationship with God. If we want to know where the bread of life comes from in our own lives, we must be willing personally to enter into that relationship of love. The bread of life is not merely a food to be eaten, but a life to be embodied: “God's bread comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Jesus the bread of life satisfies our every hunger and keeps us from ever thirsting again.
Therefore, in order to partake of the bread of life, we must be willing to receive it with the humility and confidence of children. And that true childlike disposition comes to us as we remain united to Jesus, “the Son of Man,” whom the crowd first calls “Rabbi” and then later “Sir,” indicating their growth in faith. They ask Jesus to “give us this bread always.” In response to just such a request, Jesus teaches us to pray: “Our Father … give us this day our daily bread.” We are to “come to” and “believe in” Jesus in the same way that he himself approaches the Father, as a child of God.
Therefore, the work of God that we should be about is to “have faith in the one he sent.” Our daily bread is the grace to love Jesus as much as he deserves. That dynamic of lived faith nourishes us more than any earthly food because it ushers us into the very intimacy of the life shared by the Father and the Son. Our living faith serves as an imperishable food that satisfies unto life eternal.
Father Peter Cameron OP, a Register contributing editor, is a professor of homiletics at St. Joseph Seminary, Yonkers, N.Y.
----- EXCERPT: To Lack the Bread of Life, Is To Lack All ----- EXTENDED BODY: Peter John Cameron OP ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Multinationals Scrutinized for Treatment of Workers DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:Critics argue that without independent monitoring, sweat shop problem will remain
DAVID BROUGHT Goliath to his knees with a well-aimed stone from his slingshot, the First Book of Samuel tells us. But in today's high-tech global village, an army of consumer “Davids” is needed just to make trans-national corporations like the Gap, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Nike, and Levi-Strauss sit up and take notice. Increasingly bombarded with petitions, protests, letters, and threats of boycotts however, the multinationals are doing just that.
And more and more corporate Goliaths are acceding to the demands of the Davids that the rights of workers not be sacrificed on the altar of profit.
Some corporations, Nike among them, have established codes of conduct to ensure workers are treated humanely. The Gap, after much public pressure, was one of the first Goliaths to agree to independent monitoring. Others, like Levi-Strauss and Nike, while among the first corporations to introduce codes of conduct, have steadfastly refused to allow for outside monitoring of their codes.
Among the Davids is Pope John Paul II, who, in his encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, wrote: “Solidarity helps us to see ‘the other’ not as a simple tool whose economic usefulness is to be exploited at low cost, until it has worn out, but rather as a ‘fellow human being,’ and ‘assistant’ that one must help to participate, on an equal footing with oneself, in the banquet of ‘assistant’ that one must help to participate, on an equal footing with oneself, in the banquet of life, to which all men have been equally invited by God.”
Multinational corporations, of course, have their sights set more on keeping shareholders happy than on “solidarity.” And when the bottom line is profit, it helps to have a source of cheap, non-unionized labor—people who will work long days, six days a week, earning less than the minimum wage and, perhaps best of all, won't complain.
But is cheap labor really cheap? In recent years, several well-publicized horror stories of human rights abuses, poverty wages, the use of child labor, and even torture in the factories of some sub-contractors in developing countries have cast the spotlight on deplorable labor practices that may have cost the companies millions of dollars in lost sales.
The industry is still reeling over the revelation last year that clothing sold by Wal-Mart and endorsed by TV personality Kathy Lee Gifford was made, much to the chagrin of Gifford herself, in U.S. and Honduran sweatshops. Damaging, too, was a 48 Hours report on CBS, showing that while Michael Jordan earned $20 million a year promoting Nike's swoosh label, factory workers in Asia earned 20 cents an hour, were forced to work overtime, and in some cases endured physical and sexual abuse.
For the past two years the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (CCODP), the development arm of the Canadian Catholic bishops, has pressured Nike and Levi-Strauss to agree to independent verification of their codes of conduct. It's been unsuccessful to date— even with the support of about 230,000 Canadian consumers who sent cards to the two multinationals in support of the CCODP campaign.
Levi-Strauss claims it's being unfairly targeted and says opponents should go after the companies that have no code of conduct whatsoever. The corporation is controlled by the Haas family which, at an estimated net worth of over $12 billion, ranked seventh in Forbes magazine's latest list of the world's richest people.
Nike's response to the CCODP campaign and those of other international organizations was to get an evaluation of how its contractors are abiding by the company's code. It hired former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young and his firm GoodWorks International to perform the task.
In June, after a four-month investigation in Vietnam, Indonesia, and China, Young concluded that Nike “is doing a good job in the application of its code of conduct.”
However, Young also said the Oregon-based company “can and should do better.”
He also called for external monitoring. Giving the phrase the widest possible interpretation, Nike is setting up a panel of “distinguished international citizens” and an ombudsman mechanism to ensure workers'rights are protected. It also has a monitoring contract with professional auditors Ernst & Young.
It's clear that for all the “external” monitoring, Nike intends to continue calling the shots, including choosing the people who will do the task. Company spokesperson Michelle McSorley says, however, that “these people have reputations as well and they're not about to kowtow to Nike.”
But outsiders argue that the monitoring system won't solve the “sweat shops” problem. “Ahired gun is a hired gun,” says Ken Whittingham, spokesman for the CCODP. Abused workers, he maintains, are not likely to complain to people paid by the company. And each time an abuse is reported, Nike argues it's an isolated case, added Whittingham.
But McSorley says: “When you have 500,000 people there are bound to be instances [of abuse] reported, but we won't tolerate that. We are doing things that are way above what our competitors are doing.”
In the larger picture, Nike and Levi-Strauss—and the CCODP—are only a few of the many players involved in the international struggle to define where the right of the multinationals to make huge profits ends and the right of workers not to be exploited begins.
Education—of corporations and consumers alike—is the area in which the definition is being honed. Companies concerned with their future can't help but be influenced by what the public thinks. And a survey, like the one last year which showed that 70 percent of Americans would refuse to buy a product if they knew it was made by exploited workers or child labor, sends trans-nationals a clear message.
Living in the information age, the public also has the means to be well-educated consumers. At one time they may have simply shaken their head at the $150 price-tag on a pair of child's Airmax shoes made by Nike. Now, many want to know where the product was made, by whom, and under what working conditions.
“What we wanted was to have a public debate,” says Carl Hetu, a CCODP animator in Ottawa. “The debate is occurring and I think that's healthy for everyone, especially for workers in the Third World. And maybe in the end they will get their just wage.”
If so, it will have taken the labors of countless Davids.
Art Babych is based in Ottawa, Canada.
----- EXCERPT: SOME COMPANIES DRAW UP CONDUCT CODES ----- EXTENDED BODY: Art Babych ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Painter Found Symbols of God's Truth in Nature DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:THE MAJORITY of great art museums—most contemporary ones excepted—have beautiful religious paintings in their permanent collections. They don't often devote precious exhibit space to shows with religious themes, though.
This summer, two exquisite exhibits break that pattern. “The Glory of Byzantium” at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art which just recently closed (see Register, July 27- Aug. 2), and “The Sacred and the Profane: Josefa de Obidos of Portugal” which continues through Sept. 7 at The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.
Josefa de Obidos (1630-1684) is a heroine of Portuguese culture. A devout Catholic who did much of her work for convents and monasteries, she is hardly known outside her native country. Yet she is considered the most original painter of Portugal's Baroque period, a time when very few European women painted professionally.
The 47 paintings on view at the Women's Museum are fleshly and sumptuous: Baby-doll Infant Jesuses, a flagellated Christ dripping with blood, and the Virgin Mary spraying mother's milk into the mouth of Saint Bernard hang next to paintings of honey-dipped pastry, codfish, and wisteria, bruised pears and seedy melons.
With the first startling image that greets the viewer— a poignant bound lamb titled Agnus Dei—it's clear that for Josefa, nature is just another way to depict God's truth.
So often in the Bible, Christ is described as a lamb or as a shepherd. As we prepare to receive the Eucharist we pray, “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.”
Josefa's visual translation of the metaphor is breathtaking. Three versions of the image are shown side by side. In one, a suffering white lamb with curly fleece and a faint halo lies on a sacrificial stone slab, its four hooves tied. It's an extremely realistic and moving picture of a lamb close to death.
It's also a poignant symbol of the crucifixion. Rose petals and violets signifying Christ's charity and humility are scattered around the animal. The image is wreathed with a garland of flowers with grapes (Christ's blood) and sheaves of wheat (his body).
Another painting which combines religious figures and natural symbols derived from the Bible is Saint John the Baptist with Border of Flowers. A young John, carrying a small lamb, holds a scepter-like cross inscribed Ecce Agnus Dei—Behold the Lamb of God. The dense wreath encircling him includes a honeycomb with bees and locusts to remind the viewer that as a hermit, John lived on locusts and honey. There are snails, which eat what they can find, like a hermit. There's also a water gourd, used for baptisms, suspended in the garland.
The profusion of flowers are tied with seven ribbons signifying the Holy Spirit's gifts and the fact that St. John was filled with the Holy Spirit at the visitation. Further, each species of flower—tulips, roses, daisies, wisteria, marigolds, irises, violets, forget-me-nots—corresponds to a different virtue which should be cultivated by the soul's “inner garden” according to the mystical literature popular at the time, says Professor Barbara von Barghahn, professor of art history at George Washington University.
“Still lifes are usually interpreted as totally secular works. If you go to most books on Spanish still life painting in the Golden Age there is very little emphasis on the religious content. They are all interpreted in the secular, or profane, light. Still lifes were often displayed in private homes, so art historians have assumed the work has little religious meaning. But this ignores the devout nature of families at the time,” von Barghahn explained.
For her contribution to the Josefa de Obidos exhibition catalogue, Von Barghahn consulted the mystical works of the period, especially the writing of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila, both of whom Josefa depicted.
“I went to this literature knowing that Josefa painted for convents and monasteries. She had access to these books and she was an intellectual. St. John of the Cross is not easy. He is talking about faith and darkness. But there are beautiful passages.”
Von Barghahn quotes St. John's interpretation of a passage from the Song of Songs (4, 16) which reads:
“Arise, O north wind, and come, O south wind; blow through my garden, and let the aromatical spices thereof flow.”
In Spiritual Canticle, St. John responds: “The garden in the soul … God sometimes grants these favors to the soul, his bride. He breathes through her flowering garden, opens all these buds of virtues, and uncovers these aromatic spices of gifts, perfections, and riches; and disclosing this interior treasure and wealth, He reveals all her beauty.”
Von Barghahn sees a similar attitude toward nature as a reflection of the soul in Josefa's painting. “I think the still lifes were intended as memory fragments. By memory fragments, you were supposed to be led from the flowers and fruits to thoughts about the vineyard of your soul. The fruit would remind you of Eden, for example, which would cause you to think about the acts of mercy you should perform. The still life would inspire contemplation and a repentant soul.
“There's another message in the paintings of candy and cream and cookies which were worldly pleasures. During Advent and Lent you were not supposed to indulge, so these paintings serve as warnings of temptation.
“Taste and fragrance run through her work,” observed von Barghahn. “It's worldly and biblical too. Think of the number of feeding episodes in the Bible.” In her catalogue essay, she enumerates the banquet narratives in the canonical gospels from the wedding feast at Cana to the supper at the house of Simon to the feeding of the 5,000, all of which anticipate the messianic banquet of the Apocalypse, described as a wedding feast by Matthew.
Von Barghahn also referred to St. Teresa, who declared, according to the professor: “Eden is everywhere. Paradise is everywhere. Isn't that beautiful?”
Josefa de Obidos's religious training began at age 14 in an Augustinian convent. Though she never took vows, she often lived in monasteries and was associated throughout her life with the Franciscan order. She was buried in the brown habit of the Poor Clares.
Many convents during this era supported themselves by making and selling pastries and candies, foods which were supposed to represent the sweetness of Jesus. That's another source of significance for Josefa's still life compositions.
A painting like Still Life: Boxes, Earthenware, and Flowers shows how important is this religious outlook in interpreting the artist's intention. An open wooden box of marzipan, a crystal cup on a silver compote, and a red urn filled with flowers sit on a table littered with candies in a darkened room.
The key to understanding the painting is the crystal cup which signifies Marian chastity and sits near violets symbolizing the virtue of humility. The red urn stands for Christ's blood, and the stem of red wisteria, extending over the cup, represents the spiritual refinement achieved through chastity and acts of mercy in contrast to the earthly sweets on the table which do not lead to enlightenment.
Josefa was remarkable for her independence as well as her painting. She was a landlord who became wealthy managing property, which allowed her to support her mother and other family members. She was well-educated in Flemish, Italian, and Spanish artistic trends, probably through her father, Baltazar Gomes Figueira, a gifted painter in his own right, and through her godfather, Sevillian painter Francisco de Herrera the Elder.
Most important, she offers viewers entry into a world of extraordinary sophistication and belief, a world animated in every aspect by faith. “Josefa uses a universal language—understood by the people of her time—that has been lost. Her paintings are needed for a non-spiritual age,” concluded von Barghahn, who is Catholic.
The Portuguese government recognized the importance of von Barghahn's work on Portuguese art by conferring on her the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator. But it's a puzzle why the National Museum of Women in the Arts, working closely with the government of Portugal, titled the exhibit “The Sacred and the Profane” when the central, ground-breaking, revelation made by the exhibit-related scholarship is that all of Josefa de Obidos's complex iconography ultimately refers to her Catholic faith.
“I just don't know,” answered von Barghahn. “But they certainly picked the title before I came on board.”
Eleanor Kennelly and Victor Gaetan are based in Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Eleanor Kennelly and Victor Gaetan ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: St. Theresa Seems a Sure Bet as Church Doctor DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY — An in-depth scrutiny by the Vatican has cleared the way for St. Theresa of Lisieux to be named a “Doctor of the Church,” and the process now awaits a final decision by Pope John Paul II, according to the official promoter of the effort.
Carmelite Father Simeon Tomas Fernandez told the Register the Pope is widely expected to announce his approval of conferring the title on St. Theresa (also commonly spelled Therese) during World Youth Day in Paris. Fr. Tomas also said he has “the greatest hope” that subsequent Church ceremonies granting the honor would be held before the end of the year, if not by the saint's feast day October 1.
The announcement by the Pope would make St. Theresa the third female Doctor of the Church. The Church gives the honor to great Catholic figures who made important contributions to explaining the faith and whose teachings were accompanied by true holiness. Presently, 32 saints bear the title.
“The entire Church would be so very happy to see St. Theresa given this additional honor,” Fr. Tomas said. “It would serve as a further confirmation of the enomous influence her life and thought have had on the People of God these past 100 years.”
This year marks the centenary of St. Theresa's death. The beloved saint, also known as “The Little Flower,” and “St. Theresa of the Child Jesus,” entered the Discalced Carmelite cloister at the age of fifteen. She was only 24-years-old when she died in 1897 of tuberculosis. If she is made a doctor, she will be the youngest ever. The average age the 32 Church doctors lived to is 64. The extraordinary story of her nine years in the convent is told in the Autobiography of a Soul, which she wrote under obedience.
Fr. Tomas noted that the spread of Theresa's fame was largely due to the decision of her prioress to circulate a revised version of the book, together with details of her death, to all Carmelite houses. “Theresa knew how to respond to the great spiritual thirst in our world,” he said. “She could penetrate the great mysteries of God's love and mercy while using the most simple terminology.”
Her autobiography was soon translated into most European languages and several Asiatic ones. A number of miraculous cures and an even larger number of favors attributed to her intercession caused the truly remarkable spread of her cult.
Earlier this year, the Discalced Carmelite order and the French Diocese of Bayeux, which includes the city of Lisieux, formally presented a final request to the Vatican asking that St. Theresa be granted the title “doctor.” The request detailed the impact she has had on Catholic spirituality in the 100 years since her death.
Besides this official appeal, Vatican insiders say Pope John Paul II received hundreds of requests from Catholics around the world imploring him to confer the honor on the popular saint.
Fr. Tomas has served as the “promulgator” or official promoter of the entire effort. He noted that the process of naming someone a “Doctor of the Church” requires that three conditions be met: the person must have displayed a clear sanctity of life, they must have left an eminent doctrine, and there must be an official proclamation on behalf of the Universal Church.
In the case of St. Theresa, Fr. Tomas said the sanctity of her life could not have been clearer. “Because the Church has already recognized her as a saint, there was no doubt.” He explained, however, that the Vatican went through a lengthy process to decide whether St. Theresa's doctrine could truly be considered “eminent.”
Three high-level discussions were held since May on this point alone, he said—the first with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the second with the Congregation for the Cause of Saints, and the last meeting among cardinals, bishops, and priests from both congregations combined.
The proceedings were kept strictly confidential. Nonetheless, Fr. Tomas said he received word that participants at the final meeting “agreed unanimously and with great enthusiasm” that the doctrine put forward by St. Theresa of Lisieux could be called “eminent.”
“Now we only lack an official declaration by Pope John Paul II,” Fr. Tomas said. “And from what I've heard, he will announce, or speak of, or say something about this during World Youth Day in Paris. Naturally, we await his decision.”
In the weeks leading up to World Youth Day, Pope John Paul used his public audiences to speak with and about young Catholics. He said youth today are looking for “authentic teachers and witnesses who can show them the path of truth and love.” He also stressed that growing toward holiness is “the basic task” of the Christian life.
St. Theresa of Lisieux is one of two models of Christian faith the Pope will hold up to young people during World Youth Day Aug. 18-24. The other is Frederic Ozanam, whom Pope John Paul will beatify during the week-long gathering. Ozanam and a small group of friends in Paris founded the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in 1833. The charitable society now has more than 850,000 members in 130 countries.
For the benefit of World Youth Day pilgrims, St. Theresa's relics were moved from Lisieux to the Paris Basilica of Our Lady of the Victories—the church where she prayed during her visits to the French capital.
Beatified in 1923, canonized in 1925, St. Theresa of Lisieux was declared Patroness of the Foreign Missions by Pius XI in 1929—an honor Fr. Tomas called “extraordinary.”
“Theresa was too young to even know the various parts of the world,” he said. “Yet from inside the walls of her convent—through her writings, by her life, and with her prayers—she has had an enormous impact on mission territory as well as on the rest of the Church.”
Theresa was prevented from joining Carmelite missionaries in China because of a hemorrhage—the first sign of the tuberculosis which was to kill her. As a result, she stayed on in her cloistered convent, often suffering heroically in silence.
Fr. Tomas said her message is “very close to that of the Gospels” which she so often cited. “She also expressed a love of God as a Father in childlike simplicity and trust,” he said.
The saint took for her motto the well-known words of the great Carmelite mystic St. John of the Cross: “Love is repaid by love alone.” Fr. Tomas noted that her “little way” of spiritual devotion shows a “deep understanding of the mystery of the Cross.”
Presently, two female saints bear the title “Doctor of the Church.” St. Teresa of Avila was proclaimed a doctor in September 1970 by Pope Paul VI. A month later, he conferred the same honor on St. Catherine of Siena. No new doctors have been proclaimed since.
Stephen Banyra is based in Rome.
----- EXCERPT: Papal approval of rare title for 'Little Flower'xs is expected at World Youth Day ----- EXTENDED BODY: Stephen Banyra ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Nigerian Missionaries Buoy African-American Parishes Stateside DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:A GROUP OF young missionary priests from Nigeria is giving a lift to a U.S.-based religious order that dedicates itself to the needs of African-American Catholics.
The Society of St. Joseph, known more popularly as the Josephites, has teamed with the Missionaries of St. Paul from Nigeria to provide pastoral care to Catholics. Ten of the missionary priests work in Josephite parishes in the Dioceses of Beaumont and Galveston-Houston, Texas, Lafayette, La., and in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., according to Father Cosmas Okechukwu Nwosuh MSP, who came to the United States in 1991.
The 110 Missionary of St. Paul priests serve in 10 African countries, but one of their biggest challenges to date occurred in 1986, a year after the society celebrated its first priestly ordinations. That year the Josephites invited them to work in the United States.
Not unlike most religious orders in the country, the Josephites have seen their numbers decrease during the past 30 years, while the needs of their apostolate have grown. There are 120 Josephite brothers and priests, according to Father Edward Hogan, archivist at the order's headquarters in Baltimore. Father Hogan said the Josephites began in 1882-83 and had as many as 260 priests, 90 seminarians and 20 novices during the early 1960s. But with the Josephites diminished numbers, the Missionaries of St. Paul are a boon.
“They are young and dynamic African priests,” Auxiliary Bishop Curtis Guillory of Galveston-Houston said of the missionaries. “They give people a sense of hope.” Bishop Guillory, who is vicar of African-American Catholics in the diocese, said that the six missionaries in his diocese share important cultural and spiritual ties with the people in their four parishes.
Two of the churches are in Houston's inner city, and the other two are in towns outside the city. “They can relate to both young and old people,” Bishop Guillory told the Register. The first Nigerian priests arrived in Houston eight years ago; one year after the bishop was appointed. He said a couple of diocesan seminarians in recent years have come from Josephite parishes, and he thinks that more young African-American men will consider priestly vocations because of the missionaries'example.
Father Nwosuh said he and his brother priests try to share their African identity and show people that they can be African and Catholic. “In the United States, Catholicism is seen as a white man's religion” by many African-Americans, he said. This even though there are more than two million Catholics in the United States of African descent.
The extension of the Nigerians' mission to the country was not inconsistent with the society's objectives, said Father Nwosuh. “The globe is our goal,” said the 35-year-old priest, who plans to return to Nigeria in September to teach at the society's seminary after he receives a doctoral degree in Church history from Catholic University of America in Washington.
The late Cardinal Dominic Ekandem of Nigeria founded the Missionaries of St. Paul in response to Pope Paul VI's 1969 challenge to Africans, made during his visit to Uganda, to serve as missionaries on their continent, according to Father Nwosuh. In 1964, Cardinal Ekandem became the first bishop of West Africa, and later the first Nigerian cardinal before he died in 1995. In 1977, the prelate founded the society and with the Nigerian conference of bishops established the National Missionary Seminary of St. Paul in Abuja, Nigeria.
Father Nwosuh said the Missionaries of St. Paul began in Nigeria but hope to get vocations from outside the country and to keep growing. Bishops in Asia and Latin America have invited the missionaries to begin their work in those continents, he said.
In addition to their pastoral work, the missionaries engage in the “apostolate of the pen,” according to Father Nwosuh. In Nigeria, they print The Catholic Ambassador, a publication with 20,000 subscribers. “In Nigeria, that's a big deal,” added the priest. They also publish a calendar, a Catholic directory and about half-a-dozen books each year.
Ten percent of the 300 different ethnic groups in Nigeria are represented in the missionary seminary, according to Father Nwosuh, and the missionaries try to learn to transcend ethnic divisions during their formation. The southern part of Nigeria is more Christian, while there are more Muslims in the countries northern region, where Christians sometimes are persecuted.
In the United States, the missionaries make it a point to provide Catholics with a sense of the Church's universal mission. “People sometimes get caught up in their own parish,” and identify that as the Church, Bishop Guillory said.
Father Nwosuh said that he has observed a “new paganism,” in the West. “It's a much more subtle form and hard to combat.” He also noted that Nigerian culture seems to promote respect for life more adamantly than American culture.
Father Hogan, the Josephite archivist who taught in 1985 at the Abuja seminary, said he came to admire the Nigerians for their hard work and rigorous life. “Having to deal with only a few hour's electricity each day and eating goat's meat was difficult,” he said. He remembers having to run into the showers in the afternoon before the seminarians to have a chance to take a hot shower—because the sunshine heated the water—and then having to watch for scorpions on the shower floor.
In Nigeria, the former British colony that is the most populous country in Africa, the Catholic Church is young, said Father Nwosuh, noting that there are many adult converts.
He said that people in towns and villages take great pride when one of their own becomes a priest, and towns and villages try to promote priestly vocations. Father Nwosuh is one of 11 children, and he said that large families are more the norm than the exception.
Nevertheless, Father Nwosuh said that some in Nigeria may come to the priest-hood with mixed motives. “Some may be trying to get a good education and gain a higher social standing,” he said, but their motives can become refined with time. The disciples James and John had mixed motives in following Jesus, the priest noted, but they both became saints.
Father Nwosuh said the priesthood can be “a very lonely journey,” in the United States, and he admires young seminarians for disregarding the dominant social mores. He thinks of U.S. society as being “very anti-celibacy and anti-religion” and said that in Nigeria, people encourage you and pray,” for priests.
According to Father Nwosuh, Nigeria has the highest number of priestly vocations, apart from Poland. India, Philippines and Zaire also have many priestly vocations, he added. There are hundreds of diocesan seminarians in Nigeria, and he said his missionary society's biggest problem is providing the means for training seminarians. Each year, 200 young men apply to become seminarians, he said.
William Murray is based in Kensington, Md.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: William Murray ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: DIALOGUE DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:Current Post: Pastor of St. Rose of Lima Parish in Newark, N.J.
History: Deeply involved in civil rights movement in the 60s; founder of New Community Corporation in the troubled Central Ward of Newark.
Achievements:- For more than 30 years has led the New Community Corporation, now the Central Ward's largest employer of minorities and one of its foremost economic players with a budget of $200 million; received a “genius” grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Vision: Fully integrating social action in religiously oriented pastoral work; preferential option for the poor; do it yourself rather than wait for government; Central Ward to become the preferred place to live in Newark.
Personal : Ordained in 1963; doctorate from Fordham University.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Monsignor William Linder ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: With Fund's Help, Poor Students Take Flight in the Windy City DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:THOUGH ST. AGNES of Bohemia Grade School in Chicago is blessed in many ways, affluence is not one of them. Half of its 600 students are Mexican-born immigrants, and many parents struggle to meet tuition payments on the wages earned from their entry-level jobs in factories and warehouses.
The school's hardscrabble neighborhood is a testament to the woes of poverty. Gangs and drugs collide with the lives of youth. The local public high school, competing against the lure of the streets and lacking sufficient resources, graduates less than one-third of its students.
Yet, amid the grinding poverty, St. Agnes manages to keep its building in good condition, its students in scholarship money, and its programs in fine fettle. The school spent $65,000 on rewiring for its 40 state-ofthe art computers. It plans to part with another $65,000 for a new roof for its 95-year-old building. It even paid $55,000 to set up a model preschool, accredited by the National Association of Early Childhood and Education, which has accredited only five percent of all preschools.
Students, too, are better off than expected. Twenty-three immigrant students who arrived in the United States less than three years ago are on full scholarships.
St. Agnes is not alone in its surprising financial abilities. One hundred twenty-three other grade and high schools in the Archdiocese of Chicago also are able to rise above impoverished circumstances and provide inner-city children with quality education. The schools are beneficiaries of the Big Shoulders Fund, created in 1986 by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. The fund supports 42,000 students at 102 grade and 22 high schools.
The fund is a private, separately incorporated not-for-profit group run by corporate and civic leaders, only some of whom are Catholic. The most successful program of its type, the fund has raised $62 million for Catholic schools from businesses, individuals, and foundations. “Big Shoulders” was coined by the poet Carl Sandburg to describe Chicago's industrial brawn.
The fund provides schools with capital, operating and so-called incentive grants for new books, software, science materials, and the like. Other funds are distributed for scholarships, teacher seminars and workshops, the creation of preschools, and programs to assist children with disabilities.
Schools qualify for assistance from Big Shoulders by meeting federal poverty criteria, such as percentage of students qualifying for free and reduced lunches as well as other data.
Even with the support, Big Shoulders schools struggle mightily to make ends meet. Some schools have closed their doors despite the funding. But without the fund many more schools would have closed.
“It's the reason we're alive. We couldn't survive without Big Shoulders,” said Pat Jones, principal since 1980 of St. Agnes, which has received a $75,000 operating grant from the fund every year since 1986.
Like Catholic social service agencies, Big Shoulders benefits large numbers of non-Catholics and minorities. Thirty-eight percent of students at Big Shoulders schools are not Catholic. Nearly 80 percent are minorities, mostly Latino and African-American.
The greatest payoff may be the solid citizens produced by the schools.
Altogether, the Archdiocese of Chicago has 281 grade and 48 high schools, the largest private school system in the world and the 11th largest of all U.S. school systems. The average cost to educate a grade school student is $2,163, but on average, schools charge tuition of just $1,468. Normally, fund-raisers, support from the parish, and grants from the archdiocese make up the difference. But Big Shoulders schools, whose parents are low-income, are less able to raise funds through tuition and fund-raisers or count on parish support. And their aging buildings typically require steep repair costs.
The need for Big Shoulders has not lessened as the economy has improved, said Daughter of Charity Sister Margaret Marie Clifford, associate director. “The fund was created to serve those who are economically disadvantaged. No matter how good the economy is, parents at our schools are the first ones to be laid off or be down-sized,” she said.
The board of directors of Big Shoulders has a goal of raising $100 million. That money may be needed soon. Chicago Archbishop Francis George said in July that financial pressures may force school closings. An announcement from a Special Task Force on Education is expected in the fall. The archdiocese has been down this road before. Eighteen schools were closed in 1990 when 26 parishes were closed due to the archdiocese's deficit. Every year since then several schools have been shuttered.
The Big Shoulders money has made a big difference. About 94 percent of Big Shoulders grade school students go on to graduate from high school. Some 87 percent go on to college. Those numbers are significantly better than those posted by Chicago public schools.
Test scores also attest to the value of Big Shoulders schools. Students score near the 50th percentile in the California Achievement Tests, scores dramatically higher than those earned by public school students.
The Big Shoulders schools represent a tremendous savings to taxpayers. If the students at the schools were to transfer to public schools, taxpayers would have to pay an additional $230 million each year.
The greatest payoff may be the solid citizens produced by the schools. “Our graduates have become lawyers, teachers, accountants—you name it,” Jones said. “Big Shoulders has made a difference in the lives of so many people. It's making a better tomorrow for everybody.”
The effectiveness of Catholic schools is a primary reason why business leaders support Catholic education. “Big Shoulders gives inner-city students an equal-education opportunity,” said Andrew McKenna of Schwarz Paper Co. “They get the same type of quality education they'd receive if they were living in school districts well-known for the amount of money spent per student.”
Big Shoulders enables schools to stay current with their curriculum. Santa Maria Addolorata Grade School has received funds to upgrade both its math and English programs. It also accepted funds for a counselor, a Felician sister.
Located in a depressed North Side neighborhood, the school nevertheless produces students who shine. All 21 graduates this year are headed to private high schools. Twenty-eight of its alumni made the honor roll last year at just one nearby Catholic high school.
“We're able to provide a personal touch,” said principal Bonnie Veth. “We keep the kids on target.”
Jay Copp is based in Chicago.
----- EXCERPT: The Education Page ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jay Copp ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Turn Off the Image DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:Pundits often lament that in recent years we've become an “entertainment culture” obsessed with celebrity. It seems to be an obsession without limit. As John Prizer writes in his review of Air Force One (see page 7), we have even begun to measure our presidents by their pop celebrity appeal as well as by their ability to lead. And, as Prizer notes quite rightly, despite some worthy predecessors, our current chief exec-utive—he of the hipster shades and sax appeal—is a true master at the game.
There's nothing inherently wrong in recognizing and playing to the obsession as Bill Clinton so masterfully has done, first as a presidential candidate and since 1992 as president. Why not show a sense of humor and try to win over the younger generation by waxing hip on MTVand blowing the sax on late night TV? Some observers found his overtures to the younger generation endearing and even a little daring.
The problem is that popular appeal in our celebrity culture is more about image and perception than about reality or truth. And Clinton's image consultants have mostly succeeded in getting the public to see him in a positive light. But as hip, or as concerned for the common man, or as moderate on abortion (pro-lifers know the truth about that) as the general public might think him, Clinton still can't seem to shake the wide-spread perception that he is too ready to bend with the winds of popular opinion. Even many of his supporters don't think him a man of any real mettle. Apparently the image consultants can't fool the public all the time.
In sharp contrast stands Pope John Paul II. Like Clinton or any leader, the Pontiff has his supporters and his detractors. (Most detractors think him too full of mettle.) But John Paul, who is recognized, even by critics, as telegenic and as an effective communicator, has proven he has plenty of staying power in the fickle celebrity culture. This despite declining to tender his message to garner popular support.
And a simple question underscores his appeal to youth: How many world leaders could draw nearly half a million young people from all over the world, as John Paul II is expected to do for World Youth Day next week in Paris?
The Pope doesn't accommodate his message based on polls or pundits because he isn't concerned about protecting his image—only about furthering the profound truths proclaimed by Christ 2000 years ago. People, especially young people, sense that and are drawn to it. In Crossing the Threshold of Hope John Paul II makes the same point: “(When the young seek me out) in truth it is not the Pope who is being sought out at all. The one being sought out is Christ…”
That even our president seems a product of the celebrity culture is disconcerting. But not all the world's youth have bought into the narcissistic gospel that image is everything and that we should all aspire to our 15 minutes of fame on the daytime TVtalk shows. Though almost everyone gathering from around the world in Paris next week came of age in the midst of our celebrity culture, their presence at World Youth Day presumably means they haven't fallen for the culture's prevailing siren song.
In Paris, the Pope will hold up two persons whose lives offer a bold alternative to the celebration and pursuit of celebrity. The two: Frederic Ozanam, who at 20 co-founded the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, the charitable group that's now combating poverty in more than 130 countries; and St. Theresa of Lisieux, who though she entered the cloister at 15 and died just nine years later, has had an immeasurable impact on the faith of many with her “little way” of spiritual devotion. Both Ozanam and Theresa lived and died last century, but how they chose to live offers a relevant counter-cultural example for our times.
The pull to devote oneself to cultivating an image is strong and persistent in our culture. But, more often than not, what lies behind the pose is emptiness and nihilism, and none of the richness that must have filled Frederic Ozanam or Theresa. Both were young and restless and searching for something deeper—just as are many youth today. When half a million of them gather together in Paris, they'll be reminded they aren't alone.
—LM
----- EXCERPT: EDITORIAL ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Our Legal System Gone Awry DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:by James Q. Wilson
(New York: Basic Books, 1997, 134 pp., $15)
WEEP FOR common sense! It is, we know, rare. And often it's disappointed. James Wilson's new book, Moral Judgment: Does the Abuse Excuse Threaten Our Legal System?, at any rate, helps explain the disappointment. The trouble is, Wilson has common sense, but he doesn't know where it comes from. The result? He sets himself up—and us—for lots of grief.
It's not that Wilson isn't clear or balanced. Nor is his thesis suspect. He argues that our legal system is too tolerant of excuses. Juries, in turn, too often try to explainrather than judgea defendant's actions. In doing so, they are aided and abetted by “experts.”
So how does Wilson betray common sense? He's an acute observer of the legal scene but, alas, a poor philosopher. Consider the following indictments.
First, there's his embrace of positivism. Wilson wants to warn us about the claims made by social scientists. They can't know what they say they do. Why? Because “real knowledge, as opposed to mere opinion, consists of statements that have survived the efforts of many people to disprove them.” To support his claim, he cites Karl Popper's well-known “falsifiability test.”
But the Wilson-Popper test largely limits us to empirical knowledge—though the test itself is not empirical. As such, it's self-defeating. Common sense, of course, is happy to distinguish between knowledge and opinion. But common sense is disappointed when its friends offer bad advice on how to do so.
Second, there's Wilson's fishy account of freedom. He warns of bogus “syndromes” that absolve defendants of personal responsibility. Fair enough. But he also tells us that “all behavior is caused.” Slow down, professor. If what we do is caused, and science shows this, then how can we act freely? And don't we have to be free in order to be personally responsible?
Here's where Wilson gets fancy about freedom. On the one hand, how we think and act is as caused as, say, the jerk of a knee tapped by a hammer. Yet, we're told, how we think and act “is caused by the interaction of genetic endowment, social learning, and available incentives.” This kind of causality is compatible with being free—or free-enough to be morally responsible.
But Wilson's “compatibilism” won't work. If how we act is a function of genes and environment, and thereby caused, the game's up. “Cause” is far stronger than “influence.” Complex causation—internal as well as external, psychological as well as physiological—leaves me no more freedom than the hammer's tap leaves my knee. Yes, complex causation makes for a longer story. But the upshot is the same: human action is reduced to mere behavior. Common sense, of course, recognizes personal responsibility. But gutting our concept of freedom does us no service.
Indeed, it's an even more anemic view of the human person that's at the root of Wilson's troubles. We are, for him, scarcely more than temporal intersections of desire and environment. No wonder he stumbles in trying to account for the dignity of the person. The law, he insists, largely rests on the supposition that “all lives are of equal moral worth.” Ah, but why? Because each person is made in God's image? Because each has a rational soul? None of that! The law takes this view because “it restrains our natural desire to sympathize with people we like (who often turn out to be people like us) and to condemn those we don't like.” So it goes: Truth yields to pragmatism.
If Wilson counterfeits freedom and dignity, supposedly to benefit common sense, guess what's next? For him, it seems, the opinion of “most people” becomes the touch-stone of right and wrong. So, for example, “most people” want judicial reform, have complex views of justice, and object to stereotyping. Well, we needn't be curmudgeons to note that if “most people” had common sense, we wouldn't be in the legal muddles that so need a remedy. Wilson sees that Lady Justice supplies “the moral moorings” of the law, but he won't find her via a Gallup Poll. Common sense, of course, would honor justice, but the received opinion is a shabby substitute.
Despite the indictment just served, Wilson does make specific proposals worth discussing—however shaky their philosophical basis. He suggests that we:
3 Define first-degree murder as “the intentional killing of another person, save in self-defense, under duress, or as a result of the lawful actions of law enforcement officials";
3 Sharply limit psychiatric and social-science experts;
3 Hold drunks fully culpable for criminal acts;
3 Abbreviate the jury selection process, and;
3 Restrict appellate review of criminal courts.
Such steps, he argues, will help make it clear that a jury serves not to explain a defendant's action but to submit it to the judgment of law.
It's instructive that Wilson thinks the eclipse of religion among the elites contributes to the shift away from judging; to them a social science explanation seems more enlightened. Indeed, even many believers are rushing from judgment. Comedian Dave Barry likes to say “I'm not making this up.” Nor am I. At a recent parish liturgy, a prayer of the faithful asked “That those involved in the criminal justice system not judge the acts of others, we pray to the Lord.” However sincere, this prayer affronts Christian common sense. We are to hate, and thus judge, the sin—with sinners, ourselves among them, awaiting God's judgment.
Yet the plot thickens, as the Timothy McVeigh sentence shows. There is a struggle between Christian common sense and ordinary common sense. The judicial system calls for no greater penalty than capital punishment, and nowhere does it more closely review a defendant's excuses. Here we have a haunting test case, and here our witness to human dignity is paramount. Because of the dignity of the person, the Church teaches that capital punishment, unless it serves as a self-defense for society, is unjust. The Denver verdict, to ordinary common sense, is a scandal.
James Hanink is a professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: James Hanink ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: On Death Row, Peace and Light Came to Him DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:presented by Augustin Michel-Lemonnier
New York: Alba House, 1996, $12.95)
On Monday evening, Sept. 30, knowing that he would be guillotined the following morning, Jacques went to bed, slept, awoke during the night (the guard on duty gave me this information) and asked what time it was.
“Three o'clock in the morning.”
He then asked for a light, “because I have to get ready at once.” He got up, made his bed, and took up his missal. This is how I found him on entering his cell at 5:30…. He had refused the traditional glass of rum and the cigarette…. I heard his confession for the last time. His communion, which followed, was very moving. I spoke briefly with him. His answers were calm, his peace profound. Then he fell silent….
“I faced him when they bound his hands, so that I might comfort him. The executioners had him mount the scaffold. At once, Jacques said to me, “The crucifix, Father, the crucifix,” and kissed it many times. These were his last words…. He died a great Christian.
THIS REPORT of Father Devoyod OP, chaplain of the Santé prison in Paris, brings vividly to mind, on two scores, St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Jacques Fesch, who during three-and-a-half years of solitary confinement, had come to know and love Thérèse, was executed on her feast day, Oct. 1, 1957. And his last act was to kiss the crucifix many times—the very sign Thérèse had asked of God when praying, as a young child, for “her first sinner.”
Who was Jacques Fesch?
On a cold, rainy night in February of 1954 Fesch, husband, father, and jobless ne'er do well—but with no prior criminal record—assaulted a money changer in order to rob him. The attempt failed, but shortly after, followed by a pursuing crowd and seized with panic, Fesch reached for the gun he was foolishly carrying and shot at random, instantly killing a policeman. From there his route was simple and direct—to prison, to solitary confinement, to the scaffold, and beyond.
We are fortunate to have landmarks along this route. The prison letters of Jacques Fesch make for extraordinary reading. Under maximum security in solitary isolation, he spent much of the time of enforced idleness writing to his mother; his wife, Pierrette; his mother-in-law; his lawyer, Baudet; Father Thomas, a Benedictine monk who had been a childhood friend of Pierrette; his daughter Veronica (she was six when he was executed), and a spate of other correspondents.
The letters reveal the obvious victim of a wretched family background complete with hatred, infighting, and emotional deprivation; a high school dropout; a fallen-away Catholic; a veteran of World War II, unable on his return from the front to piece together his broken marriage; and at 24 a disenchanted atheist. We follow him through the prison years as he gropes his way inch-by-inch up from the slough of despair to the splendor of his terrifying death, to disappear finally over the edge of bliss.
It is strong stuff. To be quite honest, it is the stuff of life in this century. Prison life? The futile cruelty of our modern penal system comes through undeniably. Futile, because the result in most cases is not correction but moral degeneration.
“In comparison with your life,” Fesch wrote to his Benedictine friend, “the rules here are less strict, except for the perpetual solitude and being confined within four walls. It's hard to get used to it. Without God, the cell would be such a pit of darkness and despair that a person could easily rot away or else turn into a wild beast.” And two years later on the same theme: “You would have to be here to understand how disastrous incarceration can be for a person. With time, a man may acquire the external appearance of submission, but all the while a frightful gangrene is spreading in his soul. He is like a wildcat watching for one false step on the part of his trainer, and ready to leap…”
In this ‘pit of darkness,’ however, conversion was at work in Fesch's soul.
In this “pit of darkness,” however, conversion was at work in Fesch's soul.
In this “pit of darkness,” however, conversion was at work in Fesch's soul. He was moving toward the light. Urged and encouraged by the chaplain and his lawyer, he read the Scriptures and pored over lives of the saints, his special friend Thérèse among them. He tried with all his puny might to recapture his faith. He even prayed, “ever so little” he admitted. And then, toward the end of his first year in prison, “within the space of a few hours I came into possession of faith, with absolute certitude. I believed…. Grace had come to me. Agreat joy flooded my soul, and above all, a deep peace. In a few instants, everything had become clear.”
This was the beginning of a spiritual journey which led Fesch through growth, purification, inner darkness, temptation, anguish, fear, still deeper darkness, and on to “marvelous hours” when, writhing on his cross, he could all but see the crucified one look toward him, could almost hear him say, “This day….”
The neophyte's faith awakened a quality of humor special to Jacques, the humor he should have had as a child, now liberated. “We are allowed an hour's walk each morning from ten to eleven, with our hands chained,” he wrote to his mother-in-law whom he always addressed as “Dear Mama.” “In fact whenever we leave our cells we have to trail this hardware around. We're apt to end up with a watchdog complex.”
A few months before his death, he writes to “Mama” of a visit with his wife: “Yesterday I saw Pierrette, and yes, she gave me a hug for you (figuratively, alas) and also showed me the pretty little silver bracelet which shimmers like gold.” (The bracelet was Jacque's gift to his wife, which he had promised her before they had separated, and which he had recently commissioned his mother-in-law to purchase for her.) “She is pleased with it and plays with it as Veronica does with her rattle. So we both had our chains, similar in appearance, but I, being more spoiled, had two of them.”
The family he had loved “too late” was never far from his thoughts, and how these thoughts contrast with the common image of a criminal. One month before his death he wrote, “I received Veronica's little locks. What beautiful hair she has! So fine, so blond, so soft to touch! I really feel as if I had my little girl in my cell. Something alive of hers, that I can touch now…”
The new tenderness of human love was the outer face of unsuspected spiritual depth. Perhaps Fesch expressed his truest self in these lines to his mother-in-law: “I am certainly going through a strange agony in the preparation for this bloody and horrible farce [his execution]. Well, if I tremble at it, it is not out of physical fear but because I understand better now all the purity of Christ as contrasted with my meanness. In spite of all that is going to happen to me, I shall only be saved by grace, grace alone.”
At the end, mercifully, unshakable peace was given him. Two days before his execution he wrote to Father Thomas: “No harm shall come to me, and I shall be carried straight to paradise with all the gentleness bestowed upon a newborn child.”
One would like to see this life of Jacques Fesch blown up on a cosmic screen, as a symbol of the gargantuan chiaroscuro we live in. Its movement from despair to glorious ignominy to unimaginable glory proves, beyond a doubt, that hope can still have the last word.
Dominican Sister Mary Thomas Noble is a member of Our Lady of the Rosary Monastery, Buffalo, N.Y.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mary Thomas Noble OP ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:“Living Stones”
As the author of a recently published book on the subject of Holy Land pilgrimage, Jerusalem and the Holy Land: The First Ecumenical Pilgrim's Guide, I read your interview with Rabbi David Rosen ("Holy Land Pilgrims, ‘Living’ Judaism and Christian-Jewish Dialogue,” Aug. 3-9) with special interest.
Rabbi Rosen is certainly correct in asserting that most Americans go on pilgrimage to visit the holy places “where Jesus walked,” and arrive in Israel with a lack of interest in, or even a disdain for, Jewish religious practice as it exists there today. Therefore, incorporating visits with Jewish groups in recognition of their “elder brothers” status is a wonderful idea, which I encourage in my book.
Amodern pilgrimage should be more than a time-warp visit to the ancient past. A Christian visiting the cave in Bethlehem, the childhood home in Nazareth, the sites of the miracle at Cana, the raising of Lazarus, the Last Supper, the agony in Gethsemane, the carrying of the cross, Calvary and the empty tomb, to list just the most awesome holy places, should also extend the hand of Christian friendship to the Jews, Muslims, and Christians who live there today.
Opportunities can be provided for our people to learn firsthand the aspirations and needs of these good people, especially the “living stones” (a common term for the Arabic-speaking Christians whose communities are mostly Catholic or Orthodox) who have clung to Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nazareth, and the Galilee since the days of the early Church.
James McCormick
Traverse City, Michigan
Moral Absolutes
Daily, in the public media, we are barraged with liberal propaganda. I was surprised to be assaulted yet again by the letter of Jerome Downs, Esq., in the Aug. 10-16 issue of the Register.
The Supreme Court, like all civil authorities, is bound by the same moral absolutes as we, the individual citizens, are. In each of the cases mentioned in the “We Hold These Truths” article (Register, July 20-26), the Court acted outside those boundaries.
It is true, as Mr. Downs states that morality cannot be legislated; morality existed before any instrument of legislation ever came into being. However, it should also be noted that the Supreme Court does not legislate; legislatures legislate.
When the Supreme Court makes a patently immoral decision, it is, contrary to Mr. Downs's belief, not only the right, but also the responsibility of the Church and its members to inform the Court of the fallacy of its decision. Even the Court has recognized this right and has permitted both federal and state legislatures to enact laws recognizing it. That is why abortions are not performed in Catholic hospitals.
Mr. Downs states that the 13th and 14th amendments had “their genesis in the public's view of what was right and fair.” That is true but it is also true that the public's view of what is right and fair has its genesis in the immutable moral law established by God before all time, and all courts, and all liberals.
Albert Schultz
San Antonio, Texas
Correction
The phone number for the Carmelite 24-hour prayer line “Teresian Carmelites Offer a Potent Prayer Line”) printed in the Aug. 17-23 Register was incorrect. The correct number is (508) 756-1086. We regret the error and any inconvenience it caused our readers.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Revolt of the Theologians DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:UNIVERSITIES IN this country have in recent years shackled themselves with all kinds of restrictive measures having little or nothing to do with the pursuit of truth. Affirmative action programs are firmly in place, monitored of course by government agencies, but their most avid advocates and policemen are within the walls. Political correctness is rife. I am told that it is university policy where I teach that inclusive language must be used in all communications. I do not know what punitive sanctions are attached to ignoring this rule, but I will keep you informed. There are theology professors, I hear, who insist that their students refer to God as if he were a woman and take off points from papers and examinations in which this ideological rule is not adhered to. Meanwhile, in faculty senates those who have time for the inconsequential activities of such badies bray about academic freedom.
The Swiss Guard Undercover?
The trahison des clercs is an old story and academics are no more consistent than other sinners, but it does stand out that the only interference with academic freedom, freely defined, that is spoken of on Catholic campuses is from the Roman Catholic Church. One could get the impression that Swiss Guards, in mufti, are fanning out across the nation to infiltrate Catholic universities and spy on the antics of theologians. Imaginary threats cause brave men to tremble, whereas quite real ones go unnoticed or are willingly embraced.
Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the sassy dismissal of the Magisterium by institutions claiming to be Catholic, is that Catholic belief is taken to be external to the university and apparently extrinsic not only to Catholics on the faculty but also to the pullulating platoons of academic bureaucrats. The Catholic belief campus journalists and politicians find most threatening appears to be the Ten Commandments. In an effort to understand concerns expressed in faculty and student assemblies I have to imagine that a group of Muslims is attempting a hostile takeover and that I will be asked to teach as true what I don't regard as true.
Catholic universities were founded by Catholics. It is sometimes well to state the obvious—and the faith they professed was precisely the faith defended, explained, and passed on by the Catholic Church. Catholicism was an inner motivation, the form of one's deepest life, not an alien threat from outside the walls. The creed was not something bishops believed, it was the credo—I believe. Or, as it has become, we believe. How has it happened that Catholics see the faith as a threat to what is more important in their personal and professional lives?
Bureaucrats from Rome
One way to understand this, in part, is to begin with the annoyance one feels with the burgeoning bureaucracy on campus today. One's life, from parking a car, to scheduling a place for a lecture, from arranging to bring in visitors from abroad, to supplementing the income of graduate students, involves dozens of officials in offices that did not exist a few years ago. “The insolence of office,” may be too strong to capture the glacial delays and self-importance of the clerks—often they are assistants or associates of this vice president or that—who seem to salivate at the prospect of complicating one's life.
It is said that Catholic university presidents once felt that they were being treated similarly by Vatican bureaucrats, that they were being micromanaged by officials who had no experience or notion of a Catholic college or university in North America. Insofar as the analogy works, one's sympathy is elicited. It may very well be that signatories of the Land O'Lakes agreement only wanted relief from such bureaucratic folderol. A benign interpretation, perhaps, but certainly possible. Now 30 years later the effects of what they did are clear. The enemy is no longer a Vatican bureaucracy but the faith itself and the bishops whose ordained task it is to teach the faith and to assure the faithful that others who profess to be doing so truly are.
It seems undeniable to me that academic theologians, when they have not been leading the flight from a Catholic spirit and mindset, have given the patina of orthodoxy to this betrayal. It is thought to be more Catholic to oppose the Church than to understand and explain her teachings. Theologians, not particularly notable for their research, campaign for an academic freedom which is under threat only from the corroding culture around us. Meanwhile, the very basics of Catholic belief are largely unknown to students. A laicised priest, a former religious, a fallen away Catholic, or a Protestant may be at the front of the classroom. Recently a student told me that in his theology course, the assigned content was tossed out in favor of prolonged bull sessions on women's ordination. The student, having noted that several recent magisterial documents dealt with this matter, suggested that these be read and studied. The suggestion was laughed away. The instructor was Lutheran. This is far from being an isolated instance.
Theologians, Not Evangelizers
Academic theologians are often incensed at the suggestion that their teaching has anything to do with the evangelizing work of the Church. They regard themselves as free-lancers who will not tolerate anyone monitoring what they teach. The Report of the Catholic Theological Society of America Committee on the Profession of Faith and the Oath of Fidelity, issued on April 15, 1990, provides a good sample of the prickly response of theologians to the Magisterium. What alarmed this learned body was the requirement that a Profession of Faith and Oath of Fidelity be taken by those who teach. It is as hostile and cleverly legalistic a Report as you are likely to find. As with the Canon Law requirement that they have a mandate to teach (mandatum docendi), there is a hostility that would surprise anyone who has not watched the declension of Catholic theology over the past quarter of a century and more.
The Committee took as its task to subject the requirement of a Profession of Faith and Oath of Fidelity to a critical analysis on the assumption that there was something bizarre and illegal about it. Canon 212 (No. 3) is piously invoked as the Report's motto. “In accord with the knowledge, competence and preeminence which they possess, the Christian faithful have the right and even at times a duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church, and they have a right to make their opinion known to the other Christian faithful, with due regard for the integrity of faith and morals and reverence toward their pastors, and with consideration for the common good and the dignity of persons.”
The reaction of professional theologians that they make a public profession of faith—it involves reciting the creed—and swear their fidelity to the Church, is scarcely suppressed outrage. The authors of the Report themselves note that the requirement “evoked from many theologians, pastors, and others, responses that range from discouragement and surprise to outspoken anger and resentment.” They feel that such a negative reaction calls for attention and reflection. Indeed it does, though it is not to be found in their Report.
It Started with Humanae Vitae
What is at stake here is the self-description theologians have devised since 1968. By and large out of step with the moral teaching of the Church, they have been trying ever since the appearance of Humanae Vitae to justify their rejection of that encyclical, which affirmed longstanding doctrine, and of the many magisterial moral pronouncements made since which have drawn out the implications of the error about sexual morality condemned in Humanae Vitae. Consider their reaction to Veritatis Splendor. Hence all the waffling on masturbation, pre-marital sex, extra-marital sex, homosexuality, and so on. As Paul VI had noted, to reject the essential link between the unitive and procreative meanings of the marital act is already to have no means of rejecting those other evils. Theologians rightly saw the Profession of Faith and Oath of Fidelity as a threat to their claim to be a rival magisterium.
Theologians continue to ask the faithful to choose between them and the teaching Church. That is an easy choice for anyone who understands the challenge. Many, of course, have been misled by being issued a pass in moral matters that is not sanctioned by the “official” Church.
A Wily Report
Of course the Committee Report does not propose a simple rejection of what the Holy See requires. As with contraception, one can give a deferential nod to the “official” position and then go on to suggest that there is another, opposed position which is equally Catholic. The writers of the Report are even more subtle. They summarize what they have to say under eight points:
3 The revised Profession of Faith and the new Oath of Fidelity are now law.
3 All those are bound by it who are mentioned in canon 855. But fear not. “University teachers of disciplines which deal with faith and morals are bound to take them if their positions are under Church control, such as in ecclesiastical faculties and Catholic universities which have been established, are governed, and can be closed by competent ecclesiastical authority.” This seems to mean that the requirement does not apply to theologians in our Catholic colleges and universities on the Land O'Lakes plan.
3 The history of oaths is ambiguous in the Church. The great myth of McCarthyism is invoked as a specter looming over theologians. Woody Allen, where are you?
3 There are serious ambiguities in the text of the Profession of Faith. So too with the Oath, which suffers from unnuanced generalizations.
3 There must accordingly be careful theological and canonical scrutiny of these texts. [By appeal to their own authority— work of committee members is cited in notes—or that of other members of the aggrieved Theological Society.]
3 Further study is needed—serious problems of a doctrinal, pastoral, and ecumenical nature are said to be raised by the inclusion of this paragraph: “I also firmly accept and hold each and every thing that is proposed by the same Church definitively with regard to teaching concerning faith and morals.” What is the problem? The committee explains: “There are some, for example, who would subsume the teaching on artificial birth control under what is ‘definitively proposed'” (p. 79). Aha.
3 Application. There are no sanctions for not doing what is asked. “It appears appropriate that at this time no action should be taken against those who judge themselves in conscience unable to make this Profession of Faith or take the Oath of Fidelity in the light of the problems surrounding them” (p.116).
3 All these problems impinge on the question of translating the Latin of the Profession and the Oath. The committee notes that “the use of ‘dynamic equivalency'in translation provides the possibility of supplying the necessary nuance to insure a correct interpretation…” (p. 117).
Reading Between the Lines
My dynamically equivalent translation is: The requirement of the Holy See for a Profession of Faith and Oath of Fidelity is of dubious theological and legal status, is ambiguous and confused, might be taken to include clear magisterial teaching, but in any case does not apply to us; creative translations should be made available for those who do comply. We will not be snookered into giving our assent to the moral teaching of the Catholic Church.
It is no accident, as the Marxists used to say, that the underlying concern of the Report is the continuing justification, at least in their own eyes, of the rejection of Humanae Vitae. It is the original rejection of this encyclical by theologians that is at the heart of the attitude exhibited in this Report. It is dissent in theology that has led to the absence of Catholic orthodoxy from the instruction of students in Catholic colleges and universities. It is the revolt of the theologians that explains, more than any other single factor, the parlous condition of our institutions of higher learning. Until theological dissent from clear Church teaching is a thing of the past, the Catholic Church will continue on its current course and the secularization of our colleges and universities will accelerate.
Ralph Mclnerny is director of the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Ind., and editor of Catholic Dossier.
This essay first appeared in Catholic Dossier. Reprinted with kind permission.
----- EXCERPT: Why is it that only the official teachings of the Roman Catholic Church seem to stir up protests on Catholic campuses about interference with academic freedom? ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ralph Mclnerny ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Lessons from the Women's Liberation Movement DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:ANOTHER “Catholic moment” has arrived. Pollsters have discovered that the majority of women in the United States, particularly younger women, do not identify themselves as feminists. And some prominent female intellectuals are calling for a re-evaluation of the fruits, both good and bad, of the women's liberation movement. A"new feminism” is in the works, creating an opportunity for Catholic women to share their experiences in the light of the Church's teaching, particularly as it has been expressed by Pope John Paul II.
To this undertaking I offer some observations from my own life and the lives of some of my peers. Though this is a rather limited field of study, it is representative of a far larger group of women—the tail-end of the baby boom who came of age during the peak of the women's movement.
The reason so many of us refuse to identify ourselves as feminist is that the term has become synonymous with an ideology that opposes one of the deepest longings of most women—that is, to have a family. When I was in college, one of my classmates who was majoring in women's studies told me that in order to be a true feminist I had to be a lesbian. Men are an irredeemable oppressor class, she argued, therefore only lesbianism can completely emancipate women. Though at the time I was not a traditionalist, nor even a Catholic, her ideas completely repelled me. I wanted a career, of course, that was a given; but, I also hoped “some day” to marry and have children.
Don't Blame the Biological Clock
This desire to be a wife and mother I only fully appreciated after reading the works of Pope John Paul II. He accords it more significance than the hormonal tick of a “biological clock.” Its origin is the fact that I am a female person created in the image of God, who is Love. The human person, writes the Holy Father, can be fulfilled only by making a complete gift of self to another in imitation of God, who, according to Christian revelation, is a communion of three Persons. The self-donation required by our humanity takes two forms: heterosexual marriage or celibacy for love of God. For me, as well as for most women (and most men, for that matter), self-realization as an image of God is to occur in marriage, if it is to occur at all.
The Pope's theology of self-giving contradicts the feminist doctrine that independence from men is the highest good. Perhaps feminists fail to appreciate the complementarity and interdependence of husband and wife because they have witnessed or even experienced marriages in which the giving, the sacrificing, was not mutual on the part of both spouses. Whatever the reason, the feminist rejection of marriage as a vocation had a huge impact on my generation.
Those of us who accepted the assumption that we would be fulfilled primarily by our jobs, spent our prime marrying and childbearing years building our careers. Early in this process by today's standards, I left the career track to build a family. But my friends who entered their thirties still unmarried, though successful from the feminist point of view, found themselves feeling empty and alone. “You can't imagine how long it has been since I have touched another human being!” lamented a friend of mine, who at the time was a manager in an international corporation.
Victims, Women and Men
When these women began looking for husbands, they discovered a dearth of men willing to commit. The loosening of sexual mores, hailed by feminists as liberation for women, had in fact freed men from feeling the necessity of marriage. As another single friend of mine put it, “flesh has become so cheap.” One cannot measure how deeply the dignity of women has been wounded by this fact. But it is not only women who have been hurt. The dignity of men also has been diminished by their inability to assume the duties entailed in becoming husbands and fathers.
No phenomenon demonstrates the harmful effects of the sexual revolution more than the plight of the unwed woman who becomes pregnant. “How often is she abandoned with her pregnancy, when the man, the child's father, is unwilling to accept responsibility for it?” writes the Holy Father in Mulieris Dignitatem. “And besides the many ‘unwed mothers'in our society, we also must consider all those who, as a result of various pressures, even on the part of the guilty man, very often ‘get rid of it'; but at what price? Public opinion today tries in various ways to ‘abolish'the evil of this sin. Normally a woman's conscience does not let her forget that she has taken the life of her own child, for she cannot destroy that readiness to accept life which marks her ‘ethos'from the ‘beginning.’”
Strange Confessions in Public
Though they cannot destroy their ontological readiness to accept life, women are pressured by social and economic forces to destroy the biological possibility of it. Many women experience a deep inner conflict between their innate desire to give of themselves through the bearing and nurturing of children and their fear of having “too many.” Everywhere I go with my four children, I receive comments such as, “What a cute baby … but you must have your hands full!"; “Four! I would go crazy if I had that many children!"; “Oh, I would love to have another baby, but I already had my tubes tied.” What compels women to make such personal remarks to a stranger in public?
Feminism as we know it today was forged by middle class women who felt unchallenged and unappreciated in the domestic role that had been ascribed to them. During the post-war era, the ennui of the idle rich had become the scourge of suburban housewives, whose workload had been considerably lightened by day schools for their children, social security for their parents, and modern appliances for their housework. So they began to push against the cultural barriers that prevented them from developing and using their talents in society at large.
But due to their success, many of the women of my generation suffer from an opposite problem. For various personal, social, and economic reasons, they are shackled to their jobs, not their homes. Countless times have I heard from a mother at home on maternity leave, “I dread the day I have to leave my baby and go back to work.”
Feminists blame this remorse on social conditioning left over from the ‘50s or on men who refuse to do their share of the parenting and housework. But there is another deeper and more important reason. “Motherhood involves the whole person,” writes the Holy Father. “Parenthood—even though it belongs to both (mother and father)—is realized much more fully in the woman…. No program of ‘equal rights'between women and men is valid unless it takes this fact fully into account.”
Our “spiritual mothers” leading the women's movement have not taken this into account. Nor have they accepted the fact that most women, even when educated and employed, still desire to be wives and mothers. Perhaps if enough Catholic women now come forward they will.
Vivian Dudro is based in San Francisco, Calif.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Vivian Dudro ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'Pray for Me, Peregrina, When You Get to Santiago' DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:THE GREAT CATHEDRAL is packed with tourists, worshipers, and day-trippers stopping for a bit of culture on their way to dinner. They crowd into the sanctuary of Santiago de Compostela to glimpse great art and architecture, or to venerate the relics of St. James the Great, apostle and martyr, a traveling evange-list whose remains are said to reside in a silver casket beneath the altar.
Where the two great wings of the cathedral form a cross, a priest prepares the altar for Mass. And to one side, kneeling on wooden benches, are the “real” pilgrims. They're not dressed for church. Their pews are clogged with backpacks and walking sticks, and their bare knees are brown against the wood. Somewhere about each of them, tied to a camera bag or bedroll, is a scallop shell—traditional symbol of this particular pilgrimage, and an unofficial passport to the hospitality of the residents along the way.
Even as the crowd murmurs around them, the 50-or-so peregrinossit silently, a little island of quiet amidst the echoes in the great stone edifice. They are athletes of faith, the searching souls who put feet under their convictions and walked, or bicycled, across hundreds of miles of mountains and highways to get to this holy place. Those who travel on horseback, bike, or foot for at least 90 miles along the ancient pathways, and can prove it with a series of stamps on an official pilgrimage “passport,” are shown special honor at the cathedral. They're given an elaborate certificate, called a compostela, and a simple dinner at the local hostel. And at a special noon “Pilgrim's Mass,” a cathedral functionary reads off the day's statistics. “Fourteen pilgrims from Australia. Six from Holland. United States: 12,” the voice rings out. Eyes fill with tears—some promise fulfilled, perhaps, or simple relief at the end of a long journey. Or perhaps a little mourning that the adventure is ended. Finally, the priest intones “The Mass is ended. Go in peace.”
The travelers quietly embrace one another, shake hands, exchange kisses. Most were strangers many towns back, but now will correspond and relive their pilgrimages in memories of a lifetime. The Camino changes hearts. There's something mystical along that trail, some power left behind by the thousands—the popes and paupers, saints and sinners—who walked those stones before.
Pilgrims have made their way across Spain to Santiago de Compostela for more than a thousand years. Several paths crisscross Europe, Spain, and Portugal, funneling travelers to the upper-right corner of Spain. The city still has plenty to offer vacationers. Here are 500-year-old buildings decked with gargoyles and layers of symbolism. Ancient psalms are chanted daily at a long list of convents and monasteries. Silversmiths and jewelers have a plaza of their own, and the ancient walled city is packed with tiny shops and fragrant cafes.
Legend says the Apostle James traveled to Spain to preach the Gospel, and his followers buried his body there after his martyrdom. But the saint's grave was forgotten among the cemetery remains that grew up around it, and as paganism spread across the land. But a legend sprang up there, about 700 years later. A holy hermit supposedly saw bright stars shining over a weed-covered hillside. He followed the light, and uncovered the long-neglected sepulcher.
The tale took hold, and the first tiny church was built on the site by 813 A.D. Acity soon grew up, and pilgrims were drawn by rumors of miracles. By the 11th and 12th centuries, the pilgrimage to Compostela was famous throughout Europe. A “modern” cathedral was begun in 1075, the heart of which is still part of today's sprawling stone building.
The major pilgrims’ road to Santiago, known as el Camino, carried millions of visitors across northern Spain—and they brought along their folklore, culture, religion, science, and art. Monasteries, churches, hospitals, and resting-places all grew up along the pilgrims'pathway. Many of the original roadside rests are gone, but many that remain are now spectacular hotels, cozy, time-worn churches, or echoing, empty museums of boom-times past.
The way has always been long, and often dangerous. Over the years, travelers faced bandits, disease, wolves, wild boars, and crooked innkeepers. Criminals were sent on a Compostela pilgrimage to atone for their sins. Other adventurers went in place of wealthy sponsors, or to represent an entire village before the saint.
Many active 20th-century tourists fly across oceans and rendezvous with trip out-fitters to follow the long trail. Some come out of love for history, culture, scenery, or religious fervor. It's a fantastic challenge for hikers or mountain bikers. Food and lodgings are cheap and easily found, and range from five-star former palaces, to cramped bunk beds in state-run pilgrim hostels.
As the miles grind on, each traveler finds his own pace—and something spiritual happens. The Camino winds through medieval villages, alongside interstate highways, past garbage heaps and industrial back yards. It twists over mountain vistas, and sloshes past wet meadows that rumble and bark in the language of frogs. The ancient stones disappear under mud or rose petals, cow dung or pavement. St. Francis of Assisi walked here. Pope John Paul II made the trip. Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila, and a host of lesser-known holy people viewed these stone fences and green fields, palaces and wayside chapels.
The mind settles into the steady pace of pedal or footfall. The distractions of life at home fall away. Eventually, the pilgrims say, the roadside blooms with metaphor and revelation.
Vickie Ward, an outdoor vacation outfitter from Seattle, said she has seen the metamorphosis dozens of times, in hundreds of travelers she has shepherded on her “Camino Tours” biking and hiking trips to Santiago.
“I'll have someone show up all fired-up about a great bike trip, a fun vacation, ignorant of anything historical or religious, not really caring anything about it. But by the time they're finished, they're totally nuked by the experience,” she said. “They're talking about their ‘journey,'and all the personal discoveries they've made. Even me. I was never religious, and now I'm an active member of a Church. I found my faith along this trail. And every time I do the trip, I am moved. I find some new treasure, some new truth.”
Mara Lyons, a bicyclist from Berkshire, England, described her spiritual eye-opening. Late in April, just after their trip began, an elderly lady in a rural town invited Lyons and her husband, Len, into her home for a snack of bread and wine.
“We could tell she was very poor, and she really couldn't afford to be entertaining us,” Mara Lyons said. “She wouldn't accept any money—she was almost insulted. She just told me, when I left, ‘pray for me, peregrina, when you get to Santiago.'
“I thought it was a little silly at the time, but I told her I would—it made her happy. So I carried that promise with me the entire trip. I felt responsible for keeping it. It turned my mind toward my duty to others, how I'd grown away from simple kindness. It gave the entire trip a spiritual edge. I've never been on a more meaningful holiday. And arriving in Santiago? It's a stunning, beautiful, ancient city. But beyond that, I had a purpose to be here. I had a prayer to make.”
Rebekah Scott is religion editor atThe Blade, a newspaper in Toledo, Ohio. She made the Camino pilgrimage, on foot, in May.
----- EXCERPT: Metaphor and Revelation Mark Spain's Long and Winding Road ----- EXTENDED BODY: Rebekah Scott ----- KEYWORDS: Travell -------- TITLE: It's Hard to Swallow the Chief Executive as Super Hero DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:AMERICA HAS become a media-fueled celebrity culture in which the fact of fame is more important than whatever a person may have done to deserve all the attention. The result is, among other things, a blurring of the distinctions between mass entertainment and political achievement. To many people, the president is now, first and foremost, the nation's top celebrity, and he is judged by standards applied to Brad Pitt and Oprah Winfrey as much as by those used on Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole.
Bill Clinton has mastered this terrain more cleverly than his predecessors, including mediagenic personalities like Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy. He was the first presidential candidate to woo MTV, and he further proved his cool by playing the sax while sporting hipster shades. The only constant behind his bobbing and weaving between liberal and conservative policies seems to be his ability to feel our pain like a TV talk-show host.
This summer's latest blockbuster hit, Air Force One, takes the confusion between celebrityhood and political leadership one step further by turning the president into an action hero in the Bruce Willis of Die Hard vein. The movie begins with a U.S. Army commando unit kidnapping the ultra-nationalist Gen. Alexander Radek (Jurgen Prochnow) from his well-guarded living quarters in Kazakhistan. He was the mastermind of a bloody revolt against the current, more moderate Russian regime. His aim was to restore the Motherland to its pre-Gorbachev imperial glory.
Three weeks later the American president, John Marshall (Harrison Ford), journeys to Moscow to celebrate the renegade's capture. In a speech to the Russian leadership and other top international officials, he deviates from the mild-mannered prepared text and promises never again to stop U.S. forces from standing up to terrorists like Radek, even if our national interest isn't directly threatened. When his chief-of-staff (Paul Guilfoyle) later complains about possible negative fallout from our allies and Congress, Marshall snaps: “It's the right thing to do, and you know it.”
Marshall's moral rectitude in foreign policy is soon to be matched by his display of physical courage and quick thinking under fire. The president boards Air Force One, “the world's most secure aircraft,” and tries to relax with his picture-perfect wife Grace (Wendy Crewson), and his brainy but lovable 12-year-old daughter, Alice (Liesel Matthews). But his duty-bound staff drags him away to focus on the latest round of crises.
At the same time, Radek loyalist, Ivan Korshunow (Gary Oldham), and five comrades, infiltrate the heavily protected plane, masquerading as a TV news crew. With help from a traitorous secret service agent (Yander Berkeley), they take over Air Force One, holding the passengers hostage. Korshunov brags that he would “turn his back on God himself for Mother Russia.” He wants Radek freed in exchange for the prisoners so that “the infection you call freedom” can be eradicated from his homeland. The terrorist believes that democratic capitalism has allowed Russia to be ruled by “gangsters and prostitutes,” and when the Americans argue that his actions are immoral, he replies: “You murdered 100,000 Iraqis to save a nickel on a gallon of gasoline.”
Everyone assumes that the president has escaped on a special pod ejected from the aircraft. Back in Washington, D.C., Vice President Kathryn Bennett (Glenn Close) tries to take charge, but an Alexander Haig-like secretary of defense (Dean Stockwell) challenges her authority. This provokes a constitutional crisis that can only be resolved after a consultation with the attorney general and a vote of the cabinet.
As the president's associates dither, he is forced to take matters into his own hands. The former Vietnam War helicopter pilot and Medal of Honor-winner refuses to abandon his family. He remains aboard Air Force One, engaging Korshunov in a violent cat-and-mouse game for control.
Director Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot) and screenwriter Andrew Marlowe depict the president as a crack shot, excellent at hand-to-hand combat, willing and able to kill when necessary. He's also resourceful and calm under pressure, finding ways to make contact with Washington while balancing political interests against human lives at risk. At times his daring-do almost rivals James Bond's as when he hangs off the edge of an open cargo door and kicks a bad guy into oblivion, asserting boldly: “Get off my plane.”
Of course, President Marshall is too good to be true. He combines the toughness of Reagan's foreign policy before Iran-Contra with a variation of George Bush's war record, leavened by Clinton's personal touch and youthful family. But the treatment of the president as a larger-than-life genre hero isn't necessarily a sign of respect.
In the past five years, Hollywood has abandoned the seriousness and political purpose found in earlier films about chief executives like Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Fail Safe, Seven Days in May, and Sunrise at Campobello. Instead our presidents are placed in highly exaggerated situations where entertainment value is more important than message.
The 1993 hit comedy, Dave, depicted a womanizing chief executive felled by a stroke and replaced by a look-alike. In the more recent success, The American President, a bachelor commander-in-chief courts an attractive environmental lobbyist. And last year's summer blockbuster, Independence Day, featured the president leading a fighter squadron against hostile extraterrestrials. Air Force One is merely a continuation of this trend.
In between the laughter and thrills of these escapist products the traditional dignity of the office gets lost. All of them skillfully exploit the delegitimization of one of our culture's most important institutions, substituting fantasy and wish fulfillment for reverence and intelligent examination of our highest ideals.
John Prizer is based in Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts & Entertainment -------- TITLE: Claretians Pull Plug on Social Justice Magazine DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:ASITS STAFF put the last issue of Salt of the Earth magazine to bed, there were plenty of long faces at Claretian Publications’ offices in Chicago. The decision to close the award-winning magazine is being mourned not only by its writers, editors, and other contributors, but by social justice activists and supporters of the Catholic press across the country.
“It's a big loss not just for us but for the Church as a whole,” said Meinrad Scherer-Emunds, who had worked on the magazine for five-and-a-half years and was serving as its managing editor when it published its final edition, the July-August issue.
It's a story familiar to many in the Catholic press: too few subscribers, rising printing and postage costs, and limited resources from its subsidizing organization—in this case the Claretian order. In the end, financial considerations won out in the perennial pull between “profit” and “prophet.” Cutting Salt of the Earth was seen as a way to strengthen the Claretians’ other publications, such as U.S. Catholicmagazine and an expanding cadre of bilingual newsletters.
“Like all subsidized ministries, we have to assess if we're putting our ‘capital’ (human as well as financial) to its wisest use. That's a tough call, with no sure answers,” wrote editorial director Tom McGrath in an editorial in the May-June 1997 issue announcing the magazine's demise.
The decision was not made quickly or lightly, say those who work for Claretian Publications. In fact, three years ago the magazine underwent an extensive redesign, complete with name change from Salt to Salt of the Earth, in an attempt to boost circulation.
The already practical publication was made even more “hands-on” and was marketed as a valuable resource for parish-based social justice groups. Stories like “Six ways your parish can help save the earth;” “How to turn a lukewarm parish into a hotbed of social justice;” and a regular column that allowed readers to share tips and strategies on topics such as avoiding “do-gooder” burnout were laid out in attractive, reader-friendly designs.
“We were targeting parish audiences for bulk subscriptions, but that just didn't quite materialize,” SchererEmunds said. Except for an artificially high circulation in the early 1980s of 16,000—of which nearly half were unpaid subscribers—Salt of the Earth's circulation has hovered around 8,000 to 10,000. The 1997 Catholic Press Association directory lists the magazine's circulation at 9,000.
But the numbers tell only part of the story, according to those who worked for and religiously read Salt of the Earth. “It's hard to measure the impact of a magazine solely in financial terms,” said SchererEmunds. “I believe we've had an important impact by motivating people's consciousness and helping people live out their faith in everyday life.”
That “social justice doesn't sell” is an oft-repeated phrase at meetings of marketing- and manager-types. Common marketing wisdom says that consumers are more likely to buy things that make them feel good. “That's part of the problem with any publication that deals with issues that make you feel bad,” said Mary Lynn Hendrickson, who served as Salt's managing editor for five years and now does research and development for Claretian Publications.
To its credit, Salt of the Earth tried to maintain a positive, upbeat focus. Many stories focused on people who were doing something about society's problems, rather than lamenting those who weren't. Aregular column called “Winners” detailed “strategies that spell success"; another regular feature profiled parishes that were doing it right.
Unfortunately, it's hard enough to preach the Church's social justice message, never mind trying to get people to pay to hear it, Henrickson said. “Social justice can be a hard sell to people who aren't already converted to it,” she said.
That core 9,000 regular Salt of the Earthsubscribers represented the committed converted. Claretian Father Mark Brummel, editor of both Salt of the Earth and U.S. Catholic, hopes the decision to increase social justice coverage in the more general interest magazine, U.S. Catholic, will educate the larger Catholic community.
“The people who read Salt were already convinced. You're converting the converted,” he said. “We haven't been able to reach the person in the pew.” A new series of social justice pamphlets put out by Claretian Publications that detail “Catholic wisdom” on abortion, welfare reform, immigration, assisted suicide, environment, and the death penalty have proven popular, with bulk orders of up to 100,000. In addition, the Salt of the Earth will be continued in electronic form. The now defunct magazine's website will be maintained and updated with social justice resources and materials (www.claret.org/ INSERT TILDE-salt.)
“We're not giving up on social justice,” said Father Brummel. “We're just trying to find the best way to do it.”
Catholic magazine circulation has been steadily declining, according to Owen McGovern, executive director of the Catholic Press Association. Catholic newspaper circulation numbers are up, but only because more and more bishops are seeing the value in mandating their diocesan papers.
“It's always sad,” McGovern said of the closing of Salt of the Earth. “It's a tremendous loss to the Church and the community as a whole.” But he called Claretian Publications, which is a consistent CPA award winner, a “class act.” “They're one of the most professional operations in the Catholic press,” McGovern said.
In the end, the Claretians and other Catholic publishers are facing the challenges that all print media are facing in today's fast-paced communications world. “People are reading less and less, and all publishers are having trouble keeping read-ership,” said former managing editor Hendrickson. “We're no different.”
Getting Catholics to think about the bigger problems of society is an increasingly difficult challenge, editorial director McGrath said. “The biggest problem religious publishing is facing is engaging people's attention in a time of great diversion.”
Still, he noted that Salt of the Earth did that and did it well. “It was as good a magazine at the end as it ever was,” he said.
Heidi Schlumpf is based in Chicago.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Heidi Schlumpf ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'Muscle, Magic, and Message' DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:IN 1979, weight lifter and Oral Roberts University graduate John Jacobs launched a spirited new approach to Protestant evangelization: the Power Team. He and other weight-lifter preachers would perform circus-style feats of strength, pausing between stunts to preach a simple message of salvation through Christ. Cheering crowds saw Power Team members bend steel bars, tear telephone books in half, break baseball bats and blocks of ice, squeeze soft drink cans until they exploded, or burst free from handcuffs.
Jacobs and the Power Team have been regular guests on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, a glitzy evangelical Protestant cable show out of Tustin, Calif. Some Power Team members left Jacobs' group and founded their own versions of the Power Team, including Strike Force and Team Destiny.
The teams perform at Protestant churches, juvenile halls, prisons, and even public high schools. Unable to discuss religion in a public school auditorium, the teams' message would be a “teaser” focusing on the dangers of alcohol and drugs, with an invitation to attend an evening meeting off-campus where the hulksters would deliver testimonies about the importance of Christ in their lives.
Mike Rodarte, 30, of Dinuba, Calif., a 6-foot, 275 lb. Catholic with 20-inch biceps, belonged to Team Destiny for three years. The idea of sharing the message of the Gospel, incorporating showmanship and weightlifting, appealed to him and Rodarte traveled with Team Destiny through small towns and big cities, exhorting hundreds of congregations with “a simple, inspirational message to lead people back to Christ.”
The program targeted teenagers, although adults always seemed to enjoy the fun. Among its many stops Team Destiny visited juvenile halls to perform for the incarcerated teens. In one encounter, a young inmate who was a self-declared Satanist heckled the team when they began their presentation. Later, however, he wanted to become a Christian and asked the team to pray over him.
Team members enjoyed a certain celebrity status. Rodarte was driven around in chauffeured cars, served great food, and became well known in certain circles. “It goes to your head,” he says, but adds that the performances were physically demanding. Breaking a block of ice, Rodarte once broke an arm, and has torn muscles and suffered other minor injuries.
But over time, Rodarte began to feel that, as a Protestant outfit, Team Destiny was missing something. “I couldn't talk about the Holy Eucharist, devotion to the Blessed Mother, the Sacrament of Penance, and many other Catholic beliefs and practices.
“It bothered me that someone I helped bring back to Christ might go and attend a church led by an anti-Catholic Protestant minister,” he says. Rodarte himself maintained his Catholic identity, bringing his rosary and a Catholic prayer book with him on the road. But living and working around-the-clock with Protestants, he found his perspective on Christianity becoming increasingly Protestant and he often missed Sunday Mass. One Pentecostal service he attended, however, made him long for the Catholic liturgy. The pastor exhorted his congregation to jump up and down to conjure up “happy feelings” to invite the presence of God. Rodarte remembers thinking, “Why would I do this? At any Catholic Mass I attend I know God is present in the Eucharist, no matter what I do or feel.”
Desiring to reconnect with his Catholic roots, he began an intensive study of his Catholic faith. Taped lectures of University of Steubenville professor and biblical scholar Scott Hahn and the conversion stories in Patrick Madrid's Surprised by Truthwere especially crucial to reigniting his faith.Thenin 1996, Rodarte attended the SCRC Catholic Renewal Convention in Los Angeles and found himself surrounded by Catholics excited about their faith. He realized he had grown weary of Protestant theology. “I had had enough of this ‘once saved, always saved’ doctrine, which is unbiblical,” he says.
Rodarte stresses that his objection is not to Protestants but to anti-Catholicism, biblical interpretations contrary to Catholic belief, and other practices which divide the Body of Christ. However, he maintains many close friendships with his former Team Destiny members. He is grateful for all they taught him about evangelizing non-believers. While some were not always true to the Gospel they preached, many others were sincere Christians “who loved the Lord.”
When Rodarte separated from Team Destiny, he hoped to launch a version of the Power Team that was “100 percent Catholic, (with people) who loved the Eucharist, loved the Holy Father, and would inspire others to do the same.”
He teamed up with two Orange County, Calif. apologists he'd met at the SCRC Convention: former Baptist youth minister Tim Staples, 33, and professional magician Matthew Arnold, 37, both of St. Joseph Radio, an all-volunteer Catholic educational apostolate in Orange County, Calif.
As a teen and into his early 20s, Staples was an ardent anti-Catholic who had attended Jimmy Swaggart Bible College (the Catholic Church has long been a favorite target of Swaggart), but converted to Catholicism after intensive study. Today, he teaches classes in the basics of the Catholic faith at parishes throughout Southern California.
Arnold is a professional magician who works in Hollywood and has tutored celebrities on how to perform magic tricks. Formerly involved in the New Age movement, he converted to Catholicism after a lengthy study and resolved to devote his talents to spreading the Catholic faith.
The trio became the Covenant Warriors, offering “Muscle (Rodarte), Magic (Arnold), and Message (Staples).” They present up to an hour-long, high intensity show, mixing visual effects with an inspirational message about the Catholic faith. Their target audience is Catholic teens, though adults, too, are welcome. Rodarte explains the group's name: “The covenant is the Eucharist, the body and blood of Christ. We'll guard it, defend it, and fight for it. We want teens to love the Eucharist, go to confession, and get excited about their faith.”
In a typical show, Arnold might magically produce a dove from fire, both symbols from Scripture representing the Holy Spirit. The trick will launch him into a talk about the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation. Or, after a sleight of hand trick, an act of deception, he might talk about deceptive messages in the world.
“The tricks are attention-getters,” explains Arnold. “We learn through parables and symbols.” Central to Arnold's message is the belief that “it's not sufficient to be Catholic only on Sunday. It's good for teens to see devoted Catholics in different spheres of life.”
Staples acts as Master of Ceremonies, and speaks to the audience on such topics as the person of Jesus Christ, the history and doctrines of the Catholic Church, and the differences between Catholicism and other religions.
Rodarte, after breaking a block of ice or blowing up a hot water bottle until it bursts, tells teens about the dangers of drugs, drunkenness, and promiscuous lifestyles, noting, “People are lying to you guys. We're here to tell you about one thing that's the truth, Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
The Covenant Warriors are available for parish picnics, youth groups and other Catholic gatherings. Additionally, Mike is seeking more weight-lifter Catholics interested in joining the Warriors. For more information about the Covenant Warriors or St. Joseph Radio, telephone (714) 744-0336.
Jim Graves is based in Orange, Calif.
----- EXCERPT: Covenant Warriors Serve up a Potent Mix for Evangelizing Teens ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jim Graves ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Holy Communion Perfects our Commitment to Christ DATE: 08/24/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 24-30, 1997 ----- BODY:TODAY's FINAL Gospel meditation on the bread of life discourse focuses in a special way on the bread of life as communion. Ironically, this truth is brought into relief at first by the discord and disharmony sparked by the declaration of Jesus: “If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” The Gospel informs us that, after hearing the Lord's words, “many of the disciples of Jesus remarked, ‘This sort of talk is hard to endure! How can anyone take it seriously?’” Tragically, “from this time on, many of his disciples broke away and would not remain in his company any longer.” They rejected the gift of the bread of life given specifically to unify and to bestow peace.
Jesus, however “was fully aware that his disciples were murmuring at what he said.” Two Sundays ago we heard Jesus silence the grumbling crowd with the command, “Stop your murmuring!” The only other moments of “murmuring” in the Gospel of John come from the enemies of Jesus. In fact, the Pharisees who hear the murmurings about Jesus, respond by sending temple guards to arrest him (Jn 7, 32). In other words, such murmuring remains one of the first steps that lead to the death of Jesus. Not only does murmuring sow deadly seeds of dissent, it actually causes, indirectly, the crucifixion of Christ.
But this time the Lord responds to the murmuring, not with a reprimand, but with a question to his disciples: “Does it shake your faith?” For “the spirit that gives life” does so precisely by drawing believers together in communion. That is to say, the spirit enlivens us by drawing us into a relationship with Christ and with each other that inspires us to be united with Jesus in his work of fulfilling the Father's will: “This is why I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” For the person of faith and courage, Jesus’ words “are spirit and life” because they save us from the death of isolating doubt and adhere us to the communal life of love shared by the Blessed Trinity.
Hence the supreme poignancy of Jesus’ question to the Twelve: “Do you want to leave me, too?” Simon Peter answers, not for himself but for all the Apostles—and for the Church— “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe; we are convinced that you are God's holy one.” The act of receiving the bread of life in holy Communion perfects our commitment to remain in holy communion with Christ, the Word of eternal life.
In reality, the world was created for the sake of the Church which is the convocation of men and women in Christ that effects unending communion with God's life. Christ and his Church together make up the “whole Christ”—a wholeness that is revealed in the mystery of the bread of life. “How can anyone take it seriously?” For anyone who has experienced the blessing of the communion of the Church, the real question is: “How can anyone not take it seriously?”
Father Cameron, a Register contributing editor, is a professor of homiletics at St. Joseph Seminary, Yonkers, N.Y.
----- EXCERPT: This Sunday at Mass: Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Cameron Op ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: U. S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:Denver Archdiocese: Saved by Schools
The Denver Business Journal reported strong signs of hope for local Catholics after years of decline.
“A generation of diminishing membership, coupled with the metro area's recent population explosion, has prompted the local Catholic Church to go after new blood but also to serve it better,” wrote Paula Moore, explaining that the strategy is to beautify some existing properties and to build new schools.
“‘There's a need to rebuild our infrastructure, like any other business,’ said Francis Maier, the archdiocese's vice chancellor, who becomes chancellor and the archbishop's right-hand man Nov. 1.
“… That change can be seen in the archdiocese's move this summer from its old location in upscale Cherry Creek … to a property it's recycling, the former St. Thomas Seminary on South Steele Street…. Now, the 40-acre campus, whose red tile-roofed buildings were constructed in the early 1900s, is the John Paul II Center for the New Evangelism. After a $1.4 million face lift, the facility now houses the archdiocese, a retreat center, quarters for retired priests, and a huge library, among other things. It's the hub for Catholics in northern Colorado, and there's plenty of room for future growth.”
The article attributed the diocese's strength to its business-like approach that builds schools and physically attractive buildings.
Crossing the Threshold of Hopelessness
St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes is often in the news because of actor Danny Thomas's devotion to him and the hospital for children he named for the saint. Ron Goldwyn of the Philadelphia Daily News examined modern devotion to the saint, and visited a local Church that benefits from the a novena to the saint it holds each year.
“Inside the small Church (St. Maron's) … a candle called for a $2 donation; medals cost more.
“‘It helps because we're a small parish, said [Mary] Salerno, who keeps the books. ‘The bills aren't small. Just the parish.’”
“The church has about 90 families, down from 300 three decades ago. Msgr. Sharbel Lischaa, St. Maron's cheerful and popular pastor since emigrating from his native Lebanon in 1973, laments that older parishioners are dying; younger ones are moving to the suburbs.
“But they come back twice a year: In June for a street festival that serves as the church's major money-maker, and in October for the novena and a two-night St. Jude dinner, on Friday and Saturday, 5:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.
Msgr. Lischaa, who conducts Mass in Aramaic, Arabic, and his heavily accented English, has a storehouse of St. Jude stories—a jobless man who found work after the monsignor steered him toward the saint, an elderly parishioner reunited with her long-lost adult son, cancers in remission, dysfunctional families now functioning.
“‘Some people pray 20 years, they don't receive nothing,’ he said. ‘I say faith is the main thing. I believe anything you ask of this man he will give you, if you have faith.’”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: After 10 Years in Jail, Minister Regains Freedom and Reputation DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:NEW YORK—A United Methodist minister who served 10 years in prison after being found guilty of the sexual abuse of children has had his 1986 conviction reversed by an appeals court.
Nathaniel Grady, pastor of a church in the Bronx, N.Y. at the time charges were brought against him, was released on bail last year after a United States federal court ruled that he was entitled to a new appeal hearing because he had not had adequate legal representation for his original appeal.
The case was then heard by a New York State appeals court which, Sept. 23, reversed the original judgment and dismissed the indictment.
The Bronx district attorney, the original prosecutor, has since died, and his successor chose not to contest Grady's appeal.
Joel Rudin, a lawyer acting for Grady and four daycare workers convicted on similar charges at the same time, all of whom have now had their convictions quashed, told ENI Oct. 16 that the current district attorney did not explicitly declare Grady's innocence, but implicitly conceded there was no case against him.
“It was so clear cut,” Rudin said. Grady's bishop, Ernest Lyght, said that the Church's regional ruling body, the New York Annual Conference, had always supported Grady, had never believed he was guilty and had never undertaken disciplinary action against him.
Grady's wife also continued to support him.
When the federal court last year ordered a new appeal hearing, the United Methodist City Society of New York provided the $200,000 bail for Grady. Some fellow clergy had also raised funds to pay legal expenses.
Bishop Lyght said he was a pastor in Montclair, N.J., at the time of the original trial, and became acquainted with Grady about that time. On the basis of conversations with Grady and others of the New York Annual Conference, he had a “serious cloud of doubt” about the conviction.
Grady found ways to serve as a minister to other prisoners while in jail, and wanted to continue in some form of prison ministry, Bishop Lyght said, adding that he was considering what Grady's next assignment would be. The minister was a 46-year-old respected pastor, husband, and father of two children when, in 1984, he was accused of sexually abusing children in a daycare center attached to his church. He was sentenced to serve 15 to 45 years.
Rudin said that Grady's conviction came at a time of national “hysteria” that arose when some highly publicized cases led many people to think sexual abuse in daycare centers was a common problem. “The witch hunt that took 13 years of Nat Grady's life destroyed hundreds of others across the country,” Rudin said in a formal statement released at a press conference with Grady after the appeals court handed down its decision. In another statement, Rudin said the district attorney who prosecuted Grady had orchestrated a publicity campaign that “exploited and also contributed to” the national “hysteria.” (ENI)
----- EXCERPT: Nation ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Archbishop George: Bishops Needed in Higher Ed DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Bishops have a necessary role in Catholic higher education, Archbishop Francis George of Chicago said in an address at Georgetown University. The catholicity of a college, or any institution, cannot be determined solely by the institution itself, Archbishop George said Oct. 20. But making that determination need not require an overbearing presence on the part of the bishop, he said.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Number of Hispanic Catholics in Decline DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—The number of U.S. Hispanics who identify themselves as Catholic is in decline, according to data from the National Opinion Center's general social survey. The survey, based on information from 1,202 Hispanic respondents, shows that by the mid-1990s, the percentage of Hispanics who said they are Catholic was 67 percent, down from 78 percent in the early 1970s. Father Andrew Greeley, a sociologist, decried the defection rate in an article in the Sept. 27 issue of America, a Jesuit journal of opinion. “The equivalent of one out of seven Hispanics has left Catholicism in the last quarter of a century,” he said. “If this hemorrhage should continue for the next 25 years, half of all American Hispanics will not be Catholic.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: JFK Jr.: High Praise for Mother Teresa DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—By the force of her will, Mother Teresa transformed “the lives not just of the poor whom she aided but of the rich whom she relentlessly solicited,” said John F. Kennedy Jr. In an editorial in the November issue of George magazine, Kennedy said the three days he spent with Mother Teresa years ago in Calcutta were “the strongest evidence this struggling Catholic has ever had that God exists.” Kennedy, editor in chief of George, is the son of the late President Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. His comments on Mother Teresa appeared under the headline, “A Mother Like No Other.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: North American College Enrollment Is Up DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:ROME—The North American College, the U.S. seminary in Rome, has its highest enrollment in a decade. The seminary rector, Msgr. Timothy Dolan, said the 1997-98 academic year opened with 150 seminarians resident in Rome and another five NAC seminarians spending a pastoral year in their dioceses at home, the highest enrollment in 10 years. The students come from 87 dioceses. The rector said he would like to hope that the increased enrollment reflected an increase in vocations to the priesthood in the United States, “but the statistics don't say that.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Bishop: Hispanics Hurt by Persistent Racism DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—While God has given “many blessings” to the United States through the presence of its Hispanic residents, Hispanics suffer from racism and other ills tied to the ongoing debate on immigration, a U.S. Catholic bishop said. “Economic globalization has generated economic growth. But this growth has not proven to be beneficial for millions of families. In many cases it has contributed to their unemployment and/or reduction of benefits,” said a statement by Bishop Gerald Barnes of San Bernardino, Calif., one of the nation's 21 active Hispanic bishops. “Neither has a serious attempt been made to find common solutions to the immigration debate,” said Bishop Barnes, chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Hispanic Affairs.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Debate Over Nothing Sacred Continues DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:NEWYORK— With its ratings languishing near the bottom of the Nielsens, most of America yawned over the television show Nothing Sacred while some Catholics debated its merits.
Commonweal, a national lay Catholic magazine published in New York, criticized the campaign of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights against Nothing Sacred as “small-minded” and “likely to be counterproductive.”
The diocesan newspapers of Dallas and Milwaukee, among others, also criticized the Catholic League's position on the series.
The Texas Catholic of Dallas described the League's statements about the show as a “shrill voice,” adding that the League's William Donohue may be on a “collision course” with the editors of diocesan newspapers.
The Catholic Herald of Milwaukee called the actions of the Catholic League against the show “ill-advised.”
The League's position on Nothing Sacred was also criticized by Father Andrew Greeley in a nationally syndicated column. Father Greeley said that Nothing Sacred is not anti-Catholic. “Rather, it is a sensitive and effective story of the moral and religious problems which face the country today.”
William Donohue of the Catholic League responded to the criticisms, saying, “It's predictable that the same people who were somewhat accepting of the movie Priest would accept Nothing Sacred. But just as Priest was a flop, so is Nothing Sacred.”
Asserting that Father Greeley's comments misrepresent the League's position, Donohue said, “We see Priest as anti-Catholic, but not Nothing Sacred. What we have said about Nothing Sacred is that it's propaganda—propaganda that dissenting Catholics can be better Catholics, particularly those whose dissent is on matters sexual.”
He added, “Some people's tolerance of insult is higher than mine. But we don't expect people will line up with us single file on any issue.”
ABC-TV itself took out full-page ads Oct. 23 promoting its series in The New York Times, USA Today, Philadelphia Enquirer, and Chicago Tribune. “Catholic leaders speak out for ‘Nothing Sacred,”’ said a headline over a huge photo of Father Ray. The ad quotes four Catholic priests who praise the show, including Father Greeley.
In response to the ads the League published a news release quoting Donohue as saying, “From an economic cost-benefit perspective, it makes no sense to spend another dime on this show. But from a political cost-benefit perspective, it makes a great deal of sense for Disney/ABC/20th Century Fox to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on their failed show.”
Donohue asserted that other shows with ratings higher than Nothing Sacred have been cut from prime time. In particular he singled out Time Cop, an ABC production that three-times-out-of-four rated higher than Nothing Sacred, yet was cut. Donohue maintained that deciding to continue Nothing Sacred when the economic indicators called for the opposite demonstrated that the producers' motives behind keeping the show alive were ideological.
Without commenting on the controversy between the Catholic League and its critics, Cardinal Roger Mahony praised the show Oct. 26 at an entertainment industry Mass in Beverly Hills, Calif. Cardinal Mahony said the show presents “the various challenges, human struggles that people bring to their parishes and present to their parish priest.” He added, “I think that's a wonderful way in which the evangelization of the Church is shown through all of the characters, not just the priests, but the sisters, the lay leaders, and everyone who's involved in a life of that parish as well as all the parishes of the country.”
The cardinal's homily was part of the annual Mass, brunch, and awards ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel sponsored by Catholics in Media Associates (CIMA), a group of Catholic actors, screenwriters, and entertainment executives.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Cincinnati Court Again OKs Anti-Gay Rights Ordinance DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:A federal appeals court on Oct. 23 upheld its previous decision supporting a Cincinnati voter initiative barring mention of sexual orientation in the city's human rights ordinance.
While a city official cheered the decision, a representative of a gay rights group called the ruling “a renegade decision” because the U.S. Supreme Court threw out a similar Colorado measure.
The high court had ordered the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to review its May 1995 ruling. The same panel of judges opted to sustain their initial ruling.
“It's a big win for us,” said Karl Kadon III, a Cincinnati assistant city solicitor. “The whole case is about the right of people to decide what their government can do. It's the notion of American democracy; everything else is wrapping around it.”
In 1991, Cincinnati's city council passed an equal employment law that included sexual orientation along with race, color, age, and religion as anti-discrimination classifications. In 1992, the council enacted a human rights ordinance that included similar protections for public accommodations and public housing. Voters approved a charter amendment in 1993 forbidding the council from passing any measure that granted protections based on sexual orientation.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Dutch Churches Make Asylum-Seekers a National Issue DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:AMERSFOORT, The Nether-lands—In a rare example of united action, the main Churches in The Netherlands have come out in public opposition to the Dutch government's treatment of asylum-seekers and have set up a camp-site for them in Dwingeloo, 100 kilometers north-east of Amsterdam.
It is estimated that by December, about 35,000 people will have requested asylum in The Netherlands during 1997. Last year's figure was 25,000. The countries of origin of the refugees vary from year to year. In recent years most have come from Vietnam, Eritrea, China and the former Yugoslavia. This year Iraq (10,000) and Afghanistan (5,000) are at the top of the list.
Every year several hundred people are refused asylum by the Dutch government after a long, complicated, administrative process, but say they are unable to go back to their home countries even though the Dutch government insists there is no risk to them in doing so.
Last month the Council of Churches in The Netherlands took steps to allow about 18 asylum-seekers to live in six tents at the Dwingeloo camp-site which serves in summer as a youth camp. The council is cooperating with the Dutch-based International Network of Local Asylum-seekers (INLIA). The initiative has prompted extensive coverage and an intense national debate in the Dutch media, resulting in the involvement of government officials.
The first reaction of most politicians was to condemn the Church initiative as a “public relations” exercise. Churches should not get involved in politics, they said. Elisabeth Schmitz, parliamentary undersecretary for refugees, promised to seek new solutions for those refugees unable to leave The Netherlands.
After an intense debate in the lower house of the Dutch Parliament Oct. 7, a majority of members of parliament were in favor of giving the asylum-seekers the benefit of the doubt. Schmitz promised that no refugee families with children would be abandoned on the streets.
Schmitz is investigating whether a Danish program could also work in The Netherlands. In Denmark, people not granted asylum but who are unwilling to leave the country receive only minimal government assistance. John van Tilborg, of INLIA, described the help as “bed, bread, and bath,” without any hope of a normal life in the country.
According to Jan Nico Scholten, chairman of the refuge organization Vluchtelingen Werk Nederland, nobody benefits from the recent policy of removing people against their will. The support for asylum-seekers prompted by the Churches' campaign had had a huge impact, Scholten said.
“The Netherlands after the summer of 1997 will never be the same as The Netherlands before the summer of 1997.” Ineke Bakker, general secretary of the Council of Churches in The Netherlands, has linked the united front by the Churches in their compassion for refugees to the ethics of the Bible. The Churches' campaign had given a human face to the refugees' difficulties, she said in a recent statement.
Bakker said she regretted the fact that the campaign had prompted politicians to speak of “Church arrogance,” but the time had come to open politicians' eyes to the problems and to set before them the need to care for the most vulnerable people in society.
Bakker predicted that asylum-seekers would continue to make their way to The Netherlands. “Asylum-seekers confront the countries in the rich North with the unpaid debts of world society,” she said. “The world's unjust relationships and ongoing conflicts mean there will be no end to the streams of millions of political, economic and ecological refugees, as well as a worsening of illicit movement of people and of goods.” (ENI)
----- EXCERPT: World ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Two More Church Aid Workers Taken Hostage in Chechenya DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:MOSCOW—Two Hungarian aid workers carrying out relief work for an international Church agency, Action by Churches Together (ACT), were abducted in Grozny, capital of the southern Russian republic of Chechenya, during the early morning Oct. 23, according to officials of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Since the armed conflict in Chechenya ended last year, the republic has been hit by a wave of abductions which are believed a major source of income—in the form of ransoms—not only for local warlords, but also for high-ranking Chechen government officials.
Journalists and international aid workers have been prime targets for hostage-takers. Only last month Dimitri Petrov and Dimitri Piankowsky, two Russians jointly employed by ACT and International Orthodox Christian Charities, were abducted near the border between Chechenya and the Ingush Republic as they were travelling in a truck after delivering aid supplies.
The two Russians have still not been found, despite several major efforts by the Church agencies sponsoring them.
The two men abducted early today, Gabor Dynaijsky and Istvan Olah, are employed by Hungarian Interchurch Aid, which is engaged in relief work in the northern Caucasus region, in cooperation with the Russian Orthodox Church, under the auspices of Action by Churches Together. ACT, which has its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, is sponsored by the World Council of Churches and the Lutheran World Federation. Dynaijsky is 44 years old and unmarried. Olah, aged 47, is married and has five children. His family are in Hungary. Dynaijsky has worked in Grozny since 1996, while Olah, an agriculturalist, arrived in Grozny only recently.
Oleg Kalimulin, ACT's coordinator for the Northern Caucasus region, told ENI in a telephone interview from Pyatigorsk, 105 milesnorthwest of Grozny, that Dynaijsky and Olah had been abducted by a group of 10 to 15 men who broke into the ACT office in Grozny about 3:00 a.m. today. The abductors had disarmed the guards surrounding the building and searched the office. They took $40,000, documents, and a cellular phone, Kalimulin said.
Another Hungarian ACT employee who was in the office at the time, Agnes Hetvegy, was not taken hostage and took refuge in the Grozny office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Kalimulin said. Hetvegy had provided details about the abductions, Kalimulin added.
After the abduction, ACT officials in Pyatigorsk undertook immediate negotiations with the Chechen government and representatives of the Moscow government for the evacuation of Hetvegy and of the remaining equipment in ACT's office in Grozny. Kalimulin hoped the evacuation would take place by this evening. ACT's operations in Chechenya were suspended today.
ACT is coordinating investigations to find the abducted men, in cooperation with the Russian federal government and Chechen organizations. Efforts to recover hostages usually involve lengthy negotiations over a period of several months.
Kalimulin said that in most cases no demands for ransom payments were made in the first few days after an abduction.
Vsevolod Chaplin, spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church, said in Moscow today that the Church “intends to address the Russian and Chechen authorities with an appeal to do their best to liberate the two” aid workers.
Last month, Patriarch Alexei II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, made a special appeal to Russian President Boris Yeltsin and to Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov for help in finding Piankowsky and Petrov.
According to news reports today, a French aid worker taken hostage in Chechenya more than three months ago has escaped. An employee of Medecins Sans Frontieres, identified simply as Christophe Andre, had fled his captors in the central Chechen town of Gudermes and made his way to Grozny with the help of local people, news agencies reported. (ENI)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Chile's Protestant Churches May Soon Gain Legal Recognition DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:SAO LEOPOLDO, Brazil—Leaders of the Latin American Council of Churches hope that the government of Chile will legislate in the next few months to ensure equality of the country's religious organizations.
At present the Roman Catholic Church is the only Church officially recognized in Chilean law. Protestant Churches are treated in the same way as private corporations.
According to the World Churches Handbook, published by Christian Research, London, about 10 million of Chile's population of 14 million are Roman Catholics. About 3 million people are members of Protestant Churches, including Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Anglican, Seventh-day Adventist, and about 20 Pentecostal Churches.
For the past six years, plans for a new “Worship Law” have been widely debated. If it is passed by the Congress, the law will put all Churches on an equal footing under Chilean law.
During a visit to Chile from Oct. 1-13 CLAI's president, Walter Altmann, a Brazilian Lutheran theologian, was assured by a leading government official, Jose Joaquin Brunner Ried, that the proposed Worship Law would be considered by Congress at its next sitting.
Altmann gave Ried an open letter saying to members of Congress and Church leaders in Chile that Chile should not miss this “historic opportunity to ensure that all religious confessions are equal before law.” (ENI)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Sorrowful Anniversary DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:Catholics in England and Wales were asked by their bishops to offer prayers Oct. 25-26 on the 30th anniversary of the Abortion Act, which legalized abortion on demand in Great Britain. Cardinal Basil Hume, archbishop of Westminster, led a prayer vigil Saturday Oct. 25, and issued the following pastoral letter, which was read at all Masses in the archdiocese Oct. 26:
Abortion is a great evil. Abortion was first legalized in this country 30 years ago this weekend. It is a grave scandal that since 1967 nearly 5 million procured abortions have taken place. As a nation we should all hang our heads in shame.
Why is abortion a great evil? Because it destroys human life. Human life is a gift of God. It is sacred. Human life is to be respected and protected from the moment of conception to its natural end.
Some say that human life does not begin at conception but at some later stage of development. They speak about “pre-embryos.” The word is used to suggest that at the moment of conception there is not human life. So it can be destroyed or be used for experimentation. This is wrong. Human life does begin at conception.
“From the moment the ovum is fertilized a life begins which is neither that of the father nor of the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with its own growth. It would never be made human if it were not human already” (Evangelium Vitae, 60).
Furthermore, modern science has shown that in that very first cell we can already discover many of the characteristics of the grown person. If I ask myself “when did I begin to exist?” I answer “at the moment of conception.”
From this moment we possess the gift of life from God, who is the master of all life. His law states “Thou shalt not kill.” This has been the constant teaching of the Church. The present Pope wrote in 1995:
“By the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his successors, and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human life is always gravely immoral” (Evangelium Vitae, 57).
God's law tells us how we should behave towards each other. Unconditional respect for human life is the foundation of a civilized society. The right to life from the moment of conception to life's natural end is paramount. When this is not recognized, then our civilization will begin to collapse, and the “culture of death” will be victorious.
You will remember that a film about abortion was produced by the Pro-Life Alliance during the last general election campaign. Broadcasters refused to screen it because they said it offended taste and decency. It does. But so does the reality. Our society goes to great lengths to hide the truth about procured abortion. We use coded language to disguise what we are doing. We avert our gaze. When something is so horrifying we can't bear to look at it, we should not be tolerating it.
What should we do? We have to work to change the minds and hearts of people. That is not at all easy, for the acceptance of abortion has become very much part of the thinking of many people. We should question the assumption that there is a right to abort. We should state where we can, that becoming pregnant and then killing the life in the womb is, at the very least, irresponsible. Upholding the right to life is not just a Catholic issue. We should work with those of other faiths and religions, and the many persons of no particular religious allegiance, who share our concern.
We must do what we can to help women who refuse to have an abortion, so that they may receive the assistance which they, and their baby, will need.
Our message must always be proclaimed with a note of compassion and concern. We must have understanding and sympathy for those who have felt impelled to have an abortion because of serious financial, psychological, or emotional pressure. While not condoning the wrong done, we must speak to people of the mercy of God, who forgives all who sincerely repent, whatever their sin. And God looks after the unborn.
Men and women cooperate with God in the creation of new life. The love of husband and wife is a sharing in the creative love of God. They are partners with him in the most wonderful task in which human beings can engage: the creation of a new life.
—Cardinal Basil Hume
----- EXCERPT: Perspective ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: It's Not the End of the World DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:As we approach the year 2000, many people expect something extraordinary to happen. Will it be the beginning of the end times? Will there be some unexpected cataclysm? Will human nature be changed in some fundamental way?
Acclaimed Harvard zoologist and best-selling author, Stephen Jay Gould (Full House and Dinosaur in the Haystack), doubts that any of the above scenarios are likely, but he is fascinated by the turmoil the upcoming event is creating in our consciousness. Questioning the Millennium: A Rationalist's Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown casts a cold, unemotional eye on this crazy-making phenomenon, revealing interesting facts about its origins and placing its meaning in perspective.
Gould sets himself apart from most writers on the subject in two important ways. First, he refuses to make any predictions about the future, and secondly, he declines to speculate about psychological reasons for the anxieties that seem to greet the end of centuries and millennia. Instead the zoologist focuses on key issues of history and science. Most importantly, he examines where our idea of a millennium came from, and how its meaning has changed over the years.
In measuring time, three of our primary cycles are derived from nature—days as earthly rotations, months as a variation of the revolutions of the moon around the earth, and years as the revolution of the earth around the sun. But the packaging of seven days into a week, for example, has no scientific basis. It represents an arbitrary choice of human society.
Similarly, millennial fixations have no roots in nature. Our Arabic numerology and decimal mathematics give the number 1,000 the look of evenness and thus of significance, but there's no scientific reason for the division of years into units of a thousand. “Millennial thought arises from the linkage of general apocalypticism with a specific numeral theory about the forthcoming end,” Gould observes.
The most popular Christian understanding of the apocalypse can be found in Revelation 20, 1-15. In its vision, Satan will be bound for a thousand years and cast into a bottomless pit. Christ will return and reign for this thousand years with the resurrected martyrs. At the end of this period Satan is loosed and with his followers battles the godly. But a heavenly fire rains down upon the evil ones and destroys them. Then all the dead are resurrected in a last judgment, for this is the true end of time. The righteous go to heaven with Jesus, and the damned are hurled into a burning lake.
The first Christian to believe he had figured out the exact time and place of the second coming was Montanus who preached in Turkey in about 156 A.D. He instructed his followers to leave their homes and go to an appointed place and wait. Even though the great deliverance didn't occur, his movement remained strong for another 600 years.
Gould sees Montanism as part of an emerging historical pattern. Over time apocalyptism developed great appeal to “the wretched, the downtrodden, the dispossessed, the political radical, the theological revolutionary,” he notes. Millennialism was the cutting edge for the most radical elements of the Reformation and has remained on the fringe of Protestantism until the present day. Among the American religious movements with millennial origins are the Seventh Day Adventists and the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Gould points out that over the years the meaning of the millennium has changed. For most people, it no longer corresponds to the prophecy in Revelation. However, even though the year 2000 might not bring the second coming, the conclusion of a thousand-year period of human history is still believed to have cosmic significance.
The origins of this idea can be found in the writings of the early fourth-century Church father, Lactantius, who compared the unfolding of human history to God's creation of the world in six days and his subsequent resting on the seventh. Examining the Scriptures, this scholar concluded that each day of God's creation corresponded in human history to a thousand years. His Old Testament source was Psalms 90, 4: “A thousand years are to you like a yesterday which has passed.”
In the New Testament he found support for his speculation in 2 Peter 3, 8: “You must never forget: that with the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”
Accordingly, Lactantius believed that the world's history would last six thousand years to a point of completion in earthly time, comparable with God's work in creation. The seventh and final thousand-year unit would be the second coming of Revelation, comparable to God's day of rest. The history of the earth would thus be exactly 7,000 years.
Scores of Christendom's greatest scholars tried to determine the exact dates of creation and the second coming according to his formula. But in recent times scientists like Gould have proven that our planet came into being many millions of years ago. Consequently, Lactantius's theory is no longer taken seriously, but the notion that the conclusion of a thousand-year period of history has meaning still remains in our popular culture.
The Jubilee Year 2000, organized by the Vatican, shows how the heightened expectations created by the millennium can be put to good use. Gould's historical and scientific research establishes that the year 2000 isn't likely to be a moment of cosmic razzle-dazzle. But as Jubilee organizer, Archbishop Sergio Sebastiani, recently told the Register: “It's an occasion for Christians to rediscover their faith and to give a coherent witness inspired by the Spirit of the Gospel.” This will serve God's purposes more than the wild-eyed, apocalyptic speculations which Gould chronicles so well.
John Prizer, the Register's Arts & Culture correspondent, is based in Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Ben Franklin and Friends Ride Again DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:IN SOME respects, Americans are now closer to realizing the American dream than at any time in our past. We are, as a society, wealthier than ever; our economy has never been stronger than in the past 15 years. Yet there is a growing realization that we have achieved our prosperity at a terrible cost, and a fear that we have grasped the material dimension of the dream only by abandoning our hold on its spiritual dimensions. The national discussion about values and virtues revolves around just this issue.
In his most recent book, Poor Richard's Principle, Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow draws on an extensive survey that he and his colleagues conducted a few years ago to confirm our fears, but also to offer hope that we might re-envision the dream. The “principle” in the title refers to a conviction that Benjamin Franklin shared with many other Americans of his time, that work and money only found their proper meaning in the context of a moral (or even religious) framework. Wuthnow sets out to do three things: (1) explain what this framework once meant and how we lost sight of it, (2) describe the contemporary consequences of our loss of this framework, and (3) discuss the possibility of reconstructing it.
The 18th and early 19th centuries in America were, by Wuthnow's account, a time rich in moral discourse. Inspired partly by the Bible and partly by the Enlightenment, the leaders and thinkers of the day, from Franklin and Jefferson to Thoreau and Emerson, quite naturally placed all their activities in a larger context.
There was considerable disagreement about this context, but there was also general agreement that economic activities must be subject to moral restraint. In other words, work and money found their meaning within the context of a larger moral universe. Economic forces were not independent but were to be tamed by moral reasoning.
During the course of the 19th century, however, this “moralist” vision was gradually supplanted by an “economist” vision, which detached economic activity from this moral framework. Wuthnow argues that this latter view has become the controlling vision of the 20th century, but, while it may mold our outward behavior, it has not entirely succeeded in shaping our thinking about work and money.
The competition between these visions is manifested in a variety of unresolved tensions, both on a personal and a social level. One example is the materialism characteristic of modern American society. On the one hand, we indulge in a frenzy of consumption, but we wonder if we are spending our money wisely. Further, we are deeply ambivalent about money. We form judgments about others quite readily in terms of their income and possessions, but we are strongly reticent to talk about it, even with spouses and close friends.
We are also confused about the work that we do. The economist vision tends to portray work as little more than an exchange of labor for a wage (or a salary, or stock options, etc.). At its more extreme, it discourages people from seeking some sort of meaning in the work they do and urges them to focus instead on productivity. Indeed, for the past century at least, this vision his dominated much management thinking, subordinating the structure of jobs and the workplace to efficiency. Nevertheless, research into motivation consistently reveals that we want much more from our jobs than cash. We hunger for the sort of meaning provided by the moralist vision, yet we have persuaded ourselves to be content with far less. In the people interviewed by Wuthnow, this often emerges as a sort of restless resignation.
Another much-discussed result of our loss of this framework is the imbalance that characterizes so many of our lives. Our work makes great demands upon us, in time, energy, and commitment. Literally competing with these demands are our families and communities. The needs of children and spouses steal time from work, and we both resent this conflict and feel guilty about it. Many of us detach ourselves (and our families) from the larger community because there simply is not enough time and energy. Neighborhoods become anonymous, voter participation drops, and community service is left for someone else. We are at sea and we have lost the moral compass that might place us on course to balance our lives. Without it, there is no restraint on the demands made by the economic sphere, no clear boundary where enough becomes enough.
As an antidote to the dominance of the economist vision, Wuthnow would like to see a renewal of moral discourse. He believes this renewal to be possible because it has never really disappeared from the society; it has merely slipped beneath the surface. In high proportion we cling to many of the old values, but we no longer see how they can be effectively integrated with contemporary life. Part of the answer is that we must dethrone the laws of the marketplace and reinsert them within their proper moral context.
The closing chapters of the book explore the ways in which the moralist vision persists, and offer some hope that it can be revived. Not least in importance is faith, which again and again points us toward something more than the economist vision can offer. Sadly, religious leaders have rarely mounted an effective challenge to this vision that takes seriously the reality of people's lives. Wuthnow's work could provide part of the foundation for such a challenge.
Readers familiar with Christian social thought will find many basic principles affirmed by Wuthnow's research and analysis. Moreover, he provides a wealth of insights into the dysfunctions of modern life, a first step toward corrective action. Catholic philosophers may find his discussion of moral discourse too strongly oriented toward viewing it as a sociological phenomenon, but they should appreciate his careful treatment of it nonetheless. Poor Richard's Principle is an important book that makes a powerful contribution to the contemporary discussion about faith, work, and values, and will reward the careful reading it requires.
Robert Kennedy heads the department of management at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Robert Kennedy ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:Courage Ministry Explained
Thank you for printing my critique of the document Always Our Children (Oct. 19-25). I realize it was a lengthy piece, and I appreciate you giving so much space towards it; nevertheless, I wish you had included the paragraphs of the critique in which the work of Courage and Encourage is promoted as a tangible means of support for those who struggle with homosexuality, and their family members.
Courage is a spiritual support group for men and women with homosexual tendencies who desire to live by the teaching of the Catholic Church. Under the inspiration of the late Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York in 1980, this group has developed a practical spiritual program for living the chaste life in union with Jesus Christ. It stresses its Catholic identity by encouraging members to frequently receive the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Holy Eucharist, and to develop a strong devotion to the Blessed Mother. It is now in 28 dioceses in the United States, six in Canada, and is also found in the Philippines, England, and Ireland.
The Courage program has also been approved by the Pontifical Council for the Family as a ministry to persons experiencing homosexual attractions: “This Pontifical Council for the Family supports the organization called Courage which was founded by Father John Harvey OSFS for helping homosexual persons to live in accordance with the laws of God and the teaching of his Church” (Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, speaking on behalf of the Holy See, July 7, 1994).
Encourage, an outgrowth of Courage, exists in Canada and the United States. It is specifically designed in a Catholic context to provide spiritual support and guidance to parents of persons who experience homosexual attraction. The parents, who are very often opposed by their own grown children, need spiritual and psychological help themselves, and in this respect, they are similar to members of Alanon.
Very often a son or daughter who has decided to “come out” as a homosexual, may demand, as a condition for continuing the relationship, that his or her parents acknowledge that homosexuality is morally acceptable. In such situations, these parents often undergo a form of martyrdom in adhering to their faith principles; nevertheless, they continue to love their children.
“While recognizing the hard work of the authors of the document Always Our Children and the sense of compassion they conveyed, we believe that the document needs substantive revision. It is hoped that these observations from the leaders, members, and friends of Courage will be given due consideration by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.”
Father John Harvey OSFS
Director of Courage
Corrections
I was foiled by spell check again. My book review on The Heart of Newman, which you published in the Oct. 26-Nov. 1 issue (“An Intriguing Sampler from a Celebrated Churchman”) contains two significant errors:
The sentence, “Though he was open to the idea that dogmas do increase in their expression, his idea of change was one of homogeneous and heterogeneous development,” should read, “… his idea of change was one of homogeneous and not heterogeneous development.”
The sentence, “One of his quotes most often invoked in the ‘60s to support the idea that there was not stability or a common thread to Church teaching,” should read, “… to support the idea that there was no stability or common thread to Church teaching.”
Father Brian Mullady OP
Cromwell, Connecticut
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Turning Frogs to Princes at a Sacred Assembly DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:I sent a frog to the meeting and got back a prince,” said the wife of a Promise Keeper.
The organization's gathering of more than 850,000 men praying on the Mall in Washington was a significant public spiritual event that did not go unnoticed by the secular culture. The Oct. 4 meeting was reported to be one of the largest religious gatherings in our country's history. Those who attended the “sacred assembly” found a spirit of prayer, respect and fellowship.
Bill McCartney, the founder, asked men to come in the spirit of 2 Chronicles 7, 14: “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” For six hours they prayed, sang, heard biblical teaching on what is expected of men who are committed Christians—faith in God, marital fidelity, and moral purity. Organizers brought 1 million Bibles but many men came with their own. There were no political speakers.
Costing more than $10 million, with a sound stage fit for a rock concert, this religious revival was the culmination of more than 66 rallies held nationwide since 1994. McCartney and his staff of 350 hope to help men live a vibrant faith in a culture that has become disoriented by relativism and radical feminism. By all accounts the event was well organized, the only snafu being the Park Police refusing to give them 15 minutes extra at the end of the day. The mall was cleared and cleaned up in a few hours.
“If the whole world was like this, it would be a better place,” said one man who'd come from San Diego.
Patricia Ireland of the National Organization for Women protested out of fear that the call for men to take leadership in the family means women will lose their rights.
Reactions to the event say a lot about peoples' hopes, fears, and agendas. Those who saw it as a sign of hope saw men supporting their families and wives and turning back to God. Patricia Ireland of the National Organization for Women (NOW) protested out of fear that the call for men to take leadership in the family means women will lose their rights. Ireland's argument is not so much with Promise Keepers as it is with biblical values. She does not accept a biblical understanding of men and women with complementary roles in marriage based on the example of Christ.
Christian love is modeled on Christ's self-giving love, which seeks the good of the beloved. One would think a feminist would be happy to have men commit themselves to a more responsible role in marriage and family life. Ireland's religious bigotry received ample coverage in the media but it rang hollow. Her protest was no match for the call to be better husbands that rang true to these men.
Another fear expressed was that the Promise Keepers event was mostly Republican, and even worse, right-wing. The Washington Post published a survey the next day that showed that 46% were Republican, 15% Democrat, 28% independent. Some 48% described themselves as conservative and 6% as liberal. The cultural divide is most visible on questions of moral values. Those who call themselves conservatives tend to accept values based on the Bible and resist the values of the dominant liberal culture. Liberals tend to accept “progressive” positions on moral matters and favor individualism and radical egalitarianism.
The NOW protest is typical of the ongoing episodes of the war in the culture about whose values will guide our society. It is also typical of the move to make every argument into a power struggle instead of a debate about truth.
Some observers found it odd that men would need to gather together to pray in public when they could atone for their sins in their own Churches. McCartney explains that men are not as verbal as women and that being with other men helps them to express their feelings.
One reason the Promise Keepers may draw large crowds is their focus on an essential element of religion: keeping promises to God and to others. In an age that thinks little of fault or sin, reflecting on God's promises to us and where we have failed is a good place to begin thinking about faith. McCartney, the coach, seems to have found a way to speak to men that touches hearts.
At one point in the meeting the crowd was asked to say whom they worship and they shouted “Jesus Christ.” It took a few seconds for the sound to move from the stage down the Mall, ricocheting off buildings as it went. “It was electrifying,” said one observer.
Ben Wattenberg, a Jewish commentator, wrote that, for him, it is hard to be cross with a guy who wears a T-shirt that reads: “Keep working for the Lord—the pay's not much, but the retirement is out of this world.”
Mary Ellen Bork lectures on Catholic topics. She is a board member of the Catholic Campaign for America and the Institute for Religion in Democracy.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Lady in Dark Clothes Loved Philosophy DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:Before she was a mystic and a martyr, Blessed Edith Stein was a gifted philosopher whose inquiries led her to the God of love
It seems a slight, even to those of us who have spent time in the groves of philosophy as undergraduates, to apply the title philosopher to Blessed Edith Stein. After all, Pope John Paul II declared her a “blessed martyr” at beatification ceremonies in Cologne in 1987.
She was, as we know from the recollections of Valentin Fouquet, stationmaster at Schifferstadt, that “lady in dark clothes” who spoke to him from a sealed train transport.
“Tell the family of Dean Schwind that I am going East,” she called out.
East meant Auschwitz, and the charnel house. The Dutch Red Cross filed her obituary notice Feb. 15, 1950. “Edith Teresa Hedwig Stein is to be considered as having died on Aug. 9, 1942 in Auschwitz,” it read.
Abbot Raphael Walzer of the Benedictine abbey of Beuron, was well aware of her mystical side. She could kneel for such long periods of contemplation in the Benedictine church. He seriously questioned her urgent desire to enter the Carmelite order. Would their unprepossessing liturgies satisfy a soul held in thrall by the chant and the solemnity of the Benedictine ordo? Yet both of these virtues—that of the martyr and the mystic—were lived out by a woman whose vocation and, indeed, occupation was that of a philosopher.
Flight from God
Even as a little girl she had a marked precocity about her, always attempting to enter into adult conversations. Being the youngest of 11, she had a connatural fit with the adult world. As an adolescent, her Judaism had given way to atheism. Her mother and her other brothers and sisters remained devout in their practices, but Edith was intent on fleeing the God of the Hebrews. Still, her ethical and intellectual life was not abandoned. She exhibited what Richard Epstein has recently described as the “free spirit of Jewish inquiry.”
In 1913, at the age of 22, she left Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) and began to matriculate at the University of Gottingen in Germany. The university was renowned as a center for a rising new philosophical movement called phenomenology. It had a philosophical society populated by the best and the brightest phenomenologists, and overarching them all was the magisterial presence of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938).
In 1900, Husserl had published his Logical Investigations, a work that took aim at much of 19th-century philosophy. According to Husserl, the absorption of philosophy into psychology imperiled the ability of philosophy to discuss the great issues such as the nature of man, the world, and religious experience. Husserl attacked the reduction of philosophy to a mere record of subjective states of psychic awareness.
Husserl's Phenomenology
The movement rallied a group of young philosophers to Gottingen. The cry “Back to things themselves!” was heard in the university town. Young intellectuals like Edith Stein were craving the strong meat of philosophical inquiry. Husserl's phenomenological method promised to provide this diet by bringing scientific respectability to a discipline that had been previously mired on the shoals of subjectivism.
In order to break free of subjectivism, Husserl proposed that the proper study of philosophy was the object. Knowledge, for Husserl, was always knowledge of something. Yet the object of knowledge (noema) was not exactly the thing in itself that enjoyed an existential or factual existence. All such realities must be “bracketed,” put into parentheses, thus forcing us to view the object in a pure state. Detached from the contingent world of experience, the object would then present itself to our insight in all its essential purity.
Stein quickly adapted to the Husserlian scheme. The master (as he was called by the students) wrote his speculations in a stenographic shorthand—the Gabelsberger method—which amounted to a mass of more than 40,000 pages. In 1916 he asked Stein to be his teaching assistant and to go with him to Freiburg where he had accepted a professorship. While working on her own doctoral dissertation (On Empathy) she also began to put Husserl's early writings into order.
Such an assignment gave her a privileged position regarding the emergence of phenomenology as a vital philosophical current in the early twentieth century. Yet current research on Stein's role as teaching assistant to Husserl reveals her to be much more than Husserl's amanuensis. In a just-published work on Stein's phenomenological background, Body, Text, and Science by Marianne Sawicki, the author argues that significant portions of Husserl's unpublished manuscript, Ideen II were in fact written by Stein.
Moving Toward the Church
Still, she grew restive under Husserl. Her labors in organizing some of his earliest material seemed not to interest him. There was also the perception on her part that his more mature reflections—contained, for example in Ideas: Toward a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Method (1913)—were reverting back to an incipient idealism, precisely the thing that the earlier Husserl had vowed to overcome. Stein voiced concern about an evolution in Husserl's thought: “an increasing tendency to identify 'transcendental idealism' as the real core of his philosophy.”
She concludes that “his old Gottingen students could not support him in this move, to his regret and theirs.”
Stein had had much contact with Christian students at Gottingen. Max Scheler (1874-1928) had converted to Catholicism from Judaism and had embarked on providing an ethical basis for the phenomenological method. His lectures in Gottingen, “On the Holy” fascinated Stein who found them more stirring than Husserl's matter-of-factness. Scheler's presence had an undeniable effect on a movement toward the Catholic Church that was taking place among Husserl's students.
Adolph Reinach (1883-1917), Husserl's most valued colleague and one of the founders of the philosophical society, was a baptized Lutheran. Called the phenomenologist par excellence, his untimely death at the front in World War I interrupted a series of letters in which he argued that the phenomenological method was oriented by nature to the religious question.
The ‘Mass Club’
Stein, although still an atheist was moved by his widow's resignation in the face of death. Frau Reinach's belief in a life after death became a powerful example to her. Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1970) had left Gottingen before Stein's arrival. One of the first wave of phenomenologists, he too had converted to Catholicism and was teaching in Munich. Referring to von Hildebrand and Siegfried Hamburger, Hans Lipps (1889-1941), a brilliant phenomenologist and colleague of Stein's (one to whom she showed feelings of a romantic nature) gently chided her one day inquiring if she had joined “that club of people who go to Mass every day in Munich.”
She demurred with a hesitating, “no.” But that was 1916, and her decision to enter the Catholic Church was still six years away.
By 1918 Stein had returned to Breslau where she tutored privately on the phenomenological method, while reading in the philosophy of religion, especially Kierkegaard's On the Training of Christians. She was unmoved by the solitariness of the Dane. Man alone before God seemed chilly, while the leap of faith had the effect of undercutting any reasonableness in believing. She inclined to a faith more communitarian, one more able to converse with reason. By 1921 she was reading the Gospels and wondering whether she would become a Lutheran as Husserl had become or whether she would join “that club that goes to Mass.”
Visiting the home of Hedwig Conrad-Martius she reached for a volume on the shelf, the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. Sitting down to read she was enthralled.
“My metaphysical prejudices were overcome,” she would remark.
The former atheist who had separated from the God of the Hebrews, who had felt pale stirrings from the God of the philosophers, was now gripped by the account of a 16th-century Spanish mystic. Edith Stein had found the God of love.
She was baptized Jan. 1, 1922 at the church in Bergzabern, taking the baptismal name “Teresa.” During the next eight years, Stein lived with the Dominicans in Speyer teaching at St. Magdalena's, a training institute for teachers. Although the rigors of the scholarly life were put aside, St. Magdalena's initiated Stein into the regimen of convent life.
Aquinas & a New Mentor
In 1925, however, she would encounter yet another mentoring influence, this time in the person of Erich Przywara SJ. The Jesuit was a powerful presence in European Catholic circles between the two world wars, exerting his influence on Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar.
Przywara was impressed with Stein's phenomenological writings on the human person. Her understanding of the body-soul composite caused him to wonder if in fact her thinking was aimed at the perennial philosophy. He proposed that she translate the De Veritate of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Stein's efforts with De Veritate were halting at the start. Phenomenologists were trained to avoid with scrupulousness any mentioning of authors. Only the philosophical “object” under discussion should be treated, all previous opinions should be set aside. The philosophical examination should be unencumbered by any prior commentary. Aquinas on the other hand introduced a grand concerted chorus of the dead and the living. He cited at will: fathers and doctors, schoolmen and Jewish commentators, sacred writers and pagan Greeks, infidels and saints of the calendar.
Yet despite the foreign quality of the scholastic method, her work bore fruit. She authored a manuscript comparing Husserl with Aquinas. Both thinkers sought a precise method of thinking and a certain body of truths. Both engaged in philosophy as a serious pursuit, not a pastime. Neither doubts the power of reason, although Aquinas allows it greater scope, including supernatural cognition as well as natural. Husserl held that human reason, in principle, knows no limits. Aquinas, although aware of the fragmentary nature of human knowing, maintained that in God there was actual possession of all truth.
Some commentators have implied, recently, that Stein's more pristine grasp of phenomenology was subverted by the neo-Thomist agenda of Erich Przywara. They see a certain discontinuity in her pursuit of Thomas. Dr. Marianne Sawicki sounds this note in her new book, brilliantly researched, while influenced by a feminist hermeneutic.
Father Jan Nota SJ, who knew Stein slightly in Echt a few years before her death, admired Przywara greatly and felt that his influence on Edith was positive. Still he laments the fact that she did not become a Thomist of the transcendental school, a la Marechal and Rahner.
Body and Soul
There is another view on Edith Stein and Thomism, however, advanced by James Collins in his sapiential article “Edith Stein and Phenomenology” (Thought, June, 1942). It is bold in its implications, suggesting that, in Edith Stein, we have not a shrinking amanuensis of the great Husserl, we have instead an independent thinker who was in the vanguard of the phenomenological movement, yet aware of certain limitations inherent in it.
It was precisely her grasp of the body-soul composite that inclined Przywara to engage her cooperation. She was, it could be said, naturaliter Thomista. Far from belittling Stein's giftedness, Collins sees her Thomist turn as a radical act which would ground insights which were formulated well before her encounter with Thomas.
Between 1935-1936, she authored a work, Finite and Eternal Being, a compendium of her research on the synthesis between Thomism and phenomenology. Although there are occasional departures from Aquinas, as in her preference for Duns Scotus on two or three points, such instances are peripheral and only serve to highlight the fact that Thomism is foundational to her study. Collins views this work as that of “high philosophical genius,” and although Przywara was a man of immense erudition himself, the judgment on Finite and Eternal Being remains that of an original and profound study. Thus, Thomist solutions found by Stein represent not a capitulation of her previous phenomenological studies but a true fulfillment of them. By reason of her execution at Auschwitz, we were deprived of what might certainly have been extended commentary on phenomenology and Thomist metaphysics.
In honor of her Oct. 11, 1998 canonization, this writer would like to propose, with all due reverence, an allegorical painting—in the contemporary idiom—of heavenly beatitude. Saint Thomas Aquinas sits in the magister's chair, while St. Edith Stein lectures to the Gottingen Philosophical Society.
James Sullivan is based in Bridgeport, Conn.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: James Sullivan ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Hollywood Gets Starry-Eyed Over DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:Don't expect any new movies about the life of Christ this Christmas. Instead, Hollywood will offer us two new films on Buddhism's Dalai Lama. Seven Years in Tibet, directed by Jean-Jacques Arnaud, and Kundun, directed by Martin Scorsese, which is scheduled to debut precisely on Christmas Day. Meanwhile, Nov. 7 was the scheduled premiere of Richard Gere's new thriller Red Corner, which Gere calls “an act of love for my soul-home, Tibet.”
Is Hollywood trying to tell us something?
As the movie industry has grown progressively more hostile to traditional Western religions, and Christianity in particular, it has opened its arms to spiritualities of Eastern inspiration. In his 1992 book, Hollywood vs. America, veteran film critic Michael Medved explores filmmakers'gratuitous digs at traditional Western faiths, especially Christianity. The host of films examined by Medved included such sordid fare as The Last Temptation of Christ, The Pope Must Die, Nuns on the Run, The Rapture, and At Play in the Fields of the Lord.
More recently Medved has contrasted Hollywood's respectful treatment of Eastern religions—such as in Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha and Oliver Stone's Heaven and Earth— to its visceral animosity towards biblical religions.
“Many religions,” says Medved, “as long as they aren't Judaism or Christianity, are treated with dignity and respect. Only the sensibilities of mainstream Western religious groups are repeatedly ignored.”
A typical example of the care given to non-Western religions can be found in Kundun. Four years ago, screenwriter Melissa Mathison (of ET fame) sent her idea for Kundun to Martin Scorsese, who was filming Casino at the time. Scorsese, who directed the blasphemous 1988 movie The Last Temptation of Christ, was taken with the idea and gave the immediate go-ahead.
Once Mathison had finished the script, she flew with husband Harrison Ford to Daramsala, India, to present her work to the Dalai Lama himself for his personal review. The Dalai Lama does his share of movie consulting these days. Like Mathison, director Bernardo Bertolucci used the Dalai Lama as consultant for his ambitious 1994 film Little Buddha, a glowing account of the founder of Buddhism. The Dalai Lama also counts among his friends actor Richard Gere and actress Uma Thurman's father, Robert, who together with Gere founded Tibet House, a center of Buddhist spirituality.
Wherein lies Buddhism's attraction for Westerners? Time magazine's recent gala spread on “America's Fascination with Buddhism,” cites one Ellen White, who said that Buddhism helped her “make sense out of life” without the fear and guilt she associated with her earlier Roman Catholicism. The report says that converts also mention Buddhism's “relative lack of hierarchy” and spiritual explorer Alan Watts credits Buddhism with enabling him to “get out from under the monstrously oppressive God the Father.”
Elsewhere in the occidental world things are much the same. Vincenzo Piga, one of Italy's most prominent Buddhists, offers illuminating testimony regarding his reasons for converting to Buddhism.
In Buddhism, Piga relates, “I found … a non-theistic, non-dogmatic, secular religion, without authority.”
Piga's attraction to Buddhism, one infers, stems not from what Buddhism proposes, but from what it doesn't propose. His description runs like a diet soft drink commercial: “All the spirituality of conventional religions, but with no God, no doctrine, and no authority.”
Or as University of Hawaii's Johan Galtung writes, Buddhism is a religion “with no God or Satan, no paradise or hell, and no soul in search of eternal life.” John Lennon's dream come true.
Man's desire for spirituality cannot be long suppressed. Buddhism's recent popularity—like that of Scientology and the New Age—seems the product of a jaded consumerist society that is glutted with pleasure, starving for transcendence, but unwilling to adopt a healthy regimen of solid spiritual food. Spiritual “experiences” take precedence over the search for religious truth. The result? Ersatz religion—religion without God.
This unhealthy trend cannot help causing concern for Catholics. In his 1994 book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II recognized the Church's desire to “identify the semina Verbi present in the great traditions of the Far East,” but also warned Catholics that Buddhism's fundamentally negative view of the world runs contrary to Christianity's understanding that the world, as God's creation, is essentially good.
Likewise this past March, in an interview with the French newspaper L'Express, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger called Buddhism “a sort of spiritual auto-eroticism” and suggested that “if Buddhism seduces, it is because it seems to offer the possibility of touching the infinite and attaining beatitude without having concrete religious obligations.”
The cardinal likewise recalled that in the 1950s it was said that the challenge for the Church in the year 2000 would not be Marxism, but Buddhism.
For the moment, Buddhism remains a fringe religion in America.
“There has not been enough time to ferment and intoxicate the culture in America,” says Richard Gere.
He can be consoled that Hollywood, at any rate, is doing all it can to expedite this intoxication.
Father Thomas Williams is rector of the general directorate of the Legionaries of Christ in Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Sacred History in Western Maryland DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:A car crash, two shrines, and an American saint
THE TWO Model-A Fords were approaching one another on the slick and ice-covered roads. The snow was falling furiously. Suddenly, one of the cars slid out of control and headed straight for the other, which was carrying two seminarians.
Though he still carries some of the scars of that crash, he carries the memory of the Immaculate Heart with greater joy.
The collision threw one of the future priests into a snow bank, injuring him severely. The young man knew he was badly hurt. In front of him, though, on the snow bank, appeared an image of the I m m a c u l a t e Heart. He prayed to Mary asking for her intercession to spare his life.
That seminarian, Hugh Phillips, is now a monsignor. Though he still carries some of the scars of that crash, he carries the memory of the Immaculate Heart with greater joy. He is also a man who kept a promise.
The road he was traveling is near Mount St. Mary's College and Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md. Behind the school was an almost-forgotten grotto to our Lady of Lourdes. The grotto was established in 1805, by the founder of Mount St. Mary's, Father John DuBois. It is believed to be the oldest Marian shrine in the United States.
Apathy had set in at the little church and shrine by that time, however. Weeds grew up among the flowers and eventually displaced them. Wooden fences were falling down, paint was peeling—hardly a fitting tribute to the Mother of God.
So the young priest-to-be took on the task of rebuilding the grotto in memory of the lady who he believed interceded for him on a cold and snowy road.
All of the early Catholic settlers moving from Baltimore west passed through this area. Saints have walked here. One of them was a woman named Elizabeth Ann Seton. Mother Seton wrote fondly of this place in her diaries. She would often take a group of children to the mountain, sit them down near the little stream under the shade of a nearby tree and teach them the Catholic faith. There is now a statue to her memory on the spot. Many conversions have occurred in this place.
The landscaping is beautiful. Msgr. Phillips has replaced the weeds with beautiful flowering plants and shrubs. Towering rhododendrons line the entrance. In the fall, the trees that line the hill show off a tapestry of beautiful colors that surround a golden statue of the Virgin Mary that rises 95 feet into the air.
Inside the grotto there is an immediate sense of peace. The place is quiet and restful. Time seems to come to a standstill. Strolling on the grounds, you will pass statues of Jesus, Mary, and St. Francis. You will gaze upon mosaics of the stations of the cross and pause at the reflecting pool. Then you will find the stone chapel that is the center shrine.
The chapel is a little place, no bigger than a one-room schoolhouse, though it is beautifully adorned with stained glass windows depicting some of the notables who have visited, including Mother Seton.
Behind the chapel is the grotto itself. A stone wall lined with over-growing ivy and hanging plants frames a small statue of the Virgin Mary above the altar. A small stream trickles past the grotto on its way to the reflecting pool. Above and to the left of the grotto is a life-size depiction of Jesus on Calvary cast in bronze.
Mass is held on regular occasion in the grotto with its amphitheater-like seating. During inclement weather, there is a glass-enclosed chapel at the lower end of the shrine.
Spend an afternoon listening to Msgr. Phillips tell his stories of cures and wonders at the grotto—and picture the image of the Immaculate Heart emblazoned on a white snow bank. Perhaps the grotto is as much a reflection of his love and gratitude as it is a memorial to our Lady of Lourdes.
The shrine is located on Mary-land's Highway 15. To visit the nearby St. Elizabeth Ann Seton shrine turn left out of the Lourdes grotto shrine and travel to the next traffic light, the intersection with Seton Avenue. Another left turn and a half-mile's ride will bring you to the shrine on the right. The beautiful minor basilica is one of only 33 with that distinction in the United States. Inside the ornate and beautiful chapel are the remains of Mother Seton.
Also on the grounds are sites of historical significance in the saint's life, such as one of the convents she lived in with her Daughters of Charity.
Nearby there are inns and roadside restaurants to house and feed pilgrims and tourists. Gettysburg is 15 minutes away and worth a day's visit. Baltimore is less than an hour away.
A little corner of western Maryland surrounded by sacred history, Emmitsburg is a tiny stepping stone into the traditions of Catholic America. These two shrines, dedicated to St. Elizabeth Seton—who spent her life in service, remembering our Lord's sacrifice—and our Lady of Lourdes—who revealed herself as the Immaculate Conception, the patroness of our nation—will help the faithful understand and benefit from Catholicism's rich U.S. history.
Chris Winters is based in Pittsburgh, Pa.
----- EXCERPT: The Catholic Traveler ----- EXTENDED BODY: Chris Winters ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The parents of these children have leprosy DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:These youngsters are cared for by PIME missionaries. They live in India, where leprosy is a very real problem. Not only does it disfigure and maim the person with the disease, it causes a string of social problems, not the least of which is how to care for their children. At right, they take part in a live Christmas crib scene.
PIME Missionaries have ministered to poor people in India and other countries of the world for over a hundred years. Today they can offer a cure for the disease, but the trick is to reach the poor who don't know about it or believe no one cares.
PIME Missionaries do care. And thousands of people like you, the reader, show their concern by supporting the work of PIME missionaries as they cure and rehabilitate persons with leprosy and as they care for and educate the children of those persons.
Will you help keep this loving service going by contributing to the LEPROSY RELIEF SOCIETY today?
THE LEPROSY RELIEF SOCIETY (LRS) was founded in 1960 by laity to help the leprosy work of the PIME Missionaries. All donations go directly to the PIME missions and you will be informed of the work by a periodic newsletter. Your contribution will help save lives and alleviate the pain and suffering of many.
THANK YOU FOR BEING GENEROUS!
PIME stands for the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, an institute of priests and brothers, who, along with the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate, serve in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Your tax-deductible contributions enable them to continue their many charitable works the world over.
Our patients with Hansen's disease (leprosy) are either physically or mentally handicapped due to the ravages of the disease — ulcers, amputation, deformity. They are also socially stigmatized. We are the only support and consolation for them. The support and encouragement we receive from you helps us provide shelter and daily maintenance for those most gravely affected. We are able to help school children purchase school uniforms, books, etc. For all this we are really indebted to you.
Sister Paula Terzaghi
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: An Honor for the "Father to the Immigrants" DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:Bishop John Baptist Scalabrini, champion of those struggling to build their lives far from home, will be beatified Nov. 9
AMONG THE countless refugees and immigrants who have come to the United States were Enrico Fermi, the Italian nuclear physicist; Albert Einstein, the German physicist who formulated the theory of relativity; Arturo Toscanini, the Italian conductor; Wernher von Braun, the German rocket engineer, and countless other geniuses.
America has always prided itself on being a nation of immigrants and refugees, but most of these have not been scientists, artistic geniuses, or millionaires. Most have been poor, and often illiterate. Today more than ever, immigrants from a hundred countries flood our shores, seeking refuge in a land of freedom, generosity, and compassion. They speak different languages, observe different customs and have different faces, but, before long, they and their children also become citizens of this country, contributing their gifts and treasures to this “land of the free and home of the brave.” Our forefathers were no different.
Migrants and refugees will always be part of human life on earth, because there will always be oppression and war, persecution and hunger, poverty and disease, and a love of freedom found in the heart of every man and woman. Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, Albania, and other countries are generating millions of refugees and migrants each year. These brothers and sisters of ours seek refuge not only in America but in Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, Germany, France, and elsewhere.
Nov. 9, Pope John Paul II will beatify the great “father to the migrants,” Bishop John Baptist Scalabrini, in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in the presence of hundreds of cardinals and bishops, and thousands of lay people.
By beatifying Bishop Scalabrini, the Pope is telling the world that migrants and refugees are our brothers and sisters. We cannot oppress or ignore them. We cannot say with Cain: “Am I my brother's keeper?” In each migrant all Christians are called to see the face of Christ, who in Matthew's Gospel said: “I was a foreigner and you welcomed me.”
The Pope will tell Americans, who are largely immigrants or descendants of immigrants, what God often told the Jewish people in the Old Testament: Remember to treat well the foreigners who live among you because you too were once foreigners in the land of Egypt.
Born in 1839 near Como, Italy, Bishop Scalabrini was one of the first prelates of the modern Church to wrestle with the problem of migration. At age 36, he became one of the youngest bishops in the world, in the Diocese of Piacenza, Italy, near Milan. It was then that he realized that thousands of his people were emigrating to foreign countries in search of a piece of bread. He also realized that hundreds of thousands of Italians were leaving Italy every year for the Americas.
Nobody seemed to care about these poor uprooted men, women, and children. So he mobilized Italian public opinion, stirred up the consciences of Christians, challenged the Italian government, and lobbied the Holy See. In 1887, he founded a missionary congregation of priests and brothers and, in 1895, one of sisters, and sent them to North and South America to minister to the migrants.
In 1901, he visited the United States for three months to see for himself the plight of the immigrants and the work of his missionaries. During that time, he also paid a visit to the White House to discuss the problem of immigration with President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1905, he also visited immigrants in Brazil.
Three weeks before his June 1, 1905 death, Bishop Scalabrini sent the Holy See a historic plan for the pastoral care of migrants of all nationalities. It was a comprehensive and detailed blueprint. In it he pleaded with the Holy See to set up a department for the care of migrants and refugees. Today the Scalabrini missionaries serve migrants and refugees of all nationalities in 25 countries.
One of the most influential bishops of his time, Scalabrini headed the Diocese of Piacenza for nearly 30 years. He was a powerful defender of the poor, disabled, and workers. He promoted scientific and social studies and welcomed the industrial world of his times.
As bishop, he visited each of his 365 parishes five times, spending three or four days at each stop, hearing confessions, preaching, visiting the sick, comforting, and healing. During his tenure, he held three diocesan synods. He strongly believed in the power of religious instruction. Because of his pioneering work in this field, Pope Pius IX called him the “apostle of the catechism.” Finally, he vigorously and fearlessly defended the rights of working men and women when it was not popular.
Bishop Scalabrini's three great devotions were to the Eucharist, the Blessed Mother, and the Pope, St. Peter's successor in the See of Rome.
As John Paul II beatifies the former bishop of Piacenza, not so much for his many achievements as for his holy life, the Pope will, no doubt, recall the words he spoke of him a few years ago: “Bishop Scalabrini practiced the Christian virtues to a heroic degree.”
That is why the Church will honor him as Blessed John Baptist Scalabrini and why Catholics can confidently ask this holy bishop and “father to the migrants” to intercede for them before God.
More than ever, Bishop Scalabrini's glowing example is needed as a witness of how to tend to the needs of migrant brothers and sisters throughout the world and to help Catholics realize that only through catechesis—knowledge of the truths of our faith—will the people of our generation come to know, love, and serve the Lord.
Father Dalpiaz is a Scalabrini missionary based in Burbank, Calif.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gino Dalpiaz SC ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Vicar of Christ's Home Base DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:SUNDAY, NOV. 9, the Church celebrates the feast of the dedication of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, located in Rome. Consecrated by Pope St. Sylvester I around 324, this enormous church has as its patrons two St. Johns—the Baptist and the Evangelist.
The site of five ecumenical councils (1123, 1139, 1179, 1215, and 1512), the basilica was the home of the popes from the emperor Constantine's time until the early 14th century, when Pope Clement V settled in Avignon, France. When Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome in 1377, he took residence on Vatican hill.
Why would the Church designate a day (the reason for this specific date remains unknown) on the liturgical calendar to commemorate the historic dedication of the Diocese of Rome's cathedral?
First, it must be recalled that this particular structure enjoys a unique relationship to the Vicar of Christ, providing a kind of “liturgical home base” for him. Constantine, who gave a section of imperial land to Pope (later Saint) Melchiades that had earlier belonged to Plautius Lateranus (hence the name), intended— along with the popes—that the basilica constructed on this plot would be the omnium urbis et orbis alma mater et Caput (Mother and head of all churches of the City and of the World).
Second, the cathedral church of any diocese has great import. It is the place where the local bishop—the chief shepherd of the faithful and a successor to the Apostles—gathers with his clergy around the altar for the eucharistic sacrifice. To remember the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran is to be mindful of the cathedral church in one's own diocese.
To remember the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran is to be mindful of the cathedral church in one's own diocese.
Third, the notion of “church” is deserving of frequent recognition and appropriate catechesis. After all, we encounter Jesus Christ in word and sacrament, which are proclaimed and celebrated by his bride, the Church. We are invited to meditate often and with devotion on the mystery of the Church—Christ as the bridegroom, and we as the children of the Church; Jesus as the head, and we as the committed members.
Perched on the threshold of the third Christian millennium, Catholics need a solid understanding of what and who the Church is, as well as the critical and irreplaceable roles of the Holy Father and the local bishop. With an increased awareness of these realities and their own position as baptized brothers and sisters of the Savior, Catholics in this modern age will stand ready to witness to the King, who himself established the Church on the rock of St. Peter after his sincere profession of faith.
The opening prayer of today's Mass states well the intention that each member of the Church should possess: “God our Father, from living stones, your chosen people, you built an eternal temple to your glory. Increase the spiritual gifts you have given to your Church, so that your faithful people may continue to grow into the new and eternal Jerusalem.”
Christ is the sure cornerstone: We are the individual building blocks. United to our Holy Father and our local bishop and safely under the patronage of Mary, Mother of the Church, and Sts. John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, we travel our challenging pilgrimage to eternity and become who we are meant to be—“the new and eternal Jerusalem.”
Father Mangan is a priest of the Diocese of Sioux Falls, S.D.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Charles Mangan ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Spiritual Search as Fashion Statement DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:Seven Years in Tibet goes for epic status but ends up offering moviegoers an unsatisfying mix of psychodrama, travelogue, and political commentary
Film review by JOHN PRIZER
FOR MORE THAN 40 years the artistic and intellectual classes of America and Europe have flirted with Buddhism. The Eastern religion's precepts can seem liberating to a Westerner when they're detached from the conservative cultures from which they spring. There's no guilt or sin in its understanding of human nature, and the strong moral code of the Judeo-Christian tradition is replaced by a more abstract and philosophical set of teachings.
Buddhism has never taken hold among the West's ordinary citizens, and even the Dalai Lama now suggests that spiritual seekers try to find their path within the religious tradition to which they were born. Nevertheless, Hollywood has decided to jump on the bandwagon.
Seven Days in Tibet is the first of two scheduled big budget releases (Martin Scorsese's Kudrun is the other), and it's phony from top to bottom. Both its character development and its treatment of larger issues rings false. Although it aspires to be the story of one man's spiritual quest, it confuses religious values with psychological ones and tacks on a well-intentioned political message to tie up the loose ends. At its worst, the movie plays like an overproduced Saturday Night Live skit, especially when heart throb Brad Pitt shakes badly-dyed blonde hair and emotes with a weirded-out Austrian accent.
Heinrich Harrer (Pitt) is a champion Austrian mountain climber who leaves his pregnant wife (Ingeborga Dapkunaiti) in 1939 to conquer the Nanga Parbat peak in the Himalayas. He's the prototype of the overachieving, stomp-your-competitors, would-be Aryan superman. Arrogant and self-centered, he refuses to work closely with other members of the expedition.
“No wonder you're always alone,” team leader, Peter Aufschnaiter (David Thewlis), tells him. “No one can stand your miserable company.”
Back in Austria, Harrer's wife gives birth to their son and informs him by letter that she's married one of his best friends and that his son will be told his real father is dead. This news seems to pierce Harrer's hard shell.
“If only my head could express what is in my heart,” he complains, but he remains as aloof as before.
With the outbreak of World War II, the German-Austrian mountaineering team is placed in a North India British P.O.W. camp. Harrer escapes as part of an effort organized by the rest of his group, but he strikes off on his own when they're free. Eventually he and Aufschnaiter hook up again on the barren Himalayan plains, and the two decide to head for China via Tibet.
Even though the hidden kingdom ruthlessly expels foreigners, the Western mountaineers scheme and scam their way into Lhasa, the capital city. French director Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Bear and The Name of the Rose) and Hollywood screenwriter Becky Johnston (Prince of Tides) inter-cut Harrer's adventures with scenes of the boy Dalai Lama (Jamyang Jamtsho Wangchuk), Tibet's religious and political leader, who's lonely for companionship and knowledge of the West.
This is Harrer's cue. He soon hooks up with the youth, and the two immediately bond.
“Where is Paris, France? And what is a Molotov cocktail,” the Dalai Lama eagerly inquires. “And who is Jack the Ripper?”
Harrer answers these questions and teaches him about world geography and the solar system as well.
Up until this point the Austrian has had a mean, uptight personality, but his contact with the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people change him into Mr. Nice Guy—a warm sensitive soul in touch with his feelings. However, the movie never dramatizes this inner transformation. It just suddenly happens.
The filmmakers give great weight to the Dalai Lama as Harrer's surrogate son who fills the hole in the Austrian's psyche created by the absence of his real one. This is a typical Hollywood Freudian approach though, a poor substitute for an exploration of the spiritual issues on which the drama should be based.
Except for a few comments about the importance of stripping away the ego, we never actually learn much about Buddhism. Certain rituals are lovingly recreated, but their meaning is never explained. The exception is Harrer's experience in building Tibet's first movie theater. The native workers refuse to kill the earth worms dug up during construction because they might have been someone's mother in a previous life—an example of the Buddhist beliefs in reincarnation and the sanctity of all life.
On the whole, Seven Days in Tibet has less depth than your average National Geographic photo spread.
To spice things up, the filmmakers insert a love interest absent from Harrer's 1953 memoir on which the movie is ostensibly based. Both he and Aufschnaiter are shown falling for the same woman, a beautiful Tibetan seam-stress (Lhakpa Tsanchoe), who rejects the hard-charging Austrian for his gentler colleague.
The film concludes with China's invasion of Tibet. The communists'brutality and contempt for religion is forcefully presented, but it seems like the subject of a different movie. Harrer is only marginally involved.
With its many slow pans of majestic landscapes (Chile, Argentina, and Canada substituting for Tibet), the film aspires to an epic grandeur, but the final result is more like a travelogue mixed in with a conventional psychodrama and unrelated political commentary. An aura of trendiness hangs over all the disparate elements. It's a kind of spiritual fashion statement for those who want their religious journey to be exotic and picturesque—an insult to both the audience and one of the East's great spiritual traditions.
The USCC classification of Seven Years in Tibet is A-II, adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13.
John Prizer, the Register's Arts & Culture correspondent, is based in Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: Arts & Entertainment ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Film cips DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:Boogie Nights (New Line)
Gritty melodrama about the sleazy world of porn movie-makers begins in 1977 with the rise of a new star (Mark Wahlberg) who, after a few years of big money and drugs, hits the skids until being re-hired by the director (Burt Reynolds) who gave him his start. Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson doesn't glamorize the dysfunctional characters and their self-destructive way of life, but this attempt to humanize the porn trade lacks any larger moral or social perspective. Gory scenes of violence, explicit sex acts, full nudity, recurring rough language, and occasional profanity. The USCC classification is O. The film is rated R.
Eye of God (Castle Hill)
Brooding drama set in rural Oklahoma, where a distraught, orphaned teen (Nick Stahl) is befriended by a troubled young woman (Martha Plimpton) who has married a born-again ex-con (Kevin Anderson) despite his refusal to reveal the crime for which he was imprisoned. Writer-director Tim Blake Nelson builds the mystery-laden narrative to a shattering climax in a tale of psychotic madness hiding behind fundamentalist ravings. Brief violence with grisly shots of corpses, an explicit abortion scene, fleeting nudity, some rough language, as well as profanity. The USCC classification is A-IV. The film is rated R.
Fairy Tale: A True Story (Paramount) Romanticized version of the controversy stirred in 1917 England by two little girls whose photographs of what they said were tiny fairies frolicking in their garden aroused the skepticism of Harry Houdini (Harvey Keitel), though were proclaimed genuine by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Peter O'Toole). Director Charles Sturridge spins an enchanting tale of childhood innocence in a sweet family film marred by a few rude words; serious argumentation over the existence of fairies and fleeting mild language. The USCC classification is A-II. The film is rated PG.
Gattaca (Columbia)
Weak sci-fi yarn of a future in which genetic engineering has created a master race that treats those conceived naturally as inferiors, one of whom (Ethan Hawke) carries off an elaborate masquerade to become a trusted member of the genetic elite until a murder investigation threatens to reveal his true identity. Writer-director Andrew Niccols sets up the premise of a regimented world ruled by dispassionate logic but succeeds too well in showing how dull such a place would be, even with all the scientific subterfuge used to fool computerized identity checks and the disruptions caused by swarms of investigators on the trail of an impostor. Stylized violence, sexual situations, and occasional rough language and profanity. The USCC classification is A-III. The film is rated is PG-13.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Church, Our Mother DATE: 11/09/1997 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 9-15, 1997 ----- BODY:Today's solemnity celebrates the dedication of the Lateran basilica in Rome, the mother church of Roman Catholicism. As the inscription over the entrance of the building declares: “Mother and Head of all churches in the Holy City and throughout the World.”
This solemnity reminds us how much we need the Church to be our Mother. For our meditation today brings to mind the truth that we have not given ourselves faith, just as we have not given ourselves life. That faith is mediated to us. We cannot believe without being supported by the faith of others. Our faith is engendered in us via the faith of our ancestors. The Lateran basilica symbolizes that transmission and heritage.
In today's Gospel, Christ says to those who are selling doves: “Get them out of here! Stop turning my Father's house into a marketplace!”
The vendors violate the sanctity of the temple, and not simply through their crass commercialization that is greedy and exploitative. Rather, they defile the Holy Place through their profane disregard of the Holy One. They recognize all too readily how religion gives them a livelihood, but they totally ignore how God gives them life itself and calls them to live that life through obedient faith by seeking God above all things.
Today's solemnity checks similar temptations to individualism and self-seeking in ourselves. As we honor the mother of all churches, we rejoice in the supreme privilege of receiving the life of faith through the Church our Mother. God has willed to make his people holy and to save them, but not as individuals. The Church, the Mother of our new birth, reveals how God sanctifies us precisely through that bond by which we become a people who profess God and who serve him in holiness.
As Christ drives out the animals from the temple area, “his disciples recalled the words of Scripture: ‘Zeal for your house consumes me.’” And this solemnity prompts a similar recollection in our own minds. For the physical building of every church plays a crucial role in our life of faith. Churches are not simply gathering places. Rather, they are homes that direct our minds and hearts to our ultimate home in heaven.
To step into the house of God, we must be willing to leave behind the emptiness and evil of the world. That disposition is what distinguishes a pilgrim from a tourist in a church. As the Church teaches, the visible church is a symbol of the Father's house toward which the people of God is journeying. Crossing the threshold into that sacred building remains an act of faith before all else. When that step is taken as a disciple by entering into a church, the Christian enters into the world of new life it offers.
And finally, today's solemnity drives home that we are the Church.
Visible churches make visible the people that is the Church living in this place. St. Gregory the Great reminds us that Christ has shown himself to be one person with the holy Church he has taken to himself. As we contemplate this great basilica, as we gaze upon any church, we are poignantly reminded of our exalted vocation: Christ and his Church together make up the “whole Christ.” As the body of Christ, with profound humility, we receive the body of Christ in church from Mother Church.
Father Cameron, a Register contributing editor, teaches homiletics at St. Joseph Seminary, Yonkers, N.Y.
----- EXCERPT: This Sunday at Mass: November 9 Dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran ----- EXTENDED BODY: Peter John Cameron OP ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: War Archives May Be Opened To Jewish Scholars DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—Less than two weeks after issuing a landmark document on the Holocaust, the Vatican held out hope it may open its archives from the World War II period to Jewish scholars.
Cardinal Edward Cassidy, the Vatican's top official for religious relations with Jews, suggested a team of Catholic and Jewish scholars review 11 volumes of archival material already made public as a first step.
“If questions still remained, they should seek further clarification,” an official statement said.
It followed four days of talks at the Vatican by the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee (ILC). During the meeting, Jewish delegates repeated their “demand for impartial access to the relevant archival material” on Vatican and papal activity during World War II, according to the communiqué.
“Cardinal Cassidy did not rule out that if we have to turn to the archives, so we must to further clarify the Church's role during the Holocaust,” Rabbi Marc Schneier told journalists following the talks. “That was a very significant step in what we view as an ongoing process.”
The ILC talks March 23-26 represented the 16th time the interfaith group has met since its establishment in 1971. Much of the session focused on the importance of educating Catholics and Jews about each other's beliefs.
However, the meeting was particularly significant for two other reasons: first, because the ILC held the talks for the first time within the Vatican walls; and second, because the session immediately followed the publication of the Vatican's document on the Holocaust.
Although the meeting was arranged well before the release of the document, We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, delegates said the text was a major topic of their discussions.
They described the document as “a beginning and not as an ending of a process” of reflection and examination. Cardinal Cassidy noted that Catholics still have much to learn, but he also pointed out that the Jewish community as well needs to understand better how the Catholic Church views itself.
Since its publication in mid-March, the Shoah document has prompted ongoing praise, criticism, and reflection from Catholic and Jewish leaders.
It has drawn universal approval for expressing repentance about past Christian discrimination against Jews and its strong condemnation of the practices and ideas that led to the Nazis' “final solution.”
However its defense of Pope Pius XII re-opened a bitter debate about the role of the wartime pontiff. The crux of the issue regarding the archives is whether Pius did all he should have done to save Jewish lives. While the pre-1922 archives are now open to outside historians, material from subsequent years is still being classified by Church scholars.
Years ago, trying to shed light on World War II, Vatican historians researched the wartime archives and produced an 11-volume study from 1965 to 1981. Their work, however, has not laid to rest calls for unfettered access to archival material from the period.
A joint statement at the end of the ILC meeting stated that participants agreed to establish a joint working group of historians and theologians, to pursue further studies on the period of the Shoah, and to seek together a “healing of memory.”
Pope John Paul II did not mention the Vatican's Holocaust document in a meeting with ILC delegates, but he said the continuing dialogue between Catholics and Jews was “an impressive sign of hope to a world marked by conflict and division.”
He also prayed that better methods would be found “to make known and appreciated by Catholics and Jews alike the significant advances in mutual understanding and cooperation that have taken place between our two communities.”
Jewish delegates thanked the Pope for his support of the dialogue and his promotion of respect for Jews and Judaism. However, Geoffrey Wigoder of the Israel Interfaith Committee repeated some criticisms raised by Jewish leaders about the Shoah document.
“It was felt that the self-criticism—for all its importance—did not go far enough,” he said in a prepared speech to the Pontiff.
At the same time, Wigoder noted, Jews share the document's concluding hope that an “awareness of past sins” can be transformed into “a firm resolve to build a new future based on a shared mutual respect.”
Speaking after the papal audience, Rabbi David Rosen, who also serves as the Anti-Defamation League's co-liaison to the Vatican, said the ongoing dialogue between Catholics and Jews has created “an increasing climate of trust.”
“Our ultimate goal is to work together to bring about the kingdom of heaven on earth—even if we may have certain different theological understandings of what that means,” he said.
The rabbi noted that both faith communities share many “profound social and ethical values” and that by concentrating on what unites them, Catholics and Jews could reach “a very high level” of cooperation.
When asked about the Holy See's wartime archives, Rabbi Rosen said he believed it was “in the interest of the Vatican” and of history to open them to international scholars.
“It is not a barrier to our future cooperation,” he said, “but it would be nicer if we could, as it were, reconcile memory and have some accepted analysis of the events.”
Following the publication of the Shoah document and the international debate it sparked, the Vatican's leading historian of the World War II era said he had no opposition to opening the archives, as many Jews have asked. Jesuit Father Pierre Blet said, however, that he doubted if they would find anything new. He also hit back at accusations made against Pope Pius XII.
Father Blet said the Pope did not speak out more forcefully for fear of worsening the fate of Catholics, as well as Jews, in Germany and Nazi-occupied countries.
“The apparent silence hid a secret action carried out [by Pius XII] through nunciatures [Vatican embassies] and episcopates to avoid, or at least to limit, the deportations, the violence, the persecutions,” he said.
Father Blet made his comments in the current edition of the scholarly journal, La Civilita Cattolica. He is the only surviving member of the team of historians that researched the Vatican's wartime archives and produced an 11-volume study.
He noted that when Pope Pius died in 1958, there were “unanimous” expressions of admiration for his work, including from Jewish leaders. But beginning in the 1960s, he said, a “black legend” about his presumed silence arose. The Vatican responded by authorizing an early publication of its archive materials from the period. Father Blet and three others worked some 15 years on the project. But today, he said, “few people have read the material.”
He also rejected recent scurrilous accusations that he and other members of the archival team intentionally overlooked documents detrimental to Pope Pius XII.
“We did not deliberately overlook any significant document that could have hurt the image of the Pope and the reputation of the Holy See,” the priest said. He emphasized that the research team went through every box of documents from the period and published those most relevant. The material included messages, speeches and letters of the Pope, as well as diplomatic and private notes and correspondence of other Vatican officials.
The archival finds include a series of letters from Pope Pius to the German bishops during the war period that show the Pope's strong feelings against the Nazi threat, he said.
Evidence showed that the Pope generally chose quiet diplomacy instead of public condemnations of Nazis, Father Blet said, because he was convinced that public statements would only “worsen the fate of the victims and increase their number.”
Stephen Banyra writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: Controversial Holocaust document examined at Catholic-Jewish meeting ----- EXTENDED BODY: Stephen Banyra ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Prelates Examine Church's Approach To Cyber Age DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:DENVER—Technology gurus dazzled more than 50 bishops and cardinals with displays of digital wizardry at a first ever international conference on cyber communication given for Catholic leaders, held in Denver, Colo., March 26-28.
Hosted by Archbishop Charles Chaput OFM Cap of Denver and Archbishop John Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, NewTech '98 took as its theme “ The New Technologies and the Human Person: Communicating the Faith in the New Millennium.”
The forum, a crash course in the digital revolution, explored new means of evangelization for the third millennium.
Key Latin American and North American bishops examined those opportunities and discussed how the Church ought to relate to a secularized, post-modern world.
Adobe, Microsoft, and Echo Star executives were on hand to explain to the prelates the capabilities and applications of “next generation” communication. Pectoral crosses clacked against keyboards as the prelates leaned over powerful computers linked to the Internet. In the hallways, bishops chatted together about Direct to Home (DTH) and Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS), which would deliver diocesan catechetics to their parishes and schools. Several orders of nuns put heads together to discuss computers in classrooms and school intranets. A survey indicated that 90% of the attendees were computer literate, but were eager to find applications for catechesis, education of seminarians, and missionary outreach along the information super highway.
Despite their excitement, however, participants and presenters were cautious about an unrestrained acceptance of “life on the net.” Several of the sessions questioned the wisdom of “virtual communities.”
Internet & the Church
Former Wall Street analyst Ester Dyson, a celebrated theorist and author of Release 2.0, prophesied, “It's going to shake up every established authority in the worldóincluding the Catholic Church.” Characterizing the Internet as “hundreds of thousands of global villages” who make any rules they choose, as do geographical communities, Dyson suggested the Church use the net itself to steer the faithful to worthwhile sites, as well as warn them of harmful ones. Several bishops expressed concern for sites that made no distinction between links to dissident Catholic websites and those of lay faithful who have jumped onto the Internet with excellent Catholic resources for the cyber-surfing public.
Dyson also noted that issues of free speech and anonymity require serious reflection. Many who lack the courage to seek the Church in person might explore Catholic doctrines privately via the Internet—if it can be done anonymously. Dyson's address, “Being Digital: What the New Technologies Are; Why They Matter, and What Will They Do To Life As We Know It,” caused heads to nod in agreement that caution is prudent.
Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, archbishop of Paris, delivered a profound meditation, “Why This ‘Millennial Moment’ Is Decisive: Understanding Today's Cultural Challenges in The Light Of Christian Anthropology And The Gospel.” The cardinal warned of reliance on imaginary, fictional worlds that come between man and man, or man and reality. Speaking particularly of the relationship between men and women, when “the picture is only virtual and therefore leaves man alone and without any responsibility,” desire becomes a dehumanizing fantasy, a “mirage of the real, personal encounter…. Man is then locked up in narcissistic and solitary passivity” that renders him incapable of a true relationship.
The cardinal expressed concern that simulations, virtual realities (complete with sound, smell, and touch) and holograms, give the perception that time and space are no longer anchored. The result is that the distinction between “here” and “there” or “then” and “now” are dissolved and the concept of “after” is destroyed. “What we have here is a parody of eternity. Man pictures himself as eternal. He dreams of forgetting the human condition with its mortality and infinitude, his status as a creature.”
Cardinal Lustiger asked, “How are we going to adapt the Christian rites, and even the faith itself, to the demands of modern civilization?”
Noting that many preferred the comfort of their couches, he reminded all that a TV recording of the Mass is not a substitute to being physically present; that as Christ is physically present as the giver, so we, too, must be physically present as the receiver.
New Way of Thinking
Author James Bailey (After Thought: The Computer Challenge to Human Intelligence) followed Cardinal Lustiger's address with “How The Information Revolution Will Change The Shape And Process Of Thought.”
“The patterns of thought we've known since the Renaissance are not just speeded up,” he said, “but goneóre-placed.”
Bailey explained that man develops partnerships with his communication tools; previously it was man and books, now it is man and electronic circuitry. He instructed his prestigious audience with illustrations from Catholic history, “Until the printing press, it was manuscripts and ink in scriptoriums.”
Manuscripts were spatial—three dimensional. During the 17th and 18th centuries, with the advent of the press, words dominated pictures and thought became sequential. Visual images declined, so man examined his world in text. There were great losses, since, for hundreds of years, the works of Leonardo Da Vinci were lost to universities for lack of an inexpensive way to copy his diagrams and schemata.
If Catholic students are to compete, if Catholic men and women are to influence the sciences and bring a sanctified view of man to the secular world, they must learn to think in new modalities made possible by the computer. Bailey presented a video of Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Seattle, Wash., where students are issued personal computers. Because computers combine text and images, students learn to think in parallel modes. Particularly in science, parallel thinking—that is, seeing life simultaneously rather than sequentially—gives rise to new understandings of our biological world.
The “biological revolution is not amenable to words,” Bailey advised, “we are de-coupling from words.” Biology must be studied via computer to mind, not books to mind, the author explained. “Move ethics and religion onto the Web,” Bailey suggested, for “it will be a bio-tech century.”
Cultural critic Dr. Neil Postman added this caveat to the impact of new technology: “What we need to know about technology changes is that all change is a Faustian bargain.”
Every advantage carries its own disadvantage that must be weighed against any gain for society. Automobiles brought a transportation revolution, but it also brought pollution and interstate highways to mar our landscape. “What technology giveth, technology taketh,” Postman chuckled.
Author of Amusing Ourselves To Death, Postman offered an analogy from Church history, “By placing the word of God on every Christian's table, the mass produced book undermined the authority of the Church hierarchy and hastened the break-up of the Holy Roman Empire.”
Postman commented, “The advantages of technology are not equally distributed among all people.” The question for religious leaders is, “What is the advantage [of the new media] for the average person?”
More information implies solving man's dilemmas, but, Postman suggests, “Maybe not.” More information is not needed to feed the starving people of the world.
“Ask who is given power by the new technology,” Postman said “Technology isn't neutral, it favors certain values.”
Chris Archibald, a Microsoft executive, disagreed. Archibald, whose children attend St. Vincent DePaul School in the archdiocese, told the Register, “For people of faith that is the dilemma. Technology is neutral. Don't fear technology or hide from it because the technology will acquire a different flavor from what it would be if we Catholics stay engaged.”
Vatican Web whiz, Sister Judith Zoebelein FSE, put much into perspective for the Register, “The role of the hierarchy is to give us some criteria, some context of good and evil to help us understand our experiences in the new technologies.”
As technical director of the Internet office of the Holy See, Sister Judith is responsible for content, design, and integration of the Vatican Web pages.
Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, reminded the attendees of the Holy Father's directive that the Church “must avail herself of the new technologies.”
Cardinal Hoyos offered this thought to his brother bishops, “In an age of ‘virtual reality’ people have a deeper hunger than ever for the deeper reality … this is the challenge for our evangelization of the [computer] culture, this is the new Areopagus.”
The close of the NewTech '98 conference was celebrated with a solemn Mass. Amidst the beauty of Immaculate Conception Cathedral and the many mitered heads representing some of the wisest men in the Church, Archbishop Chaput found joy and promise in the reading from Isaiah “Behold, I do a new thing.”
Mary Jo Anderson writes from Florida.
----- EXCERPT: At international meeting, talk of opportunities and words of caution ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mary jo Anderson ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Church Pressure Leads To Easing of Cuba Sanctions DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—President Clinton's decision to ease some U.S. sanctions against Cuba, announced March 20, was an outgrowth of renewed activism by U.S. religious groups, especially the Catholic Church, aimed at reaching out to Cuban people in the wake of Pope John Paul II's January visit to the island nation.
At the same time, the Administration's decision was also driven in part by concerns about U.S. relations with a post-Castro Cuba. “We're reaching out to the people of Cuba to make their lives more tolerable,” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said at the time the sanctions were eased. “We have to look beyond Castro.”
The Pope—who condemned the long-standing U.S. trade embargo against the communist island as “immoral,”—the U.S. Catholic Church, the National Council of Churches and other religious organizations that have long sought an easing of U.S. sanctions, gave the Administration the “political cover” that enabled it to take a tiny step toward thawing U.S.-Cuba relations.
“We are pleased to know that President Clinton has been listening to the growing clamor of the Churches,” said Rev. Rodney Page, executive director of Church World Service, the relief arm of the National Council of Churches. “It is our deepest hope that the reinstatement of direct flights will help reunify Cuban families here and abroad, as well as guarantee the swift delivery of critical food and medicine to a people who have suffered mightily under the U.S. embargo.”
Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua of Philadelphia called the change in policy “a step in the right direction.”
“The decision to permit direct humanitarian flights to Cuba will allow life-saving food and medicines to reach the island,” he said. “This and the ability for Cuban-Americans to send money to relatives in Cuba will strengthen the Cuban people not only physically, but emotionally and spiritually.”
Cardinal Bevilacqua said Clinton's decision “slowly opens the door of hope for the people of Cuba, which will allow them, in the words of our Holy Father, ‘to build a future of ever greater dignity and freedom.’”
The Administration's action will make providing humanitarian aid to Cuba easier to arrange and less costly to accomplish. The changes in policy will include:
l Licensing direct humanitarian charter flights to Cuba, to make it easier for Cuban-Americans to visit relatives and for humanitarian organizations to provide assistance quickly and less expensively.
l Permitting U.S. citizens and residents to send up to $300 per quarter to family members in Cuba.
l Streamlining and expediting licensing for the sale of medicines and medical equipment in Cuba.
Church groups hailed Clinton's easing of restrictions that had blocked Cuban Americans from providing financial aid to family members in Cuba.
“Cuban Americans will once again be free, as they should always be, to send needed financial aid directly to their family members in Cuba,” said Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark, N.J., chairman of the U.S. Catholic Conference's committee on international policy.
Religious groups wasted no time responding to the eased situation. On March 23, the first part of a stockpile of $6 million in medical aid collected by the New York City-based Catholic Medical Missions Board left the United States for Cuba.
While Clinton acknowledged he was taking the steps to “build further on the Pope's visit” to Cuba, religion's role in U.S.-Cuba relations began long before the historic Jan. 21-25 papal trip.
Since Cuba's economy plunged into a free-fall in the early 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, U.S. religious leaders have taken the lead in providing humanitarian aid to the island and in calling for an end to the economic embargo aimed at toppling Castro.
Castro has reciprocated by loosening restrictions on religious worship and by changing Cuba's constitution in 1992 to make the nation a secular rather than atheist state.
Last year, most of the major U.S. religious organizations backed bills in the House and Senate aimed at lifting U.S. restrictions on the sale of food and medicines to Cuba. After the Pope's visit, U.S. religious leaders, especially the Catholic clergy, stepped up their efforts to pressure the U.S. government toward change.
Archbishop McCarrick, who had earlier pressed for an end to the ban on direct flights, welcomed the president's new policy, but said he “looked forward to further initiatives both to assist the Cuban people and to advance reconciliation and better relations between them and the people of the United States.”
Cardinal John O'Connor of New York also welcomed the easing of restrictions on humanitarian aid, but questioned the continued restriction on travel between the United States and Cuba. Speaking at a Spanish-language Mass of thanksgiving March 20 for the Pope's visit to Cuba, the cardinal referred to his own participation in the papal trip, and recalled meeting a woman who was able to see her family in Cuba again after 40 years.
“Why should there be such restrictions? Is that good? Is that human? Is that what God wants?” he asked at the Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.
The day before the Administration announced its Cuba policy changes, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston repeated his call for a new relationship between the United States and the island. “The lack of medicines more quickly and cheaply attainable from the United States severely restricts the treatment that can be provided [in Cuba],” said Law. “The effect of the lack of sufficient food threatens the most vulnerable members of the population, the young and the old. The people of Cuba deserve better than that from us.”
The aid shipped to Cuba March 23 is part of $6 million in drugs and medical supplies collected from the nation's major pharmaceutical companies by the Catholic Medical Mission Agency just prior to the Pope's visit. Responsibility for the huge shipment was transferred to Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services (CRS), which works with Cuba's Caritas to distribute humanitarian aid.
Kate Higgins, Catholic Medical Mission Board's associate pharmaceutical coordinator, said she traveled to Cuba last November to assess the medical needs of the island. Upon returning to the United States she discovered the drug companies were more than willing to meet those needs, she said. Higgins collected nearly $1 million of insulin, enough to “take care of every person in Cuba who has diabetes for the next six months.” She also tapped the drug companies for another $5 million in assorted antibiotics, vitamins, nutritional supplements, bandages, gloves and “a variety of basic supplies.” Chris Gilson of CRS said the organization applied Feb. 10 for a special license to ship the aid directly to Havana. On March 20, the date Clinton announced his new Cuba initiative, Gilson was still waiting for the permit. Impatient with the Administration's lack of response, Gilson moved about $1 million of the medicines through Canada. The rest remained in a warehouse in Queens, N.Y. “Worse than the financial expense is the time loss,” he said. On March 23, however, just a few days after the president's announcement, a refrigerated airplane took off from Miami with part of the shipment's insulin, which must be shipped cold. Other flights were scheduled for later in the week.
Kenneth Hackett, executive director of CRS, said the Clinton Administration's change in policy was encouraging to all who saw signs of new hope for Cuba during the Pope's visit there. He said his agency would ship more than $5 million worth of medicines and medical supplies to Cuba as soon as possible.
The easing of sanctions wasn't universally praised, however. The Cuban American National Foundation said the Administration was sending the wrong signal to Castro.
“Nothing has changed on the part of the Cuban government,” spokeswoman Ninoska Perez told Reuters news service. “Repression has not changed. Nothing in the Cuban government has changed.”
The Cuba Committee for Democracy voiced support for the Administration's action, but said humanitarian aid alone would not end the suffering of Cuba's people. The group encouraged Congress to lift broader bans on sales of food and medicine.
In an interview with the Cable News Network, Castro said Clinton's announcement seemed positive and that he hoped the changes could be “helpful and conducive to a better climate” between the two countries.
Ana Radelat writes for Religion News Service. CNS contributed to this story.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ana Radelat ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Line Between Clergy and Laity Remains Blurred DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:LOS ANGELES—A priest walks into a sacristy to vest for Mass and is greeted by a layman dressed in a white alb. The man then informs the cleric that he, the layman, is the “ordinary minister of the Eucharist.” The priest asks his lay assistant if he means extraordinary eucharistic minister, one who helps the priest distribute Communion. “Oh no,” his friendly helper assures him, “I'm the ordinary minister all right—I do this every Sunday!”
For key Vatican officials, such incidents highlight a growing and dangerous confusion between ordained and non-ordained ministries in the post-Conciliar Church and, what's more, they're determined to do something about it.
Last November eight Vatican agencies, including the Congregation for the Clergy and the Pontifical Council for the Laity, signed a 38-page document titled Instruction on Certain Questions Regarding the Collaboration of the Non-ordained Faithful in the Sacred Ministry of the Priest, which emphasized the unique place in the Church's life of ordained ministry based on apostolic succession, calling it “an essential point of Catholic ecclesiological doctrine.” The document had been approved by Pope John Paul II three months before.
As Archbishop Dario Castrillon Hoyos, pro-prefect of the Congregation for Clergy explained in a Nov. 13 press conference, if the activity of a Catholic community does not clearly flow from the leadership and sacramental ministry of a priest, even if he is not resident in a parish, it “becomes a social-religious entity, an institution marked by efficiency.”
The Instruction met initially with criticism from some Austrian and German bishops, and with questions from some bishops in the United States. Bishop Karl Lehmann of Mainz, president of the German bishops' conference, for example, complained that the document indicates “a climate of mistrust for the laity,” and Cincinnati's Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk regretted what he called its “anxious tone.”
Lately, however, “people have been pretending that the document doesn't exist,” Father Peter Stravinskas, Pennsylvania-based editor of The Catholic Answer, complained.
That was before Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, reiterated the Instruction's warning March 11 in an article in the Vatican daily newspaper L'Osservatore Romano—a move that indicated, most observers believe, that Rome is not likely to let the Instruction die a slow, bureaucratic death.
Cardinal Ratzinger said that in some parts of the world “a loss of the meaning of the Sacrament of Holy Orders” and “the growth of a kind of parallel ministry by so-called ‘pastoral assistants’ or ‘pastoral workers’” is leading to confusion about the special identity of ordained priests. He pointed to problems in north-central Europe and, to a lesser degree, in North America and Australia.
Clarity, he said, is needed to avoid undervaluing the ordained priesthood and “falling into a ‘Protestanization’ of the concepts of ministry and of the Church,” as well as to avoid the clericalization of the laity.
The situation is particularly serious, he said, when lay pastoral workers “exercise the role of leading the community, wear liturgical vestments during celebrations, and do not visibly distinguish themselves from the priests.”
The Instruction, which came about, in part, as a result of a 1994 Symposium on “The Participation of the Lay Faithful in the Priestly Ministry” in Rome, attended by the Pope, breaks little new ground, but underlines the vital importance of observing Church norms. For example, the document renews the traditional ban on lay people preaching the homily at Mass and reiterates the conditions under which lay persons may assist at marriages or lead funeral celebrations. Diocesan and parish pastoral councils are also reminded in the statement that their lay members “enjoy a consultative vote only and [that such councils] cannot in any way become deliberative structures … directing, coordinating, moderating, or governing the parish.”
Perhaps the two provisions of the Instruction that have drawn the most attention though, concern the use of extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist to distribute Holy Communion and the use of such titles as “chaplain” or “pastor” by Catholic lay persons.
Extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist have, in many countries, become a regular feature of liturgical life since the Church first permitted the practice in the 1973 Vatican instruction Immensae Caritatis. While the new Instruction acknowledges that “such … service is a response to the objective needs of the faithful,” especially those of the sick and in the case of large liturgical assemblies, “the habitual use of extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion,” the document insists, is a source of “confusion,” and should be “avoided and eliminated.”
In a move calculated to affect Catholic hospital and prison ministries, the Instruction also reaffirms the Code of Canon Law's restriction of the title “chaplain” or “pastor” to ordained priests.
A Controllable Problem
Veteran Church observer Russell Shaw thinks that the “confusion” the Instruction addresses “is not yet a roaring big problem in the United States,” but if it's not tackled now, “in the early stages, it will become much worse.”
Some U.S. bishops, Shaw told the Register, have been slow to address the concerns of the Instruction because they're worried that lay people—lay women in particular—who, according to some figures, count for more than 80% of Catholic laity involved in Church-related ministries, “will see the statement as a Vatican slap at them, a ‘shot across the bow.’”
But, said Shaw, who is information director for the Knights of Columbus, “no well-informed lay person thinks of the [Instruction] that way. The problem for the Vatican is not the laity, but the theology of the priesthood.”
“A bad theology of the priesthood, a bad theology of ministry has sneaked in the door in the past 30 years,” Shaw observed, “a theology that, in essence, says there's no essential difference between the ordained and the non-ordained. That may have been [Protestant reformer Martin] Luther's position, but it's not Catholic theology. This statement is an attempt to help priests.”
Father Matthew Lamb, a professor of theology at Boston College, has a name for that “bad theology.” He calls it “congregationalism.”
“There's a strong tendency toward congregationalism in American culture,” he said—the idea that the priest is merely a religious employee of the people and that the Mass is solely the faith expression of the community. “It's hard for Catholics to resist it altogether.”
“It's one of the bad effects of the kind of ‘hail-fellow-well-met, let's-just-get-together-with-the-balloons-and the-guitars-and-celebrate-community’ approach we've entertained in the past decades.”
Some theologians say the Church must move from a priest-centered to a congregation-centered Eucharist.
“But the Eucharist,” said Father Lamb, “isn't priest or congregation-centered; it's Christ-centered. We're celebrating not community spirit—that's what clubs do—but the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. That's what's really going on.”
“If the Mass becomes merely a community forum, without the transcendent holiness of the Eucharist—well, Catholics have, and will continue to vote with their feet,” Father Lamb observed. “I don't see this vast increase in conversions to the Church as a result of the ‘congregational’ approach. People are looking for transcendence, for worship, for doctrinal clarity. The low-church Protestant denominations are dying.”
Centers of Dissent
Part of the problem, says Father Lamb, is that several of the leading centers for Catholic liturgical studies in the United States—liturgy departments at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., were two he cited—offer platforms to professors who openly question central tenets of Catholic sacramental theology.
“A Dominican at Catholic University wrote an article recently questioning the notion of the Mass as sacrifice,” he said, “and a Lutheran theologian teaching liturgy at Notre Dame applauded him. The head of the liturgical studies program at Notre Dame is an Anglican who's currently doing ‘deconstruction’ on some of the Apostolic Fathers,” the Christian writers of the first post-apostolic century.
“Frankly, I question the ability of these centers to provide an in-depth formation in Catholic liturgical theology,” Father Lamb said.
If a sound theology of the ordained ministry is at stake in the current crisis, however, so is Vatican II's bold vision of the apostolate of the laity.
“The priority of the task of the New Evangelization,” urges the Instruction, “requires that, today in particular … there be a full recovery of the awareness of the secular nature of the mission of the laity.”
“The faithful can be active in this particular moment in history in areas of culture, in the arts and theater, scientific research, labor, means of communication, politics, and the economy,” the Instruction exhorts. “[The laity] are also called to a greater creativity in seeking out ever more effective means whereby these environments can find the fullness of their meaning in Christ.”
Dominican Father Benedict Ashley, who serves on the adjunct faculty for health care ethics at St. Louis University, couldn't agree more.
“The lay vocation is not so much to help out the clergy,” he told the Register, “that's not the primary focus. It's to fulfill their own complementary vocation in the workplace and the professions, being involved in the problems of our time.”
In fact, he said, there was more of that kind of lay Catholic vitality a generation ago than there is now.
“Forty years ago, we had a strong Catholic movement in the labor unions,” Father Ashley explained, “in Catholic student and worker movements—lay people trying to bring Catholic teachings into the marketplace.”
Now, he lamented, we have lay people encouraged to involve themselves in all sorts of ecclesiastical roles. “We're wasting a lot of energy,” he said.
Father Ashley acknowledged that the Church needs lay people serving in various diocesan apostolates. “Of course, we need catechists, directors of religious education, people serving in Catholic hospitals,” he said, “but that's only a very small part of the laity.”
What the Instruction urges, he said, is a proper division of roles.
“The point is that everybody in the Church—clergy and laity—has a role to play. What kind of a football team would it be if everybody was a quarterback?”
Father Stravinskas puts it more bluntly.
“The idea of delegating aspects of the priestly ministry to the laity—it's an insult to the lay vocation,” the veteran Catholic educator said. “The real lay person is the one most like a priest? The only sanctity you can have as a lay person is something borrowed from the clerical state?”
The Church won't see a wholesale renewal in vocations to the priesthood, and, hence, an end to the priest shortage, or the energized Catholic lay apostolate Vatican II envisions, until an end is found to the vocational confusion, he said.
“It's that simple.”
Senior writer Gabriel Meyer is based in Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gabriel Meyer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: For Newcomers to Church, RCIA Can Be Blessing or Curse DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:NEW YORK—With the first blaze of Easter candles in darkened churches across the land, and the intoning of Lumen Christi at the Saturday Vigil Mass, aspiring adult Catholics will come forward to declare their faith in the Risen Christ through a ritual rooted in the early Church. Bishops in their cathedrals and priests in their parishes will confer upon them the sacraments of initiation: baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist.
Cradle and longtime Catholics in attendance, seeing this ritual for perhaps the first time, will have their own faith renewed by the witness of these neophytes, known to parishioners who have watched them advance publicly through stages of initiation and sign their names in the book of the elect at the beginning of Lent.
Inition programs vary widely in quality from parish to parish
This is the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) in ideal form. How it actually works in the parishes is another story and has become a source of contention between two camps since the RCIA's gradual development following the Second Vatican Council. Some think RCIA is the definitive step in implementing the Council and bringing the Church to a vibrant renewal through a recasting of the sacraments as communal celebrations and the building of small Christian communities. Others see it as a destructive force controlled by agents of change who neglect or nuance Church teachings to promote subjective religious experiences and agendas such as married priests and women's ordination.
Evidence is available to support both sides, and many views in between. The truth depends greatly on the personal element. How good or bad is the RCIA in this country? It depends on who is implementing it on the diocesan and parish levels, how the program is structured, and who is encouraged to come and remain. Even within the same diocese, the quality of programs may vary.
Royal and Jan Fink were pro-life Presbyterians drawn to the Catholic faith by former Protestant ministers who converted. After studying Church history, the couple, who have nine children, enrolled in the RCIA and encountered a shock. The priest teaching the classes told the aspiring Catholics that they did not have to believe in purgatory, a defined doctrine of the Church. The RCIA team of lay people did not encourage the Finks' thirst for truth and told them that it didn't matter whether or not they became Catholic because all faiths were equally valid.
“We were scared,” Mrs. Fink told the Register. “We knew enough to realize that they weren't teaching what the Catholic Church teaches, but we weren't ready to argue.”
They left the program and eventually found another parish with a trustworthy RCIA. “It was like night and day, but it made us realize one thing,” she said. “We were coming from a small evangelical Church and thought we'd go into the bigger Church of one happy family. You have to be careful.”
RCIA's Origins
The RCIA grew out of Vatican II's call for a restoration of the catechumenate and a revision of the Rite of Baptism for Adults. The idea was to base the process of conversion more in the life of a parish than in private instruction by a priest and a small family baptism ceremony. Texts and an order for the new rite were prepared by the Vatican in 1972, but the U.S. bishops did not approve the use of RCIA in English until 1986; two years later the present order and translations were promulgated. Officially every diocese has implemented the RCIA. Practically speaking, even the bishops' own promoters admit there is much work to be done.
Paulist Father John Hurley last year began a three-year study of the RCIA for the National Council of Catholic Bishops. Surveys have been sent to each diocese and later this year he and his team will conduct consultation days with RCIA directors in each of six regions. The focus will be not only on the numbers of baptisms, confirmations, and First Communions; they will also find out how the rite is being implemented or adapted to meet local needs, how long the average catechesis lasts, and whether those going through the programs are remaining in the faith. Next year Father Hurley will gather the data, analyze it from many perspectives, and present the findings at a national gathering of RCIA directors.
“The bishops want the RCIA to be the primary way of bringing people into the Church, so it's time to see how well the task is being done,” said the priest.
RCIA is structured to recreate, in a limited way, the process of initiation of the early Church, with emphasis on a call to conversion by a parish community and a series of liturgically based steps concluding with reception of the sacraments at Easter. Those who respond to the parish's evangelization efforts represent two main categories: catechumens, who are unbaptized; and candidates, baptized persons who lack either confirmation, First Communion, or both. They are welcomed by the parish in an acceptance ceremony (often on the first Sunday of Advent) in which a priest blesses them and parishioners show their approval.
The catechumenate follows an indefinite period of instruction in Scripture and the teachings and practices of the faith. Depending on individual needs, this could last up to three years, but a number of parishes settle on what Father Hurley calls, “the quick 16-week class and then bring them in” method. The period of instruction includes the Rite of Election on the first Sunday of Lent, when the bishop welcomes the catechumens and candidates and accepts their intention to receive the sacraments as they inscribe their names in a book before families, friends, and parishioners.
During Lent, they are asked to examine their consciences, and deepen their prayer in preparation for the sacraments. A period of post-initiation catechesis, or mystagogy, is then required, but many parishes fail to follow up adequately. This is where, critics assert, new Catholics are left dry, with little grounding in the faith, and may drift away. RCIA professionals are aware of the problem.
“If we are weak in any area, it's in this period,” said Sister Rose Vermette RCD, RCIA director for the New York archdiocese.
With the various demands on priests and the many programs in parishes, RCIA can be viewed in a “fill 'er up and drive away” perspective, she said.
“We try to stress that this is just the beginning of your education—not the end. RCIA is not just about receiving sacraments, it's about continuing conversion.”
RCIA supporters usually call it a “process, indicating continuing learning and growth, rather than a program.”
Church Doctrine Misrepresented
Most of the criticisms of the RCIA , however, are focused on the period of catechesis. As the Finks found out, quality of instruction varies from parish to parish. A more basic criticism is of the philosophy that animates many who run RCIA programs.
An article in the February issue of Crisis magazine by a man who had gone through RCIA is indicative of the complaints. The writer asserts that RCIA programs are vehicles for heterodox reformers who present the sacraments as “simply ritual expressions of deeply felt human needs.” Church doctrines are merely codifications of a community's search for God, and Scripture is open to personal interpretation. RCIA recommends Lectionary-based catechesis, which presents the faith according to the cycle of weekly Mass readings, and many dogmas may be neglected because they do not come up easily in the average Lectionary cycle, the writer asserts.
The North American Forum on the Catechumenate (NAF), which conducts nationwide workshops to train RCIA catechists, is heavily criticized in the article, especially the writings of NAF founder Father James Dunning, who died three years ago. Many RCIA directors use Father Dunning's 1993 book, Echoing God's Word, which draws heavily from the work of Father Richard McBrien, the Notre Dame theologian whose book, Catholicism, was declared by the U.S. bishops to be deficient on points of moral theology, and from Father Richard McCormick, an outspoken critic of the Church's teaching on contraception.
Father Dunning's methods would support RCIA critics, but not all programs look to his work for guidance.
“There is a great deal of variation and freedom in how it is implemented here,” Father Timothy Thornburn, chancellor of the Diocese of Lincoln, Neb., told the Register. Lincoln's ordinary, Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz, is known for his allegiance to Church teaching and his direct methods, such as his willingness to excommunicate members of dissenting groups.
“[The bishop] has made it clear: no one is to be excluded from becoming a Catholic because of the restrictions that an RCIA program may impose,” such as making people wait who seek admission after the program, Father Thornburn said. “Priests are told to be flexible, to make allowances for private instruction.”
The RCIA is not well suited for everyone, he added, and provisions are made for those who feel uncomfortable participating in public rites, or who want to delve deeper into the faith in private instruction.
Addressing the criticism that RCIA programs are often weak on doctrinal instruction, Father Tom Mayefske, RCIA head for the Santa Fe, N.M., archdiocese, said that most Catholics, even through years of Catholic instruction, pick up the content and meaning of doctrine gradually, and some reach adulthood uncertain and ill-informed.
“It is not fair to expect that, in the course of a year, a new Catholic should know better than a life-time Catholic” he said. “RCIA is intended to be an experience of faith sharing, built on the Lectionary. Within that scope, all the truths we believe are contained.”
Despite problems and shortcomings, some dioceses report record numbers of conversions. Last year, New York had more than 1,200 persons baptized or received into the Church—and the number this year is close to that. Cardinal John O'Connor tells every new pastor to maintain the RCIA in his parish or begin a program if there is none.
Though she had a negative experience initially, Jan Fink is glad she went through the RCIA. When she and her husband were received by the bishop with other new Catholics from Atlanta at the Easter Vigil, “I was so moved; it was so beautiful,” she said.
“All the things you just learned came alive and you knew what was going on, with all the symbolism, and the true body and blood of our Lord,” she recalled. “I think every Catholic should be re-taught the beauty of the faith every year.”
Brian Caulfield writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Caulfield ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'Free at Last, Thank God Almighty, I am Free at Last' DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a 20th-century man. His struggle for freedom against state-enforced oppression was the 20th-century struggle. In this century the awful power of the state to do evil has been met by the awesome power of peaceful resistance grounded in the truth.
April 4, 1998, marked the 30th anniversary of King's assassination and it is proper to remember his civil rights achievements. A few insist on pointing out that he was a sinful man. But there is a broader lesson to be drawn from King's reading of the signs of the times—a lesson of particular interest for Catholics in the post-conciliar era.
King knew he was living in the era of human rights and human freedom. The main obstacle was state power wielded against its own people. The solution was to overthrow unjust laws through peaceful protests. The force employed was the power of witness to the truth about man. In this broad outline, King's movement can be understood as a particular application of the general principles that have increasingly informed the Church's social teaching since Vatican II.
A Death Foretold
On April 3, 1968, in Memphis, King delivered his most apocalyptic sermon. To read it now is to marvel at the afflatus that moved him on the last night of his life.
“Like anybody I would like to have a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that,” said King, reflecting on the threats to his life. “I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But we as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy tonight.”
King's remarkable valedictory was full of gratitude for the times in which he lived. His preaching cadences began that night with a provocative question and answer. “If I were standing at the beginning of time, with a panoramic view of the whole human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, ‘Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?’ I would turn to the Almighty and say, ‘If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy.’”
“Now that's a strange statement to make,” King conceded, “because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion is all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the 20th century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding—something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, the cry is always the same—We want to be free.”
In its great charter on the Church in our times, the Council taught, “Our contemporaries make much of freedom and pursue it eagerly; and rightly so. Authentic freedom is an exceptional sign of the divine image within man” (Gaudium et Spes, 17). While warning against the misuse of freedom, the Church has joined its voice, more in this century than ever before, to the cry of the masses yearning to be free.
In the decree on religious liberty, the Council opened itself fully to this growing cry, recognizing the increasing “sense of the dignity of the human person” and, “the demand that constitutional limits should be set to the powers of government, in order that there be no encroachment on the rightful freedom of the person and of associations.” The Council declares these desires “to be greatly in accord with truth and justice” (Dignitatis Humanae, 1-2).
The Council took note of and doctrinally affirmed the spirit that animated King's movement, and similary inspired movements in other parts of the world. The full flowering of this teaching would have to wait for Pope John Paul II and the challenge to communism, but the Council Fathers provided here the foundation. Just as it would be difficult to imagine a 19th-century King figure, it would be difficult to imagine such Church teaching before the 20th century.
To adapt King's words, if the starlight of our times has been the focus on human freedom, then the great darkness against which it shines has been the brutality of state power suppressing that freedom. About this phenomenon the Holy Father wrote in 1991: “In the totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, the principle that force predominates over reason was carried to the extreme. Man was compelled to submit to a conception of reality imposed on him by coercion, and not reached by virtue of his own reason and the exercise of his own freedom” (Centesimus Annus, 29).
Mutatis mutandis, that analysis can be applied to examples not at the extreme, such as American segregation or South African apartheid. “That principle must be overturned,” continues the Holy Father, “and total recognition must be given to the rights of human conscience, which is bound only to the truth, both natural and revealed. The recognition of these rights represents the primary foundation of every authentically free political order.”
Dictates of Conscience
The call to make power submit to the dictates of conscience was the heart of King's philosophy of civil disobedience and protest. King recognized that state power could never legitimately demand what conscience would not allow, and the powers and principalities that so demand ceased to be legitimate. Operating in a country that holds law in the greatest esteem, it was incumbent upon King to argue that conscience demanded that some laws should be disobeyed.
This he did in his Letter from a Birmingham City Jail, dated April 16, 1963. Written while serving a sentence for participating in civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham, the open letter was addressed to white clergymen who urged King not to inflame the civil rights issue, but to wait upon the initiative of the courts. Frustrated by the “white moderate who is more committed to ‘order’ than to justice,” and who prefers “the negative peace which is the absence of tension to the positive peace which is the presence of justice,” King explained why he could not obey unjust laws.
Arguing passionately that his approach was rooted in the Christian tradition, King turned to two doctors of the Church, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. “I would agree with St. Augustine,” he wrote, that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God,” King further explained. “An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.”
It is a centuries-old principle, but given particular application by King: “Segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful.”
If that sounds familiar to students of the recent Magisterium, it should. Pope John XXIII quoted the same passage of St. Thomas to make the same point in 1963. “Authority is a postulate of the moral order and derives from God. Consequently, laws and decrees enacted in contravention of the moral order, and hence of the divine will, can have no binding force in conscience” (Pacem in Terris).
Pope John's encyclical on peace, Pacem in Terris, is dated April 11, 1963. It is testimony to the 20th-century Christian rediscovery of human dignity and freedom that in the same week, the Pope from the Vatican and a Southern Baptist preacher from his jail cell would remind their brethren that true peace can be found only where man is allowed the freedom to obey the truth he recognizes by his conscience.
The struggle for that freedom is never easy. “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed,” wrote King. The lesson of our century is that the oppressed can effectively demand their freedom without recourse to arms and violence. The oppressed have the awesome power of truth on their side, and can bring this to bear on the unjust law.
“One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly and with a willingness to accept the penalty,” wrote King in Birmingham. “I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.”
It is not new to claim that the martyr is the true law-abiding citizen and the true patriot. What the example of King and others teach is that the witness of the oppressed, exercised insistently and creatively, has a power to bring about change in a relatively short period of time. It is a witness born of conscience and aimed at conscience—the conscience of the oppressed giving rise to the witness that enlightens the conscience of the oppressor.
The Holy Father's analysis of the overthrow of communism is apposite here: “The events of 1989 are an example of the success of willingness to negotiate and the Gospel spirit in the face of an adversary determined not to be bound by any moral principles. These events are a warning to those who, in the name of political realism, wish to banish law and morality from the political arena” (Centesimus Annus, 25).
King's Legacy
Vast possibilities for constructive change are created by those who refuse to banish the Gospel spirit from public life. King's legacy can be understood as a successful application of the recent social teaching of the Magisterium on the centrality of human dignity and freedom in the political order. Indeed, King's successful application of those principles may have contributed to their recognition by the Magisterium, which must always be alert to the signs of the times.
In his last Sunday morning sermon, delivered at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on Passion Sunday, four days before he died, King spoke about the three great revolutions of his lifetime. He identified a technological revolution, a revolution in warfare due to atomic weapons, and “a human rights revolution, with the freedom explosion taking place all over the world.”
George Weigel, a senior fellow of the Washington based Ethics and Public Policy Center, quotes Oxford historian Sir Michael Howard to the effect that the two great revolutions of the 20th century have been the Bolshevik revolution and the transformation of the Catholic Church into the world's foremost defender of human rights. On the one hand, a revolution in the service of state power, and on the other, a revolution in the service of human freedom.
Malevolent state power and human freedom have been the principal opposing forces of the century in which Martin Luther King would have chosen to live. For him and so many other Christians, especially Catholics in the conciliar era, the joy of the millennium will be to sing out, as he did in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, I am free at last.”
Raymond de Souza is a seminarian for the archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario.
----- EXCERPT: Among Martin Luther King's soaring legacy: Lessons of note for Catholics in the post-conciliar era ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond de Souza ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Reluctant Politician Answers God's Call DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:Steve Largent
Rep. Steve Largent, 43, has represented the 1st congressional district of Oklahoma in the House of Representatives since 1994. He first gained national fame as a record-setting wide receiver in the National Football League. Now, Largent has emerged as a strong, new voice in Congress for pro-life positions and religious freedom. He recently spoke with Register correspondent Eleanor Kennelly.
Kennelly: How has your faith guided or strengthened you in what has been quite a successful public life?
Largent: Interestingly enough, I've been asked that question for 25 years. Prior to being in Congress, I was in professional football for 14 years and I was asked, “How do you mix your faith with what you do? How do you mix your faith with playing a violent sport that schedules all of its games on Sundays? How does that work?” So I've been answering that question for a long, long time. And my response is that my faith is at the foundation of who I am as a person.
It's not a club I belong to, or an appendage to everything else I do. It's not something I just take along and bring out to experience at appropriate times. My relationship with Jesus is the foundation of who I am. And so everything else is built on that foundation: all the decisions that I make, the way I conduct myself as a husband, a father, a congressman, or a football player all emanate from this core value and belief that I have in [my] relationship with Jesus. My faith strikes at the core of who I am.
Did you develop a commitment to faith at a young age or as you got older?
Actually, I was not raised in a religious family at all. My parents were divorced when I was six. My stepfather was an alcoholic. There were a lot of problems that accompanied that. And when I was a high school student I really began to sense, as Pascal said, the “God-shaped vacuum” that only God can fill. I discovered that friends, and football, and popularity, or drinking, or smoking, couldn't fill that vacuum I had in my life. It was when I was a high school student that I first had an experience with Christ.
What kind of experience was it?
Really it was the first time that I heard the message about love and forgiveness, about reconciliation, about joy versus happiness, about the eternal versus the temporal, about the invisible versus the visible, and all I can say is that for me, all the pieces came together and I knew that this was what I needed to fill the vacuum that I had in my life.
So did you join a Church at that time?
No, not really. I like to say all the time that following Jesus is not a destination that you arrive at, it's a process that you walk, with him. Like any relationship, it's a dynamic thing. It's different for different people. And I am still involved in that process, a process that began slowly and has no end.
As a pro football player, especially a successful one, you must have felt on top of the world. How were you able to maintain perspective in the midst of the kind of success so many young people dream about?
You can come home and think you're a superstar guy but when your wife tells you to change a diaper or take the trash out-it really has a humbling effect.
I can honestly answer this and say that two things were absolutely instrumental in helping me keep my feet on the ground and my head out of the clouds—my faith and my family. When you have a relationship with Jesus and he teaches you all the things that are diametrically opposed to the world in order to gain life, you have to lose your life. In order to receive, you have to give. All these principles are about humility, and about sacrifice, and about service and love. Those are not values that you learn in the NFL or in Congress. So my faith has a very important role in terms of gaining a healthy perspective on who I am and my role in the world.
My family also played an important role. You can come home and think you're a superstar guy but when your wife tells you to change a diaper or take the trash out, which I did, it really has a humbling effect. And I think part of the beauty and the chemistry we've had for 23 years is that my wife knew me when I was a pimple-faced, curly-haired, nerdy guy in high school. That's how our relationship began. It didn't begin when I was an NFL football player with money, all that sort of stuff.
You've gone from one career to another that are both hard on families.
It's hard on families and it's very inflating as well. When you walk down the hall and people say, “Hi Congressman” or “Let me open the door for you,” or buy you lunch, or if your staff is bowing down to worship you because, you know, you're the boss: That is very addicting and ego-gratifying, and gives you tremendous temptation to let that go to your head.
How did you make the transition from sports to politics?
This is one thing [politics] I said I would never do, this and coaching. And I learned you should never say never. All I can say is that my wife had been whispering in my ear for a long time after I retired from football, “Why do you think it is you have this tremendous platform in name-identification and reputation? Is this just so you can come back to Tulsa and blend into the woodwork or are we supposed to leverage it for some higher purpose—like politics.” And that was the end of the conversation because I wouldn't go any further. I didn't want to go down that road. I never had an appropriate answer for her until there was an open congressional seat and I got a call from [the Republican Party in Washington]. I said I would pray about it with my wife. We did, and my heart was changed. It was still not something I wanted to do, but it was something I knew I was supposed to do.
Now when you look back on that experience, do you have a clearer understanding of why you got that message?
I think so. Because my impression at that time was … well I was totally naive. I knew I had some core values and principles that I thought would make me effective as a representative and legislator. But I had no experience. I would say that in May 1994, when I made the decision to run, the conclusion I had reached was, well, it must be that I'm supposed to do this to go change Washington and now in hindsight I can say that that was not the reason at all. It was that God would change me. And that's what has happened. I have learned a lot about myself. I've learned a lot about people. I have matured and grown, personally and professionally, in ways that I never would have if not for this experience.
Why do you think you were given that direction, toward what end? Not just personal edification certainly.
Well, I have always heard it said that God is more concerned about your character than your comfort, and this has not been a comfortable job. This has been very hard, personally going back and forth every week from Tulsa to Washington, D.C., but for my family as well. My wife has experienced being a single mother for most of every year. For more than half of the year, she's a single mother at home alone dealing with four kids, and three of them are teenagers. So that is a very difficult thing.
All I can say is that God has not only transformed my character but my wife's and my children's as well—not through tremendous blessing but through tremendous hardship. And that's why I say I don't know if I can do this forever. What I'm saying is I came with this idea that I was Don Quixote and I would slay the windmills in Washington, D.C. and I've found out that what has actually taken place is that God has transformed my heart. If you're asking me where I take this from here, I haven't a clue. I have no political aspirations. I didn't have any when I ran for office.
Have you found that the American political system today is essentially a “Godless” system?
I think I came into the political system thinking that, but what I found is that the American political system is a very human business. It is about people, it's not about institutions. And all of the greatest qualities of people and the worst attributes of people are glaringly obvious in the political arena. So all the worst aspects of human nature are very evident, but so are the greatest—like sacrifice and humility, those things appear as well in the people who work here.
Do you think that the division between Church and state, which is very pronounced in the American system, has become more exaggerated than it should be?
I don't think that we currently have a balanced view of the separation between Church and state. You know they always say that the pendulum is never in the middle except when it swings from one extreme to the other? Well, we have swung to an extreme in trying to eradicate every semblance of God in our public institutions. We are ripping down the Ten Commandments from courthouse walls while we protect pornography on the Internet. Something's wrong with that picture, and so I think what we need to do is to return to a more balanced view, the view of the founding fathers of this country.
You can not deny the spiritual roots and foundation that our country is built upon. You walk over to the House chamber and you see “In God We Trust” above the speaker's chair. You've got the face of Moses looking down upon the House floor. We say the Pledge of Allegiance and we pray before every session of Congress. Things you can't do in the schoolhouse we do in the Congress. So there is a great misappropriation of the term “separation of Church and state”.
Is prayer in the school a political issue any more?
Yes, I think it is. I think all the religious issues—the Religious Freedom amendment—the whole issue is still a political issue. I just believe that when it says in 2 Chronicles 7:14, “If my people, upon whom my name has been pronounced, humble themselves and pray, and seek my presence and turn from their evil ways, I will hear them from heaven and pardon their sins and revive their land.”
And I think when we are living in a country where we have the plague of the AIDS virus, we have 20 some million women who have experienced abortion, there is a lot of pain and hurt and guilt that we need to heal. The way you do that, according to 2 Chronicles 7:14, is to pray. And I really don't see how the circumstances within schoolhouse walls are exacerbated in the wrong direction by praying. How can it get worse than putting up metal detectors, students beating teachers, teachers sexually abusing students, nobody learning anything, SAT scores down, truancy up, drug use and violence up. How will that be worsened by allowing students to pray?
Are there any new faith-based political issues, or issues of particular interest to religious people, that you see on the radar for this Congress or the next?
To me, all the issues related to and surrounding the abortion issue—while that's not the root problem—symbolize a deeper spiritual problem in our country. To me it is a vital test of this Congress and a litmus test of where we go from here as a nation and as a culture. How we deal with that. It is not an issue on which we can merely sit back and wink and nod and give a few lines for applause at a rally and then do nothing about. We have the partial birth abortion debate coming up again. I think we should do it every week and continue to pound on it.
Why?
Well, because it's the right thing to do. That's the only reason we should continue to do it. I think parental notification on Title X funding is the right thing to do. Those are like incremental steps in the right direction, but again the underlying problem is a moral meltdown in the country and there are no laws that we can pass to address that.
Are you worried that the public response to the current White House crisis represents a certain weak morality on the part of the American public?
I don't know how to interpret that, but I am still confident that the country has a very moral fabric woven into it, and that people with deep-seated beliefs and values are out there. They may be quiet but I sense a real restlessness in the spirit of this country. You know the landscape is really ripe for revival, which is what I think we need.
What kind of revival?
A spiritual revival, not a political revolution.
Do you see that spirit stirring more in Oklahoma than in Washington?
I see it here in Washington, too, absolutely. As I come in contact with members of Congress from around the country, I see their response to the spiritual vacuum and they too are seeking the deeper things in life on a personal level.
Do you see this revival as occurring across religious denominations, or mostly within Protestant Churches.
I think, absolutely, across religious differences. You know the idea that most people don't reject Jesus, they reject a caricature of Jesus, and I think a lot of our religious institutions are responsible for erecting most of the caricatures of who Jesus is. So if we can just break down the caricatures, erase those, and really lift the person of Jesus up, not Church dogma or doctrine or a particular theology, just lift Jesus up, we'll be able to get beyond all the differences. As St. Francis of Assisi said, “Unity on the essentials, liberty on the non-essentials, and love over all.” That's the goal.
—Eleanor Kennelly
Steve Largent
Football:
Wide Receiver for the Seattle Seahawks, 14 years. Set six career records, played in seven Pro Bowls. Retired in 1989 and founded advertising and marketing consulting firm. Inducted into Pro Football Hall of Fame, 1995.
Politics:
In 1994, elected to represent the 1st congressional district of Oklahoma in the U.S. House of Representatives; now serving his third term. Currently serves as a member of the House's Commerce Committee; the Energy and Power Subcommittee; Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection Subcommittee; and the Finance and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee.
Personal:
Age 43, native of Tulsa, Okla.; married to Terry for 22 years; four children; attends Fellowship Bible Church in Tulsa.
----- EXCERPT: Pro football hall-of-famer turned U.S. Rep. Steve Largent on the challenges of being a man of faith on Capitol Hill ----- EXTENDED BODY: Eleanor Kennelly ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:Healing Services Becoming More Popular
In an extended special report, the Columbus Dispatch of March 20 examined a popular new practice in evangelical worship: faith healing.
Catholics might consider the new trappings of the practice familiar: oil, laying on of hands, a belief that the soul's cure must accompany the body's.
Said one bishop of the local Evangelical Lutheran Church, “Our understanding of the healing service is it is to bring wholeness and peace…. It includes the spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and the physical.”
A spokesman of the United Methodist Church in the area described a similarly expansive view of healing services. In a healing service, “you talk about bringing people to health in mind, body, and relationships. It also involves reconciliation, coming to terms with your situation, forgiving people.”
At a Pentecostal Church in the area, the pastor explains that at his Church “We will do laying on of hands, with oil, and pray.”
But, giving credit where credit is due, the article points out that the “oldest healing services come from the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.”
The article quoted Columbus diocesan spokesman Father Larry Hemmelgarn, who pointed out that the sacrament of the anointing of the sick or “last rites” has always included oil and the laying on of hands intended to heal the soul—and, at God's discretion, the body as well.
There may be a new emphasis on healing in other Churches, but having merited a place among the seven sacraments, “Healing has always been important in the Catholic Church,” he said.
ACLU and Evangelical Go Against Catholic Charities
It is hard to imagine the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) taking a born-again Christian's side in a religious freedom dispute. But it happened in Pittsburgh, according to a March 19 report by the Associated Press.
Carlyn Kline was jailed for 26 hours last year because she refused to attend court-ordered marriage counseling. According to Kline, Judge Robert Kunselman sent her to jail when she said she objected to the counseling because it included literature published by Catholic Charities.
Kline told the judge she considers some Catholic teachings counter to the teachings of Jesus. “My God forbids me from contacting the dead,” she is quoted saying, explaining her objection to prayers to the saints. The judge was apparently unconvinced, and sent her to jail for avoiding counseling.
Kline's case, however, was decided on a technicality rather than on the merits of her religious challenge. Her brief jail time ended when a federal judge freed her from the court order—on Good Friday of last year. Pennsylvania state judges like Kunselman don't work that day.
Since the incident occurred, the ACLU has made a settlement that forces Catholic Charities to provide their literature indirectly, by giving it first to the court, so that no one has to pay the organization directly for its services.
Understanding the ‘Fifth Dogma’
A daily secular newspaper may be an unlikely place to find a well-presented discussion of the Blessed Mother's role in salvation history—but Baltimoreans woke Saturday March 21 to find a thorough treatment of the matter on their doorstep.
A Baltimore Sun article, prompted by a Steubenville, Ohio group's attempt to persuade the Vatican to proclaim Mary “Mediatrix,” included the following explanations:
• For those who missed the news last year, “a Vatican commission of 23 Mariologists unanimously advised the Pope not to proclaim the teaching. And the Pope's spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said last year that neither the Pope nor any Vatican commission is studying the proclamation of any new Marian dogmas,” according to the account.
• The promulgation of the proposed new title is what supporters call the “Fifth Dogma,” or “Fifth Doctrine,” because it follows four other proclamations about the Blessed Mother: (1) the Council of Ephesus declared her the Mother of God in 431; (2) the Council of Constantinople proclaimed her perpetual virginity in 681; (3) Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854 by ex cathedra decree; and (4) Pope Pius XII similarly proclaimed the Assumption in 1950.
Father Frederick Jelly OP, identified as a prominent Mariologist at Mt. St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., is quoted in the article explaining the appropriateness—but perhaps the imprudence as regards timing—of the title Mediatrix.
Use of the term “Mediatrix,” he said, raises the question, “What is she mediating that Christ is not?” Though some theologians favor the proposed title, none were quoted in the article.
Further, said Father Jelly, the full title being proposed, “Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix of All Graces, and Advocate for the People of God,” raises another issue. In modern English, the prefix “co-” puts two people on the same level, he said, citing the example “co-signer of a check.” He is quoted saying, “If it's interpreted that way, you're in trouble … that is not Catholic doctrine.”
In Latin, the problem disappears. In Latin, “co-” has “the connotation of saying that Mary is subordinate to, dependent on” Christ, rather than a sort of easier-going Christ or a surrogate of the Holy Spirit.
Father Jelly agreed that the Holy Father's well-known personal devotion to the Blessed Mother might well embrace the proper use of both these titles, but pointed out that the Holy Father was not likely to make a determination for the Church based on his private devotion.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Delegation Head Says Reports of Persecution Of Egypt's Christians Are 'Overstated' DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:NEW YORK—The leader of a delegation of U.S. pastors who visited Egypt early last month has declared that reports of mass persecution of Christians in the predominantly Muslim country are “grossly overstated.”
Recently the U.S. media have claimed that Christians in Egypt face persecution, but Calvin Butts III, president of the New York City Council of Churches and leader of the delegation from the Council that visited Egypt March 10-15, told journalists at a press conference yesterday that he had found no evidence of government-sanctioned persecution of Christians.
The delegation met leading politicians and diplomats and religious leaders—Protestant, Orthodox, and Muslim.
Butts, a black clergyman and pastor of the most prominent Church in New York's Harlem district, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, said his experience in the United States convinced him that a minority group would always suffer some measure of discrimination, and he had found some matters of concern in Egypt.
According to the World Churches Handbook, published in London, about 8.7 million of Egypt's 61 million citizens are Christians. The biggest Church is the Coptic Orthodox Church, which has about 8 million followers.
“Isolated incidents” sometimes occurred in Egypt, Butts said, but Christian leaders there told the delegation that relations with Muslims were good, and that the government was not “turning a blind eye” to offenses against Christians.
Butts said that the leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria, Patriarch of the Holy See of St. Mark, told the delegation that any conflicts between Christians and Muslims were “best resolved by Muslims and Christians in Egypt.”
Asked what American Church leaders might do, Pope Shenouda, who is also a president of the World Council of Churches, advised them to go home and deal with “troubles among your own young people,” Butts said.
Many Church leaders in the Middle East have deep misgivings about foreigners and foreign governments, particularly the U.S. government, exerting pressure for better treatment of Christians in the region. Such interventions could, they believe, cause harm by politicizing interfaith relationships and arousing local resentment against Christians as the supposed cause of the foreign pressures.
Representatives of a U.S. organization, the American Coptic Union, which has made serious claims about the treatment of Egyptian Christians, attended the press conference, and insisted yesterday that acts against Egyptian Christians were not “isolated incidents,” but occurred regularly. They insisted that officials of the Egyptian government did not give equal protection to Christians, but acted in collaboration with terrorists attacking Christians.
Butts disagreed with their claims and said the delegation found no need for a “crusade” to deliver Egyptian Christians from persecution. (ENI)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Russia's Baptists Want Same Rights as Orthodox Church DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:MOSCOW—Russia's Union of Evangelical Christian-Baptists—the country's biggest Protestant denomination—has called on its members to promote further growth of the denomination and also demanded that Russian authorities give it the same respect as the nation's dominant Russian Orthodox Church.
The union's 30th congress, held in Moscow March 17-20, also called for peace between Russia's Churches. They stressed the Russian history of their evangelical faith, and rejected the common perception that Russian Baptists belong to a “foreign” religion.
The congress brought together 374 delegates and more than 200 guests, most of them Baptist pastors, at a hotel in the southwest of the Russian capital, under the theme “Thy Kingdom Come.”
Interest at the congress was focused on reactions to Russia's new Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations, which many people believe discriminates against the country's minority Churches.
But Pastor Pyotr Konovalchik, who was re-elected as the union's president during the congress, said the law was not aimed at Russian Baptist Churches and did not infringe their freedom.
“We do not see how we can be persecuted on the basis of this law,” he said. However, he added that much would depend on the practice of re-registration of the communities, which was required by the new law.
The congress emphasized mission and evangelism as the backbone of the Church's activities.
“We should be more open to all of society, reach out to mass media, enter into contacts with all groups of population,” the message from the congress to Russia's Baptist communities declared, adding that Baptists should “be neither ashamed of our name, nor consider ourselves superior to other confessions, but through our love and kind Christian behavior lead people to understand that the Churches of Evangelical Christian-Baptists are indeed part of God's Kingdom on earth.”
Baptists are often seen by Russian nationalists—both within and outside the Russian Orthodox Church—as a sect. Although the Church's Moscow Patriarchate maintains official contacts with the union, many Orthodox priests and lay activists are highly critical of Baptists.
In a message to President Boris Yeltsin, the union's pastors declared their loyalty to him and to Russia, but complained of discrimination. They said they were “profoundly saddened” by the violation by local authorities of the rights of freedom of conscience and of Church equality before the law. The pastors referred to the fact that they had been refused time on television and radio, as well as places for worship. Russian authorities had also refused to return to the Churches the ownership of houses of worship in several Russian cities.
Pastor Pyotr Stebakov, a delegate from the city of Oryol in southern Russia, told the congress that in his city the Orthodox Church was trying to restrict the work of the Baptists. Last year, he said, Oryol's Baptists had planned an “evangelization” of the city. A Moscow-based American missionary, Victor Gamm, was to have preached in the city center, but when the local Orthodox bishop protested the mayor refused permission.
Konovalchik said the union now had 1,250 Churches with a total membership of about 85,000 adults. In proportion to the population there are more Baptists in Siberia than in European Russia. In comparison, the Russian Orthodox Church has about 8,000 parishes with tens of millions of members.
According to Konovalchik, between 7,000 and 9,000 are baptized in Baptist Churches every year. (ENI)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:Ingredients in the Kosovo Conflict
Mother Teresa would express sadness at—but would intimately understand—the fierce racial tensions in Kosovo, which pit its majority Albanian population against a Serb minority rule.
As a child growing up in Skopje, Macedonia, Mother Teresa found herself at the center of just such a situation. Her father was a leader in a movement for Albanian independence in Macedonia, whose predicament is similar to Kosovo's.
In an article in The Los Angeles Times March 23, Isuf Hajrizi fills in some facts about the Albanians and their lands and sheds light on a situation that is becoming a difficult one.
Seven million Albanians today live in Albania itself and in five surrounding countries: Mother Teresa's Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and the current hot spot, Kosovo.
The Albanians, originally Illyrians, inhabitants of the prized Roman prefecture Illyricum, have been disinherited in their own lands since the sixth century, he writes.
In Kosovo, 200,000 Serbs rule over 2 million Albanians.
The problems there are better characterized as racial conflict, rather than religious: Albanians of different religions have tolerated each other for years in these nations. Muslims predominate, but often join in the feast day celebrations of their Catholic and Orthodox countrymen.
Kosovo is rich in gold, silver, copper, and lead—which, Hajrizi speculates, is the real reason for Serbian interest in the country.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:Keeping Up with John Paul II
Has anyone noticed how busy the Holy Father has been? Tad Szulc, the author of an unofficial biography about the Pope, has. His March 22 Los Angeles Times report might explain why there has been so little talk recently, as there once was, of the Holy Father retiring early to allow a more vigorous man to take over as Pope.
The Holy Father's activities “seem boundless in all imaginable ways,” he writes:
• “The Pope started 1998 with a five-day four-city visit to Cuba—immensely hot even in January.”
• Later, he elevated 20 new cardinals—meaning, reminds Szulc, that John Paul II has appointed 106 of the 122 cardinals who are younger than 80 and therefore eligible to vote for his successor.
• That same week, the Vatican released 4,500 volumes of files going back 500 years that shed light on the true nature of the Inquisition, hoping that “this image of the black legend” can be re-examined.
• In March, the Vatican released its statement about the Holocaust, which the Holy Father had initiated after his 1987 meeting with Jewish leaders.
• Two weeks ago, the Holy Father returned from his 82nd foreign trip, to Nigeria.
• In between the above events, and the ordinary events filling and overfilling his schedule, the Pope found time to meet his world and personal obligations. He met with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and he elevated his long-time personal friend and secretary, Msgr. Stanislaw Dziwisz, to bishop.
The Pope and the Jewish People
Reporters have had a hard time finding a reliable list of things this Holy Father has done to reach out to the Jewish community worldwide. In his Los Angeles Times article March 22, Tad Szulc provides a partial list of important gestures:
• John Paul II was the first Pope ever to visit a synagogue (in Rome), and then writing about it with obvious joy in Crossing the Threshold of Hope.
• He presided over “an emotional concert at the Vatican to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the uprising in the Warsaw Jewish ghetto during the Nazi occupation.”
• He shepherded “delicate negotiations” to establish diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Israel.
The Unity and Authority of Nigerian Priests
To conclude its March 23 account of the Holy Father's recent visit to Nigeria, The Washington Post recounted the following anecdote, which it said shows—in its small way—the power and papal devotion of Nigeria's priests.
“[A]s the Pope took the podium, a local television cameraman stood before rows of Nigerian priests, taping the Pontiff. One priest crept forward to tap him on the arm. ‘You are blocking our view of the Holy Father,’ he whispered.”
“The cameraman turned and raised a hand for patience. ‘I'll just be a little while,’ he said.”
“This answer turned the polite plea into a display of priestly authority and unity. A score of clerical index fingers wagged at the cameraman like metronomes, to a chorus of ‘No, no, no, no, no!’ He slunk away.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Human Rights Stance of Pope In Nigeria Given High Marks DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:ABUJA, Nigeria—Human rights groups and Churches in Nigeria have welcomed the outspoken stance taken by Pope John Paul II during his visit to Nigeria against the repressive military regime of Gen. Sani Abacha.
The Pope's declarations—at two outdoor Masses and in three public speeches—were significantly more defiant than similar pronouncements about the regime of Fidel Castro during his visit to Cuba in late January.
Before his return to Rome, the Pontiff directed his aides to hand over a list asking for the release of 60 political detainees whose names had been gathered from human rights groups, governments, and relatives. In Cuba hundreds of political prisoners were released after the Pope's visit.
By the end of the three-day papal visit March 23, Abacha had not acted on the list. It is believed to contain the name of Abacha's arch-rival, Moshood Abiola, the presumptive winner of elections in 1993, as well as the former head of state, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo.
But some observers said the Pope's visit should not be interpreted entirely as a victory for religious unity and human rights. One who did not want to be identified said: “The generals [who run the country] see the Pope's visit to Nigeria as proof that this is a great nation. A great man came to a great nation—that is where their analysis ends.”
Some are pessimistic about the outcome of the Pope's lobbying, believing that Abacha may release some prisoners but only those who are not likely to stand against him in elections due in August.
A human rights group, the Constitutional Rights Project (CRP), issued a statement welcoming the Pope's intervention. “CRP believes that the immediate release of all political detainees, respect for human rights, and the implementation of a credible program of return to civilian rule, will lead us to the path of national reconciliation and prosperity,” said the group.
The Pope's visit—his second to Nigeria in 16 years—came at a sensitive time for Abacha. The August elections—which have not yet been confirmed—are supposedly part of a process to switch to civilian rule by October.
Meanwhile, imprisonment and torture by the military are continuing unabated. About 150 journalists, lawyers, and other critics of the regime are believed to be in jail; about 65% of Nigerian inmates are being held without trial.
The Pope gave crusading homilies and speeches during his visit. “God has blessed this land and it is everyone's duty to ensure that these resources are used for the good of the whole people,” he said in a clear reference to Nigeria's oil wealth—exploited by foreign companies for the financial benefit of very few.
At present, decrepit oil refineries and ill-maintained power stations are running at low capacity due to poor maintenance. This is causing fuel shortages and regular power cuts in a country that is rich in oil. Water is scarce in the provinces.
In Oba, the Pope told a crowd of nearly a million people: “There can be no place for intimidation and domination of the poor and the weak, for arbitrary exclusion of individuals and groups from political life, for the misuse of authority or the abuse of power. Justice is not complete without an attitude of humble, generous service.
“As your nation pursues a peaceful transition to a democratic civilian government, there is a need for politicians—both men and women—who profoundly love their own people and wish to serve rather than be served.”
In Abuja, the capital, the Pope met leaders of Nigeria's Muslims. During the meeting he denounced killing in the name of religion, apparently referring indirectly to brutal lynchings by Islamic fundamentalists in northern Nigeria during the past three years. (ENI)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: PERSPECTIVE DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:A high-stakes game of “chicken” is being played out between congressional leadership—committed to restore the Mexico City Policy—and President Clinton, who overturned that policy in January 1993. The policy would deny family-planning funds to international organizations that perform abortions and promote pro-abortion laws in foreign countries.
Sadly, worldwide access to abortion is high on the president's agenda. In light of this he has threatened to veto any bill containing the Mexico City Policy, including two bills he says are vital to American interests: the back payment of U.N. dues, and payment of about $18 billion to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Congressional leaders plan to use all available leverage to reinstate this quite modest restraint on family planners' hegemony over the developing world's peoples.
The outcome of this stand-off is anyone's guess. What we can expect is no final resolution concerning abortion's role in international family planning as long as such funding is authorized by Congress. Congressional and public support for U.S. funding of international family planning rests on several assumptions:
l First, that these family-planning programs are voluntary: neither coercion nor serious abuses of human rights are involved.
l Second, that funds are exclusively used to provide access to contraceptive methods, not abortion.
l Third, that current family-planning programs improve the reproductive health of women in developing countries.
l Fourth, that voluntary family-planning programs are effective in reducing fertility rates.
l Fifth, that population growth must be curbed to spur economic development and reduce “overpopulation,” with all its perceived threats: mass starvation, environmental degradation, political instability, and natural resource depletion.
Wouldn't most Americans reject a policy that trampled on human rights, violated host country laws against abortion, endangered women's health, that was “effective” only when conducted coercively, and, finally, was unnecessary? Evidence continues to mount—from those suffering from these programs, from human rights groups, and from agencies that support, conduct, or monitor population-control activities—that none of the stated assumptions underlying support for population control remains valid, if they ever were.
Coercion and abuse of human rights: The Population Research Institute recently brought to Congress's attention the coercive nature of Peru's sterilization program, which is supported through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). A Peruvian doctor and two victims of coercive sterilization testified about the pressure and incentives on medical personnel to meet monthly quotas of sterilizations, the illnesses and deaths from sterilizations performed in unsanitary settings by poorly trained staff, the lack of knowledge and consent on the part of women who are sterilized, the coercive threats and incentives used to induce women to agree to a procedure they are told is temporary.
Peru is one of 38 countries on record for violating human rights in the course of enforcing their population policies. In many countries (including Mexico), women may be sterilized or have IUDs inserted immediately after giving birth without their knowledge or consent, and even against their express wishes.
USAID is not the only channel for funding such coercive programs. The World Bank loans $2.4 billion annually for “health, nutrition, and population” programs. Apopulation sector review issued by the World Bank refers approvingly to an array of family planning incentives and disincentives—for example, promising a new well or irrigation system to a village, provided all (or nearly all) villagers accept sterilization or another long-lasting form of contraception. The World Bank has long been accused of having tied lending and disbursement to the adoption of, and compliance with, “population measures.”
Abortions by any other name: “Contraceptive” methods include oral contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices (IUDs), long-acting injectables like Depo-Provera and Norplant. Each method has multiple mechanisms of action—and in each, an abortifacient action is a back-up when the contraceptive action fails. Although one cannot possibly calculate the rates of conception and abortion as a consequence of breakthrough ovulation under the various methods, in light of the number of women now using the methods worldwide, the level of non-surgical abortion must be staggering. Girls and women in the developing world who have had “unprotected” sex are encouraged to take “emergency contraceptive” pills or RU-486 or to undergo “menstrual regulation.” All three methods constitute abortion.
Health risks: Far from improving their reproductive and general health, these hormonal and surgical methods are inappropriate for women who may be malnourished and in poor health generally and who have no access to competent medical care. Procedures are often performed in unsterile settings by staff with little medical training. Typical short-term side effects of Depo-Provera include: heavy, irregular, or interrupted menstrual bleeding, depression, weight gain, headaches, and dizziness. In addition to these symptoms, Norplant may produce nausea or vomiting, mood swings, nervousness, hair loss, acne, and more. Long-term effects of Norplant include liver disease, kidney disease, diabetes, and blood clots. Life-threatening ectopic pregnancies can also occur. Sterilization poses a risk of ectopic pregnancy and increases the possibility of needing a hysterectomy. Is this the best we can do for women in the developing world?
Susan Wills is assistant director for program activities, NCCB Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Susan Willis ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Papal 'Sorry': A Mixed Blessing DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:By Luigi Accattoli
(Alba House, 1998, 257 pp., $16.95)
On the eve of the millennium, Pope John Paul II is calling the Church to a general examination of conscience. It's a dicey business. Wise pastors are disinclined to propose such a taxing measure to the scrupulous. The unscrupulous, for their part, pay little heed to conscience, much less to wise pastors. Perhaps the Pope finds most of the flock gathering between the two extremes. Luigi Accattoli, a Vatican correspondent for Corriere Della Sera, has collected nearly a hundred citations from John Paul. Again and again, the Pope admits to the Church's moral failures and seeks pardon for them. In gathering these statements, Accattoli does us both a service and a disservice. Indeed, from start to finish he exhibits the curious hyper-ventilation of certain Vatican correspondents.
But let's begin with the positive. Why does the Pope ask for forgiveness? Why does he ask us to join him? Scripture is blunt. “If we say we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 Jn 1:10). Because we are the prodigal sons, we pray “forgive us our sins.”
The plea for forgiveness shapes Catholic life. Even from the cross, Jesus forgave us. For our part, we're to leave the altar if we've neglected to beg, or to grant, forgiveness. Vatican II teaches that we are “always in need of purification” (Lumen Gentium, 8). Saints and martyrs lead the way. Mother Teresa confessed daily. And how piercing are the words of the Trappist superior murdered, in 1996, by Algerian terrorists: “I have lived long enough to consider myself an accomplice in the evil which [prevails] in the world … I would like to have the spark of lucidity … to ask pardon of God … and at the same time with all my heart to pardon him who has struck me.”
Catholic thinkers have tried to understand just what forgiveness means. Aquinas, for example, says that forgiveness is the finest expression of God's power. Our own experience, no doubt, says that forgiveness can seem impossible. No wonder that John Paul II often speaks of the “courage to forgive.”
There's also a “logic” of forgiveness. You can't forgive without judging that a wrong has been done. There must also be a taking responsibility for the wrong and sense of remorse. Yes, we can extend forgiveness to the unrepentant, and others might extend it to us when we are unrepentant. But isn't it also true that a forgiveness that we cannot accept, because we have no sorrow, cannot heal us?
Logic, of course, becomes twisted. For example, forgiveness sometimes is supplanted by a peculiar rhetoric of forgiveness. This phenomenon ignores both the courage of forgiving and the remorse that opens us to forgiveness. Its practitioners refuse to judge others and insist that none judge them. The result? All are forgiven even though no one has sinned. Such rhetoric of course, is virtue “on the cheap.”
Accattoli recognizes the distinctive courage, and discernment, of forgiveness. He gives us a sense, too, of how the Church struggles with Catholic sins, including failures to ask and to give forgiveness. (His account of Catholics busy at slaughter in Rwanda is heartbreaking.)
Accattoli's disservice lies in his intimating that the Church should ask forgiveness for not advancing his theological agenda. His intimations take various forms. Overstatement is a favorite, and it frames his own brand of feminism. Had we realized that the Holy Father, in his 1988 apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem (On the Dignity and Vocation of Women), allegedly “corrects St. Paul?” That he hints at “doctrinal revision?”
If he finds that the Pope can correct St. Paul, Accattoli finds it easier still to show that John Paul II corrects earlier popes. To be sure, some corrections are in order. But how Accattoli muddies the water. First he declares that “no one can pit one pope against another pope.” Then, with relish, he pits John Paul II against the “many popes” who silenced earlier admissions of guilt, against the popes who supported the Crusades, and against popes who discriminated against the Jews. But Accattoli has still another ax to grind.
The Church, he suggests, should ask forgiveness for the papacy itself. Why so? There's quite a list: it's too rich; the Swiss Guard is out of place; and we oughtn't to think of the Pope as Sovereign Pontiff. (Following Mt 23:9, he adds, we should drop the titles of “abbot” and “father.”)
But there's more. We also need “to some extent” to repent “the doctrine on papal infallibility.” Perhaps this simply means that we be clear that infallibility doesn't extend to “contingent matters” that surround questions of faith and morals. But by now what's most clear is that Accattoli's contortions need unraveling.
He needs, at a minimum, to address two points. The first is that we all sin, but this is hardly news. The second is that, as John Paul II teaches, “The Church as such cannot be held responsible for the faults of her members who acted against the law of the Gospel….” Here the Holy Father does not correct, but rather affirms, the language of St. Ambrose: “We wound not the Church but ourselves.”
Contributing writer James Hanink is a professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and associate editor of New Oxford Review.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: James Hanink ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Priestly Dream Realized Before Death DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:by Father Benedict Groeschel CFR
(Our Sunday Visitor Press, 1998, 206 pp., $9.95)
Forever: The Life of Father Eugene Hamilton could spark a renewal of priestly vocations. It surely will challenge the reader with thoughts of life, death, divine Providence, and the place of the priesthood in today's world.
Father Hamilton was a 25-year-old New York seminarian ordained on his deathbed by special permission of the Pope. But to say this is to get far ahead of the story—which is about the heart of a young man meeting the heart of the Church and revealing the heart of Jesus the High Priest, broken, burning with love, and rich in mercy.
It is a story of joys amid pain, of hope amid dark days and draining doubts, of a young man of talent and high spirits dying, fighting and accepting death. It is a family story, of the firm-faithed Hamiltons and the family of the Church, forming one loving body as the son of both, Eugene Jr., grows to maturity and enters the seminary at the same time he encounters the shock of advanced cancer.
The tumor in his chest was diagnosed in September 1995, weeks after he started the spirituality program for St. Joseph's Seminary, the New York archdiocese's 100-year-old priestly training ground. Through 17 months, which found him in the hospital as much as in the seminary, Hamilton never surrendered and rarely showed signs of discomfort or discouragement, though his heart was dislocated and his chest rent from within.
More strikingly, he never gave up on the hope of being a priest, bearing a bafflingly serene conviction that he would be ordained even as his solid frame became wasted and his thinning neck failed to fill his proudly worn seminarian's Roman collar. Months after his one operation, he received news of the cancer's spread with the simple words, “Am I going to die?” He told only his family, the seminary priests who advised him and two close friends of the death sentence. To each he expressed a certainty that somehow in God's Providence he would be a priest. The fifth chapter of his book of reflections is titled, “Preparation For Priesthood; Preparation For Death.”
Father Benedict Groeschel, spiritual director and psychologist for the archdiocese, relates with admirable reserve a story that could easily give way to sticky sentiment or maudlin detail. He quotes extensively from the autobiography the seminarian started soon after learning of his cancer, and calls his effort “a book within a book.”
The unfinished autobiography, stored on Hamilton's computer, reaches into wells of emotion, intellect, and spiritual wisdom. It is titled “Servant, Victim, Brother, Listener, Friend,” the description of the priesthood given by Cardinal Terence Cooke, archbishop of New York when he died of cancer in 1983. Hamilton had a devotion to the cardinal even before the onset of his own cancer. His prayers for Cardinal Cooke's intercession increased with his own illness. It was at this point he contacted Father Groeschel, the vice postulator for Cardinal Cooke's canonization cause. At one point, Father Groeschel told the dying seminarian that by quietly insisting he would be ordained, he was praying for a miracle—he either would be cured or be ordained well before finishing his seminary studies, by special intervention.
Father Groeschel reveals the young man's deeply Catholic view of life and death—a subtle mixture of sadness and sense of defeat that comes with the realization that death is a punishment for sin, and a gentle joy that accompanies a hope in the resurrection and eternal life. Hamilton paced out the stations of the cross in the corridor of the cancer ward during his last Lent, yet stopped in each room to offer his fellow patients comfort and words of hope. In an age when so many young men do not hear a priestly call because of the preponderance of cynical noises in the culture, he was a “gentle sign of contradiction,” who maintained traditional piety and theology without anger or accusation.
In August 1996 Hamilton was given the ministry of candidacy by seminary rector Bishop Edwin O'Brien (now archbishop of the military archdiocese), and bravely began his year of theology studies under a death sentence. In November, he took a private vow of celibacy as an act of religious piety. He did not know at the time that this vow would facilitate his death-bed ordination two months later, when Bishop O'Brien would rush to Hamilton's parent's home, with holy oils and ordination ritual in hand, to confer on the barely breathing Hamilton first the diaconate and then the priesthood.
Permission to do so had come days earlier from Pope John Paul II through the request of New York's Cardinal John O'Connor. Assured that Hamilton intended to complete his studies if possible, the Holy Father gave his blessing toto corde, with full heart.
Father Groeschel devotes an addendum to the meaning of the priesthood and the reason for conferring ordination on a young man who would die less than three hours later without celebrating Mass. Affirming the Church's teaching that ordination effects a permanent interior (ontological) change, and conforms a man to Christ in a unique way, the author challenges revisionist theologians such as Hans Küng and Edward Schillebeeckx, who see priesthood in purely functional terms. Father Eugene Hamilton was made a priest, the author says, because God's hand was upon him: his last hours of suffering were sacrificial and redemptive, and he remains a priest in eternity, more closely united with the High Priest.
This book is for every seminarian suffering doubts or mid-semester blues, every priest who seeks a deeper understanding of the sacrament he irrevocably received, and every Christian in need of hope. They will be lifted by the story of a young man who lived just long enough to see his dream fulfilled, and died with the sacred oils on his hands.
Brian Caulfield writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Caulfield ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:Thorough Coverage
I just want to say that I think your paper is excellent. I really enjoy the Pro-life Profile features, the Culture of Life section, and The Catholic Traveler. Please continue with your excellent coverage. I really love the depth of the articles especially the historical aspect of major events such as upcoming synods and past synods, the upcoming jubilee, the article on the doctors of the Church when St. Thérèse was elevated (Nov. 2-8, 1997), the review of past World Youth Days, conferences on the family, and the articles that your reporters look into with extra effort.
I am hoping you might be able to provide equally good background information on the upcoming meeting of the lay apostolate movements and the Pontifical Council on the Laity to convene May 30, 1998. Please keep up the excellent work.
Michael LaFata
via e-mail
Jewish Holy Land
I've noted with interest that, like much of the popular media, your fine Middle East Correspondent, Michele Chabin, has been caught up of late in the increasingly widespread journalistic error of referring to the eastern portion of Israel's capital as “predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem”—as most recently demonstrated in the cover story, “Can U.N. Solidify Peace in Holy Land?” (March 8-14). Common variations of the above-mentioned misbegotten expression currently include such media-favored locations as “historically Palestinian East Jerusalem,” “traditionally Arab East Jerusalem,” and the like.
The unstated, though clearly intended—and thoroughly pernicious—inference that we are supposed to draw from these frequent constructions is, of course, that there are in fact two Jerusalems: an Arab one and a Jewish one. But such a conclusion would not only be manifestly false; it would also just happen to be prime grist for the agenda mill of those whose vision of the city of peace is apparently something on the order of Beirut, Belfast, or Cold War Berlin. (God forbid that their contrivances should meet with success!)
In the interests of clarity, permit me to make the requisite corrections:
(1) The eastern sector of Jerusalem is not “predominantly Palestinian.” On the contrary, it is a part of the city whose demographic complexion is very evenly balanced by equal numbers of Arabs and Jews, and in which neither ethnicity truly predominates. (For the past several years the relative percentages have fluctuated within a very narrow range: 51% to 49% and vice versa, from one census to the next.)
(2) Neither is eastern Jerusalem “historically” or “traditionally” Arab either. To be sure, it was homogeneously Arab for the 19 years between 1948—when King Abdullab of Jordan illegally seized it during Israel's War of Independence, and 1967—when King Hussein (Abdullah's grandson and successor) tried to use it as a springboard to again invade the tiny Jewish State during the Six Day War (and thereby lost control of the territory when he, along with his Syrian and Egyptian allies, was repulsed and defeated by the Israelis). But 19 isolated years of illicit possession do not a “tradition” or “history” make.
During those years of Arab rule over eastern Jerusalem, the Jordanians killed or expelled all the Jews who had resided there, and, in an effort to erase the centuries-long Jewish presence, destroyed every single one of the 58 synagogues in that part of Jerusalem, and desecrated its Jewish cemeteries by using the headstones to pave latrines. This glorious and charming 19 year “tradition” and “history” of an exclusively Arab, thoroughly judenrein “East Jerusalem” ended (as abruptly as it had begun) some 31 years ago this June.
(3) Within eastern Jerusalem is the entire old city, which contains the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, and the “Jewish Quarter.” Note that also within eastern Jerusalem are Hebrew University (built 1925), Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus (built 1938), and the Jewish National and University Library (built 1930).
No knowledgeable person seriously disputes these facts. Don't be taken in: Anybody who is suggesting to you that some portion of Jerusalem isn't Jewish is either ignorant or malicious.
Michael Zebulon
Rohnert Park, California
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: The Untold Story Behind the 'Population Crisis' DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:If you're like a lot of people, you probably believe the world is suffering some form of “population crisis.” Or will very soon. You may have in your head those memorable photos of vast numbers of children orphaned through wars in Rwanda or Burundi—some no more than infants—lying or sitting on white sheets as far as the camera can see. You may be convinced by the words of Vice President Al Gore that “global warming” is a problem of “too many people” on earth. Also you may believe the equation “less people equals more prosperity and a healthier planet.”
Think again.
A careful look at demographic trends provides a vastly different and more nuanced picture. First, it is impossible to speak of one giant global “population problem.” Around the globe, there are numerous countries whose problem is shrinking population. Due to low fertility rates (families having fewer than 2.1 children), people are not “replacing themselves.”
Thirty-five European nations are suffering this problem rather drastically. This is a result of what observers call the “first demographic revolution.” It happens when infant mortality rates drop and life expectancies rise. People then decide to have fewer children. It is also a function—and Europe is a good example of this—of a “second demographic revolution” wherein, due to cultural changes, families decide to have few or no children. Such cultural changes might include the embracing of exaggerated materialism and individualism, secularism, and even a reaction to population alarmism.
Around the world, different countries, and even different regions within the same country, are at various points along the continuum of demographic change. Some have not even experienced the first demographic revolution. But even in most of these countries, fertility rates are declining. Overall, the rate of population growth globally reached its peak in 1970. Since that time, the rate of growth has slowed down. It is now predicted that global population will peak by 2050, at around 8.5 billion people—and decline thereafter. The news of which has led even the scariest of the scaremongers—the U.N. Population Fund—to begin backing off predictions of imminent disaster.
But they haven't for one second stepped back from their zealous efforts to lower population dramatically via programs of massive distribution of contraceptives and sterilization, combined at times with abortion (legal and illegal).
This approach has massive financial backing from a growing number of rich and powerful foundations. Just in the past few months, Ted Turner of CNN and Zero Population Growth fame announced that he is giving $1 billion to the United Nations—for what else, population control. The Packard Foundation—with a mind-boggling $9 billion endowment— has also announced that it will devote about $550 million per year to population control. As for the United States, President Clinton is at present willing to withhold all funding from the United Nations unless U.S. money goes to organizations that promote abortion overseas and lobby internationally for more permissive abortion laws.
Even under the kindest interpretation, this approach reveals tremendous ignorance of population history and the real sources of poverty and underdevelopment. It has been demonstrated again and again that no country achieves prosperity primarily due to reduced population. In fact, a continually declining population is a recipe for financial ruin, not success. There is also enough evidence on hand to demonstrate that the most likely causes of underdevelopment include: corruption in political or economic systems; ethnic or racial or religious discrimination and conflicts; unjust distribution of resources; and a crushing debt burden. But here's the rub. These serious problems are more complex, and require a greater investment of time and money, than the simplistic approach of pushing contraception on the poor, and/or coercing women into sterilization and abortion.
There's a second and related reason why the real sources of underdevelopment are so rarely addressed by rich countries and foundations. It's not pretty. For the wealthy nations, controlling the populations of poorer countries is a defense issue, not a human rights or development issue at all. Recently released U.S. national security documents from the 1960s show that the impetus for U.S. “aid” to the third world in the form of birth control and abortion is to lower the percentage of “them” to “us.” All the while we cheerily assure everybody we're just “empowering” women in their reproductive lives.
The Holy See has taken a great interest in these matters. It raised its voice internationally in connection with recent U.N. conferences concerning population. And it has called on individual Catholics, particularly Catholic educators, to learn the real facts about global population. This is too important a human rights issue to be left to demographers.
Helen Alvaré is director of planning and information, Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Helen Alvaré ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Darwinist Takes His 'Dead' Theory to the Bishops DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:Last autumn, the U.S. bishops had a workshop on the theory of evolution. Since the theory of evolution touches on the subject of man's origins, the Church has a deep interest in the matter. Pope John Paul II, in fact, has urged Catholics to avoid a fortress mentality when dealing with scientific evidence for the theory.
But the Pope also cautions about materialist philosophy disguised as science: “ The Church … distrusts only preconceived opinions that claim to be based on science, but which in reality surreptitiously cause science to depart from its domain.” There is no question that the writings of many Darwinists flunk this test. People like Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Richard Lewontin will not do science without first putting on their philosophical blinders. Lewontin, who teaches genetics at Harvard, has said as much: “ We take the side of science … in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.”
Unfortunately, the keynote speaker at the bishops' conference was just this sort of Darwinist. To compound the problem, his Darwinism is badly dated. In the keynote address, Francisco Ayala, who teaches biology at the University of California, presented to his audience a brand of neo-Darwinism which Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard long ago declared “dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy.” Ayala misrepresented the fossil record and gave the false impression that the genetic mechanism that turns one species into another is perfectly transparent to science. His presentation of Darwinism was full of the sort of philosophical additives about which the Pope was speaking.
Ayala used a favorite rhetorical device of Darwinists when addressing an audience of scientific laymen. He made no distinction between “Darwinism” and “evolution.” The idea of evolution, of the common descent of species, has been around since the ancient Greeks. St. Augustine was a kind of evolutionist, although hardly a Darwinist. What Darwin did was suggest a simple mechanism—natural selection—to explain how evolution had occurred.
Although you would never know it from reading Ayala's paper, it has long been clear that Darwin's mechanism is due for retirement. Neither the fossil record, nor breeding experiments, nor mathematical probability support the idea that small DNA copying errors “guided” by natural selection created everything from bacteria to human consciousness. Leaving aside the vexed question of how DNA assembled itself in the first place, a growing number of scientists think that Darwinian selection is a grossly inadequate mechanism for the creation of complex life forms.
In fact, natural selection doesn't create anything. It simply eliminates what doesn't work. As one biologist puts it, to say that natural selection does anything is a bit like answering the question, “Why are there leaves on the tree?” with, “Because the gardener did not cut them away.”
Ayala states that the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record has been “discredited.” But all he offers are “micro-evolutionary” examples. The fact is, there are systematic gaps between all major animal groups. A man from Mars looking at the fossil record of the last half billion years would say that species are replaced by other species, rather than evolve into them. Steven Stanley, a pale-ontologist who teaches at Johns Hopkins, writes in The New Evolutionary Time Table that, “the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another.”
Ayala's basic argument is that you can simply extrapolate major evolutionary changes from the small shifts that occur all the time within species. But scientists like Gould, Niles Eldredge, and the late Pierre Grasse argue that such extrapolation is inadmissible. All species appear to be “hard-edged.” They have enough genetic variability to cope with changes in their environment, but never go beyond certain barriers. Dogs remain dogs, fruit flies remain fruit flies.
Several years ago I had drinks with an evolutionary biologist who works at the Museum of Natural History in New York. I waited until he had had a couple of beers, and then said: “You say that Darwinism is dead, and you are obviously not a creationist. So, what do you believe?” His reply was honest: “Look, we know that species reproduce and that there are different species now than there were a hundred-million years ago. Everything else is propaganda.”
The origin of species remains a scientific mystery. The idea of the common descent of all species is perfectly plausible, but we have no idea how a batch of inorganic material morphed itself over billions of years into giraffes and chimpanzees. Man is a separate mystery altogether. The explanatory glibness of Ayala's paper glosses over many serious problems.
George Sim Johnston is a writer based in New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: George Sim Johnston ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Holy Place in the French Alps DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:Surrounded by spectacular scenery and breathtaking views, Our Lady of La Salette shrine at the top of the Alps in southern France has become recognized as one of the most prominent Marian shrines in the world. Drawing more than one million visitors each year from every continent, the shrine recently celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Blessed Virgin's appearance at La Salette. The story of Mary's visit has been echoed throughout the world in numerous languages, and her message of peace and reconciliation has spread to the far corners of the earth.
The apparition of the Virgin Mary at La Salette took place on the sunny afternoon of Sept. 19, 1846. Afarmer from the nearby village of Corps had recruited two young children, Maximin and Mélanie, to shepherd his cows. After climbing up a mountain to a grassy plateau, the two young shepherds fell asleep as they watched the farmer's cattle grazing peacefully nearby.
Mélanie, who slept for about half an hour, awoke to find the cows missing. After she summoned Maximin, the two children quickly climbed the ravine only to find the animals grazing in the same spot where they had left them.
Descending the hillock, the children suddenly froze. Just a short distance away, a dazzling ball of light had burst into view. After a moment, the two shepherds recognized a woman seated, with her head buried in her hands, crying.
As the two shepherds neared the luminous being, she rose and said, “Come near, my children, do not be afraid. I am here to tell you great news.” Reassured by these words, the children dropped their sticks and hurried to meet her. As the children neared her, she continued to weep as she spoke about the loss of religion in the area, the desecration of the Sabbath, and the profanation of her Son's name.
After confiding different secrets to Maximin and Mélanie, she began to speak with great hope of the good things to come if people amended their lives. She then spoke several more words to the children and concluded, “Well, children, you will make this message known to all my people.” Then with a friendly wave she slowly vanished from their sight as she said, “Please, children, be sure to make this known to all my people.”
As the Lady vanished, Mélanie remarked that perhaps it was a great saint. Maximin replied that if only they had known, they would have asked her to bring them with her. Upon arriving back home, Maximin immediately told his family about the beautiful Lady. Mélanie was then summoned from her stable work and confirmed his story. Both children were shocked that nobody had seen the great light emanating from the hill.
Upon hearing the news of the apparition, the parish priest, teary-eyed and trembling, related the story in his homily during the Mass. The town's mayor, however, was deeply disturbed by the incident and summoned the two children for questioning. With bribes and threats the mayor unsuccessfully tried to silence them.
News of the apparition spread quickly throughout the region, eventually reaching Rome. Believers and non-believers alike went to the mountain top. Many interrogated the children in hopes of trapping them into some contradiction. All were unsuccessful. After five years of diligent inquiries by ecclesiastical authorities, the apparitions of La Salette were given official recognition.
On May 1, 1852, the bishop of Grenoble published a decree announcing the construction of a shrine on the mountain of La Salette, as well as the founding of the religious order Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette. On Sept. 19, 1855, the bishop summarized the situation: “The mission of the two shepherds has come to an end, that of the Church now begins. Those men and women of all nations and races who have found in the message of La Salette the path to conversion, a deepening of their religious faith, a vital force for daily living, and a rationale for their commitment to Christ in the service of others, are beyond number.”
The shrine of Our Lady of La Salette is located in a high alpine pasture at an altitude of about 6,000 feet, about nine miles from the nearest settlement. Easily accessible by car, bus, and taxi, the shrine operates a first-class hospitality service with accommodations ranging from dormitory bunks to hotel-like rooms. La Salette offers the visitor an excellent setting for contemplative prayer and retreats with its spectacular mountain scenery. The shrine welcomes pilgrims throughout the year, except during its annual closure every November.
Among the greatest attractions at the shrine are its basilica and hospitality center, as well as the site of the apparition (marked by statues) and the spring that began to flow after the Virgin's appearance. Video presentations, daily Mass, and prominent Eucharistic and Marian processions are just some of the many activities and events taking place at the shrine. Nearby trails also offer an opportunity for visitors to enjoy a walk in the beautiful countryside of the Alpine Mountains.
To arrive at La Salette by car from Grenoble, take N85 south to Corps, then follow the signs to the shrine (nine miles). To arrive at La Salette other than by car, one must use a combination of both train and bus service. There is no railway station at La Salette; the nearest one is at Grenoble. During the summer months, an early morning bus departs daily from Grenoble for La Salette. Outside of the summer months, one must use a combination of bus and taxi service.
For more information on making a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of La Salette, contact one of the many Catholic travel organizations offering guided tours to France or contact the shrine's pilgrimage office at: Sanctuaire Notre Dame De La Salette, F-38970 La Salette; (tel.) 011-33-476-30-00-11; (fax) 011-33-476-30-03-65.
Kevin Wright writes from Bellevue, Washington.
----- EXCERPT: The Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette remembers the faith of two shepherd children ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kevin Wright ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Raising Kids: It Takes An Association DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:If being a parent in the 1990s is a tough assignment, an organization in the nation's capital is trying to make the work a little easier.
The Parents' Council of Washington is an education association for 28,000 parents and helps them to connect with each other and trade tips about raising their children. Supported by 58 dues-paying independent schools, the council features 12 Catholic schools, who receive some additional services beyond those the Archdiocese of Washington provides for them.
Parents' positive response to the Council indicates that it is meeting an important need. Indeed, the organization could serve as a model for other groups of private school parents around the country. As Council co-president Elly Frieder says, many families need additional resources to gain a better understanding of their children and their schools. What's more, since students today have the opportunity for peer relationships well beyond their own neighborhoods, parents can also benefit from relating to each other on a wider, regional basis.
Through regular meetings, a newsletter, and other means of communication, the Parents' Council brings parents together to help each other set standards, know their children better, and understand what is “normal,” particularly during adolescence. The group also provides guidelines for parents to form peer groups in the schools.
“It's comforting to know that your teen-aged son who shuts himself in his room isn't abnormal. That's what teenaged boys do,” said Karen Zill, president of the Parents' Association of St. Anselm's Abbey School in northeast Washington, and the mother of two boys. She serves as a school representative on the Parents' Council for the Benedictine school for boys.
Through its meetings and its 175-page book, Parent to Parent: Raising Children in Washington, the group offers a mixture of time-honored advice about raising children, mixed with a contemporary understanding of children's psychology, and the importance of respecting differences in children.
A Parents' Council-sponsored lecture in February by Peter Cobb, president of the Council for Religion in Independent Schools, addressed “Raising Moral Children.” Cobb encouraged attendees to give examples of the values they wanted to instill in their children.
Beyond basic values such as honesty and hard work, respect for one's body, nature, and animals appeared on the list, which had more than two dozen items.
The Parents' Council, he said, acts as a resource for parents without claiming to have any exclusive answers to the problems families face, a resident of Rockville, Md. Nonetheless, parents at meetings can find others who share their values.
“It's easier to pick up on who has similar values,” at meetings, said Frieder, whose 15-year old daughter attends Connelly School of the Holy Child in Potomac, Md., an all-girls Catholic school. Her 20-year old son attends Jesuit-run Loyola College in Baltimore.
The ambitious organization also has a World Wide Web site at www.capaccess.org/parentscouncil and recently published a revised issue of its flagship book.
Published late last year, Parent to Parent recently sold out its first printing of 7,500 before the organization authorized a second print run of 5,000, according to Council co-president Elizabeth Hayes.
The book gives parents advice on how to define and maintain standards in raising their children, and it helps them to detect warning signs for typical problems in children, as well as how to recover after they or their children make serious mistakes.
As any good Christian would need to do, parents must be prepared to stand alone at times.
“Be prepared for the fact that your family's values may conflict radically with those of your children's friends, even parents you have known and respected for many years,” the book says.
Subjects covered in it include “Beach Week,” “Cheating and Honor Codes,” “Dating: Twos & Groups,” “Eating Healthy & Harmful” and “Alone & Latchkey.” The chapters are short and are cross-referenced to related subjects in the book as well as to other publications and organizations that can provide further assistance.
The book advises parents to maintain an optimistic attitude about their children's development. It also encourages them to apologize for their mistakes, which helps children understand that they can learn from their errors.
“Love is everything,” the book says. “Every time we kiss or hug our children, we give them the love they need to feel strong and important. Unconditional love from parents is the basis of the ‘self-esteem’ we hear so much about. Our children should feel they can depend on us—even if they have done something we don't approve of. We can love our child and hate the behavior.”
The Council helps to reinforce the message that “we're working on behalf of the children, on the same track,” Zill said.
Founded in 1964, the Council included secondary schools for many years and grew primarily through word of mouth among school administrators and parents. During the last two years, primary schools have also joined the Parents' Council. Parents of elementary school children want to get more involved, Hayes said.
Recent Catholic elementary schools that have joined include Blessed Sacrament in northwest Washington, and Little Flower and The Woods Academy, both in Bethesda, Md. Overall, eight schools have joined the fold during the past 18 months, Hayes said.
Many Catholic parents would disagree with the Parents' Council book's idea that “there are no ‘right’ answers, only possibilities to choose from.” The book passed muster with the principal of one Catholic school, however, who bought copies for all school's parents, after asking Frieder about its contents and taking a look at the book, she said.
Although the Parents'Council regularly attracts 200-300 parents to its meetings, 90% of attendees are mothers, said Hayes. Fathers tend to take more interest in meetings about college admissions or sports, she said.
The organization's board is all-women, but they would prefer to have men involved, she said.
Involvement in parents organizations is “another way to find out what's going on” at the school, said Zill. “My sons don't say a lot. I learn more of what's going on [through the Council], and it can be an opener for conversation.”
Through greater interaction with their peers, parents can also learn that their children's claims—that all their friends have later curfews or can attend beach week unsupervised—are not necessarily true.
William Murray writes from Kensington, Md.
----- EXCERPT: In nation's capital, parents' council offers an invaluable resource ----- EXTENDED BODY: William Murray ----- KEYWORDS: Education Page -------- TITLE: 'You're No Abraham Lincoln' DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:Politics is always the art of the possible. Compromises are necessary to get candidates elected and legislation passed. The hope is that the dark side of these activities will be justified by the importance of a larger cause. It's often a difficult piece of moral calculus.
Primary Colors is a deft political satire that starts out by tackling these issues head-on. Based on the best-selling novel by New Yorker magazine staffer Joe Klein (who first published the book under the pseudonym, “Anonymous”), the movie claims to be fiction. But, of course, everyone knows it's based on Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. Part of the fun is figuring out who the real-life models for each of the characters are and how closely the plot twists resemble actual events. Its scenes about the fallout from the candidate's alleged affair with a very young girl seem to have anticipated the Monica Lewinsky scandal with an eerie prescience.
The story is told through the eyes of Henry Burton (Adrian Lester), who's a cross between former Clinton aide, George Stephanopoulos, and a mythical grandson of Martin Luther King, Jr. The young African-American signs on to be campaign manager of a dark-horse, Clinton-like presidential candidate, Jack Stanton (John Travolta), who's governor of a small Southern state.
Burton's girlfriend, March (Rebecca Walker), describes Stanton as “some cracker who hasn't done much in his own state.” But the young idealist explains to Stanton's Hillary-like wife, Susan (Emma Thompson) why he joined up: “You had Kennedy. I want to be part of something that is history.”
From that moment on, Burton is pegged by the rest of the staff as suffering from a case of “galloping true believerism.” The movie's dramatic tension comes from the clash between his high hopes and the reality of the campaign. It's a classic tale of innocence betrayed.
Burton first sees Stanton in action at a minority adult literacy class in New York. The candidate is moved to tears by the students' tales of hardship and shares with them a similar story from his own past. But he can't resist seducing the group's female teacher (Allison Janney).
The incident reveals the candidate's greatest strength, his seemingly heart-felt empathy for ordinary people's problems. But it also points to his achilles heel, what's described as “the woman thing” by veteran consultant Richard Jemmons (Billy Bob Thornton), who's based on James Carville.
The New Hampshire electoral primary takes up the first half of the film. The Stanton campaign has to deflect charges that their candidate was arrested during a Vietnam war protest and had the incident illegally expunged from his record. Then allegations are made that he had an affair with his wife's former hairdresser (Gia Carides), a character suggested by Gennifer Flowers, and a tape recording is played which seems to prove it.
Susan Stanton publicly stands by her man and leads the campaign's rapid-response team to media inquiries. But in private, she slaps her husband's face upon learning of his infidelity and later pulls her hand away from his after faking forgiveness during a 60 Minutes-like TV interview. Her attitude toward her husband seems to be an accurate rendering of the combination of true love, anger, and denial that binds her real-life counterpart to the president.
Brought in to counter the dirty tricks of Stanton's opponents is “dust-buster” Libby Holden (Kathy Bates), based on long-term Clinton associate, Betsey Wright. A foul-mouthed homosexual, she's not above using threats of violence to get her way. With Holden's help, Stanton is able to neutralize the allegations made against him and finish second in New Hampshire. When the candidate who beat him drops out for health reasons, he becomes the front-runner.
Then things take a turn for the worse. Rumors surface that he has gotten a teen-age African-American girl pregnant. At the same time a respected party veteran, former Florida governor Fred Picker (Larry Hagman), enters the race to run against Stanton on a good-government platform.
Burton gets his hands dirty dealing with these problems and feels sick about it. Surprisingly, Holden turns out to be as much an idealist as he is. After finding enough skeletons in Picker's closet to force him out of the race, she challenges the Stantons to remain true to their shared McGovernite past and not stoop to their opponents' level by releasing the material.
The problem with Primary Colors is that both director Mike Nichols (The Graduate and Birdcage) and screenwriter Elaine May (Birdcage) are liberal Democrats who've participated in Clinton fund-raisers, and three-quarters of the way through the film they realize the Clinton surrogate they've created is a monster. Jack Stanton is depicted as a charming manipulator who'll use any means necessary to accomplish his goals. He functions as a kind of Mephistophelean tempter with Burton, encouraging the young man to do things that go against his nature. After all this, how are the filmmakers going to be able to justify their support for the movie's real-life model and for the principles they and he claim to hold dear?
In its closing scenes, the movie ceases being funny and bogs down in exaggerated melodrama and unconvincing moral rationalizations. Nichols and May want us to believe that almost all of America's presidents have used dirty tricks. Delivering some of the most offensive lines of dialogue in recent memory, Stanton tries to persuade Burton to stay on board. “You don't think Abraham Lincoln was a whore before he was president?” the candidate asks. “He had to tell his little stories and smile his back-country grin. He did it all just so he'd get the opportunity to stand in front of the nation and appeal to the better angels of our nature.” Obviously, Stanton has the hubris to see himself as following in Lincoln's footsteps.
Because Primary Colors shows the Stanton campaign concerned almost exclusively with image and rarely with substance, there's very little sense of a higher cause to justify all the chicanery. In order for the audience to accept Stanton as anything other than a wily corrupter, the filmmakers are forced to fall back on a blanket cynicism about politics that makes their hero look good. Despite all the laughs, it leaves a bitter taste.
Arts & culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
Primary Colors is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America.
Register ratings
Violence 4
Language -2
Nudity -1
Sexual content -2
4 Suitable
—1 Questionable
—2 Objectionable
—3 Reprehensible
Morally hazardous
----- EXCERPT: In the world of Primary Colors, politics--not the president--is the bad guy ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Misreading Anne Frank DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:Why would anyone want to mount a revival of The Diary of Anne Frank? In a certain respect, the film Schindler's List has determined the definitive way to remember the unspeakable atrocities of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, thereby rendering less eloquent depictions of those events redundant. What new insight might the current Broadway production hope to promote? In other words, just what does this new presentation of the play want us to remember?
In fact, it is not the production but rather the script that is new here. The production now playing at the Music Box Theater is not a revival, but rather a redaction by Wendy Kesselman of the original play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. Regrettably, no rationale is given to justify or explain Kesselman's adaptation, whose anti-Christian slant will leave many in the audience bemused if not downright outraged.
If there is any reason to see this production, it rests in Natalie Portman's stunning, exuberant portrayal of Anne. Portman exhibits the profound self-possession, poignancy, and convicted verve that one might associate with St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
Kesselman's anti-Christian slant will leave many bemused if not downright outraged.
Unfortunately, much of the rest of the production is disappointing and even disturbing. It is painful to watch the impotency of the human spirit when co-opted into self-sacrifice. The staging fails to give the audience a strong sense of the destitution of these people, of what it is to be cooped up in an annex with no possibility of bathing, without enough food, with only their fears.
The horror or their predicament does break through at times. In perhaps the most unsettling scene, Mr. Van Daan, father of the family sharing the Franks' hiding place, is caught stealing bread in the dead of night. We wince as his son Peter witnesses the selfishness, deception, and cowardice that the boy realizes can consume any man—even his own father. It stands as an irrefutable reminder of how savage the power of pettiness can be when we refuse to make of life a sincere gift of self.
The impetuous response of Mr. Dussel, another refugee, to this heinous injustice is to start parceling out the rotten potatoes on the spot. But the only response that can truly satisfy such a crisis is mercy.
A brief moment of redemption appears in a moving (new) monologue spoken by Mrs. Van Daan (delivered with elegant power by Linda Lavin) to her unrepentant spouse. By reminding him of the romance they shared in the long-ago days of their courtship, she attempts to revive her husband's belief in the all-encompassing power of love. She says to him tenderly: “Putti, next time you're hungry, hold on to me.” He does so immediately. It makes us think of the meaning of the Eucharist.
More often though, misrepresentations of the original material mar the new production. One exchange between Peter Van Daan, Anne, and her sister Margot, is particularly disquieting. In the original play, Anne says: “I wish you had a religion, Peter.” He replies: “No, thanks. Not me.” In Kesselman's mutation, however, Peter says: “When I get out of here I'm never going to tell anyone that I'm Jewish.” Margot responds by saying: “What? You mean you're going to get yourself baptized?” The quantum leap to such a conclusion is both absurd and abrasive. If anything, Peter seems to suggest that he will in the future profess agnosticism. And were not Miep Gies and Mr. Kraler, the heroic resisters who made this refuge possible, themselves “baptized?” Kesselman's adaptation renders Margot a cold-hearted, unthinking, ungrateful bigot. Such a suggestion is itself unthinkable.
The momentum of the entire play builds to the suspenseful climax when the Nazis come to hustle away the castaways. Incredibly, the play's director, James Lapine, completely misses the moment. Three boyish soldiers sneak into the attic like impish adolescents up to some prank. In the original script, Nazis never appear on-stage. Instead, the sense of terror for those in hiding comes across through the clamor of bells ringing, doors crashing, voices shouting, and heavy boots smashing their way into the sanctuary. Imagination can supply a far more horrifying effect than depiction.
The insinuation of a non-dramatic, concluding monologue by Anne's father, Otto Frank, (unconvincingly delivered by the understudy Peter Kybart at the performance I attended) is the final shortfall of the new production. It manages to relate what happens to every character we've encountered except for Miep and Mr. Kraler—the two people who risk their lives to save their persecuted friends, and with whom the audience has established an emotional bond. Because we truly care about them, we feel deprived when they disappear without a mention.
The original play included these characters in the drama's resolution. In this new production (which should accordingly be given its own distinct title) Miep and Kraler are meant to be forgotten.
At the end of the play, Anne's writing literally is on the wall. One would have hoped for that from the beginning instead of so much interloping. It is one thing to recall accurately the past to prompt people to remember well. It is quite another to revise remembrance according to an adapter's agenda. Then memory becomes manipulation. Whose diary is it, anyway?
The Diary of Anne Frank is now playing at the Music Box Theater, 239 W. 45th St., New York City.
Dominican Father Peter John Cameron, a Register contributing writer, is an award-winning playwright with a master's degree in playwriting from The Catholic University of America.
----- EXCERPT: The current Broadway production doesn't do justice to a young Holocaust victim's famous diary ----- EXTENDED BODY: Peter John Cameron OP ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Patiently, Pro-lifers Maneuver To End Partial-Birth Abortion DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Behind the scenes, Congress has begun considering how to override President Bill Clinton's veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (HR 1122).
This will be the second round of a political showdown that began in 1996 when Sen. Rick Santorum (RPa.) challenged the late-term procedure known in the medical industry as intact dilation and extraction (D&X) on the floor of the Senate. Since the method involves killing a child that has been delivered in a breech fashion up to its neck, many—including U.S. bishops, lawmakers, and physicians— have termed it infanticide.
At every step in the drawn-out struggle, support for the ban has grown. When the president vetoed the measure for the second time Oct. 10, it had won by a veto-proof margin (296-132) in the House of Representatives, and passed the Senate only three votes shy of the necessary two-thirds majority to override a veto (64-36).
While many Democratic senators have been persuaded to support the ban, including Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, and senior statesman Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, at least eight self-identified Catholic members of the Senate, some from the most heavily Catholic areas of the country, have opposed the ban and voted to uphold the president's veto. Sens. Christopher Dodd (DConn.), Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), John Kerry (D-Mass.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.), Barbara MikuIski (D-Md.), and Mary Collins (R-Maine) all support keeping legal the practice of partial-birth abortion. Even Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who represents the only state in which Catholics are a majority of the population, voted to keep it legal.
The allegiance of so many Catholic legislators to the “pro-choice” camp is perhaps the most distressing aspect of this political struggle for pro-life organizers. Why the contradiction? Why do politicians who publicly list themselves as Catholics, vote against the Catholic position on abortion issues?
Various senators make different arguments to justify their support for partial-birth abortion, but virtually all cite two broad arguments: The need to defer to the rulings of the Supreme Court, and the (former New York Gov.) Mario Cuomo argument, that while “personally opposed” to abortion, the decision to have an abortion should be reserved to the individual involved. Unfortunately, this opinion resonates with many people—including Catholics.
That is not to say that all Americans favor the present “abortion-on-demand” philosophy in the United States. A recent public-opinion analysis of the abortion issue sheds light on this topic. Carll Ladd and Karlyn Bowman, polling experts at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank, argue that, based on polls published in the last 25 years, the American population is deeply divided on this issue. “People recognize that human life is precious, and they think it should be protected. At the same time, they feel strongly that individual choice should be respected. Most Americans are at once pro-choice and pro-life.”
Ladd and Bowman point out that this “pluralistic compromise,” with its deference to the choices of others, is the pattern of public opinion across a range of issues (e.g. smoking, school choice, health-care options, and access to pornography. However, by large majorities, most Americans support restrictions on access to abortion after the first trimester. Regarding the partial-birth procedure, more than 70% of the population favors an outright ban.
That is why the pro-life movement has dramatically changed its emphasis in recent months. The brutal facts about partial-birth abortion shift public attention away from who is making the choice to what is being chosen—and most Americans simply don't have the stomach to support it. Whatever their conviction about abortion in general, infanticide is clearly outside the mainstream.
That has been the impetus behind the most significant movement in voting behavior on abortion issues since 1973. Eighteen states have passed versions of the Santorum bill during the last two years (not including Ohio, where the language of the ban was flawed) and many congressional Democrats (13 senators and 79 representatives) have abandoned their party's traditional pro-abortion posture.
In the Senate, Daschle, a Catholic, leads the list of pro-abortion Democrats who voted against his party and the president. His last-minute switch to support the Santorum bill came only after intense pressure from South Dakota voters and from Bishop Robert Carlson of Sioux Falls. (Daschle is reported to have exclaimed, “That's enough. Let's get this thing out of here and send it to the Supreme Court” in reaction to Bishop Carlson's leadership on the issue.) Other Catholic senators who were either unwilling to buck the demands of public opinion and the Church include John Breaux (D-La.), Mary Landrieux (DLa.), and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).
By contrast, Sen. Robert Byrd (DW.Va.) changed his position to support the ban after learning the full details of the procedure. Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) switched his vote in favor of the ban after his home state passed its own measure with broad popular support. Bishop said he felt bound to uphold the moral convictions of those who elected him.
These prominent defections have increased the pressure on the holdout Catholic Democrats. Most vulnerable are those facing election this year, such as Illinois Moseley-Braun, and Washington's Patty Murray. Moseley-Braun faces a strong pro-life Republican candidate in this fall's election, and a state Democratic Party that appears to be divided on abortion issues, having nominated a pro-life candidate for governor. What's more, Illinois is one of the states that has outlawed the partial-birth procedure. In a close election, the issue could determine the outcome.
There are similar situations in a number of upcoming political races. In fact, the override vote has become a central issue in the 105th Congress. Pro-life forces are working fervently to persuade three senators to switch their override votes. Though the debate has been quiet (at least in the national press) for months, the override issue is shaping up to be a defining moment in American political history.
The motion to override will begin in the House Judiciary Committee, where much interest and speculation centers on the timing of the vote.
Though assured of passage in the House (the margin is 10 votes greater than the required two-thirds majority), if the measure were to arise now, most observers believe it would ultimately fail. Pro-life leaders argue that it would be a mistake to rush the vote.
“The National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the Christian Coalition, and other pro-life organizations need as much time as possible to round up the crucial three votes [in the Senate],” said NRLC Legislative Director Doug Johnson. The best estimate is for a vote in late summer.
As the behind-the-scenes debate in Washington intensifies, the approvals of statewide bans are cause for hope. In New Jersey, Republican Gov. Christine Whitman, re-elected by a slim margin in November, suffered a legislative override of her veto of a state ban in December. In February, the Florida legislature demonstrated its determination by overriding Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles's veto. Virginia's newly elected state Assembly, previously dominated by pro-abortion Democrats, voted in favor of a ban in March. And in Maine, despite Greek Orthodox senator (Republican Olympia Snowe) and a Catholic senator (Collins) siding with the president, the Christian Coalition's polling shows that more than 80% of state voters favor a ban on partial-birth abortions.
With the tide running strongly against them, abortion advocates have begun the classic “end run” to the courts. Most state bans have been delayed by federal court order, and the issue seems destined to wind up in the Supreme Court. Whatever the outcome, the partial-birth issue has given the pro-life cause a new vigor and a dramatic new platform from which to educate the public. As one veteran observer commented, “it's yet another instance of God bringing good out of evil.”
George Forsyth, a political scientist and former foreign service officer, is executive director of the Catholic Campaign for America.
----- EXCERPT: Many believe it would be a mistake to rush a vote in Senate, which is still three votes shy of veto-proof margin ----- EXTENDED BODY: George Forsyth ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:“Even in the midst of difficulties and uncertainties, every person sincerely open to truth and goodness can, by the light of reason and the hidden action of grace, come to recognize in the natural law written in the heart (cf. Rm 2:14-15), the sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its end, and can affirm the right of every human being to have this primary good respected to the highest degree. Upon the recognition of this right, every human community and the political community itself are founded.”
Pope John Paul II
(Evangelium Vitae 2.2)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Assisted Suicide: A Way of Death in Oregon DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:PORTLAND, Ore.—“Let's allow this grave news to inspire us to reach out to those who are terminally ill.” That was the reaction of Portland Archbishop John Vlazny to word last month of Oregon's first reported suicide.
“At this time,” Archbishop Vlazny said, “I believe it is especially important that we reach out to one another to strengthen our resolve that no one feel abandoned in his or her final illness.”
A Portland woman in her mid-80s with breast cancer died March 24 after taking a lethal prescription of barbiturates mixed with Maple syrup followed by some brandy. She reportedly died “peacefully” while asleep about a half-hour later, with her family and her doctor at her side.
The woman's family asked that she remain anonymous. She did make an audio tape recording a few days before she died. In the tape she said she is looking forward to dying “because, being I was always active, I cannot possibly see myself living out two more months like this…. I will be relieved of all the stress I have.”
Archbishop Vlazny said he was “deeply saddened” the news. “The suicide of this elderly woman can only bring anguish to those who have resisted the public policy initiatives that changed the law in Oregon.”
There has been at least one other publicly announced doctor-assisted suicide in Oregon under the “Death with Dignity Act.” This person was an adult who had cancer. Other people might have already killed themselves under the law and not disclosed details. State officials said they will not issue a report on how the law is working until at least 10 deaths have been recorded.
While a spokeswoman for the Hemlock Society responded to the news with “Hooray for the people of Oregon,” others joined the archbishop in expressing sorrow.
“This is a tragic day for Oregon and our nation,” said Bob Castagna of the Oregon Catholic Conference.
Castagna said those against the doctor-assisted suicide law are still working toward having it outlawed. Currently the U.S. Justice Department is examining a Drug Enforcement Administration opinion that deadly medication violates medical standards.
Catholic physician Edmund Pellegrino of Georgetown University has been an outspoken foe of Oregon's law. He maintains that a dignified death is not brought on with an overdose of pills.
“A dignified and human death is one in which we participate in the mystery which is at the root of our existence as creatures,” the doctor said. “In a dignified death we affirm ourselves as persons by giving ourselves over to God's presence even in our most despairing moments, just as Jesus did in the awful hours of Gethsemane and Golgotha.”
Another doctor, Gregory Hamilton, a psychiatrist and president of Physicians for Compassionate Care, expressed grief not only for the deceased and family members—but for his profession and all of America as well.
“This is a terrible thing because people's lives are no longer being equally valued,” Hamilton said. “Suicide doesn't take place in a vacuum, and when a doctor writes a prescription for them to use to kill themselves, they are agreeing that that person's life is no longer as valuable as the lives of the rest of us.”
Despite staunch opposition from the Catholic Church, Oregon voters have stood by the concept of assisted suicide. In 1994, just 51% of the state's voters approved Measure 16. It was the first law anywhere, ever to legalize doctor-assisted suicide.
A series of legal challenges followed, and in November Oregon voters, by a lopsided margin of 60% to 40%, declined to repeal the 1994 law.
Hazel Whitman writes from Portland, Oregon.
----- EXCERPT: Church reacts with sorrow to first official occurrence under the law ----- EXTENDED BODY: Hazel Whitman ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Joan Andrews Bell Freed on Unsupervised Parole DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:Joan Andrews Bell left a Pittsburgh prison March 26 with the same message that led to her incarceration more than two months ago: She will not cooperate in any way with corrupt court and law enforcement systems that condone the killing of unborn children and penalize those who attempt to save them.
Sentenced Jan. 15 to three to 23 months, with three years probation, for refusing to register for probation, Bell was unexpectedly released more than two weeks short of the minimum sentence, with time off for good behavior. Officially, she is on parole, but she was not informed of any terms of the parole or appointed a parole officer.
In contrast to the tortuous legal case that began in 1985 with her trespass arrest at a Pittsburgh abortion clinic, and included a federal warrant issued last September after she and her husband went through an immigration service background check in connection with a foreign adoption, her release was amazingly simple.
“The officer in charge of our section of the jail came that evening and said, ‘You're released. Get your stuff and get out.’ I was shocked,” Bell told the Register from her New Jersey home three days after being freed. “I had no idea anything of the sort was in the offing.”
As she walked toward the front desk of Allegheny County Prison around 8:30 p.m. March 26, she was cautious, suspecting a legal trap. She had been jailed for refusing to follow the judge's order to register with the probation board. Perhaps there would be papers waiting and the authorities would expect her to sign in a weak moment after tasting the hope of freedom.
“There was a delay and they said there was a problem,” Bell recalled, “but it turned out they were having trouble finding my clothes. Soon after that I was out.”
Bell, who has been arrested more than 200 times for Operation Rescue activities, will not register for probation, because doing so would be admitting that she had done wrong and needed rehabilitation.
The most curious part of the proceedings, as she was later to discover, was that prison authorities had filled out the papers for her early release, hand-delivered them to the judge, Raymond Novak, who signed and returned them the same day. Her lawyers were left shaking their heads. Their client, who had followed a practice of non-compliance with most prison regulations to protest an unjust legal system, and who was placed in the psychiatric ward because of this practice, was given time off for good behavior.
The Bells attribute her release to the Blessed Mother. A New Jersey priest who is a friend of the family told her husband, Chris, to pray especially hard on March 25, the solemnity of the Annunciation. The next day she was out.
“I know this was the Blessed Mother, she watches over all her children,” said Bell.
She stayed with a friend in Pittsburgh for one night and the next morning was in Allegheny County Court to testify on behalf of a pregnant woman she had befriended in prison who was in danger of miscarrying. While incarcerated, Bell had arranged for her own lawyers to petition for a medical furlough for the woman. Throughout her jail stay, Bell helped arrange the release of a dozen such woman, and persuaded one young inmate to cancel her abortion and give the baby up for adoption.
“If for no other reason, being in jail was worth it just to save that one baby,” she told the Register.
Now that she is out, the Bells can move forward with the adoption of Emiliano, a nine-year-old handicapped Mexican boy whom they have had custody of for three years. They are scheduled to meet with Mexican child-care authorities in late April for what they hope will be the final time. They also have a five-year-old daughter, Mary Louise.
The three-year probation still hangs over Bell's head. Judge Novak, a former priest, could call her back at any time to register with the probation board, and she could be jailed again for refusing. She is too thankful for being reunited with her family to think about that possibility.
“I took the children to the park when I got home, and we went to Mass at Sts. Peter and Paul in Hoboken. It was wonderful,” she said.
Brian Caulfield writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: Surprise move brings pro-life heroine back to family ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Caulfield ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Even in the High Court, Majority Rules DATE: 04/05/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 05-11, 1998 ----- BODY:TORONTO—Canadian Catholic and pro-life organizations are shocked by the top court official's admission that public opinion plays a role in important legal decisions.
Speaking at the Faculty of Law of the University of Toronto in February, Antonio Lamer, chief justice of the Canadian Supreme Court, said popular opinion was a factor in his decision 10 years ago to overturn Canada's former abortion law. This despite Lamer's personal opposition to abortion.
“Had you asked me at a hearing if I was for or against [abortion], I would have said against,” the chief justice told his University of Toronto audience. His comments suggest that despite the justice system's claims of impartiality, majority opinion plays a role in determining even the most basic legal considerations.
Lamer was responding to a question about the benefits of a parliamentary committee reviewing appointees to the Supreme Court. His comment about public opinion playing a role in legal decisions was his way of arguing against such review committees.
Lamer was appointed to the Canadian Supreme Court in 1980 and became chief justice in 1990. He was among the majority of justices who on Jan. 28, 1988, ruled to strike down the country's former abortion law on the grounds that it violated women's security of person guarantees.
The chief justice indicated the basis for his decision to reject the former abortion law was influenced by public opinion.
“My reasoning is that unless you have a vast majority of people who think something is criminal, you should not make it a crime,” he said.
Canadian pro-life supporters have long intimated that Supreme Court rulings are not immune from partisan considerations. Nonetheless the Lamer revelation is dismaying to Catholic groups and pro-life organizations.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has reserved comment on the Lamer revelation. However, Tom Langan, president of the Catholic Civil Rights League (Canada), suggested the Lamer comments reflect the “relativistic” approach to the administration of justice.
“There is little meaningful discussion based on principle and natural law anymore, and that leaves even our best judges in a difficult position,” Langan said. “Any justice attempting to make a ruling based on personal belief or principle, would have a hard time justifying that ruling in our pluralistic society.”
Canadian pro-life officials meanwhile are less reserved in their criticism of Lamer's comments.
“Chief Justice Lamer's decision in the abortion law case of 1988, based on what he perceived to be the popular will, is a blatant misuse of power on his honor's part,” said Mary Ann Miller, president of Alliance for Life Ontario. “The whole exercise of having a trial on the abortion issue at the time was to bring hard evidence from both sides to an appointed judge who would weigh the evidence and make a fair decision. That he lacked the courage or the will to do so has set a precedent for all cases brought to the Supreme Court involving life issues.”
Miller said Lamer's attitude will serve to erode respect for the Supreme Court in Canada.
Attorney Gwen Landolt of Toronto, national vice-president of REAL Women of Canada, called the Lamer comments “truly astounding.” REAL Women of Canada is a national pro-life organization espousing a traditional role for women and families.
“Now the mask is off the Supreme Court,” Landolt said. “We all suspected that the justices were making political, rather than legal decisions, but now we have the chief justice more or less confirming it.”
Landolt agreed that the Lamer admission will likely cause greater cynicism among Catholics and pro-life supporters with respect to the justice system.
“[The 1988 abortion law ruling] was a major life and death decision and it was influenced by one man's perception of popular opinion,” Landolt said. “We have to wonder now on what other issues will he conduct his own private poll before making a ruling.”
Landolt has monitored Supreme Court behavior since the enactment of the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada. She said the Charter, which allows the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of Canadian law, in effect leaves Parliament subservient to the courts.
Other commentators across the country have been equally critical of Lamer's revelation. Many believe the comments confirm pro-life suspicions about the Supreme Court, particularly its tendency to overturn long-held values and traditions in the face of new and trendy issues. The Lamer comments also give credence to criticism that the Supreme Court has usurped Parliament's law-making prerogative.
Paul Schratz, editor of a British Columbia Catholic newspaper, echoed these views in a recent editorial. “In the case before the Supreme Court in 1988, at least one judge admits he helped kill the law—not because he considered the law unconstitutional (the usual reason for striking down legislation these days), but because he felt the majority of Canadians were opposed to it.”
Schratz also expressed surprise at Lamer's unique interpretation of the function of a Supreme Court justice.
“Somewhere the chief justice got the impression that it was his job to do what the majority of Canadians want,” Schratz said. “Where did he acquire the notion, let alone the certainty, that he is qualified to know what the majority want?”
At least one observer, however, believes there may be some justification for Lamer's citing public opinion as a factor in certain legal decisions.
Iain Benson, a senior legal researcher with the Center for Renewal in Public Policy, said “consensus” is an important component for the Supreme Court in making legal determinations under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Center for Renewal in Public Policy is an Ottawa-based forum that provides critiques of selected Supreme Court decisions.
Benson cited a recent court ruling that found community standards to be an acceptable yardstick in regulating some aspects of public policy, such as obscenity.
“Despite the apparent primacy given to the views of individuals, the court has held that the views of the community could form the basis of constitutionally acceptable law, despite the limits on individual autonomy in the area of obscenity,” Benson said.
He added, however, that the Supreme Court remains inconsistent in its attitude toward the significance of popular opinion on legal decisions. “This is because [the justices] are insecure about the relationship between morality and law,” Benson said.
Mike Mastromatteo writes from Toronto, Canada.
----- EXCERPT: Canada's chief justice admits popular opinion affects Supreme Court decisions--including the one that overturned the country's abortion law 10 years ago ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mike Mastromatteo ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Population Control Funds Tied Up by Congressman DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—A war of words is being fought in the nation's capital. Unlike most wars, where the stakes are high but the instigation is trivial, the results of this struggle will spawn both serious political implications and great moral relevance. It is a fight over whether the United States should stop its tax revenue from being transferred into International Monetary Funds (IMF) and United Nations accounts to prevent funding of abortions overseas.
On one side is the White House, the State Department, environmental protectionists, most of Congress (including its sometimes conservative Republican leadership), and the entire international community. On the other side is Rep. Chris Smith, a strongly pro-life, blue-collar Republican from New Jersey, who chairs the influential House subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights.
Ideological disagreement over U.S. involvement in the IMF has proven to be one of the most contentious scraps in Congress in a long time. American financing of global population control is commonly sent to organizations that perform abortions. While American law prevents U.S. support from being directly spent on foreign abortion, money sent to groups that supply both contraception and abortion obviously underwrites general expenses which frees other available resources for abortion. Smith is deftly managing the IMFUN funding bills as barter to end such indirect abortion support.
Complicating matters further are conservative protests about American participation in IMF-sponsored bailouts at all. According to Judy Shelton, an international economics expert at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Empower America, “the IMF has come up short on its policies for restoring stability to currencies and providing the necessary solid monetary foundation for long-term economic growth.” Moreover, American financial assistance in questionable IMF schemes constantly rises, as with the Asian bailout where an original U.S. contribution of $3.5 billion has since ballooned to over $18 billion. In the opinion of economists like Shelton, the IMF actively encourages economic mismanagement in corrupt nations by guaranteeing to bail out systems that fail. Then the IMF rides to the rescue, but assistance comes only if faltering nations agree to pursue austere economic measures favored by the international body such as massive tax increases, floating currencies and increased centralization of social and economic programs.
Mexico, which was bailed out by the IMF in 1995, is still very unstable after three years of intricate monetary machinations. This agenda makes nations poorer, increasingly dependent on IMF and UN help, and more likely to fall into the population control trap that proposes nations must rein in childbirth rates to flourish economically. In fact, the United Nations’ Population Fund spent over $309 million in 1996 on its agenda to refine developing nations through radical population control measures. The UN's goal is to raise a whopping $17 billion for population control by the year 2000.
The funds for birth control showered across the globe by the United States are not paltry. Some $550 million was spent in 1995, $356 million in 1996, and $385 million is appropriated this year. Foreign contraception providers have such a demand for this money that in many cases nations liberalize their abortion laws to accommodate pro-abortion strings that are attached to American assistance. Cambodia legalized abortion in October 1997 and approximately one hundred other nations in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean are on the brink of abandoning abortion restrictions to receive lucrative U.S. foreign aid.
The worldwide impact of American leadership is obvious. If foreign governments tailor their abortion laws to receive U.S. funds, new restrictive abortion laws passed by Congress would impel similar restrictions abroad. Pro-life policies during the Reagan and Bush presidencies successfully forestalled dollars from going to foreign Planned Parenthood clinics, which alone have received $75 million from the Clinton Administration. A breakthrough in the Republican conference occurred last November when House Speaker Newt Gingrich agreed with Smith's position that IMF funding and anti-abortion stipulations “are bound in perpetuity.” If the speaker sticks to his word, no foreign aid appropriations bills will be passed without anti-abortion stipulations. Pressure, however, is building on Capitol Hill to pass the funding packages for the international groups.
Environmentalists are also flexing their political and financial muscles in favor of abortion and contraception under the notion that fewer childbirths worldwide are good because proportionately less harm to the earth will result. Last year, a joint letter drafted on August 29 by the National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, Population Action International, Zero Population Growth, and the Sierra Club was sent to congressmen urging them “to reject the amendment offered by Representative Chris Smith to cut off the U.S. contribution to the United Nations Population Fund.”
The chilling letter continues that “a decline in the rate of population growth was heralded as the most positive environmental achievement in five years. The success in slowing the rate of population growth is due, in large part, to sustained international efforts led by the United States.” This bizarre twist illustrates the complications of IMF-UN policy: American environ-mentalist groups lobby U.S. Congress to fund abortion and contraception in foreign countries channeled through international organizations.
State Department reorganization, fast-track trade authority, disaster relief funds, U.S. military authorization, UN funds, IMF funds, and reform initiatives at the latter two organizations are involved in the controversy. The easy explanation for this political shell game lies in the congressional practice of attaching controversial legislation to bills that are nearly impossible to vote against. It is essentially political blackmail: Not too many politicians are willing to vote against helping flood victims (and similar sympathetic measures) no matter what other principles are involved.
Even staunchly pro-life Senator Jesse Helms stumbled over his desire for reorganization of the State Department. Angered by Smith's firm stand against compromising on abortion language which scuttled the parent bill that included State Department reform, Helms and his staff had a temper tantrum which included publicly attacking the New Jersey subcommittee chair. “What has [Smith] accomplished?” stormed Helms last December. “He didn't save one unborn life.” Helms has since changed his tune and supports Smith's tactics.
An essential component to Smith's strategy is fidelity to the Mexico City Policy for funding so-called family planning clinics across the globe. Instituted by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 and effective throughout the Reagan-Bush years, the provision bans U.S. birth control funds sent overseas from going to clinics that provide abortions, violate a nation's abortion laws, or lobby to change a government's existing restrictions on abortion.
President Clinton barely had time to blink before terminating the policy two days after taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, 1993. Acquiescing to the president's uncompromising position in the hope of striking a deal, Gingrich has crafted a watered-down version of the Mexico City language that now includes the lobbying provision only.
So when will all this be resolved? The Republican leadership hopes to settle the issue now that Congress has reconvened from its recent recess. The Senate planned to address the Mexico City Policy April 21 or 22. On March 26, the House passed the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act with the compromised Mexico City language, by voice vote. The ball is now in the Senate's court. But Smith makes clear that such issues will not be solved if it involves further compromise on abortion.
“It's about time the abortion rights side met us halfway,” says Smith, noting that Congress last year offered the president the $3.5 billion he wanted for the IMF, $926 million for the UN, and the desired comprehensive reform initiatives for both the UN and the State Department. Once again proving that increased access to abortion is a top priority at the White House, Bill Clinton rejected everything he had asked for because of the attached Mexico City language. Odds are good that Clinton will veto the legislation this year even with the compromised Mexico City stipulation.
Serious questions over tactics also plague the Republican Party. Many conservatives are opposed to Smith's strategy of using billions of dollars as leverage on abortion policy because they do not think the U.S. should pay UN dues or contribute to IMF handouts at all. Other critics question how Catholic congressmen can vote for any legislation that earmarks hundreds of millions of dollars for birth control given its inherent abortifacient nature. Other Republican legislators are either expressly pro-abortion or willing to compromise all the way to the bank.
For his part, Smith defends his tactics, stating that abortions could be prevented “if only we can agree to re-erect the wall of separation between family planning and abortion.” It is a compromise most oppose as too strict. Congressional efforts to end birth control funding altogether are nonexistent.
In matters of faith, all roads eventually lead to Rome. In matters of IMFUN funding in Washington, D.C., all paths lead to Smith's office, where every inch of legislation is checked to make certain no abortion funds are being exported from American soil. As the Chicago Sun-Times noted on April 13: “Smith virtually controls foreign policy in the House.” That control is now being used to curtail American-sponsored abortion in foreign lands.
Brett Decker writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: Rep. Chris Smith opposes U.S. aid linked to overseas abortion agenda ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brett Decker ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Catholic Educators' Convention Focuses on Diversity DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:LOS ANGELES—More than 12,000 Catholic educators from around the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada, convened in Los Angeles April 14-17 for the 95th annual National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) conference. This year's theme, “Spotlighting the Mosaic of Catholic Education,” emphasized cultural diversity among the Catholic population.
The city's Cardinal Roger Mahoney welcomed attendees to the conference, noting that his archdiocese, in which Sunday Mass is celebrated in 42 different languages, reflects the diversity he believes will become typical for many dioceses across the nation. Mayor Richard Riordan, a strong proponent of Catholic education, welcomed attendees to the City of the Angels, saying that “Catholic education is the future of our society, of Los Angeles, and of our nation.”
Contrasting top-heavy bureaucracy and poor test scores common to many public schools, the mayor underscored the material benefits and superior academics of a Catholic education, such as students gaining the skills to compete in a high-tech business world. He said this education makes it possible for them to achieve “the American Dream.”
Despite the conference's theme, opening keynote speaker Alan Keyes encouraged Catholic educators to focus less on diversity and more on the common thread which unites all of humanity—namely, our utter dependence upon a loving, merciful Father and Creator.
Referencing recent news events, including a South African priest giving President Clinton Holy Communion in South Africa and the Jonesboro school-yard murders, Keyes, a former ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, 1996 U.S. presidential candidate, noted author, and host of a TV/Radio live call-in show, said that although economic and material prosperity is improving, times are getting worse. He noted that society needs the kind of courage that stands up for its beliefs, the courage of the early martyrs, the courage of Mother Teresa who did not hesitate to tell the president of the United States to “stop killing the babies.”
“Whatever the diverse roads we take,” Keyes said, “the key to success in Catholic education lies not in the results, but in the faith that shapes it.” Poverty of soul, more than material poverty, afflicts this time more than any other, Keyes asserted, underscoring the critical importance for Catholic educators to embrace and live their faith with zeal. “We must put the crucifixes back up on the walls and we must fix our eyes upon them … Our first application is to feed the spirit. When we do, it has a transforming effect on material things.”
Keyes’ powerful remarks moved the filled-to-capacity general assembly crowd to a standing ovation.
Reinforcing Keyes’ remarks, Cardinal Mahoney challenged attendees at the opening day's Mass to imitate Mary Magdalen when she discovered the risen Lord at the tomb in the day's Gospel reading. Search for Christ in the daily circumstances of life, he said, listen to him, embrace him with generous love; and when you embrace the Lord fully, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Lord will send you on a mission. In this case, of course, the mission is to pass on a zeal for the faith to future generations currently sitting in classrooms.
The myriad of workshops at the conference offered everything from information on developing English language skills and self-confidence in students struggling with the native tongue to sessions on the use of media and on spiritual formation. In addition to more than 450 sessions, the conference featured more than 700 exposition booths displaying a wide range of educational products, technology, and services.
The sessions regarding media literacy drew educators who were interested in bringing media into the classroom effectively, while also teaching children to become more discerning about what they absorb from secular programming. “We live in a media culture,” explained Father
Keyes said that although economic and material prosperity is improving, times are getting worse.
David Gallardo, senior religion teacher at Bishop Amat High School in La Puente, Calif., who was interested in learning more about what the media can offer Catholic students. His school plans to incorporate the use of television more into the classrooms next year. “We need to make kids alert to hidden messages that are being transmitted to them [by secular TV programs]. The media also provides a strong visual aspect, presenting a living example to students.”
The conference offered a notable number of sessions devoted to sharpening fundraising skills and knowledge. Raising sufficient money to sustain Catholic education seemed to be an across-the-board issue for many attendees. Many expressed concern both for providing fair and adequate salaries for lay teachers as well as providing subsidies for families who cannot afford to send their children to Catholic schools.
“Our biggest challenge is trying to pay just salaries to Catholic teachers,” said Marianist Brother Francisco Gonzalez, director of education for his order in the Northeast region and principal of a grade seven through 12 all-boys school in Puerto Rico. “Enrollment is no problem, but the salaries are very low right now—$10,000 to $12,000 per year. Yet if we raised tuition, parents couldn't afford it.”
Other principals in attendance also noted that keeping the cost of Catholic education down while making it available to all was a key concern.
For some others fundraising was not a primary concern. Providence, Rhode Island, diocesan elementary teaching consultant Sister Mary Dumond, CP, believes the biggest challenge facing Catholic schools nationwide is keeping the Catholic mission alive in its schools. “The aim of the Catholic school is what makes it different from other schools,” she explained.
Sister Dumond was concerned that many younger teachers seem to lack a strong faith or profound connection with the traditions of their faith. “What they hand down [in the classroom] is affected by what they believe,” she said. “You can't pass on something that you don't have. It's a big concern and it seems to me that the NCEA thinks so also.”
Sister Rosario Reyes, OP, from Beeville, Texas, in the diocese of Corpus Christi noted that for some parents Catholic schooling is less important. “I've been a teacher for 30 years and a principal for six. I've seen that more and more young parents are losing their priority of [securing a] Catholic education for their children so that they can buy more material things.”
A small group from Saskatchewan, Canada, reiterated the need for understanding the difference in Catholic education in terms of something other than dollars and cents. In Canada, explained Miles Meyers and Tracy Fuchs of Michael A. Riffel High School, there are two systems (Catholic and public) which are equally funded by the government. Education tax dollars follow each student.
The biggest challenge that these Canadian teachers face is, in their words, “keeping naysayers of the two-system from winning ground based on money only. They don't touch the issue of ‘Catholic,’ they only talk of dollars and cents and now the public system is promoting values education. We've spent the last five years boldly explaining the difference between the public and Catholic system and the public has lost a lot of students to our system.”
The ‘90s trend of rising enrollment in Catholic schools continues. Dr. Jerome Porath, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles's superintendent of schools, noted that this is the sixth consecutive year of nationwide growth. NCEA statistics reveal that total enrollment for the 1997-98 academic year is 2,648,859—an increase of 81,000 since 1992.
Of the roughly 2.6 million Catholic school students, 1,995,649 are in elementary school, 19,392 attend middle school, and 633,818 are in high school. Minority student enrollment constitutes 24.4% of the total and the average student-to-teacher ratio is 17 to one. Annual tuition in Catholic schools averages $1,499, up 13% since 1995, according to the NCEA.
At a press conference, Dr. Robert Kealey, executive director of the NCEA Elementary School Department, said 150 new Catholic schools have opened around the country during the last 10 years. Most report full enrollment and long waiting lists.
The popularity of the Catholic schools can be attributed to numerous reasons. But NCEA president Dr. Leonard DeFiore focuses on one in particular. “No matter what popular polls may seem to say, people are concerned about character,” he said. “Parents want their children to grow into adults with strong moral values. That's what Catholic schools deliver and that's why more families are enrolling.”
Karen Walker writes from Corona del Mar, California.
----- EXCERPT: Keynoter Alan Keyes's detour from theme draws standing ovation ----- EXTENDED BODY: Karen Walker ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Asian Bishops Address Priorities Of Their Massive Continent DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:TAIPEI, Taiwan— The bishops of Asia began their meeting in Rome this week to mark the first synod for their region in history. About 250 participants, including bishops, experts, and observers from Asia and other continents, are taking part in the special assembly which winds up May 14. (See related stories on page 6)
Like other recent synods, the Synod of Bishops for Asia is a preparatory exercise for the year 2000. It was formally announced during the papal visit to Manila at the VI Plenary Assembly of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conference in 1995. The gathering is the third continental synod, following the African and American Assemblies, held in 1994 and 1997, respectively. Dates on synods for Oceania and Europe have yet to be decided.
As they meet in Rome, the bishops of Asia are reflecting on Jesus Christ and his mission of love and service on the continent where three-quarters of the world's population live and more than half are under the age of 25.
“The synod will focus on the Church's service to life,” said Philippine Archbishop Oscar Cruz and president of the synod's committee for the message.
The lineamenta, or working plan, was first published in September 1996 to elicit answers on pastoral problems in Asia. This past January, the Instrumentum Laboris was drawn up—the result from responses received from bishops, theologians, and other groups, and sent to synod participants.
During the first two weeks of the synod, bishops of each region will address statements to the general gathering. The Instrumentum Laboris, the working document of the synod is a starting point, but does-n't necessarily reflect all the issues that will arise. “As far as I'm concerned, there are three strong points to be discussed: inculturation, interreligious dialogue, and the social action of the Church,” Archbishop Cruz said before the synod began.
Pre-synodal input from the bishops underscored their interest in discussing the role of the Church in relation to socio-economic issues affecting developing or extremely poor regions of the continent. They also wanted to address pastoral methods of helping people develop their thinking on issues involving human dignity, including such areas as child labor, migration to and from Asia, the rising culture of media, AIDS, caste systems, and the continent's flourishing sex trade.
Despite these challenges, there are visible signs of hope in Asia: the rising level of education, liberation of people from negative traditions, a heightened awareness of human rights, flourishing vocations, and the growth of Christian communities and interreligious dialogue.
The bishops also hope to explore how to focus their pastoral efforts more clearly on the family. Many believe the strengths and weaknesses of the Asian continent can be traced back to the Asian family.
The Catholic Church is a minority in Asia. The continent is home to the most ancient religious traditions, such as Buddhism, Shintoism, and Islam. And Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world. In Southeast Asia, with its population of three billion people, Catholics number up to a hundred million, half of them from the Philippines. The Middle East has a population of 220 million, five million of whom are Catholic.
Throughout North Asia, including the Siberian region, there are another ten million Catholics. Among other issues, the synod will study how better to spread the Gospel in areas ripe for evangelization such as in Siberia and Mongolia, former Soviet states.
The Instrumentum Laboris for the synod regards inculturation as “a major missionary challenge” for the Church. “Faith should be inculturated gradually in our lives,” says Archbishop Cruz. However, the problem of inculturation is complicated by the fact that in present-day Asia, no “pure culture” exists though there is an emerging “culture of the city.”
Most bishops on the continent express concern over the power of the Western media and advertising, which are contributing to a universal “mono-culture,” threatening to drive Asian cultures to extinction.
While the Church is respected for her organizational, administrative, educational, and health services, often people do not see her as totally Asian because of her Western approach in theology, architecture, art, etc. and her link with past history. During the synod, the bishops will discuss the burning issues of colonialism and westernization.
Another issue to be tackled is the peoples' perception of Jesus Christ. “The central theme of the synod is Jesus Christ as Savior of mankind,” said synod recording secretary Cardinal Paul Shan SJ of Taiwan. “Some people say that Jesus Christ is not the only Savior. This needs to be clarified in the synod, which should help the Catholics in Asia know their (faith's) authenticity.”
The Instrumentum Laboris states the main question clearly: “How can the Church in Asia explain that Christ is the one and only Savior and unique mediator of salvation distinct from the founders of Asia's other great religions?”
Most bishops stress the importance of proclamations in deeds more than in words. The bishops cite the witness of the late Mother Teresa, admired in Asia by both Christians and people of other faiths, as an example of this type of evangelization. They also agree that new evangelization begins with a proper catechesis of the Church's members, as well as with a renewed awareness of prayer and contemplation. They emphasize the role that liturgy should play as the source and summit of the evangelizing activity of the Church.
The bishops note the need to use modern technology and traditional forms of communication such as dance, theater, speech, and shadow plays.
The current question of interreligious dialogue is also a priority for the Asian bishops. Dr. Sebastien Karotemprel, SDB, professor of Theology of Mission at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome and a member of the theological-historical commission for the year 2000 said, “the Church is challenged to demonstrate its willingness for true dialogue.”
The Instrumentum Laboris enumerates the elements shared with followers of other religions and cultures of Asia: the centrality of the will of God in Islam; with Hindus, the practice of meditation, contemplation, renunciation of one's will and spirit of non-violence; with Buddhists, detachment and compassion. In Confucianism, there is filial piety and humanitarianism; with Taoists, simplicity and humility; and with traditional religions, reverence and respect for nature.
Lastly, the bishops have expressed the need to see Mary as Mother of Evangelization and model of the mission. Some members of the Asian Church are reflecting upon the Gospel image of Mary to better represent her spirituality and to make her a model for Asian women.
“The success and impact of any synod depends on two factors,” Karotemprel said, “the new insights brought into the synod and the use made of them by the post-synodal documents. Whether the Synod of Bishops for Asia will have a lasting influence upon the future of the Catholic Church in Asia is still to be seen. It is too early to make any evaluations. One can only hope that the synod will have the spirit of discernment and the courage to move forward with the mission of the Church in Asia.”
Joyce Martin writes from Taipei, Taiwan.
----- EXCERPT: Evangelization, inculturation, and interreligious dialogue occupy prelates at historic synod ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joyce Martin ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 17th-Century French Spirituality: Good Stuff for Modern Catholics DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:LOS ANGELES—It would have been nearly impossible to have stopped by a religious book rack in a pre-Vatican II church vestibule and not found ample supplies of titles like True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin and, in vast paperback quantities, The Secret of the Rosary by St. Louis-Marie Grignon de Montfort.
Whoever flipped through a copy of the latter would not soon forget its no-nonsense opening lines: “Poor men and women who are sinners, I, a greater sinner than you, wish to give you this rose—a crimson one, because the Precious Blood of Our Lord has fallen upon it. Please God that it will bring true fragrance into your lives—but above all that it may save you from the danger you are in.”
Decidedly not a ‘60s sentiment. And among the various leading spiritual voices of the recent past, few were banished more thoroughly from the postconciliar mindset, at least for many Catholics, than was de Montfort's, one of the last great figures of the seventeenth century Catholic revival in France.
De Montfort's austere teachings on the cross, abandonment, and “loving slavery to Jesus through Mary,” seemed, to many, the very epitome of what the post-Vatican II Church had jettisoned in favor of an optimistic view of human nature and the vision of a cheerful, progressive God who, apart from politics, made few radical demands.
De Monfort's fervor and flowery language were relics of French Baroque piety, and reflected, so some historians of spirituality informed us, the fawning court etiquette of absolute monarchs like Louis XIV. All told, they had very little, if anything, to say to Catholics of the late 20th century.
However, there are abundant signs that, in the wake of a more sober assessment of the message of Vatican II, the preaching of Pope John Paul II, whose motto, “Totus Tuus” (“All Yours”) is borrowed from De Monfort, and a revival of interest in the so-called “French” school of spirituality, the saint's “exile” from the book racks may well be ending.
DEMONTFORT'S STORY
Louis Grignon de Montfort was born on Jan. 31, 1673 at Montfort-la-Cane near Rennes, the eldest in a large and once-prosperous family that had fallen on hard times. Even in his early years he showed signs of a special devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
After being educated by the Jesuits, poverty prevented him from realizing his wish to enter St. Sulpice seminary in Paris, one of the centers of French Catholic life. Instead, he attached himself to one of the small communities affiliated with St. Sulpice. There, as contemporary witnesses attest, real destitution reigned; so much so that St. Louis fell dangerously ill and had to be hospitalized. Eventually, he completed his studies at St. Sulpice, where he received a solid education in theology, the Church Fathers, and in the spiritual writers of the day—particularly the works of the highly influential Cardinal Pierre De Berulle (1575-1629), the leading light of the 17th century Catholic revival in France, and his disciples, Charles De Condren (1588-1641), Jean-Jacques Olier (1608-1657), and Henri-Marie Boudon (1624-1702).
Experts today insist, rightly, on placing De Montfort solidly in Berulle's camp with its emphasis on the primacy of God (as against the so-called devout humanists), the contemplation of Jesus in his mysteries, liturgy as the font of spirituality, devotion to Mary, and the apostolate as the fruit of prayer.
From the beginning, De Montfort manifested a particular apostolic zeal for the poor. While still a seminarian, he gave catechetical instruction to rough Parisian street urchins. Ordained in 1700, St. Louis was sent to Poitiers where he served as the hospital chaplain, ministering to beggars, the sick, unwed mothers, and other societal outcasts. While at Poitiers, he found time to write his most significant theological work, The Love of Eternal Wisdom (1703), and to organize the nucleus of the Daughters of Wisdom, the first of three religious congregations inspired by his teaching and example (the others are the Company of Mary and the Brothers of St. Gabriel).
He also managed to arouse the jealousy of the local bishop who forbade him to preach in his diocese. Undismayed, St. Louis made his way to Rome where he appealed to Pope Clement XI to allow him to enlist in the foreign missions. Wisely, the Pontiff sent him straight back to France, armed with the title “apostolic missionary.”
For the next 16 years, De Montfort traveled thousands of miles, often on foot, preaching missions. His methods were often nothing if not bold. For example, he would invite parishioners to toss their irreligious books on a pyre surmounted with an effigy of the devil dressed as a society woman. He would present theater sketches with himself playing the role of a dying man contended over by devils and guardian angels. In perhaps his most famous resort to “visual aids,” the saint encouraged the peasants of Port-Chateau to erect a life-sized Way of the Cross in stone, an act which aroused the ire of another bishop who ordered that the multi-acre site be leveled. (Eventually, the shrine was rebuilt and can be visited today.)
But when it came to the apostolate, De Montfort was, quite simply, fearless. On one occasion, traveling by boat, he asked his fellow passengers, who were singing obscene ditties, to join him in the rosary. They greeted his invitation with jeers, but were eventually persuaded not only to recite the prayer on their knees, but to listen to the saint's admonitions afterward as well.
It's not for nothing that one De Montfort scholar called the saint's teaching “feet-on-the-ground theology.”
In 1712 St. Louis wrote his most famous work, the Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, still perhaps the Western classic on Marian devotion and consecration, and whose teaching on “consecration to Christ through the hands of Mary” Pope John Paul endorsed in his encyclical Redemptoris Mater(187-88). De Monfort's other works like The Secret of Mary and The Secret of the Rosary are popularizations of teaching contained in the far more comprehensive and well-balanced Treatise.
Louis-Marie Grignon de Montfort died, fittingly, on April 28, 1716, while preaching a mission. He was 43 years old. He was canonized in 1947.
PROBLEMS IN COMMON
“What you have to understand,” says Sister Agnes Cunningham, SSCM, of Batavia, Ill., a former seminary professor and expert on the French school of spirituality “is that the problems that Berulle and De Monfort faced are very similar to our own. That's one of the reasons why the French school is particularly relevant to our times.”
For one thing, Sister Agnes stressed, the masters of the French school, like us, were living in a postconciliar age. For them, it was the Council of Trent, concluded in 1563, whose teachings sought to reform the Church in the face of the Protestant challenge. Like us, the French school was concerned about the relationship between faith and life, and about the questions raised by science.
“And, like us, they lived at a time when the Church called for a return to the sources,” Sister Cunningham told the Register, “to Scripture, the Church Fathers, to the mystical tradition, to the whole renewal of prayer and spiritual life that Vatican II proposes.”
In fact, said Sister Cunningham, echoing other writers on the French school, Vatican II itself, far from wishing to distance contemporary Catholics from figures like De Montfort, is inconceivable without them.
Landmark conciliar documents like Lumen Gentium, Gaudium et Spes, and Ad Gentes, the decree on the missionary activity of the Church, “one would have thought that [Berulle's school] had written them.”
Berullian (and De Montfortian) themes like the necessity of basing the spiritual life on the major realities of faith, the notion of an interiorized liturgical life, the necessity of a personal relationship with Jesus, prayer's goal as union with God, the apostolate as the fruit of contemplation, the centrality of the priesthood and the Eucharist, the urgency of evangelization, the role of Mary in forming the soul in the image of Christ, the role of the laity as active cooperators with Christ in the world— these all find their echoes in the major thrusts of Vatican II's teaching.
One of the central problems the average Catholic faces in rediscovering masters of the French school like De Montfort has to do with terms they use that are nothing if not jarring to a late 20th century sensibility—terms such as: “abandonment,” “annihilation,” “slavery,” and the whole concept of Marian consecration.
As Raymond Deville writes in The French School of Spirituality: An Introduction and Reader (Duquesne University Press, 1994), perhaps the best single introduction to the field, “frequently the vocabulary [of the leaders of the Berulle school] has to be decoded.”
The first thing to notice, says Sister Cunningham, is that the French school find much of their language in the writings of St. Paul and in the Gospel of St. John. “That's important. For example, it's the Apostle Paul who frequently refers to himself in his epistles as the doulos, the Greek word for ‘bond slave, ’of Christ.”
There's also the example of Mary's Magnificat, and the so-called kenosis hymn in Paul's Letter to the Philippians (Ph 2:5ff), where Christ “empties himself, taking the form of a doulos, or slave” in order to fulfill his mission of salvation.
“Slavery to Jesus through Mary,” says Sister Cunningham, “comes out of Berulle's idea of realizing, in an adult way, one's own baptismal promises. That's what's going on here. When De Montfort preached his parish missions, he would conclude them by calling people to recommit themselves to their baptismal profession. What he was calling for was an adult decision to live for Christ, and he called that, in his typically vivid way, ‘the servitude of love.’”
“It's not a lugubrious, oppressing, negative kind of thing,” says Sister Cunningham, “but an openness to the transforming action of the Holy Spirit in our lives through Mary, our companion, model, and precursor in the pilgrimage of faith.”
‘HOLY SLAVERY’
As Pope John Paul himself pointed out in a 1984 interview with Andre Frossard, “the word ‘slavery ’may upset our contemporaries. Personally, I don't see any difficulty in it. I think we are confronted here with the sort of paradox often to be noted in the Gospels, the words ‘holy slavery ’signifying that we could not more fully exploit our freedom, the greatest of God's gifts to us. For freedom is measured by the love of which we are capable.”
Interestingly, the current Pope's sense of his mission as servus servorum Dei, “servant of the servants of God,” has, according to many Marian scholars, a profoundly Montfortian coloration.
Another De Montfortian term that often grates on contemporary ears is “abandonment to God,” or even praying to “annihilate” one's will in His service.
“These are ‘dark ’terms, chiefly borrowed by the French writers from Spanish mystics like St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross,” said Sister Cunningham.
“What it's really about is creating capacities,” she explained. “‘Abandonment ’means setting aside our own desires, the ones with a small ‘d’, in order to create a capacity for, an openness to the capital ‘D ’Desires of God.”
The whole idea of daily abandonment is not a negative idea at all, she said, but a recognition that there's a daily struggle going on between what I might want to do and what the divine plan for my life is.
“It's a constant search,” she said. “Particularly when it comes to the apostolate. That's what ‘annihilation ’means: to empty myself in order to develop a capacity for the love of God that frees me to do virtually anything He asks.”
“It all has to do with openness to the Holy Spirit,” she said, quoting one of the writers of the French school who asks “to be as light as a feather borne on the breast of the Spirit.”
Or as Jean-Claude Guy a Sulpician writer, put it, “If I am to enter into communion [with God], … I must move out of myself, I must ‘decentralize ’myself, … [moving] away from myself as the center of all things, [in order] to center myself in Christ. [Thus] the Spirit initiates me into another life, life in Christ.”
For De Montfort, no person was able to model, guide, and nourish that process, so essential to personal holiness and the apostolate, as Mary.
But De Montfort's Marian focus was not on the Virgin as an isolated figure of greatness, but, as he insisted, on “Jesus living in Mary.”
Contrary to the impressions of some De Montfort critics who have read him only superficially, the saint preached a highly Christocentric mariology.
As Marianist Father Bertrand Buby, a professor at the University of Dayton's International Marian Research Institute, told the Register, “De Montfort and the whole French school of spirituality have one of the soundest Mariologies. Mary is always seen in relationship to Jesus and the Holy Spirit and in the context of the reality of the Incarnation.”
There is perhaps no more compelling example of De Montfort's Christocentric Mariology than this famous passage from True Devotion:
“If, then, we are establishing sound devotion to our Blessed Lady, it is only in order to establish devotion to Our Lord Jesus Christ more perfectly … If devotion to Our Lady distracted us from Our Lord, we would have to reject it as an illusion of the devil. But this is far from being the case … This devotion is necessary simply and solely because it is a way of reaching Jesus perfectly, loving him tenderly, and serving him faithfully.”
It's because of the “integrated character of the spirituality of the French school,” says Father Buby, that interest in De Montfort and other Berullian exponents is on the rise.
“It's an extremely important school of spirituality,” he said, “steeped in sound, robust incarnational theology, and extremely well-grounded in the New Testament and the Fathers.”
One of the reasons we're paying more attention to it these days, he explained, is that it's practical, and “brings home with such vigor and scope the tremendous relationship anyone can have with God, and the difference that can make to the world.”
“We'll be taking De Montfort with us into the 21st century,” he concluded. “I'm sure of that.”
A Congress will be held this summer on the theme “Alive in the Spirit: Prayer in the French School of Spirituality” July 17-24 at the Simpsonwood Conference and Retreat Center in Norcross, Georgia. For information, contact Father Ron Bagley, CJM /Eudist Fathers/ 36 Flohr Ave., West Seneca, NY 11244-1818, fax: (716) 825-4376.
Senior writer Gabriel Meyer is based in Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: St. Louis de Montfort, `retired' after Vatican II, makes a comeback ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gabriel Meyer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: With Local Solutions, Vocations Numbers Start Creeping Up DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:Does the Holy Spirit need a marketing plan? For most of its history, the Catholic Church in America has had the luxury of sitting back and waiting for young men to answer the call to the diocesan priesthood. However, with vocations—or lack of vocations—emerging as one of the Church's greatest challenges at the end of the millennium, it has become obvious that a concerted action plan has become increasingly necessary.
On a national level, the U.S. bishops are in the final year of a three-year national strategy for vocations. Called A Future Full of Hope, the strategy addresses the responsibilities of bishops, priests, Catholic organizations, and families in promoting vocations.
The hope is that the strategy will provide valuable research, resources, and encouragement for local bishops, priests, and vocations directors, because in the long run, there is little disagreement that the late House Speaker Tip O'Neill's famous line, “All politics are local,” also applies to vocations.
“The key is to get people in the parishes—to raise their awareness that they can do something about vocations,” said John Latenser, president of the USA/Canada Council of Serra International, the only Catholic international organization that has defined encouragement and support of vocations as its primary mission.
If the Church can get people in the pews involved in prayer for vocations and actually asking young men to consider that they are being called, “then we've gone a long way,” he said.
“The programs that are working so well are really an application of that principle in some way,” Latenser added.
While it is hard to demonstrate a cause and effect relationship, some specific diocesan programs seem to have created a heightened interest in vocations, which usually translates into practical numbers, according to Father Timothy Reker, director of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Vocations.
One such initiative was started by Cardinal John O'Connor in the Archdiocese of New York and has since been duplicated in several other dioceses around the country. The idea is a simple one—a discernment retreat led by the cardinal himself.
To date, the cardinal has held four full retreats and one “mini-retreat.” The full retreats have attracted between 35 and 65 men. Retreats are publicized through a letter sent to pastors, calls to men who had already made inquiries with the vocations office and Cardinal O'Connor's weekly column in Catholic New York, the newspaper of the archdiocese.
The Friday-Monday retreat is a huge time investment for a bishop, especially a bishop with as full a schedule as Cardinal O'Connor. But it is well worth it, according to Father Robert McKeon, special assistant for vocations to the archbishop.
“It's going to have long-term benefits,” Father McKeon said. “One of the things I feel very strongly about is that it allows priests to really get involved. The cardinal writes to each of them individually; he knows vocations are going to come from parishes. Many times, I end up speaking with the priests as well. For the long-term, you want priests involved. National studies speak to that so much—the importance of a good example, a mentor, someone you can emulate.
“A second benefit is that it helps the men who come on the retreat because it is so difficult to talk about the priesthood today. It seems so countercultural. This allows men to come together and see that they are among peers who are having the same kinds of thoughts, and they feel comfortable talking about it.”
Since the first retreat in 1995, the archdiocese has seen an increase in men who enter St. John Neumann Residence (a pre-seminary discernment program) from 32 to 48 men.
Another popular program in many dioceses is Operation Andrew, which is basically an evening with the bishop. It's geared to young men, mainly high school juniors, and participants come with their pastor. The group spends time in prayer, dines together, listens to priests tell their vocations stories, and is invited to ask questions.
The program has had success in the Diocese of Joliet, Ill, where the seminary population has increased from 14 to 21 men in the last three years. The diocese, which has 145 diocesan priests serving 520,000 Catholics, is in the early stages of a 10-year campaign to ordain 100 men in the next 10 years.
“There are tangible results; the number of seminarians has increased,” said Father John Regan, the diocese's vocations director. “It's hard to say which programs are responsible. However, most of the guys in our seminary have attended an Operation Andrew … The program's main purpose is to serve as an initial-contact event,” he continued, adding that it is “fairly nonthreatening.”
Father Regan has been a leader in a new form of recruitment which may end up dwarfing any other method for identifying potential candidates—the Internet. Joliet has a comprehensive, attractive website (www.vocations.com) which has generated 8,300 hits in just over two years. According to Father Regan, since the site moved to its current, easy-to-remember address, it has been getting 400 hits per month.
“The use of the Internet has dramatically increased the number of contacts from people interested in the priesthood and religious life, but they are from all around the country.”
Father Regan e-mails anyone who contacts the Joliet Vocations Office through the website. For those from out of town, he encourages them to contact their local diocese's vocations office. A couple of Joliet seminarians made their first contact with the diocese through the website.
Though he said the Internet is “a significant piece that has to be there,” he cautions that a multi-pronged approach must be used. “You can't put all of your eggs in one basket and say this is the way we're going to recruit priests,” he said.
Father Reker at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops said he is partial to a program that has had success in his home diocese of Winona, Minn. Known as Quo Vadis Days in Winona, similar programs by other names are popular throughout the country. It is aimed at younger children from seventh to ninth grade.
“It goes under the category of sowing the seed,” Father Reker said. “When we started out we hoped for 30 to 50 kids. We got over 100.”
The children are brought to Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary where they spend a day with younger priests and seminarians.
“We gave them some fun but we also gave them talks by the seminarians and priests, Mass and reconciliation. Then we gave them a little prayer book and told them not to expect to make a decision in junior high school, but to keep praying and asking God what they should do with their lives.”
The primary purpose is to provide role models who are priests and seminarians and to get the boys thinking.
“For boys, a big part is to interact with the men and to see that they have fun and are normal guys,” he said.
Dennis Poust writes from Austin, Texas.
----- EXCERPT: Successful efforts involve Internet and time commitment from busy bishops ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dennis Poust ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Courage in the Marketplace DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:Paul Henkels
Paul Henkels is Chairman of Henkels & McCoy, a company his father started in 1923 with an investment of $1000. The company's annual sales are now approaching $500 million. Henkels & McCoy currently employs over 5,000 people operating from 70 offices throughout the United States and one in Mexico. It provides engineering, construction, and maintenance for electric, telephone, and gas utilities, industrial firms, institutions, and foreign governments. Henkels spoke with Register assistant editor Gerry Rauch in the offices of XRT Corporation in Wayne, Pennsylvania.
Rauch: I've heard your Catholic background makes a big difference in the values you bring to your company.
Henkels: It very definitely does. To me, business is not just making a living. A good deal of my life is spent in business. If I've got values why not bring them to the marketplace, because then I'm living them in my total life, not just at home or in my community.
How did you form your values as a Catholic?
Well, first off, both my parents were very good Catholics and had very good values.
Let me tell you a story. I was probably about eight years old, and it was in the depths of the Depression. The company was about ten years old, and I was home alone. The office for Henkels & McCoy was in a room just outside the kitchen of the house. I was on the second floor; my father was in the office. We were the only two people in the house.
A subcontractor came in and said my father owed him about $2,000 worth of extras that he did on a job. Now in those days $2,000 for a small business like ours was a very large sum of money, particularly during the Depression.
My father was a man of very strong character, and he also had a very awesome temper. But he really was a very principled man. The exchange got heated, and for an eight-year-old on the second floor it was frightening.
The conversation went on for several minutes, and finally there was a long pause. Then my father said in a much lower voice, filled with emotion, “I made an agreement with you and I told you what it was. It was up to me to make myself clear. I did not make myself clear. Therefore, I shall abide by your interpretation and pay you the $2,000. I'm not sure how we're going to be able to do it, but we shall do it.”
This was very remarkable because as prime contractor my father was holding the money and he had tremendous control over the site and situation. But that's the way my father decided. So that was my first lesson in ethics in business.
How did your interest in Catholicism develop through your life?
I went to an excellent grammar school. We were taught the fundamentals of the Church primarily through the Baltimore Catechism. And we would discuss these things at home around the dinner table. We always ate dinner together and these things were discussed and everything was taught to me very clearly. It all made sense to me and I have stuck with it ever since.
My wife, Barbara, has the same values and has the same good grounding, knowing what the Catholic religion is all about. So there is complete compatibility there.
I understand you are very much in favor of unions. Many business people aren't.
Well, first off, when businessmen talk to me I tell them that if management treated their people properly there would never be unions. So just on the face of it there is a justification for unions.
Business people are against unions because with unions they don't have total freedom in running their employees the way they want to. And secondly, of course, unions will over-step their bounds too. So at their best, unions make for creative tension. At their worst, there are other kinds of tensions.
So you've found unions helpful?
No, I don't find them helpful. I find them just.
But I do not find them harmful in most cases. There are advantages because you have somebody representing the other side—which isn't actually another side. If we don't have work, the union doesn't have places to put their people. So they have an interest in Henkels & McCoy getting work and being competitive.
There is also a certain stability that unions bring in other ways. For instance, you are setting wages for your people generally once a year and this means that you don't have to bargain with each individual. We have five thousand employees and it's useful that you don't have to bargain with each individual.
How do you handle business ethics when competition puts you under pressure to go another way?
When I tell our people what we're going to do, let's say concerning an unethical practice such as collusion, I tell them we are not going to violate any trust laws. When I explain it, I give them two reasons. One is the best reason, the right reason: that it is the wrong thing to do. But I know all of our people do not have the same values and morality that I do, so I don't expect them all to buy that. So then I give them the pragmatic reason, which is you're going to get fired if you get caught, and you're going to go to jail if the authorities get after you.
Does rejecting collusion make a difference in how competitive you are?
Yes. In construction you will read from time to time about collusion and anti-trust violations someplace in the country. Some industries are more noted for it than others. I make it very plain to our people at least once a year that we are not going to do those things.
But I also tell them that it is wrong because if a group of contractors colludes and passes the work around from one to the other, the prices rise and the practices in the field are not as efficient as they can be. People know they've got a profit, and that they've got an extra margin in there, so they don't operate as efficiently as they can. Somewhere down the line, in a matter of years, they're going to become non-competitive. Somebody else will start a business in the area, or somebody from another area will bring their very efficient business in and give you competition. So in the long run, collusion is the wrong way to go simply for pragmatic reasons.
In the long term, your company will also have a totally different reputation from the others in your field.
Absolutely. We've got the highest reputation across the country for integrity first and foremost, and also for quality and safety.
What are the short-term losses, though?
Collusion can take place not only among you and your competitors, it can also be with your customer. So if you don't go along with that game, passing jobs around, you might not be able to work for a customer who has a purchasing agent or somebody important that wants something back for himself—like a vacation in the Caribbean or a TV set or whatever.
Also, if you don't collude with a union, the union can visit sorrow on you by giving you poor workers or telling people that the work went sour.
They sabotage you?
It's a form of sabotage, yes.
Are you able to get around that?
Well, the first thing we do in our business is not to think about profit. If we do a good job for our customer and treat our employees properly then we will find a way to make money. But we don't start out to make money. We start out to do a job for the customer.
Where does risk-taking fit in?
We're taking risks all the time. The thing you have to do is never take a risk that you can't absorb. You can't take a risk that would take your company down. Yes, maybe once or twice in a businessman's life he has to take a risk that could put his company into bankruptcy. If he does it more than once or twice he is taking too much risk. But sometimes you just have to do it, either for principle or for some other reason.
Do Catholic values put you in some hot spots?
Well, I can tell you an experience I had. For a number of years we were working on telephones with an electrical union down in the Tampa area in Florida. They had a contract and we would renegotiate the wages every year. There were two contractors negotiating with the unions, one being us. The other one had about a third of the work that we did.
One year I did not go down to the negotiations. I let a division manager handle the negotiations. When it was over I asked how it went and he said, “Fine.” He said we had settled for 4%, as I remember it—but the specific percentage doesn't matter. I said, okay, that seemed to be about the pattern, so fine.
Then he said, “Paul, there's one thing you should know about this: we gave 6% to the men on the top, the foremen and the journeymen, and we gave 2% to the men on the bottom, the truck drivers and the groundmen.”
I said, “Oh, that's a little unusual. How did that come about?” He said, “Well, the union said that's what the members wanted.” I said, “Okay, but next year I want to attend the negotiations.”
So I went down the next year. Negotiations can generally end pretty quickly, in several hours, if everybody is realistic. And that's what happened. We started at nine and settled by eleven o'clock and had agreed again on 4%.
But the union said there was one thing that the membership wanted: to give 6% to the men on the top and 2% to the people on the bottom.
Normally, it's the practice that you agree on a settlement and you give them the money and you let the union spread it around the way they want it. For example, 2% could go into the pay envelope, and 1% could go into pension, and 1% into health and welfare, or whatever. So, I called a caucus and left the room and told the other contractor on our side of the negotiations that we were not going to settle for that. I said it had to be 4% across the board.
The other contractor said, “Well, Paul, it's the top people who are the ones who are key to us and the people on the bottom are not key to us.” But I said that Henkels & McCoy was not going to accept it.
We went back to the union and told them that we weren't going to do it. They asked why not. I said that we had had a lot of turn-over in the lower ranks and none on the top; and I said that we just didn't think it was fair, and that we thought we ought to stop the turn-over.
The thing that was never said during all those negotiations was that the people on the top were white, and the people on the bottom were black. We argued all that day and adjourned at five o'clock and started in the next day and talked about this thing, and never once was race mentioned. Finally, we were getting nowhere and about 11:30 a.m. we called a caucus and the other contractor said, “For God's sake, give in.” I said, “Well, I'm going to throw race into the thing and see what happens. We might as well get that into the open.”
So, we went back in and I told them we had not talked about race this whole time, and that I was just not going to settle this way. I said, “We work on a very close margin. So the foremen could slow down the work and it would take us three or four weeks to find out about it. In that interim we would lose our profit. But this is the chance we have to take because this is the right thing to do.” There was silence. Finally the business agent said, “We want a caucus.” He went out, and when he came back he accepted our offer. That was something that brought nothing extra to Henkels & McCoy, but it was just the right thing to do.
What would you like the American bishops to hear about business?
That business is an asset to the country, it is an asset to people, it is an asset to the Church. Business people are not all ogres. A lot of them are very constructive, very good, very just people, and they add quite a bit to the world.
Who do you turn to to learn about business from a Catholic point of view?
Father Robert Sirico (president of the Acton Institute, a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based think tank) is absolutely outstanding. I like to hear what he has to say. Of course we talk to business people in our meetings of Legatus (an organization for Catholic CEOs), so this has been a wonderful association. Also, I think Father George Rutler, who is the national chaplain for Legatus, is always very interesting and has his feet on the ground and knows what business is about.
What other things are you involved in outside the field of business?
I have always been interested in education, mostly higher education. But then in the late '80s I was very upset about poverty in the inner cities, particularly in the minority areas. And also I saw how poorly high school graduates and even college graduates were coming out. They could not write a decent letter, for example. So I figured I had to put some time in to help improve elementary and secondary education.
After thinking about it and talking to people, I became convinced that the only answer was school choice. This would allow parents to send their children to the schools they wanted, and more importantly the competition would shape up the public schools.
I have been very active in that ever since. I am chairman of the REACH Alliance, which is Road to Educational Achievement through Choice in Pennsylvania. We are the state closest to putting in place a state-wide law on school choice. In the last year or so I have also been trying to do something on a national level, particularly to have Congress enact school of choice laws for at least 2,000 children in Washington D.C.
Once we get a full statewide school of choice law enacted and it goes to the Supreme Court, this will be the first real step to reforming education, which in this country is very badly needed.
How close do you think we are to getting school choice?
It's within a few votes in Pennsylvania.
—Gerry Rauch
----- EXCERPT: The Chairman of a $500 million company says Catholic values and ethics are good for business ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:Foes of Male Priesthood Protest Chrism Mass
As celebrated every day in Masses all over the world, on the first Holy Thursday, Christ gathered his apostles around him and instituted the Eucharist, commanding the 12 men at table to continue the practice. But when priests gathered in Philadelphia to commemorate that event they were greeted by protesters who argue that women, too, should be priests, according to an account in the Philadelphia Inquirer (April 10).
Despite rain and cold temperatures, women like Bernadette Cronin-Geller gathered with signs and shouted at priests who were arriving to participate in the Chrism Mass honoring the priesthood and blessing the oils to be used in ordinations and confirmations year-round.
“It's a sin to go in there without your sisters!” Cronin-Geller is quoted yelling to one priest.
“I'll say a prayer for you,” the priest reportedly replied with a smile.
The protests have been held for 11 years at Philadelphia's Saints Peter and Paul cathedral despite the fact that in 1994, as the article noted, Pope John Paul II declared “infallibly” that the Church has “no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women.”
The Archbishop Who Wants to Be Sacristan
The Denver Post (April 12) profiled the new local ordinary, Archbishop Charles Chaput OFM Cap, and found that many lay people were very appreciative of him.
“He's a holy man and a good communicator,” said one. “He's really a prayerful person and lives what he says,” said another.
But he has his detractors too. Some were particularly unhappy with his refusal to use his position of authority within the Church to sanction homosexual “unions” or to encourage homosexual men to adopt children.
Archbishop Chaput told priests on Holy Thursday this year, “we must never cut ourselves off from what the Church teaches. … Nothing is more important than obedience to your identity as a priest. Our souls and the souls of the people depend on that fidelity.”
The paper concluded by reporting that the archbishop has one ambition for after his retirement: he would like to be the sacristan of a church, centering his life around care for the tabernacle and altar.
From the Altar to the Mound
When Jeff Suppan, pitcher for the Arizona Diamondbacks, pitched in Dodger Stadium earlier this month, it was a homecoming of sorts. The pitcher, said a report in the Los Angeles Times, has deep—and spiritual—roots in L.A. His spiritual life has followed his baseball career.
Said the April 9 report:
• The devout Catholic pitcher has made it a point to return to his Catholic high school in California since 1994 to accompany seniors on their annual retreat as an adult mentor.
• When playing in the minor leagues in Boston, he made a priority of finding a spiritual director. And he did—an elderly priest who is also a baseball fan. “Boston has a large Catholic community and I felt comfortable there,” Suppan is quoted saying. “There are a lot of temptations out there and it was important to me to have someone I could confide in and who could answer questions.”
• Throughout his childhood, Suppan could be found often in one of two places: in Church or on the mound. He was an altar boy until he was 17.
• About his pitching, Suppan said, “God gave me an opportunity and a gift. It's up to me to make the most out of it.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:Cloning Jesus?
Cloning has been in the news for months now, and Easter Week brought a fresh angle to the debate. Could Jesus be cloned, perhaps from the Shroud of Turin (which stared from the cover of Time magazine that week)?
The question is a serious one—if a bit premature. Scientists have so far cloned only early fetal animals, not fully developed ones—let alone dead cells like those on the shroud.
A London Guardian article (April 11) quoted a number of possible answers to the question of cloning the shroud.
Film-maker David Rolfe (who plans a science fiction movie on the subject) is a believer: “Someone in possession of the shroud might just put together enough DNA from the blood on it to clone—Jurassic Park-style—the person to whom the blood belonged, whoever it may be.”
The Rev. David Hilborn, theological secretary to Britain's Evangelical Alliance is quoted saying that “you cannot clone Jesus Christ anyway. God does not have DNA. If you cloned cells from the grave clothes, you might get someone who looked like Jesus, spoke like Jesus, but it would be a mere physical similarity—he would not be the Lord and Master of the universe.”
A spokesman for the Church of England was less certain. “So far, mercifully, cloning Christ is hypothetical,” he said. Catholic spokesman Monsignor Kieran Conry said that if such a cloning occurred, “You'd only get one side of the story—Jesus's humanity.”
Scientists said not to worry: the idea is not possible in the “imaginable future.”
Poisoned Wine Kills Priest and Nun
Bottles of poisoned wine were given to Colombian priests on Holy Thursday, said several wire reports, including an April 13 Reuters report. One priest and one nun died after drinking theirs. At least two such gifts of poisoned wine have been confirmed in the area surrounding Bogota.
Father Gilberto Pulido, who knew Father Jesus David Saenz and Sister Marina de Rojas, said that the wine, which arrived on Holy Thursday, the day when the Church honors priests, was taken to be a parishioner's thoughtful gift. The two died shortly after drinking it.
Father Pulido also received a bottle of tainted wine and drank some—but spat it out immediately, because of the foul taste.
A similar case was reported in another Bogota suburb, where a priest's sister and a sacristan received and drank wine laced with wood alcohol. Police don't know who to blame, and speculate that it may even be the work of a Satanic cult.
----- EXCERPT: World ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:Seeing God in a Telescope
At the Vatican Observatory near Tucson, Ariz., faith and science walk hand-in-hand, according to an April 13 Los Angeles Times report.
The report interviewed George Coyne SJ, PhD, who is responsible for studying the skies and reporting what he finds to the Holy Father.
“I did not come to believe in God through any scientific knowledge,” Coyne is quoted saying. “I believe in God because God gave himself to me. Not in any miraculous way. I grew up and I questioned this and that. I thought, ‘Could this be true?’ I never came to a point where there was any need to reject what was given”
“Once I am a believer and I start doing science, I find that not only does science not challenge my faith, but that it enriches it. “ [I]t gives me more to think about as far as God being the source of all this. Faith goes beyond reason. It's transcendent.”
New Swiss Guard Commander Still Needed
The Vatican is looking to hire a new leader of the Swiss Guard.
A New York Times news service report (April 13), had this to say about the Swiss Guard and its commander:
• The guard's commander must be Swiss, preferably of noble birth, with military experience, 5 feet 9 or taller, and a Catholic.
• The Swiss Guards have guarded the Vatican gates since they were hired after defending Pope Clement VII during the sack of Rome in 1527. To this day, they dress in the Medici family colors (red, yellow, and blue) with plumed helmets and seven-foot pikes at their sides. They have added one item: tear gas for crowd control.
• They are also the Pope's personal guards, keeping a 24-hour watch at the door of his apartment. Two accompany him (in plain clothes) as part of his security entourage when he travels.
Lt. Col. Alois Estermann became acting commander when Cmdr. Roland Buchs retired early in October. Estermann was only a few yards from the Holy Father when he was shot. The article quotes him saying, “To serve as a soldier to the Holy Father is a beautiful combination for me.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Dirty Laundry in the Third World DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:John D. Rockefeller III's 1958 swing through Asia had momentous consequences for the cultures of the world. For the scion of the Rockefeller family came back from a close encounter with Asian poverty convinced that population control, not economic development, was the cure—and ready to put his millions to work towards that end. The peasant societies of Asia, Africa, and Latin America would never be the same.
By the late ‘60s, American family-planning field workers bearing boxes of contraceptives were a common sight in many countries. The villagers they approached, residents of a calmer, more congenial world, rarely rejected these gifts outright.
“[The workers] were so nice,” one Indian man later remarked, “and they came from distant lands to be with us. All they wanted was that we accept the [foam] tablets. I lost nothing and probably received their prayers. And they, they must have gotten some promotion.”
This villager's shrewd guess could not have been closer to the mark. From the beginning, the success of population-control programs has been measured not by declines in fertility, but by the numbers of “acceptors” it generates. Those workers who meet their quotas of acceptors are promoted; those country programs that meet their targets are expanded. Since those that fail on either count are terminated, there is little incentive to make sure that all this contraceptive largess is used for its intended purpose. One villager used his free boxes of vaginal foaming tablets, their contents undisturbed, to build a little temple in his living room to the local Hindu deity.
The leaders of newly independent states had little use for this new wave of secular missionaries or the anti-natal religion they preached. It seemed to many that a new and insidious form of cultural imperialism was being unleashed on them by their former colonial masters. Had they known of the existence of National Security Study Memorandum 200, a remarkably chauvinistic document produced by the National Security Council (NSC) in 1972, perhaps they would have barred the condom bearers entirely.
Steven Mosher
Written in near-apocalyptic terms, this secret report declared continued world population growth to be a grave threat to U.S. national security. If the peasant hordes of Asia, Africa, and Latin America were allowed to multiply, it declared, their search for social justice would inevitably lead them to communism. This would limit America's access to strategic minerals and other raw materials, both directly through the action of hostile regimes, and indirectly because of greatly expanded local consumption.
Thus was population control declared to be a weapon in the Cold War. The immediate result was a huge jump in population-control spending by the United States and its allies. Dozens of countries around the world were targeted, especially those that were considered to be vulnerable to communist insurrection (such as Thailand), and those sitting on top of valuable metals (such as the southern tier of Africa).
The programs themselves also became more sophisticated, especially in the use of surrogates. To answer the charge of cultural imperialism, local elites in targeted countries were recruited to serve as the public face of these new programs. To avoid the appearance of neo-colonialism, U.S. population-control funding was increasingly funneled through international organizations like the United Nations Population Fund and the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
Having muted, or at least neutralized, many of its developing world critics, the stage was set for a war on population. The NSC, in a follow-up study, issued specific guidelines on how this war should be fought.
“[P]opulation programs,” this report noted, “have been particularly successful where leaders have made their positions clear, unequivocal, and public, while maintaining discipline down the line from national to village levels, marshaling governmental workers (including police and military), doctors, and motivators to see that population policies are well administered and executed. Such direction is the sine-qua non of an effective program.”
At the time the NSC report was written, India was in the middle of its infamous “compulsuasion” campaign. Although this strange word was an amalgam of compulsion and persuasion, the emphasis was definitely on the former. No longer was our congenial Indian villager merely to be given boxes of contraceptives with which to build temples. Instead, he was to be sterilized. Governments'officials were assigned vasectomy quotas, and denied raises, transfers, and even salaries until they had sterilized the requisite number of men.
At the same time it was privately commending India's programs, the NSC strongly cautioned against public praise.
“We recommend that U.S. officials refrain from public comment on forced-paced measures such as those currently under active consideration in India … [because that] might have an unfavorable impact on existing voluntary programs.”
Indeed, the NSC cynically advised U.S. officials to pretend a complete lack of interest in population control.
“[A]void the language of ‘birth control'in favor of ‘family planning'or ‘responsible parenthood,’with the emphasis being placed on child spacing in the interests of the health of child and mother….”
With the United States looking benignly on, several million “compulsuasion” sterilizations took place in India. The program was wildly unpopular, especially among untouchables and Muslims, and riots followed. For the rumor (later verified as fact) had spread that the Hindu majority was deliberately targeting low caste and minority groups for sterilization in an effort to reduce their numbers.
Such an obvious and callous display of racial and religious bigotry is easy to condemn. But how can we possibly claim the moral superiority to do so? For our own government more than 20 years ago set in motion a policy designed to eliminate our own version of low caste and minority groups—the poor Africans, Latinos, and Asians of the world.
Steven Mosher is president of the Population Research Institute and author of A Mother's Ordeal: One Woman's Fight Against One-Child China (HarperCollins, 1994).
----- EXCERPT: Perspective ----- EXTENDED BODY: Steven Mosher ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Priesthood: A Scandalous Vocation DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:The North American College (NAC) has the best view in all of Rome. Sitting atop the Janiculum Hill, the diocesan seminary for Americans studying in the Eternal City is only a stone's throw from the Vatican. St. Peter's sits upon the skyline like a great ship in a quiet harbor, solid as a rock.
Brian Murphy's book about the NAC—The Vatican's Elite School—makes much of this proximity. Men at the NAC get a privileged view of the center and history of the Church, and also its corridors of power. It is here that many of the most promising seminarians are sent, to live and study under the shadow of the Rock, and to learn what the Roman in Roman Catholicism is all about.
Murphy promises us an inside view. The breathless subtitle suggests scandals to be exposed. And Murphy delivers, not scandals, but souls. The seminary is the heart of the Church, and the only way to know someone's heart is from the inside. Self-described as a “born-and-bred” Catholic, Murphy portrays a seminary as it really is—a school for souls. Seminarians spend a lot of time studying and learning how to live together—and perhaps plotting their ecclesiastical careers—but the most important work of a seminary happens within. The “inside view” Murphy presents is scandalous, presenting in all honesty the scandal of men who believe that God has called them to be his priests.
The New Men—capital N, capital M—is what first year seminarians are called at the NAC. It sounds a bit like West Point, and it is supposed to, for studies in Rome are a special privilege. The book focuses tightly on six new men and the rector of the NAC, all of whom who confide in Murphy with remarkable candor.
Murphy's six include the unlikely phenomenon of twin brothers, Scot and Roger, both star students at Harvard. Roger is secure in his vocation. Meanwhile Scot has questions—among them, whether he should switch to Roger's diocese. Chris lived the New Orleans high life and now agonizes over whether he can live celibacy. Gary, a quiet farmboy from the Dakotas, is torn between remaining at the NAC or entering a Benedictine monastery. Brian, a former air force pilot, wonders whether God wants him in the seminary or with the woman he loves. Tran is the least interesting—no dramatic vocational struggles—but the most heroic; a refugee from Vietnam after his father was imprisoned by the communists, he has remained faithful to the call he first heard as a boy, before the war stole his childhood.
All six seek answers in the right place. They pray. They pray so much that Chris gets callouses on his knees. Murphy allows his narrative to breathe with the spirit of prayer, wisely choosing quotations from the Breviary—the daily prayer of the Church, recited by seminarians—to begin each chapter.
“Taking the test, wearing the clerics, cutting the ties with the secular life,” writes Murphy, “are all subordinate to something as basic as prayer. It is the lead in the stained glass. Without it, the seminarians say there is nothing.” If Murphy's six are typical, then the NAC is what a seminary should be: a house of prayer. God speaks softly in prayer and the six are ready to listen.
Chris receives the grace to embrace celibacy after months of rising at five o'clock for a private holy hour. Gary decides that he is called to serve in the rural parishes—not the monastery—but only after two pilgrimages to Subiaco, shrine of St. Benedict. Roger and Tran remain secure, but Scot does not return for the second year after his diocesan transfer goes awry. And most moving of all, Brian meets his former girlfriend over the Christmas holidays in Ireland and they decide together—emotionally and prayerfully—that God wants Brian in the priesthood.
The book cuts through the cynicism and worldliness that corrodes so much writing about the priest-hood.
Murphy captures the great joy of the seminarian secure in his vocation: the certainty of knowing God's plan for life. The world offers seemingly unlimited options. But one mission is better than 1,001 options. “The new men say they feel in themselves “ the lovely serenity coming from conviction, from being certain,” he writes. Lovely serenity is a felicitous phrase, for a vocation gives a serenity born out of love, the love encountered in prayer, the love that never fails.
The New Men is a deeply edifying book. It cuts through the cynicism and worldliness that corrodes so much writing about the priesthood. As the new men try to become new men in Christ, the grandeur of the priestly vocation shines through. Only something grand can persuade six highly intelligent and capable men to turn their back on worldly success. “I can do anything and the thing I want to do is to become a priest,” says one seminarian, who left a high-paying job. The grandeur of the priestly vocation lies in the fact that no man can say “I can do it,” but rather, “I will allow God to do it through me.”
These seminarians are ordinary men with an extraordinary mission. They get angry and frustrated and even cry. But they also play football, barbecue up on the roof, have a few beers or a scotch, and a cigar. There are times for letting off steam and enjoying some friendly rivalries—as with the Legionaries of Christ, who always get to papal events before the NAC and claim the front seats.
But the diversions remain just that, diversions. Cardinal Edmund Szoka comes to dinner to celebrate his 25th episcopal ordination anniversary and the Vatican's “money-man” tells the seminarians that Holy Mass is the center of his day. “Never let the external obligations of the Church divert you from the internal beauty of prayer,” he advises them.
Acurial official plays tennis with Roger and discusses clerical ambition—everybody assumes Roger is headed for high office in the Church. “Never stop seeing the world through the eyes of a priest,” warns the monsignor. “If you forget that, you are in deep trouble.”
The seminary is where a man learns to look at the world through the eyes of a priest. Murphy has done seminarians and those considering priestly vocations a service in allowing them to see that process from the inside. A new man must learn to look at the world a new, through the eyes of Christ. Seeing a new begins with seeing. And so the new men must look.
“Look at this Eternal City, Rome, the most effective of classrooms to teach you about the Church,” instructs the rector in his welcoming address, “Look over at that dome, overshadowing every corner of this Janiculum Hill, reminding us of St. Peter and his successor. And new men, look within. Look within and see a man who has come to do God's will.”
Raymond De Souza is a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond de Souza ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Praying with Saints and Seminarians DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:If a seminary is to be place of prayer, it will be a place of prayer books. The most important of these is the Breviary, the book used in praying the Liturgy of the Hours (often called the Divine Office). Brian Murphy uses quotations from the Breviary to provide themes for the chapters in his book on the North American College (see review above). But there is another prayer book at the NAC that merits comment, and it is not just for seminarians.
Years ago a new seminarian at the NAC would be issued a prayer book to strengthen his prayer life with the wisdom of the centuries and saints. That custom, like so many others, died out, but through the enterprise of recent seminarians, supported by the faculty, the prayer book is back. It is a welcome sign of renewal. And like any authentic renewal it incorporates what is new into the best the tradition has to offer.
Manual of Prayers follows the standard layout, with prayers before and after Mass, prayers for confession, morning and evening prayers, stations of the cross, and litanies and devotions to the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, and the saints. Ranging from St. Andrew to Mother Teresa, the manual presents the most beautiful prayers composed in Latin and English. To pray these prayers is to pray with the saints of all time, and to pray more fervently today, for the language of these prayers elevates the mind to God in a way that most of us could not do unaided.
To pray with Augustine on the beauty of creation, with Anselm for understanding… is to experience the joy of being Catholic.
To pray with Augustine on the beauty of creation, with Anselm for understanding, with Leo the Great for the Church, with Thomas More for our enemies, with Aquinas in adoring the Eucharist, all in the same words they used, is to experience the joy of being Catholic. The tradition is always being enriched: it invites us to pray with Father John Hardon for family life, and with Cardinal Cushing in his moving prayer for priests. A special treat are the pages devoted to Cardinal Newman, including his magnificent translation of the prayer to St. Philip Neri, composed originally by Cardinal Baronius, a vivid example of tradition remaining vibrant through the centuries.
The inclusion of the sequences for the great feasts of the Church, the Eucharistic hymns, the seven penitential psalms and seasonal chants, all in Latin and English, make this an unusually comprehensive prayer book. Bonded in black leather, with Vatican yellow and white ribbons, gilt-edged, and on heavy stock, the manual itself is a fitting repository for its prayers.
When Manual of Prayers was published in 1996, it proved to be a success among the laity as well as with priests and seminarians. A second edition is already in print. It would make a fine gift for a seminarian, or even better, a confirmation gift that might plant in a young man the seeds of a priestly vocation.
Raymond De Souza is a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond de Souza ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:Film Critiques
I have recently given a gift subscription of the Register to my family. The paper gives good coverage of the universal Church and provides insight into the workings of the Vatican, allowing the reader to maintain ties with the center of the Church in Rome.
You do good service by providing such information and news. One section of the paper, though, seems to be inconsistent with the rest, namely the section titled “Film Clips.” The large majority of the films included in this section are morally objectionable, I believe. Viewing these films would put one into a state of temptation at the very least, and more probably into a state of sin. The simple standard to apply to such films is WWJD—“What would Jesus do?” When deciding which film reviews to include in the paper ask the simple question, “Would Christ watch such a film?” If the answer is no, then the film is not worth reviewing, unless to condemn it in strong terms.
I appreciate the good work you do in publishing the Register and only write in hopes of helping to make it an even better paper.
Michael Deqscanis via e-mail
Editor's note: The film clips the Register runs periodically are meant to be a quick reference-not a recommendation—to help readers evaluate current films and to alert them to any unwanted “surprises” once inside the theater. The rating guide from the USCC provided with the clips makes clear if a film is objectionable from a Catholic perspective and why.
Oscar Night
This message is in reference to the article and photograph of Jesuit Father Chris Donahue, Oscar winner for the film “Visas and Virtue” (Register, April 5-11).
What a pity that Father Donahue lost the opportunity of giving testimony of being a priest on Oscars’ night. He could have worn the Roman collar instead of assimilating himself to the rest of Hollywood in a tuxedo.
Salvador Miranda Miami Beach, Florida
Clinton's ‘Photo Op’
I viewed with disgust the picture, and read the article regarding President and Mrs. Clinton receiving the Holy Eucharist at Regina Mundi Catholic Church in Soweto, South Africa (Register, April 5-11). What you didn't mention was how many more non-Catholics in his party of 700 also inappropriately received the Eucharist at the same Mass.
I view the incident as Mr. Clinton, his planners, and handlers setting up a “photo op” similar to looking out of the prison cell or the slave trade holding area. What other reason would the planners have for approaching the priest? I believe that the priest was somewhat pressured to let them receive the Eucharist, and be photographed in his church. As smart as these people are they know that they should go to the bishop for such a request.
What has bothered me, is why Catholic Bishops haven't condemned this act by the United States President and his wife as morally reprehensible. There was no special feast or occasion. It was only a visit by a person who “surfs” churches for political gain. When is the Church leadership going to speak out against such hypocrisy?
Edward Wood New Port Richey, Florida
Correction: The April 12-18 story by Karen Walker on pro-life rock musicians quotes Bryan Kemper saying: “I was abused and molested by my uncle and parents.” It should read: “I was abused by my parents and molested by my uncle.” The Register regrets the error.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: United We Stand, Or How Catholics Can Avoid the Jell-O Syndrome DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:Catholics present a less than united front when speaking out on issues. Afriend of mine says trying to organize Catholics is like trying to organize Jell-O. One difficulty is that as a group they are on both sides of every issue. For example, Catholics have taken leadership in the pro-life movement but there are still many Catholics who are pro-abortion, often defending their position with political reasons, not moral ones. Catholics undergo half of all abortion procedures. Prominent Catholic politicians scandalize us with their pro-abortion views while touting their Catholicism.
One wonders where Catholics stand on the question of President Clinton's actions in the Lewinsky matter; would they dismiss private behavior as unimportant as long as the president does his job, a popular opinion among the American people? What kind of principles guide their thinking in evaluating the facts we know so far? A poll would undoubtedly find that we are divided on how to evaluate our political leaders. Both abortion and the Lewinsky matter involve primarily moral questions in a highly charged political and legal climate and Catholics, of all people, should be able to sort out popular opinion from sound judgment.
Many Catholics unfortunately go along with the dominant opinions in the culture without much reflection. Many people I talk to are so depressed about many cultural tendencies that they want to go and live on an island and pull up the drawbridge. Others want to take some action but they despair that their efforts will make no difference when the cultural problems seem so intractable.
Engaging in partisan politics comes naturally to us. We want our man to win and our cause to succeed. Identifying the guiding principles of social teaching can clarify what we want to achieve in the give and take of politics. A first step for Catholics is to learn more about the treasure of social teaching that is available to them in the Church. Laymen tend to think that only bishops should write letters and take stands on issues. But it is precisely the role of the laity to be active on questions that affect our life together in society, questions like abortion, euthanasia, school choice, and policies affecting the family.
Many of us say we are too busy for this kind of study. True, we have many family, professional, and charitable responsibilities that make sitting down to study seem like a leisurely exercise. On the other hand, educated Catholic citizens should see the work of defending moral principles in the public square today as a part of their Christian vocation. Why? Because our society is suffering a truth deficit and Catholic laity are intellectually equipped to witness to truth in all areas of life.
If we know the principles from studying documents such as Evangelium Vitae, Centesimus Annus, and the Catechism, it is easier (but never simple) to look at a policy debated by Congress and decide how to evaluate it beyond mere partisan politics. The problem is many of us never get beyond our partisan view. Catholic social teaching can sharpen or challenge our partisan views. We can deepen our understanding of the values under attack and be better able to argue in their defense. If knowledgeable Catholics were more involved in public debates perhaps we would have fewer pro-abortion Catholic politicians because they would be taught by their fellow Catholic citizens.
When people ask what Catholics stand for in our society the answer should reflect a few key principles: the dignity of the human person, the sanctity of human life, the pursuit of the common good, the irreplaceable role of the family, solidarity in working for the good of the poor and the suffering, and subsidiarity (i.e., keeping responsibility close to the personal level). These principles should form the basis of a more united Catholic presence in today's great debates. Instead of a house divided on moral issues we could weigh in with one intelligent voice and promote a more focused policy discussion. This is a witness to truth.
Some of us think the Democrats have a better practical application of these principles; others think Republicans do. That is what makes politics. But Catholics are called to more than mere politics. We are in the business of transforming society, of lifting it to a higher moral level. One of the best ways to achieve this goal is to form our conscience by a better grasp of Catholic teaching. Then we can better scrutinize secular arguments to see if they come close to a Christian view of society. Then we can better work to restore the link between freedom and truth and have a more substantial presence in society than Jell-O.
Mary Ellen Bork, a board member of the Catholic Campaign for America and the Institute for Religion in Democracy, writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Separating Church and State: The Justices, The Key Cases, The Interest Groups DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:Does the U.S. stand for freedom
Part one of this series in last week's Register discussed how the idea of separation of Church and state has mutated since America's founding. The Founders believed religion was necessary to the success of the American experiment, and they encouraged it. For them, “separation of Church and state” meant that the government could not choose an official religion. It did not mean that the government could have nothing whatever to do with religion. And it certainly did not mean that religion must be banished from public life. Separation of Church and state, for the Founders, meant only that the government must be neutral among the individual religions.
But things began to change after World War II. An activist Supreme Court majority, egged on by activist pressure groups, began to hold that the Constitution requires not only neutrality among individual religions, but also neutrality between the very idea of religion and its opposite.
Now, fifty years later, this notion has been reduced to absurdity. Not only have nativity scenes been banished from town squares, but Christmas trees are increasingly being banished from public schools. And one school district, in Hillsborough, New Jersey, has even forbidden students from exchanging Valentines because St. Valentine's Day was once a religious holiday.
Fortunately, this insistence on neutrality between religion and what the Supreme Court majority calls “irreligion” has not gone unchallenged. Throughout the last 50 years dissenting justices have consistently disputed the majority's reading of the Constitution. A number of think-tanks and public-interest law firms (some more sophisticated than others) have arisen to challenge the secularist pressure groups.
This article describes the attitudes of the present Supreme Court justices and summarizes the positions of some of the more prominent activist organizations, in order to show just how much is at stake in the current battles over the meaning of the Constitution.
The Current Supreme Court
The nine justices of the Supreme Court fall into three factions on the question of Church-state relations. The hard-core secularist faction is composed of four justices: Justice John Paul Stevens, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and usually Justices David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Three justices are committed to the original understanding of the Constitution and believe that it bars only official discrimination among religions. They are Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Justice Clarence Thomas. Finally, two justices, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, are swing votes. They give a majority to the secularist faction in some cases and to the originalists in others. As a result, neither faction is currently able to cement its position in pure form. Also as a result, the litigation strategies of most Supreme Court lawyers come down to a struggle for the minds and hearts of these two justices.
For example, in Agostini v. Felton, the question before the Court was where government-paid tutors could give remedial help in math and reading to underprivileged parochial school children. The tutors helped public school children inside their public schools. Could they also tutor parochial school children inside the parochial schools or only in vans parked outside? The Court split 5-4. The two swing votes (Justices O'Connor and Kennedy) joined the three originalists (Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Scalia and Thomas) in upholding the tutors'presence inside parochial schools. But the rationale of the opinion was a compromise. Rather than simply holding that the Constitution permits public support, on an equal basis, of all schools, the narrow majority produced a narrow opinion. It held that because the government program aided all eligible schoolchildren, regardless of where they went to school, any aid that ended up at parochial schools arrived there only because of the private choices of parents who chose to send their children to parochial schools in the first place. But even that was too much for the four secularist justices. They dissented bitterly that religion was being aided in violation of their view of the Constitution.
A second case, Board of Education of Kiryas Joel v. Grumet, shows what happens when the swing votes go the other way. The question was whether a town called Kiryas Joel, which was composed entirely of Hasidic Jews, was able to receive government funds for its public school. This time Justices O'Connor and Kennedy voted with the secularist faction to strike down the funding.
Once again, however, the opinion was an ideological compromise. Justices Stevens and Ginsburg voted with the majority but still wrote separately to express the view that the school district of Kiryas Joel was even more problematic than the majority opinion let on. In their view, what was really wrong with Kiryas Joel was that it “increased the likelihood that [children] would remain within the fold, faithful adherents of their parents’ religious faith.”
Activists'Agendas
Because the Court is so deeply divided on the meaning of religious liberty, every Church-state case that comes before it is literally a crisis. With so much at stake, it is not surprising that activist groups on all sides of the Church-state question are pouring resources into the fight. What is surprising, though, is just how frank some of these groups sometimes are about their true agendas.
The Freedom from Religion Foundation is a good example. It is nothing if not aptly named. Claiming members in all 50 states and Canada, the Freedom From Religion Foundation states as its first principle that “the history of Western civilization shows us that most social and moral progress has been brought about by persons free from religion.”
An avowedly atheistic organization, it is active both in the media and in court. Its efforts, while cranky and idiosyncratic, are effective. Its media program, for instance, is directed by Dan Barker, an ex-minister and ex-Christian musician who now puts his musical talents to use in the service of atheism, penning such tunes as “Nothing Fails Like Prayer,” and the “Stay Away Pope Polka.” Nevertheless, the Freedom From Religion Foundation is regularly quoted in mainstream, national media. The Foundation's litigation efforts are even more effective. It is active in suing to remove from public property war memorials containing religious references, crosses, statues, etc.
Americans United for the Separation of Church and State is an organization that has for its 50-year history dedicated itself to a decidedly idiosyncratic notion of the principle of separation of Church and state. Officially founded in 1947 as Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, its genesis is said to have been a reaction to the appointment of Myron Taylor as U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. In all events, its early work was certainly marred by overt anti-Catholic bigotry. Its special counsel, Paul Blanshard, was particularly notorious. His book, American Freedom and Catholic Power, was panned even by The New York Times: “despite occasional sorties into reality, Mr. Blanshard repeats, often in modern dress, old scandals, and old wives’ tales that one had assumed were forgotten. …Unfortunately, this reviewer can find little in these pages that is not on a very prejudiced plane.” Nonetheless, it was effective. Blanshard's book was cited as authority in some of Justice Black's opinions for the Supreme Court.
In recent years Americans United has broadened its attack (but has not disavowed its origins). Both in the media and in court, the organization now attacks virtually any public acknowledgment of any religion. It is particularly active against any type of school choice program.
Founded in 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is the grand-daddy of all public interest law firms. Its anti-government stance was originally forged in conflicts with Attorney General Palmer, who had been conducting discriminatory deportations. Suspicious of religion from the beginning, the ACLU has since become by far the most effective force opposed to religion in public life. Thus, when the Supreme Court, in Lynch v. Donnelly, approved including nativity scenes in public holiday displays, it was the ACLU who set out to overturn the decision. In practical terms, they have nearly succeeded.
In Allegheny County v. ACLU, they convinced a narrow majority of Supreme Court justices to strike down a particular nativity scene ruling. Ever since, they have been arguing before school boards and county councils that the logic of that case should banish all public religious symbols everywhere. The result has been that local governments, fearful of expensive litigation, have tended to back down.
For decades, groups like the ACLU were all but unopposed. More recently, groups such as Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), The Rutherford Institute (which handled Paula Jones's lawsuit against President Clinton), the Christian Legal Society, and other similar, largely evangelical groups have been formed in response. They have been effective to varying degrees. (The ACLJ has actually won several Supreme Court arguments.) Their success, however, has largely been limited to forcing the courts to live up to the neutrality they preach. That is, the main approach taken by the Christian Right law firms has been to argue that neutrality really means neutrality and not hostility.
Also opposed to the secularist groups, yet apart from the Christian Right, is The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, headed by the present writer. The Becket Fund, named after St. Thomas a Becket, follows a philosophy consistent with the teaching of Vatican II and Pope John Paul II on religious liberty. It is bipartisan and ecumenical, and litigates on behalf of all religious traditions.
The Underlying Question
Last year, for example, in Rigdon v. Perry, it succeeded in striking down the Clinton Administration's order barring military chaplains from preaching against the President's veto of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. The case was brought on behalf of a priest, a rabbi, and the Muslim American Military Association. It is currently representing Mayor Bret Schundler of Jersey City in ACLU v. Schundler. That case is a challenge by the ACLU to Jersey City's display of both a Nativity Scene for Christmas and a Menorah for Hanukkah. The Becket Fund, on behalf of interfaith coalitions, is also challenging the constitutionality of several states’ Blaine Amendments, which ban many types of public aid to parochial schools.
As hard-fought as the legal questions are, however, they are not the ultimate question. Ultimately, the question of religious liberty comes down to a debate over the true nature of the human person. Underlying the secularist position is the notion that religion is like second-hand cigarette smoke: it is bad for you and so should be outlawed in public. ACLU President Ira Glasser recently wrote that the reason the federal Constitution does not refer explicitly to God is that the Founders knew that any such reference would violate the separation of Church and state and thus of religious liberty. Never mind that the First Amendment did not even exist yet, so there was no separation of Church and state to violate. And never mind that all of the state constitutions referred to God (and still do). This is a startlingly mistaken view of human nature.
The Declaration of Independence finds it “self-evident” that individuals’ right to liberty is “endowed by their Creator.” Glasser thinks it is obvious that we have the right to be shielded from the mere mention of God in official documents. Not surprisingly, the Freedom from Religion Foundation agrees with the ACLU.
Opposed to this view of the human person is that taught by the Second Vatican Council in Dignitatis Humanae, and by Pope John Paul II throughout his pontificate. According to the Holy Father and the Council, the human person comes with a builtin thirst for the transcendent as well as a built-in desire to live in community. People thus require freedom in order to search for God and express in public what they believe they have found. In short, because the religious impulse is natural to human beings, religious expression is natural to human culture.
It is not too much to say that whichever side wins this underlying philosophical debate will ultimately determine the future shape of religious liberty in America. If Glasser wins we will have freedom from religion. If we win there will be freedom of religion.
Kevin Hasson is president and general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kevin Hasson ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Radical Solution for a Post-Cynical Society DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:In one of his more lucid moments Oscar Wilde defined a cynic as “a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Now, a century after Wilde penned Lady Windermere's Fan and put this clever phrase into Lord Darlington's mouth, there has been no diminution in the cynical composition of society. If anything, we could say that such cynicism is firmly ensconced at the heart of the modern Zeitgeist.
One could even argue that modern man has gone beyond cynicism. Not only does he know the price of everything and the value of nothing, he would be astonished to learn that there is a difference between the two. After all, isn't value determined by market dynamics? And isn't this market consensus faithfully reflected in price?
Identifying value with price carries with it three fateful flaws. The first is that by their very nature many real values cannot be bought and sold. Who ever thought of putting a price tag on a sunset, or friendship, or world peace? Yet such values are of undeniable worth. Not that man hasn't tried to convert these values into commodities. All around us we can witness attempts to turn even the most intimate human values into merchandise. In this barbaric exercise, no stone has been left unturned: sex (pornography, prostitution, sex-based advertising), life (sperm banks, test-tube babies, wombs for rent), death (assisted suicide, abortion)—even human beings themselves are reduced to chattel in the institution of slavery, still in existence today.
The second flaw in identifying price with values is a corollary to the first: values are incommensurable. Through a common medium of exchange all commodities can be converted into others. Thus yo-yos can be traded for bicycles, bicycles for televisions, televisions for boats, and so forth. Price makes this possible. With many human values, however, such convertibility runs amuck. On Holy Thursday, Christians shudder as they behold Judas Iscariot handing over his Lord and Master for 30 pieces of silver. The repugnance stems not from the paltriness of the price, but from the very thought that loyalty and friendship could be sold to the highest bidder.
Finally, values and price differ in their genesis. Price results from a consensus of the market regarding the monetary worth of a given item. Thus prices fluctuate with changes in consumer perceptions and tastes, which reflects their subjective underpinnings. Values, on the other hand, bear an intrinsic worth independent of these variations. This is because values, in the words of German philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand, refer to what is important, and importance is grounded in objectivity. When Jesus asked his disciples, “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?” he was referring to the absolute value of eternal life. Eternal life is objectively important to everyone, more important than any temporal concern.
By ignoring these real differences between price and value, the post-cynical society has fallen victim to a cultural disease: consumerism—which, as Pope John Paul II reminds us, encourages man “to have and to enjoy rather than to be and to grow.”
Make no mistake, consumerism and capitalism are not the same thing. In our day it is commonplace to rail against capitalism as one of the graver social evils of the fin de siËcle. We are terribly concerned about all the shopping going on, the widespread preoccupation with financial affairs, and the quantity of things that clutter our existence. We sigh wistfully for the simple life of bygone days before technology seduced our soul with microwave ovens, personal computers, and trash compactors. And worst of all, we no longer have the gumption to leave it all behind, to pack up and move to Walden Pond.
But the abundance of things isn't the problem any more than their scarcity is the solution. The availability of goods and services furnished by the free market is no social evil. The great danger of consumerism isn't that people are buying or producing more. The problem lies rather in absolutizing the market and reducing all other spheres of life to the economic. In equating price and value, consumerism accepts as worthwhile only those things that can be bought and sold, and implicitly disdains those intangible goods that elude commercial exchange. As a result, the Pope points out, “The more one possesses, the more one wants, while deeper aspirations remain unsatisfied and perhaps even stifled.”
How can consumerism be overcome? It would seem that the most effective means is an uncompromising option for such values that clearly cannot be bought or sold. Volunteerism and the consecrated life, for example, confound conventional wisdom and throw the consumerist mentality into tilt. Perhaps only through the radical witness of “leaving all to follow Christ” will our post-cynical society be led to reevaluate its criteria and put price and value back in their proper places.
Father Thomas Williams is rector of the Legion of Christ's general directorate in Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Saint for a City of Workers DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:Lowell, Mass., birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution, is a fitting home for a shrine to St. Joseph the Worker
Less than 50 years after the Revolutionary War's Battle of Lexington—and 14 miles north of the site where it was fought—America's second major revolution began in Lowell, Mass., at the confluence of the Concord and Merrimac Rivers. Once their water power was harnessed and channeled through five-and-a-half miles of new canals, textile mills constructed alongside them made Lowell the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution.
Laborers poured into the burgeoning city to work in the largest concentration of mills anywhere, which by 1888 rolled out 4.6 million yards of cloth weekly. At the time, more than 21,000 men, women, and children— many of them immigrants—toiled to keep the mills humming.
It's only fitting, then, that the shrine of St. Joseph the Worker, model and patron of laborers, be located in Lowell. His shrine, located just steps away from the now quiet canals and mill buildings, was dedicated May 10, 1956, by then-Archbishop Richard Cushing of Boston.
The shrine was first established in 1868 as St. Joseph Church, to serve the Franco-Americans recruited from Quebec to work in the mills. The French-speaking Oblates of Mary Immaculate in Montreal, responding to an invitation, came to Lowell to staff the workers’ parish. Within two weeks of their arrival, the pastor purchased an existing Gothic stone church, and dedicated it to St. Joseph during a first Mass May 3.
With Canadians streaming to Lowell, the church needed two additions by 1881. Later, when it was necessary for the burgeoning parish to build nearby St. John the Baptist Church, St. Joseph's became a mission church. As the mills dwindled and eventually emptied by the mid-20th century, workers still faithfully attended the church.
Through the years, the Oblates maintained a strong presence and continued as guardians when the church was dedicated as a shrine after Pope John XXIII established May 1 as a liturgical memorial honoring St. Joseph the Worker.
At the shrine's dedication, Archbishop Cushing urged the working people of Lowell to maintain their ardent devotion to St. Joseph. “A greater saint you couldn't have,” he said. “We don't know a word he ever spoke or wrote, yet, next to Mary, Mother of God, he is the greatest saint.”
Reminders of St. Joseph's unique relationship with Jesus and Mary are present throughout the shrine's interior. Tall stained glass windows, which were added during recent renovations, illustrate the saint's life and invite admiration and meditation. Pictured along with the marriage of Joseph to Mary are the biblical events of the Nativity, the finding of Jesus in the Temple, Jesus working with Joseph at Nazareth, and the holy man's death. Another window depicts the Holy Family's appearance during the miracle at Fatima.
“Work was the daily expression of love in the life of the Holy Family of Nazareth,” wrote Pope John Paul II in his 1989 apostolic exhortation, Redemptoris Custos (Guardian of the Redeemer). “If the Family of Nazareth is an example and model for human families, in the order of salvation and holiness, so too, by analogy, is Jesus’ work at the side of Joseph the carpenter.”
As if to personify the “sanctification of daily life” through work, medallions at the bottom of the windows also picture men and women at work in Lowell: mill workers, carpenters, electricians, teachers, medical workers, printers, mechanics, musicians, attorneys, firefighters, and police officers.
The stained glass windows dating from 1881 offer subtle reminders of the shrine's origins as a parish. Among them is Our Lady of Lourdes, revealing the devotion of the original parishioners to her.
The interweaving of the new and the old, the spiritual and the artistic, finds another example in the large paintings above the side altars. The marriage of St. Joseph, a copy of the Raphael original from the 1880s, stands above one altar. A side altar has above it a 1960 painting of a young St. Joseph being assisted by Jesus, as Mary, at a spinning wheel, watches them.
The Blessed Sacrament is exposed here daily (except Sunday) for adoration from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The atmosphere is always prayerful and devotion is strong. During the week, three Masses are celebrated daily, preceded by the joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries of the rosary. Wednesdays include prayers and a perpetual novena to St. Joseph, a practice as old as the church itself.
Confessions are heard six days a week, mornings and afternoons. “The basic ministry here is the ministry of reconciliation,” says shrine director Father George Roy OMI.
The shrine continues drawing workers from Lowell's downtown as the city itself undergoes a renewal. Many who live in the area's housing for the elderly are regulars, as are people from neighboring towns who attend the devotions, come for eucharistic adoration, or light votive candles before rows of statues, such as St. Joseph and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Pilgrims can also enjoy many other sites in the Lowell National Historical Park—all within a few blocks of the shrine. Canals, mill workers’ housing, and the thunderous operation of 88 power looms in a restored cotton weaving room are just a few of the sights.
Everything from a 1930s-era diner to fancy dining are nearby too, as are plentiful overnight accommodations. Street parking is hard to come by, but visitors’ lots and garages are nearby. About 30 miles northwest of Boston, Lowell is easily reached via Route 495 to the Lowell Connector to Exit 5B, where signs indicate the simplest way to the humblest of saints, honored at St. Joseph the Worker Shrine.
Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Conn.
----- EXCERPT: The Catholic Traveler ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: In the Middle Ages, Church Supported Fledgling Universities DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:In his statement on Catholic higher education, Ex Corde Ecclesiae (“From the Heart of the Church”), Pope John Paul II reminds the world that, far from the Church and the universities being natural enemies, the universities themselves were conceived within the womb of the Church and grew to maturity there.
The early history of universities is necessarily hazy, since schools of various kinds always existed in important cities following the fall of the Roman Empire, and eventually some of them grew to the point where they might be recognized as what were later called universities.
The earliest of these are thought to have been at Salerno and Bologna in Italy, the former specializing in medicine, the latter in law. They seem originally to have been based on the guild system in which certified practitioners of a particular skill banded together to train students and to regulate the standards of the profession. Thus in a sense the two Italian institutions originated outside the formal framework of the Church. But neither became a full-fledged university until the thirteenth century, and at that time they came under some kind of ecclesiastical authority.
A “university” in the Middle Ages was another name for a corporation, a group of people with an officially recognized collective identity. In order to achieve such a status it was necessary to be chartered by some authority. Although kings and emperors sometimes issued such charters, especially in Italy, charters were more normally granted by a bishop or the Pope. Thus universities had no official existence without Church authority.
The first institution to attain full status was Paris, which grew out of the cathedral school of Notre Dame in the late twelfth century. For the remainder of the Middle Ages universities spread all over Europe, as far south as Sicily, as far north as Sweden, and as far east as Poland. Everywhere the Church played an indispensable role.
But this true not only in a mere formal or legal sense. Theology was pronounced the “queen of the sciences,” because it dealt with the highest and most certain truths, those pertaining to God. The word “science,” which simply means “knowledge,” was not yet given the restricted meaning it now has, and theology was the queen of the sciences because divine revelation provided real knowledge.
Thus the very idea of a secular university would have been unthinkable in the Middle Ages, because it would have excluded the single most important and exalted branch of knowledge.
In the early centuries of the Church the theologian Tertullian had asked the famous rhetorical question, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” and had given the implied answer “nothing.” In other words, the Church, possessing divine truth, had nothing to learn from human wisdom.
But, momentously, the Church as a whole answered the question quite differently. Human reason was seen as itself an image of God in the soul, the way in which man was most like God. And, since God created the universe, signs of his presence could be seen everywhere. The godlike faculty of reason was to be used to read those signs.
This then formed the intellectual basis for the universities—institutions dedicated to the pursuit of truth through reason as well as divine revelation. Unknown in the ancient world, and equally unknown outside Christian Europe, these religiously inspired institutions were the first communities established precisely in order to encourage men to exercise their reason to the fullest. As later centuries would put it, they were pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. (Institutions which might be called universities also existed in the medieval Muslim world. However, Islam in the end proved less hospitable to reason than did Christianity, and these Muslim institutions stagnated.)
First of three parts on the History of Religion and Universities
In certain disciplines the autonomy of reason was obvious—law, medicine, and the seven courses theoretically found in every undergraduate curriculum: grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. In such subjects there were no revealed divine truths, and men were left on their own to discover wisdom.
More complicated was the status of philosophy as a whole. The medieval universities did not make the clear distinction between theology and philosophy which became commonplace later, but saw the use of reason to seek truth as inseparably intertwined with meditations on divine revelation. Thus St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the medieval “schoolmen,” expounded his purely rational arguments and his reflections on revelation as part of a seamless whole.
The method of instruction in medieval universities revolved around “disputations.” A master (professor) would expound certain positions in lectures which were expected to be logically compelling. Students or other masters might then take issue with him, and he would be expected to answer their objections satisfactorily. Masters like Aquinas would attempt to anticipate as many objections as possible and to answer them.
Thus, while the ultimate authority of divine revelation was acknowledged, this by no means foreclosed rational inquiry. While Church authorities might occasionally step in to condemn certain opinions which seemed contrary to Church dogma, most of the time a master's ideas would stand or fall on the persuasiveness of his arguments, and different schools of thought actively contended with one another.
The medieval universities did not neglect the physical sciences. The Greeks had been interested in the subject, and so were medieval thinkers, especially at Paris and Oxford. They made genuine efforts to understand the physical world through rational principles, and by the end of the Middle Ages many scholars had concluded, for example, that the world was round, or had come to suspect that the sun was the center of the universe.
What medieval universities mainly neglected were the historical and artistic disciplines (music was studied for its mathematical properties only), those subjects deemed not amenable to rigorous logical investigation. If those universities had a fault, it was an excessive rationalism which did not recognize truths which might be found in ways other than by formal reasoning. In virtually every field which they did study, medieval scholars made important contributions to human understanding, which every fair-minded historian has recognized. The universities of the Middle Ages were a unique and remarkable achievement, and could not have happened without the support and encouragement of the Church.
James Hitchcock is a professor of history at St. Louis University.
----- EXCERPT: The two weren't `natural enemies' then and they shouldn't be today ----- EXTENDED BODY: James Hitchcock ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Before Titanic, There Was Ben-Hur DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:Nearly 40 years after its release, the first film to win eleven Academy Awards still packs a spiritual punch
Biblical spectacles were once a Hollywood staple. Although often sentimentalized and overly melodramatic, they gave mass audiences a positive, orthodox view of Christianity. For more than 50 years, moviegoers around the world eagerly bought tickets. Then sometime in the late 1960s, regular production of these epics stopped.
Studio executives claim it's because audiences lost interest, but other factors are involved. “For many of the most powerful people in the entertainment business, hostility to organized religion goes so deep and burns so intensely that they insist on expressing that hostility, even at the risk of financial disaster,” Michael Medved observes in his landmark book, Hollywood vs. America.“On no other issue do the perspectives of the show business elite and those of the public differ more dramatically.”
Gen. Lew Wallace's novel, Ben-Hur, was subtitled a Tale of the Christ and first published in 1880. After a series of successful stage adaptations, it was produced as a silent film in 1926 and then remade as a “talkie” 33 years later. Both times it was a huge hit. The later sound version won 11 Oscars, including best picture, director, and actor—a record unmatched until this year when The Titanic racked up an equal number of wins.
The 1959 production of BenHur interweaves an orthodox depiction of Jesus’ life with the fictional story of the friendship and rivalry between a Jewish prince, Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston), and a Roman soldier, Messala (Stephen Boyd). Director William Wyler (The Best Years of Our Lives) and screen-writers Karl Tunberg, Gore Vidal (uncredited), and Christopher Fry (un-credited), convincingly dramatize how God can enter into our lives even when we don't expect it and how his mercy and love can transform us if we'll let them.
Ben-Hur and Messala were boyhood friends in Jerusalem. When the Roman returns as a commander, he asks the Jewish prince to spy for him. Ben-Hur refuses, declaring that some day his people will rid themselves of Roman domination and “there will be a shout of freedom such as you have never heard before.”
In retaliation, Messala arrests the Jewish prince, his mother, Miriam (Martha Scott), and his sister, Tirsa (Cathy O'Donnell), on trumped-up charges of sedition. Ben-Hur is sentenced to be a slave on a Roman galley, and his family is kept in prison.
On the way to the seacoast, BenHur's captors refuse to give him food and water. During a stop in the small village of Nazareth, he cries out, “God have mercy.” The carpenter's son, Jesus, offers him a drink of water, and Ben-Hur experiences an unexpected moment of peace.
During a naval battle he saves the life of his galley's commander, Quintus Arrius (Jack Hawkins). In gratitude, the Roman adopts him as a son. But Ben-Hur wants to return to Judea to find his mother and sister.
Back in Jerusalem, he gets a job training the horses of an Arab sheik (Hugh Griffiths) and defeats his childhood friend-turned-enemy, Messala, in a spectacular chariot race. But Ben-Hur's joy is short-lived when he learns that years of cruel imprisonment have turned his mother and sister into lepers. He visits them in the valley to which they've been exiled. Jesus is preaching nearby.
Later Ben-Hur watches Jesus drag his cross through the streets of Jerusalem and tries to offer him water in return for his earlier kindness. The Jewish prince witnesses the crucifixion, and both he and his family experience the power of God's healing grace.
Ben-Hur is the foremost example of the kind of intelligent, reverent, big-budget spectacle that was produced when Hollywood and its audience were on the same wavelength. Although some of the special effects seem primitive by current high-tech standards, the chariot race and naval battles are exciting, and the conflict between Ben-Hur and Messala packs a punch. More than offering thrills and emotional climaxes, the movie is also a story of spiritual growth that's still relevant to contemporary audiences. It's too bad similar films aren't being made today.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: Arts & Culture ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: PBS's All-Human Jesus DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:Most academic experts use quasi-scientific methods to establish the historical truth about an individual or a social movement. Great emphasis is placed on cultural context and on speculations about the psychology of the people during the time period under discussion. So it should be no surprise that scholars at our elite educational institutions work with the same set of assumptions when they analyze Jesus Christ and his Church. Their activities are rarely part of a spiritual journey, and non-rational events like the resurrection and the miracles are usually explained away.
The four-hour PBS special, From Jesus to Christ; the First Christians, which aired earlier this month, reflects this mainstream, secularist approach. Twelve top-ranked scholars from places like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Union Theological Seminary, and DePaul University present the most recent findings on the subject in a well-organized, easy-to-understand fashion. A distinction is made between the historical person of Jesus and the Christ, who's treated as a symbolic figure whose identity evolved as the result of political, cultural, and religious conflicts. There is much talk about “a plurality of Jesuses.”
Writer-producer Marilyn Mellowes, and director-senior producer Paul Cran, use appropriate images from the Holy Land and sacred texts as well as architectural mock-ups to advance the academics’ arguments. But this slick, high-brow packaging shouldn't blind orthodox believers to the program's overall impact, which is to weaken the faith.
The opening sequences are promising. Some socio-political aspects of the Jesus story are highlighted. Recent archaeological excavations at Sepphoris, an ancient city in Israel, reveal Galilee was not the backwoods, provincial village society many have imagined. The place is found to have been a cultural crossroads, and Jesus, who grew up in nearby Nazareth, would have been exposed to sophisticated ideas from Jewish, Greek, and Roman sources that could have influenced his teachings.
But Galilee was also conquered territory under Roman rule. As such, Jesus would have understood that his preaching was political as well as religious. “In the first century, these were intertwined,” notes John Dominic Crossan, professor emeritus of religious studies at DePaul.
“Everything Jesus is doing is politically dangerous,” Crossan continues. “If you are following his life from day to day, you should be saying to yourself, ‘Somebody is going to kill this man.’”
Christianity is described as an apocalyptic sect of Judaism which grew up around the person of Jesus. But with the introduction of Paul, the show's secularist biases become apparent. The resurrection is presented solely as a doctrine which was useful to the apostle in building up the early Church. Its reality is neither affirmed nor denied by the show's scholars. Similarly, Paul's conflicts with Peter and James over the gentiles and their adherence to Judaism are depicted primarily in terms of the tactics needed to win new converts. No one mentions that the debate about these issues was also part of a search for the truth.
The show argues that the four Gospels were written after Paul's death and the trauma of Jerusalem's fall in 70 AD. “The followers of Jesus coped by telling stories about the man they had expected would deliver the new Kingdom on earth,” the narrator says. “These were not historical accounts but shared memories shaped by a common past.”
The idea that the Gospels were concocted as a coping mechanism for intellectual confusion and grief is offensive to many believers. But this kind of dumbed-down pyschologizing is typical of contemporary scholarly endeavors. It also underscores that the show's depiction of Jesus isn't the neutral, objective effort it pretends to be. Its conclusions are defined by certain currently fashionable academic notions that are, in their way, as dated as the sentimentalized, overly pious versions of the Jesus story popular in the 19th century.
Even more disturbing is the show's championing of heretics. The scholars rightly wax enthusiastically about the fifty-two early Christian texts discovered in Egypt in 1945. They include the gospels of Thomas, Philip, and Mary Magdalene, among others. Princeton's Elaine Pagels claims that these writings contain important teachings excluded from canonical texts. Using the language of contemporary radicalism, she argues that the works were suppressed by an emerging hierarchy that “didn't want people making choices about what to think.”
Pagels singles out second century apologist Irenaeus as the villain. “He thundered against those he saw as heretics,” she says. “He wanted people thinking what the bishops told them to think.”
The whole struggle is presented exclusively in terms of power politics. To the show's scholars, orthodoxy is just the point of view of the particular faction that won control of the Church, and like all victors, it rewrote history to discredit the losers, in this case the Gnostics. The extraordinary second century debates that resulted in the Apostles’ Creed and other important statements of belief are ignored. There's no sense that the institutional Church's view of Jesus may have prevailed because it was right.
But the program has more serious flaws. None of the scholars deals with the significance of the Church's belief in Jesus’ divinity or the doctrine of the trinity. The possibility of the Holy Spirit entering into history and affecting its outcome is also never discussed. This exclusively humanistic view of Jesus has had a following among certain segments of the intelligentsia for more than a century. From Jesus to Christ merely articulates the details of its latest incarnation.
The sad truth is that none of the show's viewpoints is considered controversial in the academy today. It's the orthodox interpretation of the Jesus story that's been marginalized.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Dying Want Pain Relief, Not Suicide, Bishop Says DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:DUBUQUE, Iowa—To fight against assisted suicide, we must work to stop needless suffering for the sick and dying, said Bishop John McGann of Rockville Centre, N.Y., during a symposium on health care ethics. Bishop McGann was the keynote speaker for a March 25-27 symposium celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Bioethics Research Center at Loras College, a Catholic institution in Dubuque.
“In the face of serious illness, it is natural to struggle with grief, anger and self-doubt,” the bishop said, “but we must recognize that people who ask for help to commit suicide are almost always really longing for something else; not death but relief from physical pain, depression, and the social pain caused by isolation.” (Pro-life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: Life Notes ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A City's Top Politician Doubles As Its `Spiritual Leader' DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:Jersey City, N.J., Mayor Brent Schundler takes up the ‘life is sacred’ banner
Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler sounded like the preacher he once thought of becoming as he held a government–sponsored prayer vigil April 13 outside a sewage treatment plant where a newborn baby had been found dead amid the refuse. He spoke of life as a sacred gift and blamed an immoral and throwaway culture for creating the conditions that would lead a mother to drop her hours–old baby into the sewer, and also cited the recent school shootings in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and in other public schools across the country.
He plans to lead his New Jersey city in publicly proclaiming “the sacredness of life” and announced that a section of a local cemetery would be set aside for burial of unidentified bodies of children and adults, so that those who died unknown and unnamed may receive the respect they apparently did not receive in life.
“There was an incident in Jersey City last year in which one 19–year–old murdered another teenager within 10 feet of a police officer,” Schundler said in a Register interview. “This shows a society that has contempt for life, and people end up showing self-contempt by their violence. Sometimes people despair that things can't be changed, but they can. We can only do it by coming together as a community.”
The recent vigil at the sewage plant was opened by the prayers of a Catholic priest and closed with an invocation of a Protestant minister. Schundler, a rare pro-life Republican leader operating in close proximity to New York City, would later be debating lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union over the placement of a creche last Christmas on city property. He contrasts sharply with New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a nominal Catholic, who supports abortion, criticized the Pope for condemning partial–birth abortion, and marches each year in a “gay pride” parade that passes in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral.
A Presbyterian who speaks passionately of the “natural law,” Schundler insists that government has an obligation to take sides on moral issues and should allow for a reasonable public practice of religious faith. He calls partial-birth abortion “legalized infanticide” and chides New Jersey Gov. Christine Whitman, also a Republican, for vetoing a state bill outlawing the procedure. He is a strong advocate of school choice for parents and has won three elections mainly on the strength of his economic policies, which have drawn on his Wall Street experience, after the previous mayor wound up in jail for fiscal shenanigans. Schundler has bought the city time by selling off the municipal debt and enforcing greater compliance with property tax laws.
Not your average mayor by any standards, Schundler is a strong, consistent voice within a too–often–compromising Republican Party. He is up for re–election in two years and the 39–year–old talks of “limiting myself” to two terms and possibly seeking higher office.
Jersey City lies a few hundred yards directly across the Hudson River from midtown Manhattan, just out of the shadows of the impressive skyscrapers. Built largely by Catholic immigrants of the past century, it is a place of old factories, new sweatshops, and deep pockets of poverty that has also seen an influx of new residents and sparks of prosperity since the 1980s. Young urban professionals, drawn by the quick rail ride under the Hudson to Manhattan, have remade parts of Jersey City in their own image, turning old industrial buildings and rundown two–family houses into quality residences and reclaiming swaths of waterfront real estate for parks and malls.
The city also has a long history of corrupt politicians and an entrenched Democratic machine. When Mayor Jerry McCann was jailed in 1992, Schundler was a Wall Street yuppie living with his wife and their daughter in a gentrified section of the city. Letting idealism and the call to public service get the better of him, he left a large salary to take on the sea of troubles that come with inner–city governance. His economic talk sounded good to people who had been sold out by the previous mayor, and he struck a chord with the city's poor people, performing an end run around the liberal Democratic tactics of winning their support with subsidized housing, high taxes, and handouts. Schundler pounded the pavements and climbed the steps of the public housing projects, pushing his school choice program to parents who were fed up with an ineffective and dangerous public school system that had been taken over by the state because the city could no longer handle it. He won the special election to fill the vacant City Hall seat in the summer of 1992, won the regular election a few months later, and was re–elected in 1996.
Exactly how his fiscal program will fare in the long run remains to be seen and he will likely be back on Wall Street or off to higher office by the time the creditors come knocking. He has drawn criticism from human rights watchers who cite him for placing economic good above moral principle, by maintaining Jersey City's “sister city” relationship with a region in China, which carries out a one–child policy and forced abortions. Schundler has responded that free trade of goods and ideas is a way toward social change.
He has failed to get school choice instituted though he continues to push it as a foundational tenet in turning around the culture and giving families a greater stake in the future of their children. In a recent letter to the Wall Street Journal, Schundler debunked the notion that the Constitution is violated by allowing public funds to help parents send their children to private and religious schools.
The GI Bill allowed veterans to attend the schools of their choice, he wrote, and “federal Stafford loans and Pell grants for higher education can be similarly used at any accredited college or university, regardless of religious affiliation.” He added that public schools are not “value neutral” but inculcate values “which are generally secular and relativist in nature.”
He continued, “Those parents who seek alternatives to the govern-ment's education monopoly by sending their children to schools that reinforce the message of there being absolute rights and wrongs should not be legally discriminated against by having to pay extra to educate their children accordingly.”
He said that he is against abortion at all stages of life in the womb and remarks of partial–birth abortion, “What's the difference of an inch? If it's illegal to kill the baby once fully delivered, why is it legal just a few moments before?”
The focus on the late–term procedure is good, he added, because the Supreme Court allows state regulation of abortion in the third trimester and too few local governments have taken the initiative to ban or limit abortion in that period.
Whatever economic, crime, and educational problems the city may suffer, Schundler sees himself as a leader of the human spirit as much as the city's top politician. A prayer vigil to mourn the death of an abandoned baby is more symbolic than practical, but symbols can have deep–reaching effects, he said.
“It's not enough for the mayor to say, ‘If you murder a police officer, we'll arrest you,’” he said at the vigil. “It's part of my role to say, ‘Murder is wrong.’”
Only moral convictions based on religious beliefs and a sense of absolute truth and justice have the strength to move people to act together for change, he told the Register.
Brian Caulfield writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: Culture of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Caulfield ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Indiana University Students Protest Mandatory ‘Health Fees’That Fund Abortion DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:Every semester, Emily Allen receives a bill from Indiana University. As a junior at IU, Allen expects to pay the necessary amount to receive her education. What she doesn't expect is to pay for other students’ abortions.
Yet Allen, and other pro-life students at the university, are forced to pay a mandatory $70.50 each semester as a “student health fee.” This fee is used to fund the IU Health Center, the main health-care provider for students. What bothers Allen is the health center's policy promoting chemical and surgical abortion. The center not only distributes abortifacient birth control and provides information on abortion, but it also has launched campaigns to make students aware of its special “contraceptive” services such as the “morning after pill.”
“It's quite aggravating to be forced to pay this fee, especially since I have visited the center and picked up their literature on birth control and pregnancy. They are completely into the abortifacient, sex-with-no-consequences mind set,” she said. “They're feeding my fellow students with lies about the nature of the ‘morning-after pill’ and many other so-called ‘contraceptives.’”
These sentiments are what drove Allen and two dozen other students to picket and leaflet at the IU Health Center in early April. They decided that an educational picket would serve two purposes: It would educate students and other members of the community about the deadly ramifications of such chemical birth control methods as the Pill, the “morning after pill,” DepoProvera, and Norplant. The public demonstration also let the university administration know the students’ opposition to having their student health fees going to pay for a health center that distributes abortifacients and refers for abortion.
The demonstration worked. Besides the typical positive and negative remarks from passersby, the students were also able to distribute educational brochures to other students about the “morning after pill,” Norplant, and Depo-Provera. The picket also ended up sparking local media attention, including a major article in the local paper, The Herald-Times, and discussion in the campus newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student.
Scott Tibbs, a columnist for the Indiana Daily Student and treasurer of IU Students for Life, used the demonstration to highlight the fact that university students were forced to pay the health fee whether they used the Health Center or not in his weekly column.
“I was one of about 20 students who picketed outside the IU Health Center to educate students about the issues surrounding the ‘birth control’ provided there,” Tibbs began his April 13 column. “Our main concern was many of these ‘birth control’ devices are not contraception at all, but are forms of chemical abortion.”
Tibbs went on to share his thoughts of the demonstration's affect on the community.
“I began seriously thinking about the picket during the next few days,” he wrote. “Perhaps the pro-choice side does think it would be best if we pro-lifers would just ‘Go Home!’ as one of the passersby suggested. But we have been sitting on the sidelines for too long while innocent children are slaughtered in the womb, both surgically and chemically.”
The demonstration and press coverage grabbed the attention of Dr. Hugh Jessop, administrator of the IU Health Center. After stating that he respected and understood the concerns of pro-life students, Jessop said he would not favor any proposal allowing students to “optout” of paying their mandatory health fee. He explained that only approximately 60% of the health center's operating budget comes from student fees, with the remaining amount coming from fees patients pay for services. He also told pro-life students that they should accept the mandatory health fee, comparing it to a tax for living in the community.
“The health center provides medical services to students and it provides educational services on practically every health topic you can imagine, including the ‘morning after pill’ and abortion,” Jessop told the Herald-Times.
He also said use of the “morning after pill” is not abortion, and that the pro-life students have a different definition of pregnancy than he does. According to Jessop, the “morning after pill” is not abortion because, while it allows fertilization to take place, it prohibits implantation of the newly conceived human being.
This is clearly an abortifacient property, however, and as such, is condemned by the Catholic Church. In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae The Gospel of Life, Pope John Paul II wrote: “Among the Greek ecclesiastical writers, Athenagoras records that Christians consider as murderesses women who have recourse to abortifacient medicines, because children, even if they are still in their mother's womb, ‘are already under the protection of Divine Providence.’ Among the Latin authors, Tertullian affirms: ‘It is anticipated murder to prevent someone from being born; it makes little difference whether one kills a soul already born or puts it to death at birth. He who will one day be a man is a man already” (61.3).
‘Campus health centers, in distributing abortifacient birth control, give credibility to drugs that are not used to improve health but instead make women sick…’
The public debate at Indiana University about using student fees to fund such things as health centers isn't entirely new. In fact, Jessop said, pro-life students picketed the health center in 1994 as well. However, the suggestion that pro-life students should be able to “opt out” of paying the fee makes this debate noteworthy, according to collegiate pro-life leaders.
Laura Carroll, director of Collegians Activated to Liberate Life (CALL)—a national network of pro-life college students—said her organization encourages pro-life students to make the health center's involvement in surgical and chemical abortion an issue on campus.
“Campus health centers, in distributing abortifacient birth control, give credibility to drugs that are not used to improve health but instead make women sick with side effects, may act to kill preborn children and in general promote an attitude of careless disrespect for the gift of sexuality,” she said. “We strongly encourage pro-life students to reveal the hypocrisy of health centers giving out drugs that harm people and to alert fellow students to any student fees that are paying for the destruction of human life.”
Education is the key component to IU Students for Life's campaign against their student health center, according to Allen. While exploring legal options the students may have to conscientiously object to paying the mandatory health fee, Allen said the group's main goal to is educate fellow students.
“The truth must be told about the abortive nature of these forms of birth control,” she said “Since the health center supplies young, sexually active students with these chemicals, it's a prime place to start the education process.”
Greg Chesmore writes from Bloomington, Indiana.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Greg Chesmore ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Nathanson Sounds Alarm On Unrestrained Genetic Manipulation DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:Afearsome new world where headless humans beings are created as “farms” for organ transplants, disaffected human clones band together against naturally born people, and a genetically enhanced super-race live forever may well become reality at the hands of unrestrained geneticists, according to pro-life author and lecturer Dr. Bernard Nathanson.
The keynote speaker for the Dallas bishop's fifth annual Catholic pro-life dinner last month told of current experiments in biotechnology, which include human cells being implanted into the testicles of mice to be used for human in-vitro fertilization, embryos that can be kept alive in artificial “test tube” environments for as long as 19 weeks, and the creation of headless mice.
Studies in so-called enhancement genetics, he said, involve identifying and “puffing up” individual genes so that a person with an enhanced memory gene would remember everything, and one with an enhanced sleep gene could survive on only one hour of sleep a night. Other work on genetic aging presents the possibility of virtual immortality, from a life span of 500 years to as many as 10,000 years, he added.
“The cutting edge of new biotechnology poses serious challenges to those of us who are pro-life,” Nathanson told his audience of 1,600, gathered in the Great Hall of the International Apparel Mart. “With this technology— this cloning, tinkering with the aging process, we are…redefining human life.
“There are no federal regulations on any of (these experiments). The geneticists and the embryologists are running wild,” he said. “You will see it for yourself. This is not science fiction.”
Nathanson, a former abortionist and pro-choice leader who once directed the largest abortion clinic in the world, warned his audience that just as in 1969 when the abortion movement “caught the Catholic Church sound asleep” and passed abortion laws in 13 states, “it is not good, it is lethal, to play catch up on these issues.”
Having been “burned out” as an obstetrician, Nathanson enrolled in Georgetown University's Kennedy School for Bioethics in 1993. There he began his encounter with the brave new world of biotechnology, which poses ethicists such problems as the fertilization of eggs taken from aborted female fetuses and human cloning.
Despite his grim forecast, Nathanson, the producer of the ultra-sound pro-life videos Silent Scream and Eclipse of Reason, expressed optimism about the main focus of event sponsor Dallas Bishop Charles Grahman's pro-life committee: ending abortions. The committee sponsors such projects as prayer vigils at Dallas’ seven abortion clinics, parish-level support for unwed mothers, and youth education.
Just as in 1969 when the abortion movement ‘caught the Catholic Church sound asleep, it is not good, it is lethal, to play catch up on these issues.’
“There is an ebbing tide for the prochoicers and a flowing tide for those of us who are pro-life,” he said, noting a New York Times poll that showed 50% of Americans believe abortion is murder and 70% believe it should be severely regulated and eventually eliminated.
Nathanson went on to describe a strategy for the current pro-life effort to ban partial-birth abortion: to demonstrate that the procedure is not, in fact, an abortion but “a pre-term delivery with an act of infanticide at the end of it.”
“Roe v. Wade addressed only the ante-partum phase (of pregnancy and delivery). Partial-birth abortion is an intra-partum event, so by definition it is not protected by the Roe v. Wade decision, and that is where we need to make our attack,” he said.
Pro-lifers also need to be aware of the “irrefutable data” about the three major abortion pills, whose “many consequences have been for the most part ignored by the media,” he said. Fetuses exposed to, but not killed by, methotrexate and RU 486 typically develop severe skull and brain abnormalities. Children born to women who used the drugs often develop complications with multigenerational effects.
Nathanson, a lifelong atheist whose celebrated conversion to Catholicism culminated in his baptism by New York's Cardinal John O'Connor in 1996, closed his talk with the story of his spiritual journey, chronicled in his recently published book, The Hand of God.
“My life had become a charred and smoking ruin. It had spun completely out of control,” said Nathanson, citing a series of failed marriages, supervision of 75,000 abortions—including that of his own child—an emotionally disturbed child and finally, thoughts of suicide.
Intrigued by the conversion of his former professor Karl Stern, author of Pillar of Fire, Nathanson studied the book and began meeting monthly with a priest who grew from his intellectual companion to a spiritual confidant. Though Nathanson's views had long been compatible with Catholicism—he became pro-life years before on the strength of ultrasound evidence of the humanity of the unborn fetus—he never saw himself as a believing Catholic, he said.
“The parallel lines intersected at my baptism, and I shed a quiet tear that morning to mark that improbable intersection,” he said, quoting from an article he wrote about his conversion.
Ellen Rossini writes from Dallas, Texas.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Rossini ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:“I repeat once more that a law which violates an innocent person's natural right to life is unjust and, as such, is not valid as a law. For this reason I urgently appeal once more to all political leaders not to pass laws, which, by disregarding the dignity of the person, undermine the very fabric of society.”
Pope John Paul II (Evangelium Vitae 90.3)
(See profile of Mayor Brent Schudler at left)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Story Behind the RU-486 `Abortion Pill' DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:The manufacturer of the RU-486 abortion pill, (originally labeled ZK 95.890, but now classified as RousselUclaf 38486 (RU-486 for short) is the French company Groupe Roussel-Uclaf, a subsidiary of the West German pharmaceutical giant Hoechst.
RU-486 imitates progesterone, the hormone that signals the uterus to become receptive to the fertilized egg. The abortion pill is used in tandem with a prostaglandin that prepares the uterus for evacuation.
RU-486 contains a progesterone analogue (impostor) that “plugs in” to the uterine progesterone receptors, but does not deliver the message that progesterone is supposed to transfer naturally. These hormone impostors are commonly labeled “anti-hormones.”
Once the anti-hormone has occupied the progesterone receptors, the blastocyst (developing human being) is denied attachment and simply starves for want of nutrients and oxygen. He or she is expelled after several days. This method is “effective” to kill pre-born children up to eight weeks of pregnancy.
Most abortion pills, including RU-486, are about 80% “effective” when used by themselves, and about 95% effective when accompanied by one or two subsequent injections of synthetic prostaglandin E or Sulprotone. Other abortion pills are used to kill preborn babies of less than five weeks gestation, and their efficiency decreases dramatically past seven weeks’ gestation.
The RU-486 pill was designed to be an abortifacient. However, the public is much more comfortable with contraception than with abortion. When polls have been conducted on RU-486, the results vary depending on how the question is asked. If RU-486 is referred to as an “abortion pill,” it has significantly less support than if it is called a new form of birth control. The description can change support by as much as 15-20 percentage points and determine if a majority of those polled are in favor of the pill.
The inventor of RU-486, Etienne-Emile Baulieu, offered some ironic comments in the Register in April 1990: “I don't like abortion and I don't like talking about it. I am a physician and would rather talk about saving life. I am not really for abortion, I am for women…. I resent it when people present the very early interruption of pregnancy as killing a baby, morally or physically. I think it's a crime to say that.”
Source: The Facts of Life: An Authoritative Guide to Life and Family Issues, by Brian Clowes PhD (Human Life International, Front Royal, Va.) Reprinted with permission.
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Scheidler Guilty Under Racketeering Law DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:Pro-life leader gets the criminal treatment
CHICAGO—As the guilty verdict was announced by a Chicago jury in federal court against Joe Scheidler and his fellow pro-life plaintiffs midday April 20, they were ready with post-trial motions and applications for an appeal. They will not let the decision stand since the defendants have been made to stand for the entire pro-life movement and the movement's future hangs in the balance, from Operation Rescue participants to people who pray in front of abortion clinics.
“We expected a defeat during this round,” said Scheidler, director of the Pro-Life Action League in Chicago. “The plaintiff's case was full of lies and mis-statements. It was nearly impossible to sift through it all to discern the truth.”
The First Amendment rights not only of pro-lifers but of all civil rights activists are threatened by the verdict, which charges that persons involved in unpopular activities are guilty of extortion against the person or group they are protesting against, said Scheidler.
“We have no intention of backing off our life-saving efforts,” he stressed. “With the trial behind us we will turn our full attention back to carrying on our pro-life mission.”
The case, National Organization for Women v. Scheidler et al, began March 2. NOW and a number of abortion clinics sued Scheidler in a civil suit under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act that was drafted as a tool against mobsters. The jury found that Scheidler and the other defendants had acted in a conspiracy to close abortion facilities around the country through rescues, pickets, and other forms of direct action.
The jury awarded two abortion clinics in the case $85,926.92 in damages, a figure that the judge is expected to triple under RICO guidelines.
Defense lawyer Tom Brejcha has said throughout the seven-week trial that RICO was exceedingly vague. The judge repeatedly refused to allow the defendants to mention the bloody details of abortion or the success of their efforts, which have saved thousands of unborn babies and their mothers from abortion, said the lawyer.
An example of the judge's behavior during the trial was seen during the testimony of Anne Scheidler, Joe's wife, said Jerry Horn, a former assistant to Scheidler. The judge interrupted her on numerous occasions as she tried to answer questions about the activities of the league, and then allowed a NOW lawyer to state that he had no cross-examination since it was obviously that Mrs. Scheidler would “stand by her man,” Horn told the Register.
The judge instructed the jury to decide the case on a very narrow interpretation of the law, which in effect decided the case, Brejcha said. If the defendants simply could be shown to have engaged in action to try to close an abortion clinic— an action the defendants admit to have engaged in—they were to be found guilty. On appeal, Brejcha hopes to show that the defense was unfairly limited by the judge and to introduce more evidence on behalf of his clients.
He said that the defendants were sued as proxies for all pro-lifers “as if the entire movement could be equated with some high Mafia family, whose 'street soldiers’ engaged in lawless acts of greed, fear, malevolence, and malice, rather than in peaceable, self-sacrificing and non-violent acts of civil disobedience, as a matter of conscience in order to save human lives and signal moral disagreement with the status quo.”
Brian Caulfield writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Caulfield ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Governor Signs `Partial-Birth' Ban DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:RICHMOND—Republican Gov. James Gilmore signed into law April 13 a ban on so-called “partial-birth abortions,” which he described as “repulsive” and “hideous.”
The new law would ban the procedure except when the life of the mother is threatened, creating regulatory procedures to review the steps taken by the doctor performing the abortion. Violating the law is a misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $2,500 fine.
“This procedure … is never medically necessary,” Gilmore said. “Not only does it snuff out the lives of children, it can put the lives of women in jeopardy.”
More than 20 states have enacted similar bans, Gilmore told a crowd of about 100 people assembled at the signing ceremony, and he contended that Virginia's version “rests on sound constitutional grounds.”
Abortion advocates continued to threaten a court challenge to the new law, saying it infringes on rights granted 25 years ago in the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. (Pro-life Infonet).
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Parental Consent Bill Fails In California Senate DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:SACRAMENTO—The Senate Judiciary Committee, by two votes, rejected legislation April 14 to restore California's parental consent abortion law, which was tossed out by the state Supreme Court last year. The court held that the 1987 law requiring minors to obtain permission from a parent or judge before procuring an abortion was “an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.” To overcome that decision, Sen. Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe City) authored a measure that would have asked voters in November to place the requirement in the California Constitution. Leslie told lawmakers that “parents have the right and responsibility to know if children are undergoing medical procedures.” State Attorney General Dan Lungren added that youngsters cannot go to a tanning salon without a parent's permission, or get a tattoo if under 18—even with their permission. Similar legislation is pending in the state Assembly. (Prolife Infonet).
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Connecticut Residents Oppose Assisted Suicide DATE: 04/26/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 26-May 2, 1998 ----- BODY:HARTFORD, Conn.—When Connecticut residents are asked if they support “making physician-assisted suicide legal in Connecticut” 44% said they favored such suicide help, while 49% were opposed.
The poll was taken in mid-March, about a month after North Branford resident Muriel Clement became the first state resident to die with the assistance of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Clement, a 76-year-old retired nurse suffering from advanced Parkinson's disease, died in Michigan of intravenous poisoning.
Catholics are least likely to support it while non-Christians or people with no religious affiliation are most supportive.
The telephone poll, conducted by the University of Connecticut, surveyed 500 randomly selected adults. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus five percentage points. (Pro-life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Bishops' Poverty Campaign May Revise Funding Criteria DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:Proposed guidelines meant to safeguard Church's respect for life
WASHINGTON—In mid-September, the United States Catholic Conference (USCC) Administrative Board will vote on proposed guideline changes that tighten criteria for projects receiving funding from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the U.S. bishops' domestic anti-poverty program. Revisions to the moral guidelines restrict funding for projects or programs sponsored by organizations involved in any activity that is not in accord with Church teaching about the “sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.”
The guidelines indicate that CCHD will consider projects that “demonstrate respect for the human person” and “will not consider projects or organizations which promote or support abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, or any other affront to human life and dignity.”
The CCHD established by the bishops in 1970 has given more than $100 million in grants and loans to more than 3,000 projects that supporters say help poor people help themselves. Critics of the CCHD say its funding has reached groups that oppose Church teaching. Current and proposed guidelines require that projects and programs receiving CCHD funding are in conformity with Catholic teaching. The revisions require recipients of CCHD funding to sign a statement agreeing to adhere to the principles detailed in the guidelines.
Guideline revisions were unveiled at the U.S. bishops' June 19 meeting in Pittsburgh.
Do those changes reflect an existing problem or are the modifications just a safeguard? Officials at the national CCHD office in Washington, D.C. won't comment until after the administrative board's vote, said Bill Ryan, a USCC spokesman. A panel of approximately 50 bishops is scheduled to meet Sept. 15-17. Some details can be gleaned from a June report to the bishops from the CCHD task force that wrote the guidelines. The report said modifications “affirmed the basic integrity of the 1972 guidelines … [that] had served CCHD very well.” The original guidelines were drafted by Philadelphia's John Cardinal Krol while he was president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) and USCC.
Task force members were in agreement that “reformulation of guidelines might be warranted at this particular time … especially in light of the more complex social realities which CCHD might encounter,” the report said. Furthermore, according to a Catholic News Service (CNS) report on the June meeting, Bishop Ricardo Ramirez of Las Cruces, N.M., chairman of the bishops' CCHD Committee, told bishops that the Campaign “doesn't fund organizations, it funds projects.” He said that CCHD “has never knowingly funded any project contrary to Catholic teaching.”
Those statements have been repeated throughout CCHD's history in response to accusations about its allocation of monies. Guideline modifications may have been motivated by concern that funds were misused or to avoid such situations in the future, said Mark Brumley, who coordinated CCHD activities while director of the Office for Social Ministries for the Diocese of San Diego from 1991 to 1995.
“We tried to carefully screen the local recipients of local grants so they were not involved in activities contrary to the Catholic Church,” said Brumley, now managing editor of Catholic Dossier and The Catholic Faith magazines.
Project screening at the diocesan level precluded projects in conflict with Church teaching, said Kent Peters, current director of the San Diego Office for Social Ministries, who also served in that capacity in the Diocese of Duluth, Minn., from 1989 to 1997.
“There was never any doubt that organizations in any way violated Church moral teaching,” he said. “That didn't mean everyone in the group was in line. With the new guidelines, organizations can't be involved in anything contrary. There is a little bit of flexibility. [For example,] a homeless project [could be] funded by coalitions of groups [that could include] the American Civil Liberties Union.”
Cautious Support
Critics of CCHD endorsed the guideline changes, but stated that problems still exist.
“The bishops are to be commended for addressing this issue. It has been a point of contention,” said Father Robert Sirico, director of the Acton Institute, a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based think tank.
Father Sirico lauded the task force's decision to consult with Father Augustine Di Noia OP, director of the NCCB's Office of Doctrine and Pastoral Practices.
“Some reflection needs to be given on the ways things are done,” he said.
The idea of proposed modifications met with mixed reactions from Terrence Scanlon, president of Capital Research Center, a Washington, D.C. think tank that studies the philanthropy of nonprofit organizations. CCHD has been the subject of critical reports in the center's Organization Trends publication since 1988.
“Hopefully, it will be an improvement. The fact that the bishops are looking at this is good,” he said.
However, Scanlon believes there are loopholes in the new guidelines. One is that applicants have to adhere to Church teaching in project administration only, but not in other activities.
“With the track record of CCHD, that could be a problem,” he said.
Father Richard Neuhaus, editor of First Things magazine, called the proposed guidelines “a very encouraging turn of events.” He and other critics maintained that there is still a risk of fungibility, that CCHD grants issued to an organization could indirectly support efforts contrary to Church teaching.
Father Neuhaus said, “I think CCHD got into an awkward position. If they give money to one project, it frees [funds] for other programs.”
Over the years, CCHD officials have responded to those accusations as Bishop Ramirez did at the June meeting. In CNS articles, they have refuted charges that the Campaign funded family planning clinics. The Register researched those charges for more than a month, following leads and asking CCHD critics about direct funding of clinics. No concrete evidence of that direct funding was uncovered.
Supporters of the Campaign say some criticisms of CCHD aren't credible. Cited among those was a booklet from Wanderer publications. One CCHD director said the book contained “half-truths” that took time to refute.
“We waste our time putting out nonexistent fires,” he said.
Brumley, however, indicated that while the publication cites factual data about the Campaign, the criticisms seem to stem from a differing philosophy about Catholic social teaching.
The Register looked into allegations made in the July 2 issue of The Wanderer. The article about the June bishops'meeting included the statement that, “Triumph magazine produced evidence that $300,000 in CCHD money was allocated to 16 clinics involved in abortion, contraception, or sterilization programs.” Triumph was not listed in media directories. The Register contacted Triumph Books, a Christian publishing company in New York. They had no knowledge of the magazine.
When The Wanderer was contacted, a woman who answered the inquiry sought to know the writer of the article. When told the story had no byline, she said, “We don't know who wrote it; someone sent it in.”
When asked how to contact Triumph magazine about the $300,000 in funding, she said, “They're out of business. I guess that solves your problem.”
The magazine closed 20 years ago, according to a staffer at Capital Research Center.
Furthermore, in its July 2 article, The Wanderer alleged, “based on documents filed with the U.S. government, the Claretian Medical Center in Chicago used [CCHD] funds to start up family planning clinics in Hispanic neighborhoods to provide contraceptives as well as sterilization and abortion referrals.”
The archdiocese in 1978 funded part of the salary for a nurse practitioner for a medical center started by the Claretian order, said Jim Lund, co-director for the Chicago archdiocesan Office for Peace and Justice. The archdiocese under John Cardinal Cody did not follow national guidelines when issuing local grants.
The Center was established in an area where the closure of steel mills resulted in the loss of services including primary care. The government document referred to the application from the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare for construction of the clinic. The document included the question about where people would be referred for contraceptive counseling. The question had to do with referrals and was not thought to be an issue because the clinic served senior citizens, said Lund. He added that since 1980, the archdiocese has followed national guidelines for local projects.
Campaign History
Another criticism of the CCHD is the political nature of funded projects. CCHD supporters point out that the Campaign is not a direct service charity — and that funded projects are in accord with Church social teaching. To understand that debate, one must look back at the Campaign's history. U.S. bishops founded the CCHD in 1970 as an anti-poverty and social justice program. The Campaign's goal was to address the root causes of poverty in America through promotion and support of community-controlled, self-help organizations, and through education.
The national CCHD office would work with local dioceses, and the Campaign would be supported by an annual collection, traditionally held the week before Thanksgiving. Most of the collection is applied to national grants, with 25% of donations remaining in the diocese and applied to smaller projects. The first annual collection in 1970 raised a total of $8.5 million, according to the USCC communications office.
The CCHD indicates that the national share of 1996's collection was $10.2 million — 75% of the $13.6 million total. The remaining 25% stays in the dioceses. Figures for the 1997 total were not complete because 15 dioceses have yet to send their contributions. (Not all dioceses schedule collections at Thanksgiving.) However, the Register learned that the total is expected to be $14 million.
Last year, the Campaign awarded $8 million in national grants that were distributed to 256 self-help projects in 43 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
The highest (final) total on record is $13 million in 1993, with about $3.3 million remaining in dioceses, according to a 1994 announcement by Bishop James Garland of Marquette, Mich., then-chairman of the bishops' CCHD committee. That same year, critics blasted the issuance of a $100,000 grant (made in 1993) to the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), a group that seeks to direct charitable giving. That direction was to “liberal nonprofits, including pro-abortion groups,” according to the October 1994 issue of Organization Trends. The publication cited a 1990 NCRP report titled Rightwing Attacks on Corporate Giving, saying it focused on a “campaign of harassment” by pro-lifers against corporate funders of Planned Parenthood.
Despite the criticism, 1997 funding projections cited above seem to indicate that financial support has not waned permanently.
The piece compared pro-life activists to Nazis. Bishop Garland's response to charges against the Campaign was reported in a Nov. 3, 1994 CNS article. The bishop said NCRP sought funding for a specific project — to make community foundations more responsive to the needs of the poor in spending foundation money.
In the past, CCHD funding recipients have included organizations that help low-income people create jobs, fight crime, reform schools, improve working conditions, and find affordable housing. This year, the word “Catholic” was added to the Campaign name. Although CCHD officials won't comment, there is an explanation about the name change in the Campaign's summer newsletter, Helping People Help Themselves.
Father Robert Vitillo, CCHD's executive director, wrote that the change was recommended by the bishops' Conference Committee.
“People of all faiths know of the work … but are often not aware that it is an integral part of the Catholic Church's social mission…. The addition of the word ‘Catholic’ is also a faithful link with our history,” the newsletter states.
Campaign critics also wondered about a link between funding and organizations with a liberal agenda. Three critics interviewed for this article (Fathers Neuhaus and Sirico, and Mr. Scanlon) maintained there is a “leftist” bias at the CCHD staff level. They say that bias is reflected in groups that receive grants. A long-time recipient, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has been criticized by Organization Trends for activities that included protesting U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party's Contract with America.
Enabling The Poor
A broader criticism of CCHD comes from a misunderstanding of how the Campaign works, said former San Diego diocesan director Brumley.
“It's not a direct service organization to feed or clothe the poor,” he said. “[It funds] projects to enable the poor to help themselves.”
CCHD money funded a San Diego project to organize domestic care workers to rally for better working conditions from their employer, the state of California. Higher wages and more training were among the demands.
San Diego's Peters said, “It created a very negative work environment. The state was treating each one like an independent contractor; a private employer couldn't do that. Some folks think unions are a bad thing, but if you look at Catholic social teaching, sometimes it's accepted.”
The people in the pews need to know that the Campaign is not a direct service program, added Brumley.
“People need to be informed,” he said. “When I give, do I realize I give to help people help themselves even if it's political?”
That political involvement is described in Campaign material that reads, “funded groups have been instrumental in securing passage of federal and state legislation on such issues as child support, family and medical leave, community reinvestment, and housing.”
It remains to be seen whether criticisms of the Campaign will affect the annual collection, scheduled for the weekend of Nov. 21-22.
The October 1997 issue of Organization Trends stated that two dioceses refused to participate in the Campaign. But the motives for declining appear to be unrelated to CCHD's approach to funding projects. Marty Wind, spokesman for the Diocese of Corpus Christi, Texas, confirmed that the now-retired Bishop Rene Gracida dropped the collection during the late 1980s. The decision had to do with the decision to fund a local ministry, according to Wind. Bishop Gracida retired in April 1997, and Bishop Roberto Gonzalez, a Franciscan, was installed as ordinary. Bishop Gonzalez reinstated the CCHD collection for this year.
While Organization Trends correctly indicated that the Diocese of Allentown, Pa., did not participate in the Campaign, that could change, said Deacon John Murphy, director of the Allentown diocesan Office of Information.
“Since its founding in 1961, the Diocese of Allentown has believed that the most cost effective and spiritually productive use of its funds has been to primarily support diocesan-related agencies and pastoral outreach programs,” he said.
“The number of national and annual collections was reduced; however, now that we have a new ordinary [Bishop Edward Cullen, installed Feb. 8], these matters in addition to many others will have to be reviewed as he determines his priorities,” said Deacon Murphy.
While the USCC board prepares to review the proposed moral guidelines, debate continues about the viability of the CCHD. San Diego's Peters said some resistance could be attributed to the fact that certain programs for low income people could appear at odds with people paying salaries. Such programs could be perceived as “anti-business,” but the programs work at the community level by building coalitions of liberals and conservatives.
“CCHD has a way of bringing people to the table,” he said.
Father Neuhaus wonders if the guidelines are sufficient to remedy what he perceived as problems.
“Something like CCHD is an important expression of Catholic social teaching. Whether CCHD can do that or is weakened by mistakes (remains to be seen). It may require a new initiative or CCHD may become what it was meant to be,” he said.
Liz Swain writes from San Diego.
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Liz Swain ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Fights Recurring Battle for Family DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:NEW YORK—The Vatican's role at United Nations international conferences has taken on an almost wearying routine. At the meetings in Beijing on women, in Cairo on population, and in Istanbul on living conditions, the Holy See's Permanent Mission to the United Nations was the major voice opposing aggressive population control measures and abortion, and standing up for the family as the central unit of society, based on marriage between a man and a woman, and the rights of parents to rear their children according to their own beliefs.
The recent U.N.-backed meeting for youth in Lisbon, Portugal, saw similar questions raised and the Holy See making familiar objections against terms such as “reproductive rights,” a code for birth control and abortion, “gender preference” and the promotion of homosexual lifestyles, and the failure to recognize the family as the primary unit of society. Especially noticeable in the Lisbon Declaration, approved at the Aug. 8-12 meeting, was the absence of any recognition of the rights and responsibilities of parents in the lives of their children. Young people, defined for the purpose of the conference as those from ages 10-24, were presented as largely autonomous, self-determining persons who are able to exercise a wide range of rights apart from parental or familial influences.
A statement affirming the family as “the basic unit of society” and the unique character of marriage was added to the preamble of the document late in the conference after heated debate and a written intervention by the Holy See. Whether the entire document will be read in the light of the preamble is questionable, said Vatican delegates.
In a speech to the meeting, Bishop Stanislaw Rylko, secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, said, “The poverty and marginalization of entire populations are increasing, and on the spiritual level the crisis of essential values becomes deeper.” Many young people around the world, he added, “are experiencing the frustration of false freedom, the lack of meaning in life and of reference points.”
John Klink, who has served as a delegate for the Vatican for the past 11 years at dozens of conferences, led a coalition of Christian, Muslim, and Mormon delegates at Lisbon in pushing for a more traditional view of youth and the family. Despite performing similar tasks repeatedly at other conferences, Klink, from California, has not grown cynical of the international conference process. He still sees such meetings as useful forums of international dialogue, and is especially convinced of the vital importance of the Holy See's participation.
“If we weren't speaking, there would be a real lack of balance. I hate to think of the result if the Holy See were not there,” Klink told the Register soon after returning from Lisbon.
The Holy See approaches issues from a moral perspective, not from a strictly political one, and draws upon the truths of divine revelation and the wisdom of Catholic philosophy, he said. This fact is not always appreciated by the delegates from other countries who seek to understand interventions of the Vatican in terms of political gain and earthly power, Klink added.
Msgr. James Reinert, an attaché to the Holy See's U.N. Mission in New York City, wrote the Vatican's Aug. 10 statement on the Portugal Declaration, with clearly noted objections. At preparatory meetings at the United Nations in New York, he said, the Holy See tried at least five times to include language affirming the family and parental rights.
“When we're talking about youth, education, and the next generation, not to mention parents is a big omission,” he stated. “This is especially true when we get to the controversial issue of so-called ‘reproductive health.’ To suggest that parents have no rights and responsibilities in this area is plain wrong.”
Particularly disturbing, he admitted, was a report that a World Health Organization spokesman said in a press conference Aug. 10 that U.N. agencies will interpret the Lisbon Declaration's health recommendations on sexuality to apply to children as young as 10.
Kay Balmforth, a Mormon from the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Family Voice in Provo, Utah, told the Register, “Below a certain age, people need protection and help and direction in their decision making. Every country recognizes this; it is the difference between adults and minors.”
The groups attacking the rights of families and parents know that young people are in formative stages and open to influence. “They don't want parents to be the influence; they want it to be themselves.
“There were enough family-oriented NGO to make our views heard,” said Balmforth, “but there is a great need to get more traditionally minded people lobbying at the United Nations. We've ignored the United Nations for the most part and the radicals have run amok.”
Like other U.N. declarations, Msgr. Reinert said, there were enough positive points in the Lisbon document to make the conference a worthy effort. Included were statements on the exploitation of children in labor, in wartime, and by governments. These points are not stated as strongly as they are in the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, drafted in the early 1990s, he said, and efforts must be made to ensure that the language of the more recent meeting does not supplant that of the former one.
The Lisbon meeting, the First World Conference on Ministers Responsible for Youth, was sponsored by the government of Portugal and approved by the United Nations. It came a few days after the Third World Youth Forum of the United Nations in Braga, Portugal, which was heavily influenced by non-delegate lobbyists advocating abortion, contraception, and homosexual rights. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan opened the Lisbon proceedings by reading from the declaration of the Braga conference.
Since it was sponsored by a government and not directly by the United Nations, it is unclear precisely how the Lisbon meeting fits into the series of U.N. conferences and what authority its findings will hold, said Msgr. Reinert.
In a straightforward 600-word statement, the Holy See made clear that it joined only partially in the Portugal document and noted five major reservations: “Reproductive health care” and “reproductive rights” are to be understood in a more general concept of health which encompasses the whole good of a person, including maturity in sexuality according to moral norms. Abortion and access to abortion are rejected.
“Family planning” and “family life education” are terms that the Holy See interprets according to its moral objection to birth control methods and its recognition of the duty and right of parents as the primary educators of their children in areas of sexuality.
Any references to family planning services should be understood as relating exclusively to married couples, who alone are given the privilege to make decisions about conjugal relationships.
The Holy See interprets the word “gender” to be grounded in the biological reality of two sexes, male and female.
References to “family unit” and “family structures” are interpreted as meaning the family as the basic unit of society, based on the conjugal love of a husband and wife.
About the consistent efforts of abortion and population-control advocates at these conferences, Msgr. Reinert said, “We're going to see them get stronger each time if we don't keep vigilant. We always hope they finally have as much as they want and their influence will not get worse, but it keeps getting worse.”
Currently, the Holy See is preparing for the five-year review meeting of the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population, to be held in New York in the spring.
“We're digging in, waiting to see how bad this can get,” said Msgr. Reinert.
Klink said that he was encouraged at Lisbon by the significant number of pro-life young people attending their first international conference. They kept proceedings in the working groups from being dominated by voices for abortion and other anti-family measures and signaled possible improvements for the future, he said.
Brian Caulfield writes from New York.
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Caulfield ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'Just War' Theorists Weigh Impact Of U.S. Strikes on Terrorist Camps DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, a Republican who represented Michigan in the Senate from 1928 to 1951, is largely remembered for his statement, “In foreign policy, all politics stops at the water's edge.”
This call to bipartisanship is still largely followed when U.S. interests are perceived to be in jeopardy.
So when President Clinton launched missile strikes at terrorist camps in Sudan and Afghanistan Aug. 20, he was given strong support from Congress and the American public. This was in sharp contrast to the criticism he has received as a result of the Lewinsky scandal, which has tarnished his presidency.
Broad endorsement for the U.S. government's action also was based on the recognition that terrorism, which has invaded the lives of many Americans during the past two decades, needs to be decisively addressed. Many were horrified by the terrorist bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania Aug. 7, which claimed 12 American and nearly 300 African lives.
Despite this understandable sense of patriotic support and moral outrage, people of faith often question and pray whether particular military actions, which sometimes claim innocent lives, are just. That is an appropriate response because Church teachings have encouraged us to do so.
For Catholics and, indeed, for other Christians and even non-Christians, one enduring standard here has been the concept of “just war.” Partly built on the framework developed by St. Augustine, the doctrine is largely attributable to the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, the great 13th-century doctor of the Church.
The just war theory stipulates when military force is morally appropriate (jus ad bellum) and what action is reasonable (jus in bello). To determine whether force can be justified, several standards need to met, including whether the cause is just, whether the intent of the action is reasonable, and whether the response is made under lawful authority.
Among other considerations are proportionality — whether the magnitude of the response is consistent with the transgression — and taking care that innocent people are not punished. Retribution itself is not sufficient reason to wage war.
Several 20th century popes have addressed the issue of war, including Pope John XXIII in his 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris. Probably the most notable guidance to come from American Church leaders is the bishops' pastoral letter The Challenge of Peace, issued in 1983.
This letter restates just war theory, especially in the context of the nuclear age. The complexity of the concept today is noted in the following passage: “For resort to war to be justified, all peaceful alternatives must have been exhausted. There are formidable problems in this requirement.”
In an effort to present a clearer understanding of how this early Christian doctrine might be better understood today, particularly as it applies to terrorism, the Register consulted several leading experts in the field. Most reiterated the value of just war, but a few raised questions that thoughtful Catholics might wish to consider.
Gerard Powers, executive director of the Office for International Justice and Peace at the U.S. Catholic Conference, said, “The just war tradition is still relevant to international affairs, and it provides a set of moral criteria to guide leaders and citizens in deciding when and how force can be morally justified.”
The National Conference of Catholic Bishops has not issued a statement on the recent missile strikes, but Powers, who is an expert on the ethics of war, suggests that preemptive, self-defensive strikes against terrorism are not unreasonable.
“Government — the United States and the international community — has a moral responsibility to effectively reduce the threat of terrorism.” But, he asked, “What is the moral way to respond?”
Imminent threat, ongoing aggression, and the need for self defense — all of which appear to be present in the threat of terrorism — are among those criteria that would suggest a military response is appropriate, he added.
More troubling to Powers is that the Aug. 20 attacks are clearly not a “one-shot deal.” Should a likely long-term struggle against terrorism develop, he said, Catholic teaching would suggest that an international, rather than a purely U.S. response, would be more desirable.
Dr. Daniel Pipes, the editor of Middle East Quarterly, believes we are in a protracted struggle, one that began in the early 1980s.
“A war has been declared on us the last 15 years by a motley group. More Americans have died in terrorist attacks than in any other violence since the Vietnam War,” he said.
Such aggression, Pipes contended, requires the United States to respond forcefully to what he characterizes as “an Islamic flavor to totalitarianism.” He believes we are confronted with a violent ideology in the Marxist, Leninist, and Fascist tradition. He stresses that ideology, not religion, is the key to understanding the motivations of these terrorists.
This idea that war has been declared on the United States by terrorist groups also resonates with Dr. Ernest Lefever, a noted political philosopher and founder of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
“In this case,” he said, “I regard — as President Reagan did — a deliberate attack on American facilities as an act of war. The tricky part is that the state did not perform this attack.”
Lefever, an advisor on terrorism to the State Department in the 1980s, said, “I believe it is legitimate for the United States to destroy terrorist camps. Putting a terrorist organization out of commission is a strike for peace and freedom.”
But, he added, in the context of just war tradition, “great care must be taken to spare citizens, where possible.” A holder of a divinity degree and doctorate in Christian ethics as well as a colleague of the late Reinhold Niebuhr, Lefever clearly sees the vital link between ethics, religion, and public policy. He told the Register, “Churches should teach the doctrine of just war.”
Charles Lichenstein, a former ambassador to the United Nations and now a fellow at The Heritage Foundation, added to the discussion by offering his views on deterrence and proportionality.
The expert on terrorism said, “Proportionality must not only be measured in actual acts of terrorism, but how much force is necessary to deter them. Pinpricks usually do not do the job. Deterrence is part of your judgment of proportionality, in my judgment.”
While supporting Clinton's action, he also raised issues to be considered in this and similar attacks. One of the “ifs,” as he calls it, is whether the right people were targeted. Intelligence and good advance police work are ways to minimize inappropriate strikes.
He expressed concern that even in precision strikes, there will be peripheral and coincidental loss of life. Innocent lives are likely to be taken, he said, and “that is always a problem for those who have a conscience.”
Another prominent thinker on just war theory is Father John Langan, a Jesuit at Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics. He reiterated that “Just war theory really is designed for conflicts between states. One of the basic assumptions is proper authority, and that is a state.”
Although the adversary often is unclear, “there's no question that the group that struck at the embassies showed their contempt for the norms of just war thinking. It is important to note that the folks on the other side are not playing by the rules,” he said.
Still, he continued, “The crucial question is whether it was, indeed, true that we were at risk for taking more attacks from this group. If so, it's a last resort issue,” which makes force justified under Aquinas's theory.
“This is a murky world,” the priest added. “Our government relies on its intelligence sources, and it's never as clean as moral analysts or journalists would like it to be.”
Another perspective was given by Diane Knippers, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute on Religion and Democracy, an organization that represents mainline Protestant churches.
“I consider just war criteria a tool — an essential tool — for government and military leaders,” she said. “The only people who can apply the theory are these officials.”
“Most government and military leaders are not adequately trained” to understand the concept, so “it's the role of the Church to teach and preach these ethical principles. But it's not the role of clerics to prejudge the application of them,” Knippers added.
Interestingly, noted Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, some of the ideas embodied in the just war theory are not restricted to the Christian tradition. Rabbi Eckstein, the president of the International Fellowship of Christian and Jews, said, “There is a very clear line of thought that runs through Jewish law and tradition: ‘If someone is coming to murder you, you may kill him first.’”
“This is very ingrained in Jewish thought,” he said. This helps explain the military policy of Israel, the rabbi emphasized, particularly the idea of preemptive strikes. He suggested further that a disproportionate response might even be appropriate if it has a deterrent effect.
Yet, he added, “exercising power doesn't give license to abuse.” The Israeli army practices the idea of “purity of arms,” in which power, necessity, and morality are all balanced. One way to practice restraint is to first pursue diplomacy, then boycotts and other means, and only finally resort to military action.
It would be misleading to imply that support for the president's action was unanimous and even that the just war concept — or similar manifestations of it — is universally accepted. One alternative view is offered by Father John Dear, a Jesuit and executive director of the interfaith Fellowship of Reconciliation, headquartered in Nyack, N.Y.
Father Dear quoted the late Bishop Carroll Dozier of Memphis, Tenn. (1971-82), who said, “Just war theory belongs in the same drawer as the flat-earth theory.”
The priest said, “I believe the just war theory doesn't hold anymore because of the kinds of weapons we now have.” Proportionality is the key to him. “Warfare has changed. The criteria [for just war] can't be met anymore,” he argued.
“Terrorism cannot be stopped by further terrorism. We condemn these latest bombings, just as we condemn the terrorist bombings of the U.S. embassies, and we call for creative non-violent means to solve international conflict. There are such means available. It is time to use them,” he said.
Despite the views of Father Dear and other proponents of nonviolence, support for the Aug. 20 retaliation has been strong. There is, however, a diversity of views as to whether such strikes can always be assumed to be moral and just, under the teachings of the Catholic Church and other religious groups.
The concept of just war, although ingrained in our cultural ethos, may or may not need refining in the nuclear age, but it continues to give many insights into what might constitute appropriate action.
It also provides an opportunity for vital introspection for those who are trained and willing to do so. As with so many rich traditions that the Church has preserved, it causes us to think about our impulses and their potential consequences.
Joseph Esposito writes from Washington, D.C.
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Esposito ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Muslims Raise Fairness Issues As U.S. Gets 'Tough on Terrorism' DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Sudanese protesters may be filling the streets of Khartoum with placards reading “No war for Monica” — a reference to suspicions that President Bill Clinton's mid-August bombing raids on a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and suspected terrorist bases in Afghanistan were undertaken to deflect attention from the president's domestic troubles — but most Muslim observers and Middle East specialists are thinking hard about the long-range implications of the Administration's new “get tough on terrorism” policy.
On the morning of Aug. 20, the United States launched military strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan aimed at groups believed responsible for bomb attacks at American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya Aug. 7 that killed more than 260 people and wounded 5,500 others, mostly Kenyans. U.S. officials said that early investigations by American and African intelligence teams had led them to target the terrorist network believed to be run by the super-wealthy Saudi dissident and guerrilla leader Osamma bin Laden.
The Clinton Administration later characterized the actions as part of a broader “war against terrorism” and vowed to crush the bin Laden organization, a loose coalition of radical groups with bases in many predominantly Islamic countries, that law enforcement officials have long believed to be behind terrorist attacks in the United States, the Middle East, and now Africa.
Despite all the anti-terrorism rhetoric, however, Administration officials have gone out of their way to distance their war against bin Laden from relations with the Muslim world at large.
“I want the world to understand,” said Clinton in his formal address to the nation Aug. 20, “that our actions today were not aimed against Islam.” Instead, the president made careful distinctions between the Muslim followers of “a great religion” and radical groups that espouse “a horrible distortion of their religion to justify the murder of innocents.”
(Bin Laden, who is not an Islamic jurist, issued a fatwa, or “ruling,” earlier this year in which he said that killing American civilians, in addition to targeting military personnel and government employees, was religiously permitted.)
The Administration's stance was, as Gustav Niebuhr noted in The New York Times Aug. 22, an unusual mix of national security considerations, the recognition of the importance of a religious faith, and a gingerly attempt to zig-zag through the minefield that lay between the two.
“It was as if, after a Cold War that obscured forces like religion, ethnicity, and national culture within a global struggle between democracy and Communism,” Niebuhr remarked, “Mr. Clinton was saying that his Administration did not want to see the struggle revived as a confrontation between the West and Islam.”
Aside from anticipated anti-American protests in a few Muslim capitals, the general response of the Islamic world so far to the bombings — and, more particularly, the response of America's Muslims — has been critical, but thoughtful, and, some say, may well presage a more concerted attempt on the part of mainstream Muslim organizations to help shape, and temper, the new U.S. anti-terrorism crusade.
“I have, frankly, mixed feelings about the president's comments about Islam,” Salaam al Marayati, director of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), told the Register.
“On the one hand we have these gentle words about the Islamic faith,” he said. “But on the other, the Islamic world is treated to these harsh military actions. There really is a double standard at work here.”
Al-Marayati pointed to the examples of Ireland and Bosnia.
“There's terrorism there, too,” he said, “but there the U.S. advocates diplomatic solutions. In the Muslim world, though, the first reaction is the use of military muscle. It's all getting a bit transparent.”
And counterproductive, he said.
We don't attack Radko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, Serbian warlords who are responsible for the deaths of thousands of Bosnian Muslims, even though they're headquartered within a few miles of American forces stationed in Bosnia, al-Marayati opined, because we fear they'll retaliate against our troops.
“We go against cheap targets, poor countries like Sudan or Afghanistan who have no conventional means to hit back,” he said. “And precisely because they have no conventional way to respond, the likelihood of the use of terrorism increases.”
“Air strikes, anger, anti-American feelings, terrorism — we're caught in this vicious cycle of violence,” said al Marayati.
Dr. Maher Hathout, spokesperson for the Islamic Center of Southern California, and a leading Muslim inter-faith leader in the Los Angeles area, thinks that one of the ways the United States might break out of the “old paradigm” is to include American Muslims in the development of anti-terrorism policy.
According to most estimates there are more than 4 million Muslims in the United States today.
“Who has more to lose from terrorist acts [like those attributed to bin Laden] than ordinary Muslims? Terrorism puts us in a very difficult position. On the one hand, it kills Americans, our fellow countrymen. On the other, terrorism tends to scapegoat Islam, and puts people in Muslim countries in harm's way. We have more to gain from eliminating terrorism than anybody else, so why shouldn't we be included in the policy debate?” he asked in a recent radio interview.
Hathout is writing an open letter to the president calling for a public debate on anti-terrorism policy. In addition, several Muslim organizations, including MPAC, are planning to convene a conference on the subject in Washington, D.C., before the end of the year.
However, Joshua Muravchik, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., finds himself less than impressed with the current Muslim reactions to the campaign against Osamma bin Laden.
“I'd be happy to see more Muslims denounce him,” he said. “What disturbs me is that, instead of denouncing extremists, most Muslim groups denounce the West for stereotyping.”
There's an easy way to stop the West from stereotyping Muslims, said Muravchik.
“Make more noise about how repugnant you find what these extremists stand for; how angry you are about what they do; how serious the misrepresentation of Islam is that they pose. I just find most Muslim spokespeople grudging, finally, in their denunciations.”
But Muravchik agrees the recent U.S. air strikes are “worthless if they're not part of a broader policy.”
“I think that it will be necessary to combine fighting terrorism with making a maximum effort to cultivate forces in the Islamic world that share certain basic civilizational assumptions with us,” he said.
“I have to imagine that encouraging the development of democratic values in the Islamic world is a big part of that.”
For Christian Brother David Carroll, assistant to the secretary general of the New York-based Catholic New East Welfare Association (CNEWA), empowering majorities in the Muslim world to reject violence is the key to solving the terrorism dilemma.
“It's really a matter of moral suasion,” said Brother Carroll. “Not air strikes.”
Brother Carroll pointed to the example of Northern Ireland.
“We couldn't just ‘write off’ the nationalist groups that were violent,” he said. “They were part of the problem, they needed to be part of the solution. Eventually the desire of the majority for peace, and the majority's disillusionment with violence, compelled the extremists to come to the table.”
Now that much of the Irish Republican Army mainstream has been persuaded to join the peace process through patient dialogue, Carroll said, “the cranks can be effectively isolated.”
The same goes for the Middle East, he said.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was long considered a terrorist group, but today they form the basis of the Palestine Authority and negotiate with the government of the state of Israel, he pointed out.
“There's no easy way to bring such developments about,” he said. “Certainly not by knocking out military dormitories and shooting ranges in a Third World country.”
“The process of long, sustained dialogue — that's the crucial element.”
Paradoxically, Carroll sees a potential opening for dialogue in the aftermath of the U.S. air strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan.
“There's a window of opportunity now for Western leaders to sit down with the regime in Khartoum,” he said. The long-isolated Sudanese regime of Hassan al-Turabi issued an invitation Aug. 24 for United Nations officials and other international leaders to inspect the damaged pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum that the United States contends was used to make precursors for chemical warfare.
“A lot will depend on how the West responds,” he said. “There's a chance here to start a process that might help moderate this regime. I just hope we seize it,” he said.
Gabriel Meyer writes from Los Angeles.
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gabriel Meyer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: La Vang Bicentennial Marked with Fervor DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:Vietnamese Marian apparitions of 1798 bolstered persecuted faithful
WASHINGTON—Most Catholics are familiar with the Blessed Virgin's appearances in places like Lourdes and Fatima. What is not so well known is that Marian apparitions have been reported in many non-western settings as well—in Africa, for example, and, perhaps most strikingly, in Asia.
Among the Marian visions granted to Asian Catholics, the 200-year-old apparitions at La Vang, Vietnam, have been attracting media attention in recent weeks. Pilgrimages to the shrine for the 1998 bicentennial of the event in mid-August demonstrated the fervor and vitality of the Church in communist-dominated Vietnam, and a high-profile celebration of La Vang in Washington, D.C., last month reminded Americans of the determination of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese Catholics who found refuge here after the collapse of South Vietnam.
There are approximately 200,000 Vietnamese Catholics in the United States today. The Catholic population of Vietnam is about 6 million, out of a total of 62 million.
La Vang also highlights for many western observers one of the least known corners of the Catholic world — the long-suffering communities of Asian Catholics in places such as Vietnam, Japan and China — “martyr Churches” that have endured centuries of often unimaginable persecution in the name of Christ.
“At La Vang, Our Blessed Mother appeared in order to console the people and to urge them to pray for the strength to persevere.”
That's how Father Joseph Tran, a U.S.-based Vietnamese priest, and secretary general for the organizing committee of the La Vang celebrations in Washington, D.C., recently summarized the message of Our Lady of La Vang.
It was a message addressed to a Church in extremis.
In the 18th century what is now Vietnam was divided into two kingdoms: The north, with Hanoi as its capital, was ruled by the Trinh family and the South, ruled from the city of Hue, was governed by the Nguyens. These southern rulers sought the help of the French in 1787 as part of their campaign to subdue the north. However, a group of intellectuals, known as Van Than, opposed French influence and led a palace revolution that placed a king who shared their point of view on the southern throne. Quang Trung died shortly after reuniting the country, leaving the reins of government in the hands of his ten-year-old son, Canh Thinh.
On Aug. 17, 1798, in an action reminiscent of the edict of Japan's shogunate two centuries earlier, the young king's advisers issued a royal ordinance forbidding the practice of the Catholic faith by Vietnamese on the grounds that it was a foreign religion. The Van Than clique saw native Catholics as a “fifth column” responsible for the growing French presence in the country.
Like its Japanese counterpart, the decree commanded nothing less than the wholesale extermination of Christianity in Vietnam. Churches were destroyed, foreign and native clergy arrested and killed, and Vietnamese believers were given the option of apostasy or death. In the century of persecution and civil war that followed — a war that ended with a French protectorate over what was then called Indo-China in the late 1880s — more than 100,000 Vietnamese Catholics were slain.
When the king's decree was first issued in 1798, many Catholics fled into the jungles. The dense foliage of La Vang, a hill about 40 miles from the city of Hue in central Vietnam, provided a haven from persecution for thousands of believers, although other dangers stalked them there — wild animals, famine, disease.
Families gathered every night beneath a large tree in the forest to pray the rosary and seek God's help. According to the traditional account, one night Our Lady appeared to them, bearing the Child Jesus and surrounded by angels. She promised them her protection and assured them that their prayers would be heard. Most of all, she urged her supplicants to be faithful.
“Have trust, be willing to suffer hardship and sorrow. I have already granted your prayers,” she told them. “Whoever will come and pray with me here will receive favors and blessings.”
As a sign, she instructed the faithful to boil the leaves of certain trees and many of those suffering from diseases were cured.
Other apparitions followed, and a series of small straw chapels were built to commemorate the site.
“The oral tradition,” said Father Tran, “is that Our Lady appeared every night to encourage the people. Word spread and La Vang became a place of pilgrimage. What I can say is that many miracles have taken place, and continue to take place there.”
Unfortunately, no early written attestations of the appearances at La Vang survive, probably because Church archives in nearby Hue were destroyed during the civil wars of 1833 and 1861.
Nevertheless La Vang continued to function as a beacon of hope and as a place of solace and blessing for thousands of harried Catholics during the terrible decades of persecution.
When the war against the Church ended in 1886, pilgrimage to La Vang increased. Beginning in 1901, national pilgrimages to the site were organized, usually every three years. By 1928, the shrine had become an independent parish.
La Vang was, however, destined to play as major a role in Vietnam's recent history as it had in the brutal civil wars of the past. In that sense, La Vang occupies a place in the drama of Catholic identity in Southeast Asia that is not unlike the role of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the life of Mexico or Czestochowa in Poland.
The defeat of the French in the IndoChina war (1946-1954) led once again to the division of the country, this time into a communist North and an anti-communist South. In April, 1961, the bishops of South Vietnam, assembled in Hue, made a vow to the Immaculate Heart of Mary to consecrate a national shrine to her, asking Our Lady for the freedom of the Church and peace for their divided land. Later in August, the bishops recognized La Vang as a national Marian center, and early the following year, in the letter Magno Nos, Pope John XXIII raised the parish to the status of a minor basilica.
By the mid-1960s, La Vang had been transformed into a veritable Marian polis. Holy Rosary Square with its 15 statues representing the mysteries of the rosary set off the new basilica. There were two small lakes, fountains, retreat houses. But in 1972, barely nine years after completion, the new Marian complex was totally destroyed by invading North Vietnamese forces.
But that was hardly the end of the story.
After reunification, all the bishops of Vietnam, gathered in Hanoi in 1980, reconfirmed the earlier designation of La Vang as the country's central Marian site, and national pilgrimages resumed. In 1996, the last major national pilgrimage to the shrine before this year's bicentennial observances, not only did larger numbers of Vietnamese Catholics participate than ever before, but they were joined by significant numbers of pilgrims from the surrounding countries.
This year's bicentennial celebrations began to take shape as early as 1993. Pope John Paul II urged Vietnamese Catholics who participated in that year's World Youth Day in Denver to look to the 200th anniversary of the La Vang apparitions as an opportunity “to reinforce unity and mutual understanding” between all Vietnamese. And on several other occasions, particularly the 1994 ad limina visits of the Vietnamese bishops, the Pontiff spoke about the importance of the upcoming anniversary, especially in light of the Church-wide preparations for the Great Jubilee of the year 2000. He also underscored his regard for the event by granting a plenary indulgence for those who participate in any of the bicentennial celebrations of Our Lady of La Vang.
Following that lead, the bishops in Vietnam announced a year-long series of pilgrimages to La Vang and other commemorative events only to find those plans scaled back by the communist-dominated Vietnamese government late last year.
According to a Catholic News Service report, the government's office of religious affairs ruled last December that the celebrations of La Vang would be limited to the traditional Aug. 13-15 time slot, and be open only to Catholics from the Archdiocese of Hue, where the shrine is located, and that tour operators would be forbidden to bring foreign visitors to the site. The government said that the province was experiencing the worst draught in a century, and that its restrictions were appropriate for difficult economic times.
“The government tried to frustrate the organization of pilgrimages,” Father Tran told the Register, “and there was no reason to do so. We had clearly demonstrated that the [commemoration] had no political implications, that it was purely religious.”
As it turned out, more than 200,000 people mobbed the three-day event in central Vietnam in mid-August, including 14 bishops, 300 priests, and representatives from every diocese in the country.
Vatican Radio reported Aug. 17 that the celebration, marked by processions, Masses, and catechesis was perhaps the largest “unofficial” gathering in Vietnam since the country's reunification 23 years ago — with numbers exceeding even the organizer's expectations.
La Vang celebrations in the U.S. took place a week later than their Vietnamese counterparts, Aug. 20-23 in Washington, DC. These involved workshops on the Church and the third millennium held at The Catholic University of America, a youth rally and candlelight prayer vigil, an outdoor procession in honor of Our Lady of La Vang and the martyrs of Vietnam, all culminating in a Mass in honor of Our Lady of La Vang held at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception with James Cardinal Hickey presiding, and Archbishop F.X. Nguyen Van Thuan, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, as homilist.
More than 10,000 people attended the celebration.
“One of the aims we had at the event,” Father Tran related, “was to thank the American people and the Catholic Church in America for helping welcome more than one million Vietnamese refugees to this country since 1975. We really want to do this, to thank people for their generosity and help.”
Father Tran also indicated that his committee was “in the process of preparing a request” that a chapel to Our Lady of La Vang be included among those in Washington's National Shrine.
We have so much to thank her for, said the priest. “In a certain way, Vietnamese Catholics — their survival, their faith — is the greatest of the miracles of Our Lady of La Vang.”
Senior writer Gabriel Meyer is based in Los Angeles.
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gabriel Meyer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Governing with a Sense of God DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:Michigan's Gov. John Engler grew up in a Catholic family of nine on a farm near the small town of Beal City, Mich. He was elected the state's chief executive on a strong pro-life plank in November 1990. He is currently running for a third term against Geoffrey Fieger, a long-time attorney for Jack Kevorkian. Under Engler, Michigan has passed a law to allow more educational choice and has opened more than 100 new charter schools. His tenure has also produced a parental-consent requirement, and a late-term abortion ban. Most recently, Engler signed a ban on assisted suicide. He spoke recently with Register correspondent Kate Ernsting.
Personal: Age 49; married to Michelle Engler; father of three-and-a-half-year-old triplet daughters: Hannah, Madeleine, and Margaret; parishioners of St. Thomas Aquinas Church in East Lansing, Mich.
Background: Two-term Republican governor; at 22 (1970), became the youngest state representative ever elected — the first in a series of nine straight election victories; elected to the State Senate in 1978, and later made Senate majority leader.
Achievements: Abortions in Michigan have decreased by 40% during the past decade, and teen pregnancies have dropped by 25%; student performance on nationalized tests is up more than 10%; Michigan ranks first in the nation in new factories, independence in welfare, adoption of abused and neglected children, and in tax reductions.
Ernsting: Michigan has been a battleground for the assisted suicide issue during the last few years. Jack Kevorkian is nationally known because he has helped more than 100 people commit suicide. Previous attempts to prosecute him have failed. In July, you signed into law a new assisted-suicide ban. Please tell us about it.
Engler: We think it will be very effective. Those who are assisting someone to commit suicide — who are preying on the innocent — this law will put out of business. And specifically, that would be Dr. Kevorkian.
So you expect this law to stem the threat posed by Kevorkian and those like him?
The penal code has been amended and a felony established for assisting in a suicide…. The law is written to address the legal objections that had been raised about previous legislation that had been struck down. Michigan has a common law prohibition against assisted suicide, but the difficulty has been to communicate to juries what that means in practice. So, now a prosecutor will be able to point to the [written] law.
This ban passed both houses of the legislature with substantial bipartisan support…. I think we are appalled that Michigan has become, with Dr. Kevorkian, a national site for people wishing to end their lives.
You helped negotiate enactment of this law.
Yes. I support this law and have also been involved in other legislative efforts to end assisted suicide. With this one, we had the votes to pass the measure, but we were short of having two-thirds of the vote to make it effective immediately. So at the end of the legislative session we were able to get an agreement that it would become effective Sept. 1. Otherwise, it wouldn't become effective until next April.
Every month that goes by we are more at risk and — more importantly — vulnerable people are at risk.
A local assisted-suicide advocacy group, Merian's Friends, has successfully placed an initiative to legalize assisted suicide on the November ballot. If approved, this proposal would nullify the ban.
Very simply, what the ballot proposal does is legalize Jack Kevorkian's suicide plan. It even allows people from out of state to continue to come to Michigan if they can show any connection to anybody inside Michigan.
I understand that the Merian's Friends' initiative would effectively preempt the medical examiner from investigating an assisted suicide.
It uses a politically appointed taxpayer-funded group of citizens to give a review — and I think that is a very dubious provision.
Recently it was reported that abortions in Michigan have decreased by 40% and teen pregnancies by 25%. To what do you attribute these trends?
I'm pleased by this very substantial decline. To talk about it, let me separate the two. The decline in teen pregnancies is also accompanied by a substantial decline in teen birth rates. The birth rate has come down among 15- to 19-year-olds some 21%, and only three states — Alaska, Maine, and Vermont — have shown a greater decline. It is very clear that the educational message of abstinence is working. The message we are giving is of abstinence — period.
Is it a message you are promoting in Michigan's schools?
We want the message in the schools, but there's also a public campaign we have sponsored with ads praising abstinence. Everywhere that we can in terms of public utterances from state officials and leaders, we are saying that one of the biggest mistakes a teen can make is to become pregnant. There's nothing they can do that will more surely reduce their ability later in life to enjoy the kind of lifestyle they would like than to have a child as a teen.
In terms of protecting the lives of the unborn, I think we have established certain priorities. Under the leadership of my lieutenant governor, Connie Binsfield, we have reformed our adoption laws to make that much easier in the state. We've made “adoption the better option.” We have really tried to stress that if someone does find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy there is that option — that there are so many childless couples in our state who are just praying to have an opportunity to raise that child.
How does your Catholic faith help you personally? What do you derive from it that assists you in your role as governor?
It's a source of great strength for me, for Michelle, my wife, and for our family. We both learned this growing up. We have always found that our belief in God — our faith — is something that we can rely on. It puts a perspective on whatever you are doing.
Even if you are the governor of a state, it pales in comparison to the eternal truths.
Do you have any new perspective on your faith and God's nature since the birth of your triplet daughters?
I'll tell you one of the things that has struck me. I think it is possible to maybe glimpse the meaning of what it is for everyone to have their own unique soul when you see three daughters, born on the same day, within the same womb — and now see them as they are three-and-a-half years old, growing up in the same environment all of their lives, yet each of them unique and different, with likes and dislikes, and thought processes that are just their own.
There's nothing that was done to develop one in one way and one in another. They're just a gift from God — unique little people.
In exit polls conducted after the Aug. 4 primary, Michigan voters cited education of their children as their most important issue. You've supported educational choice since you became governor. Please comment on your efforts to improve educational opportunities in the state.
Michigan has a very firm constitutional ban against public dollars assisting non-public or private schools. Rather than engaging in a campaign to change that, I put my focus on creating as much opportunity through choice and competition as possible in the traditional public school system.
We now have more than 100 charter schools — the third greatest number in the country. We have students attending school districts next door or across town, that are different and fit their individual needs for an education program better. It's what the parents and the students want. This is sending a message to every school that, just as happens in our community college and university system, when the student and parent have a choice, schools are working to satisfy the customer. I'm seeing school reform efforts undertaken in schools that have been resistant for years.
I've always felt that we had a lot of talented teachers, and if they were unleashed to teach, if some of the distractions were cleared away — such as a violent student, a bureaucratic lack of priority, or something outside the school — that we could do very well. Gradually, we are winning a lot of converts among public school teachers who say, “We understand what's going on now.”
The Republican Party has a pro-life platform, but there is pressure from some quarters to not only include people who are pro-abortion, but to change the pro-life stance of the platform. Do you think that will happen? Do you think the idea of appealing to more voters justifies changing the platform?
I think there's a difference. There are Republicans who have very different opinions on issues like abortion. That doesn't mean they're not Republicans. Just as some Democrats have gone against their party's platform and been very anti-abortion. [Outgoing State Sen.] Mike Griffin from Jackson is one, he has been a great Democratic legislator over the years. [Former] Gov. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania is another. Now, it may mean that Bob Casey doesn't get invited to speak at the Democratic convention, but it doesn't mean that he's not a Democrat.
In the Republican Party, since we only have two main parties in the country, you are going to have some differences. There are some Republicans who are more economic-oriented, some who are almost libertarian. We have had a debate within the party about drugs, and have had very prominent Republicans who have basically tossed in the towel on the drug fight, saying, “Look, let's just legalize them.” I don't mean to equate these things with the [pro-life part of the platform], but obviously, drugs take lives, too.
I don't think we are applying a litmus test and saying, “You can't be Republican.” I know there was a debate at the National Republican Committee a few months back, where folks proposed that we deny funding to [candidates] who have a position on abortion different than the platform. [Michigan State Republican Chairwoman] Betsy DeVos did not support that, and she is strongly pro-life.
We had three “no” votes to that proposal from Michigan. That is based on the fact that, as this debate goes on, you want to be able to do some persuading and arguing, and you want to be able to talk to people and say, “Will you take a look at this issue?” For instance, I think that the partial-birth abortion issue has caused a lot of people to rethink what had been absolute positions on the abortion issue.
Do you think people are turning around and going against abortion-on-demand when they hear the facts about partial-birth abortion?
They begin to realize what's going on. I mean, our girls were born at 35 weeks. You know, multiple births often come earlier. Like those remarkable septuplets out in Iowa. At the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor, what they can do in terms of saving a two-pound baby is extraordinary. It's hard to imagine — as a father of what were very tiny infants — how in one room we're going through heroic efforts to save, and in the next room we're killing, babies of the same age.
Do you foresee the Republican Party changing its platform?
Every four years it's a completely different set of people who participate. But if the presidential candidate, for example, comes in and says, “I want a change,” that candidate would be talking to delegates who would have been elected before [the nomination].
It's going to be the grassroots, and I don't see the party platform changing very much.
Geoffrey Fieger, Jack Kevorkian's former lawyer, was nominated by Democrats to oppose you this November. Will your election strategy change because of the reputation of your opponent?
We're not going to change our campaign. Of course we are going to work very hard to reach out to Democrats who are simply going to be unable to support somebody who, I think, lacks the ethics necessary to be governor. I think this is the first time we have someone running who has been cited by the state courts for unethical behavior in the practice of law.
For somebody like me, who is Catholic, or even for any person of faith, whether Jewish, Christian, or otherwise, it is hard to imagine somebody who refers to Cardinal Maida [of Detroit] as a nut and then describes the Council of Orthodox rabbis as “closer to Nazis than they realize” as deserving support.
He tends to paint people of faith as religious zealots with a very broad brush, and that is unacceptable. The intolerance is a sharp break from the civility we've always had in Michigan politics. You go all the way back to [former Democratic Gov. G. Mennen] “Soapy” Williams and there has always been, at least in this state, a clean campaign and a level of discourse that didn't tolerate singling out groups or people.
Can you name anyone, historical or contemporary, who is a personal hero for you?
One of my great heroes is Margaret Thatcher, who I think has been enormously important in the way in which she helped change the world. She was elected prior to Reagan and was a wonderful leader. Teddy Roosevelt was one of the presidents I admire. Of course I've read a lot about Lincoln, I admire him, and Jefferson was another who was so remarkably gifted as a leader.
The Pope holds great hope for the new millennium, based on God's plans and dependent on our response to them. What are your hopes for your daughters and their generation in Michigan, in the United States, and world?
First and foremost we want to see them and their generation be able to grow up in a world that is at peace — in a world that is able to deal with some of the human tragedies that still are out there. When you see the magazine pictures of the Sudanese people right now, it's inconceivable that this could go on, that governments could look the other way as people starve to death … when we deal with surpluses of food in many countries.
In this country, we need to see people get out of the grinding poverty that still exists. With the welfare reforms that we are having, I'm hopeful that my daughters will be the first to grow up in a country where people are in charge of their own lives. I'm hoping it is as close to a drug-free generation as possible. If we could end the curse of drugs and other substance abuse in society, we would see overnight a dramatic reduction in incidences of child abuse and neglect.
—Kate Ernsting
------- EXCERPT: Michigan's chief executive assesses the future of his state and the country ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gov. John Engler ----- KEYWORDS: Imperson -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:Catholic Schools Vouch for Latino Kids
The situation there highlights the issues involved in voucher debates nationwide: public schools complain that they are losing money because of the scholarships, while thousands of poor families are eager to abandon well-funded but ineffective district schools. Voucher dollars are causing the school district to compete in ways it otherwise did not, and diocesan schools are a major beneficiary of the new students, whom they welcome while worrying about how it will affect their Catholic identity.
About 616 awardees have shared $3 million in tuition payments so far, officials with the Children's Educational Opportunity Foundation (CEO) told the paper. CEO gives vouchers of $2,000-$4,000 to families, said the report. Meanwhile, the school district complains it stands to lose $6 million in projected state funding next year as a consequence — though admitting that the state of Texas will still provide it more than nine times that amount.
What's more, even though CEO had to turn away most of the 1,479 applicants and more than 4,500 phone calls, the popular vouchers have caused a competitive response. Edgewood has opened up special vocational and other programs to outside districts to attract more students. One district board member even complained about the competition. He was quoted expressing resentment that “these kids are being experimented with.”
The archdiocesan superintendent, Dale Hoyt, claims enrollment is rising noticeably in Catholic schools in the area. He wants to reassure state critics, he told the paper, “as long as it does not take away the Catholic identity, as long as it does not have a negative effect on the purpose and philosophy of Catholic schools.”
Scandal Drove Catholic Supporters from Clinton
That made William Powers of the National Journal notice something: it seems that many of the president's former allies who dropped their support of him during the scandal share one thing in common.
“Is it any coincidence that so many of the commentators who have chosen to signal their unhappiness with Mr. Clinton, despite their ideological comfort with him, come out of the same Church?” he asked in his report.
He listed several Catholic detractors: CNBC's Matthews, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, The Washington Post's Michael Kelly and Mary McGrory, PBS's Mark Shields, ABC's Cokie Roberts, NBC's Tim Russert, and former White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, each of whom has criticized the president regarding the scandal. Matthews gives Catholic morality the credit for his opposition.
Roberts gives the Sacrament of Penance some of the credit, too. Growing up Catholic, she is quoted saying, “You just hear over and over, ‘You take responsibility. You did it.’”
In contrast, she called Clinton's begrudging admission of lying to the country but not to the independent counsel a “mea minima culpa.”
Elected Catholics in Michigan Told to Defend Life
The law would legalize assisted suicide, repealing the state's ban. It is a centerpiece of the gubernatorial campaign of Geoffery Fieger, whom the state's Democratic party has vigorously supported despite much controversy.
Fieger, the lawyer who successfully defended suicide-specialist Dr. Jack Kevorkian, has been widely quoted ridiculing the Pope; saying Orthodox Jews are like Nazis; and calling Jesus a “goofball who was nailed to a cross.”
The Catholic Campaign named Catholic politicians and quoted Pope John Paul II's words in The Gospel of Life that prohibit them from supporting the measure.
“In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it,” said the encyclical.
Robert Mylod, co-chairman of the Catholic Campaign for America, named these Catholic elected officials in Michigan: U.S. Rep. John Dingle, David Bonier, Joe Knollenberg, Dale Kildee, Gov. John Engler, State Attorney General Frank Kelly, Wayne County Executive Ed McNamara, and Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer.
Gov. Engler opposes assisted suicide. (See related “InPerson,” page 1.)
------- EXCERPT: Excerpts from select publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Orthodox Theologian Praises Catholic Model DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:WARSAW—A leading Russian Orthodox theologian has praised the “universalism” achieved by the Catholic Church under Pope John Paul II.
He added that more and more Russian priests believed an encounter with Western Christianity could help the Orthodox world meet contemporary challenges.
“The Catholic Church has preserved its universal character, even though there were moments when it forgot it,” said Father Georgi Chistiakov, a Moscow University professor.
“I'm amazed and fascinated by its current dynamism, its courage in asking old questions while seeking new answers. I'm impressed by the path the Church has taken over the 30 years since Vatican II.”
In an interview with Poland's Tygodnik Powszechny Catholic weekly, Father Chistiakov said Western Christians had responded successfully to new problems at a time when Orthodox counterparts were convinced their main task was to restore Church life and theology “in a 19th-century form.”
“Seeking out new theology isn't a Russian tradition — Orthodox Russia needs to be shown that new horizons are possible,” the priest continued.
“We must be conscious that Christianity isn't only a repetition of old revealed truths, but an endless search and discovery, an eternal spring. This is visible in the contemporary theology and life of Western Churches.”
Father Chistiakov said views of Catholicism in Russia were outdated, adding that few Orthodox Christians were aware of key papal texts such as Orientale Lumen and Ut Unum Sint.
However, he stressed that traditional attitudes were being questioned increasingly by “theological daredevils,” who believed the Church's authorities should be open to criticism.
“Orthodox theology is dominated by a fear of taking new steps — many are convinced all such steps will amount to a betrayal of Orthodox tradition,” the theologian said.
“In reality, traditions shouldn't divide us, but allow us to see the variety and richness of Christianity. A Catholic can be fascinated by St. Serafin of Sarov, just as an Orthodox Christian can revere St. Francis of Assisi.”
Disputes over ties with the Catholic Church, whose million Russian members face tough curbs under a 1997 religious law, have intensified in the past two years, with many Orthodox clergy demanding a cutback in ecumenical contacts in response to alleged Catholic proselytism.
Among recent incidents, an Italian priest was dismissed from Altai State University at Orthodox insistence, while Jozef Cardinal Glemp of Poland was reported by Church sources to have emerged “depressed” from a June meeting with Metropolitan Vladimir of St. Petersburg.
However, in his interview, Father Chistiakov said Orthodox anti-ecumenists had failed to enlist their Patriarch's support against proponents of change.
“Alexei II finds himself between the hammer and the anvil,” the theologian added. “But he is not our opponent. He always says he has nothing against us, but only believes there's too much noise around us.”
Father Chistiakov said he had met the Pope several times, and believed John Paul II embodied an “unusual mixture” of “fundamentalism and openness.”
“The Church elected him knowing he could harmoniously combine faithfulness to tradition with a courageous acceptance of contemporary challenges,” the priest said.
“He is able to take new and unexpected steps, while remaining deeply rooted in Polish spirituality.”
The theologian, a former close associate of the murdered Orthodox ecumenist Father Alexander Men, said he saw himself as belonging to a “universal Church,” adding that he hoped to bring other Russian Christians closer to Western traditions while remaining loyal to his Orthodox priesthood. (Jonathan Luxmoore)
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:Non-Catholic Students Learn Prayers and Attend Mass
In Australia, the latest enrollment figures show that non-Catholics are flocking to Catholic schools as never before — knowing that they will be required to participate in religious education and regularly attend Mass.
In many parts of Australia, non-Catholic enrollment has grown as high as 25%. A spokeswoman at Australia's Parramatta diocese told the paper that “students come to the school knowing it has a definite ethos and commitment to religious instruction and prayer.”
It quoted one non-Catholic high school freshman student saying, “I don't see myself as being Catholic. But I pray to God at church and I learn about loving God and helping people.”
In recent tests, students averaged 97% on questions requiring that they know Catholic prayers, said the report. The schools want the students to get their scores on doctrinal questions up to that same level.
Said one school spokesman, “My hope would be that when these children finish [senior year] that there would not be any significant gaps in their knowledge and understanding of the Catholic faith tradition.”
Polish Diaspora United by Church and Scouting
They haven't forgotten them, however, thanks to the International Polish Scouting Organization (which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year) and the Catholic Church.
There are Polish scouts in 11 countries. In the United States, the group now has more than 100,000 members in 11 states, said the Columbus Dispatch. Ohio was the site this month of the international group's jubilee, which is held every six years.
The Polish scouts stress their heritage, which includes Catholicism. Archbishop Szczepan Wesoly flew in from Rome to kickoff the golden anniversary jubilee with an outdoor Mass in Polish at the camp Aug. 16, said the report.
“Incorporating Polish language and heritage into programs keeps Polish-American youth in touch with their roots,” Scout leader Andy Stachowiak of New Britain, Conn., told the paper. “If you know your background, you fit in.”
Julian Green's Diary Ends
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Aug. 17—One man who figured largely in what has been called the “20th century Catholic literary revival” has died, reported the Associated Press (AP), which learned the information from French media.
Julian Green, born in Paris to American parents and educated at the University of Virginia, was the author of several novels about the American South — in French. But perhaps he was best known for his extensive diary that chronicled his life among the Parisian elite, and which expressed a profound faith and his struggle to keep it.
He also translated Catholic poet Charles Peguy into English in language that bilingual critics have called better than the original. AP reported that he was the first foreigner to be elected to the Academie Francaise that guards the purity of the French language. He died at age 97, but the report said that he had already stopped his ambitious schedule of spending hours every day writing in his journal.
The diary itself, 40 years before his death, offers a clue why.
“You will be a better man only when you have completely lost sight of yourself and will then think of your Creator,” he told himself. “No more diary, no more mirror, no more self-complacency. A fly, after long wanderings over a windowpane in search of the sun it sees but cannot reach, being separated from it by this sheet of glass, will fly out of the window when death opens it.”
------- EXCERPT: Excerpts from select publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:20 Years Later They Call Paul VI a Prophet
Paul VI's Humanae Vitae is the encyclical letter that reaffirmed Church teaching about of contraception. It correctly predicted that a contraceptive culture would mean more immorality, worse situations for women, disregard for human life, and governments that would push the pill as an easy — but ultimately ineffective — solution to poverty.
Often overlooked, Paul VI's other work was prophetic as well, wrote Schultz, prefiguring Pope John Paul II's unique pontificate. His many trips set the stage for his successor's extensive travels. The Pope also prepared for later anti-communist successes when he “established connections and precedents that John Paul II would use to elicit growing concessions from the communists.”
“Paul VI also helped bring the various parties to the Paris peace talks,” which led to the end of the Vietnam War, he continued — and it was Paul who first said: “If you want peace, work for justice.”
Schultz said the popular Pope did much for women, as well: first of all, by standing single-handedly against contraception, but also by proclaiming the first women as doctors of the Church (Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Sienna), and by other actions.
On a personal note, Shultz added, “[g]ood literature, art, music, and culture touched him as deeply as theology and philosophy.”
------- EXCERPT: Excerpts from select publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: The Catechism of the Catholic Church on 'Just War' Doctrine DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:“The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
“These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the ‘just war’ doctrine.
“The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.”
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Ethics of Cloning DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:The American Enterprise Institute has just published an informative little book called The Ethics of Human Cloning. The book is an exchange between Leon Kass, a physician and bioethicist, and James Wilson, a retired UCLAprofessor who has written on restoring a moral sense to our nation. When it was announced in early 1997 that Dolly the sheep had been cloned by Scottish scientist Dr. Ian Wilmut, a public debate began about the implications of cloning. Scientists tended to favor tolerance for further controlled experiments. Ethicists tried to evaluate the implications of such experiments. Government leaders in the United States looked to the National Bioethics Advisory Committee for a thorough review of the legal and ethical issues raised by the possibility of human cloning.
Dr. Wilmut emphasized the complexities of his success — he had 276 failures before the procedure worked. He also expressed opposition to human cloning. Gradually the public debate seemed to reach some type of consensus that cloning techniques on plants, animals, and human tissues should not be prohibited, but attempts at cloning a human being should not be pursued. The consensus was and is fragile, and most people do not expect people's ethical discomfort to ultimately prevent human cloning.
Professors Kass and Wilson each had published essays that stood out for their moral clarity and seriousness. These are presented in The Ethics of Human Cloning, along with a response from each scholar.
Kass' original essay, “The Wisdom of Repugnance,” published in The New Republic, argues that “by removing human conception from the human body and by introducing new parties in reproduction [scientists and physicians],” the origin of life has been put literally in human hands and a process has been initiated that leads “in practice, to the increasing technical mastery of human generation and, in thought, to the continuing erosion of respect for the mystery of sexuality and human renewal.”
Kass' underlying argument is based on respect for the “anthropology — natural and social — of sexual reproduction.” In effect, Kass argues for a total prohibition of human cloning. At the same time he recognizes that such a prohibition will be hard to achieve unless founded on social repugnance.
“In crucial cases,” says Kass, “repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason's power fully to articulate it.” He further states that in a world where virtually everything is permissible so long as it is freely done, “repugnance revolts against the excesses of human willfulness, warning us not to transgress what is unspeakably profound.”
Professor Wilson, in his essay, “The Paradox of Cloning,” originally published in The Weekly Standard, argues that “cloning presents no special ethical risks if society does all in its power to establish that the child is born to a married woman and is the joint responsibility of the married couple.” While far more tolerant and trusting than Kass, Wilson's position is grounded in the value of marriage and the family. He approves other techniques of assisted reproduction as long as they assist a married couple who accept the responsibilities of parenthood.
In reading the essays, I was impressed with the similarity of the reasoning with Catholic moral teaching, more so with Kass than Wilson. Wilson's strong point is parenting within the family, but with some limits on unfettered freedom. For instance, Wilson would not allow cloning so parents could have geniuses, dancers, or football stars. Failing a stipulation to prevent such abuses, he would oppose human cloning.
Kass, on the other hand, is resonant of John Paul II in his emphasis on the generative meaning of sexuality and his conviction “that one will be increasingly incapable of defending the institution of marriage and the two-parent family if one is indifferent to its natural grounding in what I call the ontology of sex.” And Kass raises the further question as to whether and how we can ensure “that all children will have two parents if we ignore, in our social arrangements, the natural (hetero) sexual ground of parenthood?”
Kass makes a powerful argument that limits on cloning will not be effective.
“Given our current beliefs about reproductive freedom, the fracture of the once-respected and solid bonds among sex, love, procreation, and stable marriage, and the relentless march of technology,” Kass believes it will be impossible to safeguard the family and parenting “in the absence of some miraculous recovery of good sense about sexuality and the meaning of procreation and an attitude that once again sees children as a gift to be treasured rather than as a product for our manipulation.”
Kass argues that the battle about reproductive rights was lost when the couple's right to marital privacy in the use of contraception (Griswold) was almost immediately converted into an individual's right of sexual privacy, married or not (Eisenstadt). Of course, privacy was extended even further in Roe v. Wade.
Kass recognizes that in our present culture it is difficult to take a strong moral stance on almost anything, and that due to cultural change, it is “now vastly more difficult to express a common and respectful understanding of sexuality, procreation, nascent life, family, and the meaning of motherhood, fatherhood, and the links between the generations.”
All of this reinforces Kass' wisdom of repugnance. He is convinced that “human cloning is unethical in itself and dangerous in its likely consequences.” Thus he argues for legislation to permanently prohibit human cloning and the taking of all necessary steps to make such a prohibition effective.
The debate is ongoing, and The Ethics of Human Cloning is an important and informative contribution to the ethical discussion.
Bishop James McHugh is ordinary of Camden, N.J., and a member of the NCCB Committee for Pro-Life Activities.
------- EXCERPT: PERSPECTIVE ----- EXTENDED BODY: Bishop James McHugh ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Radiant Words of a Neglected Saint DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:Meditation on the seven penitential psalms was long a part of Catholic piety. Daily recitation of these seven psalms was part of Galileo's sentence (his niece, a nun, was later allowed to pray the psalms in his stead). These psalms of King David are divinely inspired confessions of sin, moving the sinner to make his own the words of King David: peccavi Domino (I have sinned against the Lord). This new printing of St. John Fisher's masterful sermons on the psalms may well encourage readers to pray them, perhaps at the end of the day (seven psalms — one per day), or during the penitential seasons.
This reprinting also serves to reintroduce St. John Fisher to contemporary readers. Fisher shares a feast day with St. Thomas More, June 22, the date on which Fisher was martyred in 1535 for resisting Henry VIII's break with Rome. In this century we have become accustomed to courageous bishops standing up to tyrants — for example, just last month Alojzije Cardinal Stepinac (d. 1962) of Croatia was declared a martyr under the communists and will be beatified in October.
Yet in his time Fisher was the only bishop to defy Henry VIII, understanding himself to be following in the footsteps of his namesake, John the Baptist, in defending the indissolubility of marriage. Fisher was not only a bishop, but a leading scholar, man of letters, chancellor of the University of Cambridge, and confessor to Lady Margaret Beaufort, the saintly grandmother of Henry VIII. Alas, he remains as ignored today as St. Thomas More is celebrated.
This volume presents in modern English Fisher's sermons on Psalms 6, 31, 37, 50, 101, 129, and 142 (alternatively numbered 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143). The most well known of these are 50 (51), the Miserere, and 129 (130) the De profundis. The former appears every Friday in the Liturgy of the Hours, and the latter is traditionally recited when praying for the dead. Together with the other five, they comprise the seven penitential psalms.
Anne Barbeau Gardiner has rendered Fisher's English (he wrote before Shakespeare) into felicitous modern English, while not sacrificing the elegance of the older, elevated style. Her introduction briefly outlines Fisher's life, describing him as “a virtual one-man counter-reformation in England,” first against Luther and then against Henry VIII.
Barbeau makes a contribution to the continuing project of correcting anti-Catholic history, arguing that the popularity of Fisher's sermons — reprinted seven times between 1508 and 1529 — “evinced a high measure of spiritual receptivity and showed that genuine faith and devotion were far more alive than usually claimed by defenders of the Protestant Reformation.”
There is no mincing of words about the horror of sin and our culpability.
The sermons are of high literary quality, devotional and theologically rich. His graceful combination of systematic argument and literary devices makes his prose useful both for study and spiritual reading. Notwithstanding either devotional fervor or theological argument, it is Fisher's transparent holiness that gives the work its true radiance.
While Fisher focuses on conversion, contrition, and the need for penance (sacramental and otherwise) in the spiritual life, his reflections are wide-ranging. He preaches at some length on the Virgin Mary in Psalm 37, and his sermon on Psalm 129 interweaves a brilliant exegesis of Jonah with a detailed description of the process by which we entertain sin, consent to it, revel in it, boast of it, and finally are ruled by it. There is no mincing of words about the horror of sin and our culpability. He dwells upon the wretchedness of sin only to move his listeners to “tears of contrition,” directing them to the “cleansing power of Christ's blood.”
No recommendation of this volume should lack a sample of this fine work. In a splendid passage of his sermon on Psalm 50, Fisher vividly “measures” the mercy of God, mixing Latin and English, and weaving together verses from other psalms:
“Truly, the mercy of our most mighty and blessed Lord is great, so great that it has all measures of greatness. Of its greatness in height it is written, Domine, usque ad cælos misericordia tua, Lord, your mercy extends and reaches up to the heavens (Ps 56:11). It is also great in depth, for it reaches down to the lowest hell. The prophet says, misericordia tua magna est super me, et eruisti animam meam ex inferno inferiori, Lord, your mercy is great over me and you have delivered me from the lowest and deepest hell (Ps 85:13). It is broad, for it occupies and spans all the world, the same prophet saying, misericordia Domini plena est terra, the earth is full of the mercy of our Lord (Ps 32:5). It lacks no length, for also by the same prophet it is spoken: misericordia eius ab æterno, et usque in æternum super timentes eum, the mercy of God is without end on those who fear him (Ps 102:17).
“Therefore since the mercy of God is so high, so deep, so broad, and so long, who can say or think it is little? Who will not call it great by all measures of greatness? Then, everyone who wants to acquaint himself with this mercy can say, miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam, Lord, have mercy on me according to thy great mercy.”
That passage should serve to whet the appetite for St. John Fisher's works, which here and elsewhere move us to confess peccavi Domino, secure in the knowledge that the prayer, Miserere mei, never goes unheard.
Raymond de Souza is a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario.
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond De Souza ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Private Revelations: Handle With Care DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:Digest of Father Mark Slatter's article on private revelations in the June 1998 issue of This Rock magazine
The June 1998 issue of This Rock magazine carries an article by Father Mark Slatter on judging the validity of private revelations. Father Slatter reminds us that, “Though the Church is never without false mystics, she also recognizes the role that private revelation has played in history…. These revelations have sparked faith in countless lives. I've lost count of the number of people who've attested to significant religious conversions at these apparitions.”
Besides producing powerful positive effects, however, a hankering for special access to God “has its share of pitfalls. Some Catholics are unknowingly damaging their faith and that of others for want of discernment of the authenticity of the ‘messages.’Others are taking fairly harmless messages — even those considered respectable — and bringing harm upon themselves because of the way they take them to heart….”
“To keep a sane view of private revelations, you must know first and above all that you do not have to accept any private revelation whatsoever…. The public or universal call to faith for all and for all time is Jesus Christ, the love of our lives. It's not belief in a message, however credible it might be, that will save you.”
And we have to consider not just the message, but the messenger.
“Even the exceptionally gifted will not receive every revelation perfectly from the Holy Spirit…. To see the truth of this, we should note the many examples of ‘erroneous revelation’ in the lives of the great saints. It is thought that Catherine of Siena believed the Lord told her that the Immaculate Conception did not happen. Joan of Arc had an interior locution concerning her death, but misinterpreted both the date and the manner…. Now, if these giants knew error, can others among us refrain from slipping into the same?”
“Spiritual experiences are still human experiences…. [Those who] were closer to the Lord than any of us are … were sufficiently wise and humble to know that it was murky and potentially hazardous in that Cloud of Unknowing, and one could easily get lost in it.”
In addition to verifying the revelation's “alignment with the Gospel and Church teaching, the lifestyle, and integrity of the seer … submission to ecclesial authorities,” Father Slatter recommends these six criteria:
“1. Syncretism. Some sources are a hybrid of pagan, secular, and Christian ideas….
“2. Hidden agenda. Other messages are strongly ideological, promoting an agenda that reflects the anger and dissatisfaction of certain interest groups in today's Church….
“3. Anti-hierarchy. Other messages are not only critical of the Church hierarchy … but actually deny Church authorities their delegated responsibility of shepherding God's people….
It's not belief in a message, however credible it might be, that will save you.
“4. Common sense…. I can't recall the exact details, but somewhere out there there's a set of messages detailing a future disaster for Canada. To survive, one is required to have a piece of paper upon which these or similar words are written: ‘Christ, save me’….
“5. Freedom to respond. Some … ‘revelations,’on the other hand, resort to emotional blackmail. I have in mind a pamphlet that put into the mouth of Christ these words: ‘These people, who brawl against my religion and cast slurs on this sacred letter, shall be forsaken by me’….
“6. The messenger…. Sister Faustina's authenticity and the beautiful devotions begotten by her life are watertight, almost beyond question. On the other hand, there is the case of Maria Valtorta, author of The Poem of the Man-God … in the words of Father Benedict Groeschel, who happens to be a trained psychologist: ‘Miss Valtorta was a very devout and intelligent person. She spent the last 10 years of her life in complete cata-tonic schizophrenia, unable to speak to anyone. This disease came on her gradually. It's important to realize that the progress of a disease like that may take years before the acute symptoms occur….’
“Some might object that they've experienced an inspiration from God through The Poem of the Man God. Yet anything can inspire faith…. Ultimately the question is not one of inspiration but of credibility and authority….”
Finally, Father Slatter considers contemporary apocalyptic messages: “There is great danger here, for, however sincere the desire to inspire or strengthen faith by an apocalyptic message, it's possible that the end effect will be a weakening of faith … the possibility for sin with private revelation is trust not in the Lord but in a supposed knowledge of a future event. The only difference between this and consulting the horoscope is that one harvests knowledge from the stars and the other from a mystic.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidsonville, Maryland.
The Definite Article is a digest of the Register's choice from the nation's top journals.
------- EXCERPT: THE DEFINITE ARTICLE ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Firm Stand DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:Congratulations on the issue of July 12-18, 1998. It's a wonderful boost to my sagging morale to see you take a firm stand on essential points. Your front page article by Mark Brumley, “Controversial Homosexuality Document Reissued with Revisions by U.S. Bishops” comes late, but no less welcome, followed by Bishop [Fabian] Bruskewitz's statement of some months ago, to which you accorded editorial status along with Pope John Paul II. Also, Karl Keating is a pleasure to read for his “episcopal backbone” and other phrases!
Antoinette Edrop
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Lefebvre's Undoing DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:I found the article on “New Latin Mass Orders Making Pa. Diocese a ‘Spiritual Powerhouse’” (Aug. 9-15) both informative and inspiring, in that the more traditional movement is creatively inspiring vocations at the same time that the new theology can only propose the non-Catholic notions of priestesses and the suppression of celibacy as solutions to the vocations crisis it itself created.
However, certain statements made about the Society of St. Pius X and its founder, Archbishop Lefebvre were not entirely accurate. As anyone who has read Pope John Paul's apostolic letter Ecclesia Dei knows, Lefebvre was excommunicated for the “schismatic act” of disobeying a “formal canonical warning” not to consecrate bishops against the Pope's wishes (No. 3), not at all for a “lack of support for changes brought by the Second Vatican Council.”
Many loyal groups, such as Father Joseph Fessio's Adoremus, point out that the liturgical innovations of our day were not so much as mentioned in any Vatican II documents. Even Lefebvre, in his 1976 book A Bishop Speaks, supported much of the Council's liturgical agenda, saying, “Some reform and renewal was needed…. Let the priest draw near the faithful, communicate with them, pray and sing with them, stand at the lectern to give the readings from the Epistle and Gospel in their tongue…. All these are happy reforms restoring to this part of the Mass its true purpose.”
On the other hand, Pope John Paul has, in his concern for “those Catholic faithful who feel attached to some previous liturgical and disciplinary forms of the Latin tradition” and to “facilitate their ecclesial communion” and “rightful aspirations” (Ecclesia Dei, No. 5c) provided the indult “for the use of the Roman Missal according to the typical edition of 1962” (6c). The article failed to mention that not only the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, but all of the sacraments are licitly administered in their traditional, pre-Vatican II form by the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. Therefore, it seems inaccurate to say that the schismatic group's problems relate to “lack of support” for Vatican II changes, when the Pope himself has explicitly given the indult for just that: all of the sacraments and minor orders in their 1962 form with no Vatican II changes.
Eugene Mafi
Seal Beach, California
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Age-Old Book Offers Unusual View Of Early Popes DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:The ancient Liber Pontificalis (Book of Pontiffs) gives brief lives of the first 108 holders of the see of Rome. Only recently has this important work been translated into English, allowing those of us whose Latin is less than fluent to browse at will. The fourth pope listed is Clement, known to history as Clement of Rome and the author of an epistle, addressed to the Corinthians, that is used by Catholic apologists to show the early exercise of papal authority. It seems that the Corinthians had called on Clement to settle a dispute (the poor Corinthians were still troubled, long decades after Paul had tried to straighten them out, apparently with insufficient success). The last surviving Apostle, John, lived much closer to them and would have been the logical adjudicator, but they didn't write to him. They wrote to the successor of the chief apostle, and Pope Clement replied in tones of authority. The Liber Pontificalis gives only 20 lines about Clement, including the curious note that “on St. Peter's instruction he undertook the pontificate for governing the Church, as the cathedra had been handed down and entrusted to him by Jesus Christ…. Hence Linus and Cletus are recorded before him because they were ordained bishops to provide the sacerdotal ministry by the Prince of Apostles himself.”
For clarification of this peculiar passage, I flipped back a page to the life of Peter. “He ordained two bishops, Linus and Cletus, to be present in Rome to provide the entire sacerdotal ministry for the people and for visitors.”
Today we would call Linus and Cletus auxiliary bishops. They seem to have been given most of the sacramental duties, while Peter oversaw the Church as a whole. “Peter himself was free to pray and preach, to teach the people” (suggesting perhaps that the sacramental duties of a bishop tended to limit his leisure for prayer and for homiletics?).
Then comes a curious point: In addition to praying, preaching, and teaching, Peter seems to have been noted for his public debates. “He held many debates with Simon Magus, both before the Emperor Nero and before the people, because Simon was using magical tricks and deceptions to scatter those whom Peter had gathered into Christ's faith. When their disputes had lasted a long time, Simon was struck down by God's will.”
In addition to praying, preaching, and teaching, Peter seems to have been noted for his public debates.
Nero, later the first great persecutor of the Church, thus knew Simon Magus and Peter and amused himself by watching the magician joust with the fisherman from Galilee. But Nero's champion “was struck down by God's will.” Did this embitter Nero against the Christians? We aren't told, but it is a fair surmise. Recall that Pharaoh's opinion of the Israelites was not improved when he saw his priests bested by Moses.
The next sentence of the life of the first Pope records that Peter “consecrated St. Clement as bishop and entrusted the cathedra and the whole management of the Church to him, saying: ‘As the power of government, that of binding and loosing, was handed to me by my Lord Jesus Christ, so I entrust it to you; ordain those who are to deal with various cases and execute the Church's affairs; do not be caught up in the cares of the world but ensure you are completely free for prayer and preaching to the people.’ After making this arrangement he was crowned with martyrdom along with Paul in the 38th year after the Lord suffered.”
Do not misinterpret what is going on here. No pope can make another man his successor; the most he can do is make him a bishop, which is what Peter did to Linus, Cletus, and Clement. It is unclear what force should be given to the clause “after making this arrangement,” but I take it to mean that Clement was consecrated not long before Peter's death.
He appears to have been Peter's recommendation for pope, but that choice could not be made until the papal see fell vacant and thus would be made by the living, not by Peter. Since Linus and Cletus had been ordained some years earlier to assist Peter in the administration of the see of Rome, and since each had paid his dues, so to speak, it must have seemed proper to the clergy of Rome to allow each in turn to serve as chief bishop of the imperial capital.
Thus Linus became the second pope, holding the see for 11 years, and Cletus the third, holding it for 12. Next came Peter's personal favorite, Clement, who was pope for nine years. The Liber Pontificalis closes its lives of Linus and Cletus by noting that each was buried “close to St. Peter's body on the Vatican [Hill].” Unexpectedly, Clement, Peter's favorite, died in Rome but ended up being buried in Greece.
Karl Keating is founding director of Catholic Answers.
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Karl Keating ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The First Catholic Voice Before Congress DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:In a bold 1826 address, Bishop John England defended the faith in front of President John Quincy Adams and others who thought badly of it
Much attention has been given in recent years to the role of religion in American life. A recent exhibit at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. contributes to that discussion by highlighting the religious views and practices of Americans from the colonial to ante-bellum eras.
The exhibit, “Religion and the Founding of the American Republic,” shows the vital role that faith played in the early years of the nation. By presenting the contributions of various denominations, it also celebrates the diversity of beliefs that have come to characterize the American religious experience.
Several artifacts reflect Catholic practices, but perhaps the most interesting of these focuses on a sermon given by Bishop John England of Charleston, S.C., in 1826. This talk was delivered in the U.S. House of Representatives, and it marked the first time that a Catholic spoke on religion in that chamber. A copy of the speech and an oil portrait of Bishop England are included in the exhibit.
What is most important to us today is that Bishop England delivered a memorable speech that boldly proclaimed the beliefs of his faith while at the same time stressing its compatibility with republican virtues.
But this was only one event in a career that was notable in its defense of Catholicism in the press of the day.
A Rebuttal to the President
The speech he delivered in Washington Jan. 8, 1826, partly responded to anti-Catholic remarks made by John Quincy Adams in a Fourth of July oration nearly five years earlier. Adams was by then president and was on hand to hear the bishop's rebuttal.
Bishop England's route to the dais of the House of Representatives was a rather unusual one. Born in Ireland, he arrived in the United States in 1820 as a 34-year-old priest, newly appointed as the first bishop of Charleston. The post was largely a missionary one, for the diocese included only three priests and 5,000 Catholics in three states.
Still, he accomplished much in the 22 years he led his people. He established a prototypical diocesan council, founded the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Mercy — which still exists today — and launched the first American Catholic weekly newspaper, the United States Catholic Miscellany. In recognition of his many journalistic efforts, the Catholic Press Association presents an annual publisher's award in his name.
The catalogue for the Library of Congress exhibit notes that clergymen from various denominations were routinely invited to preach in the House. Bishop England apparently leapt at the opportunity to present a Catholic rejoinder to those who, like Adams, were either skeptical or disdainful of the Church. Virulent anti-Catholicism would not develop for another decade or so, but clearly the antecedents were present.
In a preface to the published version of his speech, England said he had sought to address the misunderstanding that even educated people had about the beliefs of the Catholic Church. At several points in the sermon, he discussed the myths that were conveyed regarding Catholic practices, and he most certainly believed Adams was one of those myth makers.
Separating Church & State
In an age where republicanism — a commitment to equality and virtue — was strongly followed, Bishop England sought to show that Catholicism was perfectly compatible with that ideal. He also endorsed a division between religion and civil government, saying that such a dichotomy was in the best interest of both institutions. One of the bishop's biographers, Peter Clarke, has written, “John England was the first theoretician of separation of Church and state and freedom of religion.”
In dissecting this notable speech, the reader is impressed by the steady, but forceful apologia offered by the Irishman. He tells the assembly, which surely was overwhelmingly non-Catholic, that the revelation of truth from the Lord was given to early Church leaders.
In the first century these holy men “formed but one Church through many nations — one tribunal to testify in every place the same doctrine — all the individuals who taught, were witnesses for or against each other: the whole body, with the successor of Peter at its head, watchful to see that each taught that which was originally delivered,” he said.
There has been a constancy to this truth throughout the ages, and it must be presented to each age “neither adding, omitting, [nor] changing.” After arguing the static universality of revealed truth, Bishop England then addresses the political issues that were of interest to his republican audience.
Politics & the Pope
First he discusses the same question that dogged Alfred Smith in his 1928 presidential campaign and John F. Kennedy in 1960: Does a Catholic have inappropriate loyalty to a foreign power — that is, the Pope? Here is where Bishop England is most emphatic.
“I would not allow,” he says, “to the Pope or to any bishop of our Church, outside this Union, the smallest interference with the humblest vote at our most insignificant balloting box. He has no right to interference.”
He then goes a step further by emphasizing that Congress and the U.S. government have no right to meddle in the affairs of the Church.
He told the gathering, “You have no power to interfere with my religious rights, the tribunal of the Church has no power to interfere with my civil rights. It is a duty which every good man ought to discharge for his own, and for the public benefit, to resist any encroachment upon either.” Unfortunately, he notes, there are misinformed people who believe certain slanders against the Catholic Church. One is that the Church is despotic and antithetical to a republican form of government. He counters by citing Catholic individuals and nations who have been bulwarks against despotism, and argues that there is no evidence that Catholics are anything but true republican patriots.
To the charge that the Church has encouraged persecution, he says that, sadly, every Church has practiced some degree of cruelty and bigotry. This was wrong, but there is nothing in Catholic teaching which encourages it. Even the Inquisition, he notes, was a civil, not a religious, movement.
The final political point he addressed dealt with the Church's role in deposing unfriendly kings — clearly a practice that would raise concerns. The evidence, he argues, is absent; and legends to the contrary are the product of biased writers. It is not, he stresses, a tenet of the Church that popes interfere with legitimate governments, whether kingdoms or republics.
Kudos from Congress
The bishop's sermon, which lasted two hours, was apparently so well received that 21 members of Congress immediately encouraged him to publish it in book form. This he did, and a copy of that book is part of the Library of Congress exhibit. Less than one month after the speech, Bishop John England, a native of Cork, Ireland, became an American citizen.
The exhibit is replete with stories such as that of Bishop England. Although the various components of the historical display do not go into the detail provided here, the overall effect is to create a better appreciation for the richness of America's religious history.
“Religion and the Founding of the American Republic” ended its showing in Washington, D.C., Aug. 25, but is scheduled to continue to other U.S. cities. Presumably, many more Americans will get a chance to see the works of people such as Bishop England and Father Andrew White, who celebrated the first Mass in America in 1634.
These offerings help us to understand one notable observation made by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835 and cited in one of the exhibit's booklets.
The legendary Frenchman wrote in Democracy in America: “I do not know whether all the Americans have a sincere faith in their religion, for who can read the human heart?
“But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society,” he said.
Joseph Esposito is the Register's Washington Correspondent.
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Esposito ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: So-Called 'Private Acts' Have Profound Impact on Society DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:We live in a world of crises. And none is more dangerous than the current crisis of conscience. After all, conscience is, the Pope tells us, “the monitor of true social and moral order.” Without it we lose our bearings, not only individually but socially as well. Since we are social beings even our “private acts” are profoundly social. In many respects, there are no “private acts,” since any of our actions affect our families, our friends, our communities, our nation.
If we are Christians, our “private acts” either strengthen or weaken the entire Body of Christ.
Abortion, which was supposed to be merely a private matter, has had profound social ramifications. A single Supreme Court decision, claiming that abortion was a “private matter,” wiped out many public laws enacted by countless legislators over decades. Since that time our country has been torn apart by controversies over that “private act.” There have been legal and legislative battles. There is the social fact of millions of citizens never born, workers never producing, future teachers, scientists, and doctors never seeing the light of day to make their own unique contributions to society. Ironically there are also those who want the government to pay for that “private act” with public tax dollars. “Private acts” never remain merely “private.”
The Supreme Court is supposed to interpret the Constitution, that document which shapes our life together as a nation. Yet the Court seems so mired in radical subjectivism that it cannot see the necessarily social impact of “private acts.” In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the justices spoke of the Constitution granting citizens a broad “right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
The problem of course is that one does not have “a concept of existence, of meaning … of the mystery of human life” without acting on it. The individuals who blew up U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania certainly had their “concept of existence.” Those who kill babies as they are being born through partial birth abortion have their “concept of meaning.” So do scientists who experiment on embryos, and physicians who help patients kill themselves. And so do men in positions of responsibility who exploit women who work for them.
Is it surprising in such a world that even the president of the United States would try to excuse immoral behavior on the grounds that it concerned only his “private life”? Yet we can see how quickly such “private acts” have their social impact, on family, friends, nations.
They even have their implications for national security as we saw when the motives of the commander-in-chief were called into question when he bombed Sudan and Afghanistan.
What is the protection against such dangerous subjectivism? Conscience. It is “the monitor of true social and moral order.” There can be no social order without a moral order. A democracy is only as strong as its citizens and leaders are virtuous. Did our Lord not tell a parable in which a master entrusted his servant with great things precisely because he had been faithful in small things?
Today conscience is falsely understood as the power to do whatever one wants rather than the power to do what one ought. When properly understood conscience tells us how to live for others, not how selfishly to gratify ourselves. Conscience helps us live in accord with our true, God-given nature that was described concisely by the Second Vatican Council: “man … cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”
We can all know what is truly good for us since God created us all with the same human nature. Everyone can know how they ought to act, if they are sufficiently attentive to the voice of God in themselves. Robert Spaemann, a Catholic philosopher, writes: “If there were no such thing as the basic structure of human nature [created by God], whereby certain things are considered reasonable or unreasonable, then the command to love one another would be meaningless and could be replaced by whatever we wanted, for it could be filled with any content.”
This of course is precisely what has happened in our day of “private acts” justified by our “private conscience.” However, even conscience is not really private. It is most assuredly personal. I am the only one responsible for my acts, and I am the only one who will be rewarded or punished for those actions dictated by my conscience. However, one reason we have to answer even for our “private actions” is that none is ever simply “private.”
John Haas is president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Boston, Massachusetts.
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Haas ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Campaign in Action DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:Projects that conform to Church moral teaching and “innovatively address the basic causes of poverty and effect institutional change” are the focus of funding from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, according to the Campaign's annual report. At least 50% of those benefiting from the project must come from a low-income community.
The funding process starts with an application that may be prescreened at the diocesan level, said Kent Peters, who presently serves as San Diego diocesan CCHD director in his capacity as director of the Office for Social Ministries. He came to that position last year after serving in a similar capacity from 1989 to 1997 in the Diocese of Duluth, Minn.
In Duluth, CCHD-funded projects for organizations focused on Church-based organizing, women's issues, homeless advocacy, and Native Americans.
“There was never — in San Diego or Duluth — a project that was close to questionable [in terms of adherence to Church teaching],” said Peters.
He pointed out that if an ordinary didn't like a project, funding would be pulled.
Peters explained that a new organization completes a pre-application used to screen such agencies according to prescribed guidelines. If the organization satisfies this first step, a full application is reviewed by a team at the diocesan level. The team's recommendations are forwarded to the national CCHD office and reviewed by an advisory committee. That panel makes recommendations to the CCHD bishops'committee, which makes the final decisions.
Here's a look at some Campaign recipients:
• The Environmental Health Coalition (EHC) in San Diego received grants for two projects. Several years ago, CCHD funds helped start the program. The acronym SALTA stands for Salud Ambiental, Latinas Tomando Accion (Environmental Health, Latinas Taking Action). Women in two low-income neighborhoods were trained to be promotoras, environmental health promoters. The promotoras then recruit, train, and educate other women to recognize environmental health hazards and to teach other women about the dangers of potentially hazardous household cleaners and toxic pesticides.
• In 1995-1996, EHC trained 18 promotoras who recruited more than 200 other women. One critical issue that SALTA tackles is children's exposure to lead, which can be found in pottery and dishes, in paint on houses built in the 1950s, and in some candy from Mexico, said Diane Takvorian, EHC executive director. The coalition's Lead Project also receive CCHD funds for activities including educational programs and free testing of children. The EHC says children under three are at most risk to contract lead poisoning. Risks include stunted mental and physical growth. Furthermore, exposure to pregnant women can lead to spontaneous abortions.
• In the Chicago archdiocese, 20 organizations receive local and national funding, said Jim Lund, co-director of the Office for Peace and Justice. Funded organizations include Not Dead Yet, a group of disabled people fighting against physician-assisted suicide.
Also funded is the Resurrection Project in the Pilson neighborhood. The housing program targeted at Hispanics includes the purchase of lots in the city and construction of more than 100 homes.
Economic development is represented by the Academy Bakery. A CCHD grant was used to found the bakery where at-risk students from a poor neighborhood learn to run a business.
— Liz Swain
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Liz Swain ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: John Paul II's Letter on La Vang DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:The Pope addressed this letter to Paul Joseph Cardinal Pham Dinh Tung of Hanoi, president of the episcopal conference of Vietnam, to mark the 200th anniversary of the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin in La Vang (excerpt).
“… For two centuries [Our Lady's] message, still up to date, has been fervently welcomed in La Vang. Despite the great trials which have marked it in the course of its history, it has now become a national Marian center, which has been able to keep alive the tradition of pilgrimages. Many people, of all origins and all conditions, come here privately to entrust their troubles and hopes to their Mother in heaven. Bishops, priests, religious, and lay people like to find in her the welcoming presence of the One who gives them the courage to bear an admirable witness of Christian life in circumstances that are often difficult. I bless God who never abandons the people who seek him and who, with the motherly assistance of the Virgin Mary, continues to guide them, in days of happiness and of adversity. I hope that the faithful who will come here to pray to Our Lady of La Vang at her shrine during this jubilee year and those who will invoke her in other places will find a new apostolic impetus for their Christian life and receive comfort and strength to face life's trials….”
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Letters -------- TITLE: Collegiate Institute Defends Belief That Ultimate Truths Can Be Known DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:The ISI works to counter relativism on campuses across the country
A conservative, non-sectarian organization is working with leading Catholic thinkers, among others, to spread traditional liberal arts ideals on college campuses.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute Inc. (ISI) promotes John Henry Cardinal Newman's concept of a liberal education as one that does not serve any particular ends and can help young people liberate their minds, guide them to wisdom and virtue, and attain some degree of inner harmony within themselves, said Jeffrey Nelson, vice president for publications at ISI in Wilmington, Del.
Those liberal arts ideals have caused many ISI supporters to oppose movements such as feminism, historical revisionism, and multiculturalism because they serve specific, political ends, according to Nelson.
Issues regarding what Nelson calls ‘moral normalcy’- right to life and homosexual issues — seem to ‘get the passion going’ on campus more than any other issues.
“Newman would have considered them servile arts,” as opposed to the liberal arts, Nelson said, citing The Idea of a University by the English convert.
Philosophical relativism is “the most insidious influence in higher education,” because it teaches young people that there are no ultimate truths, Nelson told the Register.
Many who oppose ISI would claim that any pedagogy is inherently political, and ISI's is to preserve the status quo, which has benefited certain classes, creeds, and races of people throughout history.
“Any assertion of truth is not a power play,” said Nelson in defense of ISI's viewpoint. “We do have a point of view [which] is to pursue truth for its own sake. We believe there is a truth that we can know.”
ISI has 60,000 professor and student members, which makes it the largest such academic organization in the United States, “by a long shot,” said Nelson. The organization does not charge membership fees.
After launching its first such effort in 1993, the group now publishes eight to twelve titles each year and sells more than 100 discounted books, Nelson said.
Leading authors include G.K. Chesterton, Father Stanley Jaki OSB, Russell Kirk, and C.S. Lewis. Chesterton was an English convert to Catholicism, and Father Jaki is a theoretical physicist and theologian at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J.
ISI has also published A Student's Guide to Liberal Learning, a handbook by Father James Schall SJ, of Georgetown University, about authors and books that liberal arts' students should read. Next month, the organization will co-publish Choosing the Right College, which features 52 schools, among which are about a dozen Catholic colleges and universities. The book reviews their ability to provide a solid liberal arts education and a healthy living environment for students.
One of ISI's most important works is its lecture bureau, which coordinates 300 lectures each year through a legion of “lesser-known” professors who do not require as high honorariums as some conservative speakers, said Mike Wallacavage, ISI's lecture director for the college and university level.
ISI, which has sponsored lectures since its 1953 founding, works with leading Catholic thinkers like Dinesh D'Souza, Robert George, Register columnist John Haas, Thomas Howard, Peter Kreeft, Father George Rutler, Father Robert Sirico, and R.V. Young.
George, a Princeton University professor, participated in the “End of Democracy? Judiciary Usurpation of Power” debate in First Things and wrote Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality, published by Oxford University Press. He will speak at Duke University in Durham, N.C., this year, according to Wallacavage.
Last April, Boston College's Kreeft spoke at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire about the superiority of Western civilization. Father Rutler, from the Archdiocese of New York, may speak at Princeton this year, Wallacavage said.
ISI sponsors about 20 conferences each year, including one on Lewis's thoughts and writings at Seattle Pacific University last June,which featured Kreeft and fellow convert Howard, who teaches at St. John's Seminary in Brighton, Mass.
Intercollegiate Review, published two times a year with a circulation of 60,000, speaks about the “great ideas and great authors in an interdisciplinary way … to make sense of their ideas today,” said Nelson.
Campus is mailed to 125,000 subscribers three times a year and takes on hot campus issues such as multiculturalism, sensitivity training, and political correctness.
“People don't realize how hostile a college campus can be” for conservatives, Nelson said. “Speech codes and harassment codes [are an attempt to] intimidate students into submission.”
College administrators usually justify speech and harassment codes as ways of protecting minorities and women.
Issues regarding what Nelson calls “moral normalcy” — right to life and homosexual issues — seem to “get the passion going” on campus more than any other issues, in some cases leading to the burning or trashing of independent conservative newspapers and threats against writers, he said.
ISI backers object to multiculturalism because of the cultural relativist and political overtones of such studies, Nelson said. “It's a beating down of the Eurocentric attitude,” and multiculturalist proponents claim “we can't really say with any certainty that there's anything special behind the West's achievements,” he said.
From a Catholic perspective, Nelson called attention to the “degree to which envy and hatred motivate multiculturalism.” He called for a “love of our culture but not an indiscriminate love.”
During the past four years, ISI has sponsored a network of independent student newspapers, and the number of publications has grown from 38 to 67 in that time, Nelson said. The publications serve as “watchdogs” who document the rise in incivility and immorality on college campuses, and they advocate the colleges and universities cut their “bloated bureaucracies” and make higher education more affordable, Nelson said.
The publications have a combined circulation of 2.7 million.
There are also ISI chapters at a number of colleges and universities.
ISI also prints two other journals, Modern Age and Political Science Reviewer, and distributes three other ones, including one dedicated to Chesterton's writings.
ISI was founded in Bryn Mawr, Pa., as the Intercollegiate Society for Individualists, to counter the Intercollegiate Socialist Society and its collectivist theories, Nelson said. Many people would consider the group's founders as economic libertarians, individualists, and proto-conservatives, he said.
The founders “came to learn that the crisis that confronted the West was much more than an economic one,” according to Nelson. Quoting Kirk, Nelson said they saw that there had to be “order in the soul and in the commonwealth.”
The Institute developed into one that promotes the cultural, economic, political and spiritual values that ISI members believe sustain a free society, he said.
ISI has granted about 400 graduate-level humanities grants. Edwin Feulner, president of The Heritage Foundation; Russell Hittinger, Warren Professor of Catholic Studies and a law professor at the University of Tulsa; William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard; and former Navy Secretary John Lehman are among those who attained ISI grants in their college years.
Through an honors program, ISI pairs up some students with faculty members at other universities with whom they can develop close ties and a mentorship if all goes well, Nelson said.
Contact ISI at 800-526-7022 or via the Internet at www.isi.org.
William Murray writes from Kensington, Maryland.
------- EXCERPT: EDUCATION PAGE ----- EXTENDED BODY: William Murray ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: A Landmark of Early American Catholicism DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:In Bally, Pa., a town named for a priest, the faith took root even before the Revolutionary War
Sixty miles north of Philadelphia, in the town of Bally, Pa., St. Paul's Chapel is located in the apse behind the sanctuary of Most Blessed Sacrament Church. The historic chapel remains one of the oldest original places of Catholic worship in the 13 colonies.
When it was built — with nearly three-foot-thick stone walls — Daniel Boone was a child playing at his family home a few miles away.
George Washington wasn't yet a teen. By the time he became our first president, when most towns didn't even have a Catholic church, the Krauss brothers were building the organ for St. Paul's new 35-foot addition. This organ is still in use today.
Visitors to the historic church quickly realize it continues to be an active parish of 800 families in a well-preserved context that dates to the initial mission stops in the English colonies.
A stately colonial structure, St. Paul's received its name change to Most Blessed Sacrament in 1837, the year of its final (80-foot) addition. Since then, the exterior has remained true to the facade depicted in 19th-century postcards of it. The few changes include the front vestibule, side entrance, and stained glass windows.
In the 1750s, half the Catholics in the state were members of this parish. At the time, the area was known as Goshenhoppen. The first resident pastor, Father Theodore Schneider SJ (previously the rector of Germany's Heidelberg University) emigrated to the colonies to found St. Paul's in 1741 as a mission primarily for German Catholic settlers. Sacramental records begun that year are now the oldest such accounts in existence among the 13 colonies.
Because the times were unfriendly, legally speaking, for Catholics, early missionaries concentrated their pre-American Revolution efforts in Maryland, then Pennsylvania, where oppressive laws went largely unen-forced. With milder restrictions because of William Penn's policy of peaceful toleration, a Jesuit came to Philadelphia and soon began Catholic services in what became Old St. Joseph's Church. By 1741 two other hubs on the missionary circuit emerged: Conewago Chapel (to be described in an upcoming “Catholic Traveler” feature) in Hanover, Pa., on the other side of the Susquehanna River, that covered the western portion of the state to the limits of civilization; and Goshenhoppen, with a mission trail that covered eastern Pennsylvania and extended to Lake Erie.
Father Schneider's congregation wasn't made up only of German immigrant farmers working the fertile countryside. Early parishioners included some Irish and English Catholics, Native Americans who had converted, and black Catholics — both free and slave. Many worked for the nearby large iron industry.
For 23 years the pastor shepherded his territory, plus much of the state for a few years when he was appointed simultaneously to head Conewago Chapel. He even ventured east into New Jersey, often disguised as a physician because of Catholic oppression, and is credited with laying the foundation of the Church there.
At St. Paul's Chapel, he also founded what is believed to be the first Catholic parish school in the country. Today, centuries later, it remains vibrant with 270 students.
Father Augustin Bally SJ, appointed pastor in 1837, also strongly promoted the school. At the time he arrived, the town's name was Churchville. On Aug. 7, 1883, a year after he died, the name was officially changed to Bally in his honor. Even the town's non-Catholics mourned him. During his 45 years at the parish, he completed the extension of the church begun by his predecessor and oversaw construction of a new school building as well as the rectory, which is still in use today.
Including these two priests, members of the Society of Jesus administered the parish for 148 years before diocesan priests took over.
Despite many changes, St. Paul's Chapel has remained. With the 1799 addition, it was used as the sacristy. In 1837 it returned to a chapel, still used today for small baptisms and weddings. On Holy Thursdays, the Blessed Sacrament is reserved in its wooden tabernacle, surmounted by a carved statue of Mary holding the child Jesus.
The chapel is well-preserved and looks much as it did in the mid-1700s. The wooden candlesticks and altar remain flanked by tall pedestal candelabras in the shape of wooden wagon wheels.
Once behind the altar but now relocated is an 18th-century painting of The Last Supper, a gift from the prince-elect of Saxony. Displayed on the side wall is the tall cross of iron used on the steeple erected in 1743. Father Schneider and other early priests are buried at the foot of the altar.
The main church, restored and renovated most recently in 1990, is beautiful. Sublime religious art combines with colonial, Roman, and gothic touches that lift minds and hearts to God.
Beneath the intricately painted barrel vault, the reredos has a moving painting of the Crucifixion. A magnificent mural fills the arched top of the reredos — before a heavenly background, the Sacred Heart holds a chalice from which emerges a dazzling white host.
Mid-sanctuary, the vault has a mural of the Last Supper, while in the center of the nave, a huge mural depicts the Holy Trinity crowning Mary. These were completed within the last century.
Highly detailed stained glass windows from the early 1900s line the nave with such scenes as the Good Shepherd, the Holy Family being blessed by God the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the death of St. Joseph.
Among other highlights are the intricate side altars and white walk-up pulpit with canopy, and the gleaming oak, spindle-top pews installed on the occasion of the church's bicentennial. The white side altars honor Mary as the woman in chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation, and St. Joseph with the Child Jesus.
Original pews remain in the balcony and choir loft, where the 1799 Krauss organ is situated. With late baroque-style white case trimmed in black and gold, it is the oldest Krauss in continuous use. Since its installation it has been expanded by a Krauss grandson, rebuilt early this century, and restored in 1990. Professional organists, who come across the country to play it, marvel at its perfect tones.
Everything from the church's original bell, cast in Paris in 1706, to many sacred and colonial artifacts and items make the historic Most Blessed Sacrament Church, situated in the midst of picturesque farmland, recall the nation's early heritage.
From Philadelphia, take Interstate 76 (west) to Route 422 into Pottstown and Route 100 (south). In Bally, take a right on 7th Street and travel three blocks to Pine Street. The steeple is a landmark. From New York, pick up Interstate 78 (west) in New Jersey, follow to Allentown, Pa., and Route 100 (south) into Bally, then as above. Padre Pio National Center (to be featured next week) is about two miles from Bally. There are tourist activities in the Allentown and valley area, with motels and plenty of restaurants. Contact the church at 610-845-2460.
Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.
------- EXCERPT: CATHOLIC TRAVELER ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: A Post-Feminist Cinderella for Our Times DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:Despite its politically correct trappings, Ever After still casts a charming spell
Considering current Hollywood trends, it finally had to happen: a politically correct Cinderella. After Disney perfected this revisionist type of storytelling in its animated versions of classic folk tales with heroines (Pocohantas, Mulan, etc.), live-action producers aiming at the same youth market niche were bound to do likewise.
Regarding Cinderella, first you have to dump the fairy godmother and the magic pumpkins. Post-feminist heroines who rise from rags to riches must do so on their own — even if the action is set in the 16th century. They can't let some sappy, supernatural creature wave a silly wand and make it all come out right.
Next, you can't permit an intelligent, liberated young woman to wait passively for Prince Charming to make his move. She must be an activist in all things, particularly romance. It's her energy that has to push the courtship forward, and if he refuses to treat her as an absolute equal, the whole thing must be called off lest her self-esteem be damaged. The surprising thing about the use of this post-feminist ideology is how little harm it does to the original tale. Ever After: A Cinderella Story — which is P.C. to the max — proves that the romantic elements of the fairy tale are virtually indestructible. The audience winds up rooting for the good-hearted young woman to best her wicked stepmother and grab the prince despite the ideologically fashionable packaging.
Writer-director Andy Tennant (Fools Rush In) and co-screenwriters Susanah Grant and Rick Parks invent a 19th-century prologue in which an unnamed aristocrat (Jeanne Moreau) tells the Brothers Grimm that Cinderella was a real person, her ancestor, and that certain key elements of their story are wrong. Now, the noblewoman has decided, is the time to set things right.
The action flashes back to Renaissance France where we meet the real-life Cinderella named Danielle. An eight-year-old tomboy, she has been raised by her loving father, Auguste (Jeroen Krabbe), who has taught her to read and think for herself. His favorite book is Sir Thomas More's Utopia, which she has learned contains great wisdom.
Auguste is remarried to a haughty Belgian, Rodmilla (Anjelica Huston), whose two daughters are the kind of perfect, feminine little ladies Danielle and the filmmakers despise. Almost immediately, Auguste dies of natural causes, and Danielle is left to be raised by her stepmother.
Ten years pass, and Danielle (Drew Barrymore) is treated as a servant in what was once her father's house. She waits on her stepsisters, the beautiful Marguerite (Megan Dodds), and the plain-looking Jacqueline (Melanie Lynskey), who've nicknamed her “Cindersoot” because she's dirty from sleeping with the pigs.
The action cuts away to the crown prince of France, Henry (Dougray Scott), who's rebelling against his father's wish that he marry a Spanish princess for political reasons. The young hunk wants “nothing more than to be free of my gilded cage” and runs away to be his own person.
Pursued by the king's guards, Henry steals a horse from Danielle's manor. She stops his escape by beaning him with an apple. He, of course, is taken with her feistiness, but she doesn't yet reciprocate even though she knows he is the prince.
To make sure we grasp that Danielle is the equivalent of a feminist for her time period, the filmmakers show her using Utopia as a handbook for political action. When her cruel stepmother sells to the royal family a servant who had worked for her father, she rushes off to the court where she delivers to Prince Henry a lecture on human rights that would bring cheers at a present-day Amnesty International meeting. The family retainer is quickly freed.
Henry's father takes pity on his son and decides to allow him to marry the woman of his choice if he can make up his mind within five days. Rodmilla pushes forward her darling Marguerite, but the prince pines for Danielle whose true identity is unknown to him.
The filmmakers engineer a series of encounters between the two. Moments of dewy-eyed romance alternate with lectures from Danielle on the responsibilities of privilege, and as a result of her influence, the young royal asks his parents to endow a university for the poor.
During one romantic interlude, the couple is kidnapped by gypsies. After both prove their physical prowess in fighting the outlaws, Danielle rescues Henry by literally carrying him on her shoulders. But the two decide to stay and party, and Danielle, ever politically correct, teaches him not to be so prejudiced against people from another ethnic background.
Also present at the royal court is Leonardo da Vinci (Patrick Godfrey) whom the couple befriend. Leonardo, though carrying a canvas of the Mona Lisa, seems less involved with painting than with his visionary, screwball inventions that provide everyone with a few laughs.
In keeping with the legend, the evil stepmother manages to thwart Danielle's plans on the night of the big ball. The filmmakers have Leonardo assume part of the fairy godmother's traditional role in helping her overcome obstacles. He even designs for her a breathtaking costume that includes another holdover from the original, the glass slipper.
Credibility is sometimes stretched as the filmmakers try to construct a happy ending without any kind of rescue by the prince, and the dialogue occasionally sounds more like a TV soap than the conversation of the 16th-century upper classes. But the movie's most significant departure from the original is to make the Cinderella character seem almost too good for her Prince Charming. This may reinforce certain post-feminist prejudices about the general superiority of women to men. However, it's also an excellent dramatic device which traditional romances have often employed with telling effect.
Most importantly, in this version as in all others, Cinderella's prince recognizes her beauty and virtues that have been hidden from the world by her stepmother, and he makes a special effort to win her heart. The trappings may be politically trendy, but how can we resist?
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer is based in Los Angeles.
Ever After: A Cinderella Story is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America.
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Love and Rivalry Among Sisters DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:In George Cukor's Little Women, the March girls bring family values to life
Our family is usually the place where we learn how to love, and it's not always easy. Few family units are like Ozzie and Harriet. Jealousy, competition, cruelty, and neglect often rear their ugly heads and put us to the test. Yet our moral values are forged in this crucible, and families are the basic building blocks of any decent society.
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, has been a popular novel for more than a century. Several generations have identified with the four March sisters, who love each other fiercely as they negotiate life's misfortunes and their own petty jealousies.
Hollywood has adapted this classic four times to the screen with varying degrees of success, but the version most faithful to the novel's spirit is the 1933 production directed by George Cukor (My Fair Lady) and co-written by Sarah Mason and Victor Heerman, whose screenplay won an Oscar.
The emotional spine of the movie is the coming of age of Jo March (Katherine Hepburn) and her growth as an independent woman and a writer. Feminists have long claimed her as a prototype for their values, but Alcott and the filmmakers are careful to balance the blossoming of her talent and career with her passionate attachment to her family, whose needs are usually her first priority.
The Marches live in a small New England town during the time of the Civil War. At one time they were rich, but financial problems have made them part of the struggling middle class. The father is off fighting to free the slaves, and his wife (Spring Byington) and daughters are forced to support themselves.
Jo is an aggressive tomboy who contributes to the family income by serving as a companion to her rich, mean-spirited Aunt March (Edna May Oliver). It's Christmas eve, and the sanctimonious old lady congratulates herself as she gives each of the girls a dollar bill. The four sisters fantasize how they will spend it, but eventually they decide to forgo their personal pleasures and pool the money for a gift for their hard-working mother, a generous gesture typical of the girls. The day ends with all of them gathered around the piano with their mother, singing the hymn, Abide With Me — an image of family togetherness rooted in religious belief.
On Christmas morning, a sumptuous hot meal has been prepared in the grand manner they were used to before they lost their money, but their mother persuades them to give it to a poor, hungry family in an act of pure Christian charity.
The March sisters are also all too human. They live next door to the wealthy Laurence family, and when Meg March (Frances Dee) becomes smitten with their tutor, Mr. Brook (John Davis Lodge), Jo opposes the match.
“Do you have to go and fall in love and spoil all our happy times together?” she laments because her sister has stopped confiding in her as before.
Jo's feelings make no difference, and Meg and Mr. Brook are soon married. But Jo has her own romantic difficulties. The tutor's former pupil, Laurie Laurence (Douglass Montgomery), loves her. Even though the two have developed a deep friendship, she rejects him, citing as reasons her ambition as a writer and his taste for high society elegance.
Jo moves to New York where she supports herself as a governess. Her stories are published in popular, low-brow magazines. The German-born Professor Baer (Paul Lukas) encourages her to aim higher and exposes her to the worlds of opera and theater.
Aunt March takes Jo's flirtatious sibling, Amy (Joan Bennett), on the European grand tour always promised to Jo. Jo's resentment has the potential for turning to bitterness when she later learns a romance has blossomed between her rejected suitor, Laurie, and Amy during their travels.
Meanwhile, Beth March (Jean Parker) has contracted scarlet fever while looking after the baby of an impoverished family. The filmmakers show Jo praying for her, indicating that her literary ambitions haven't extinguished her faith. When Beth's illness becomes worse, Jo drops everything in New York and rushes home to be with her.
Jo is an exemplary person for our times. Her spirit isn't embittered by the disappointments and conflicts in her personal life and career. Her outlook is grounded in love of God and family, and Little Women shows how these commitments sustain her.
Next week: Luchino Visconti's The Leopard.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Catholics Gearing Up For 'Partial-Birth' Action DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Catholics throughout the United States are being asked to join in a novena for life from Sept. 7, the vigil of the feast of the birth of Mary, to Sept. 15, the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.
At least one of the nine days is likely to coincide with debate in the U.S. Senate on overriding President Clinton's veto last October of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The House overrode the veto July 23 by a 296-132 vote.
The “Nine Days for Life” novena, prepared by Father James Moroney, executive director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for the Liturgy, asks Mary to bless “all mothers, especially those wearied by life and overcome by the suffering they bear for their children.”
Each day of the novena is dedicated to a different group — suffering women of the world, women giving birth that day, new fathers, all children, and families, for example.
Helen Alvaré, director of planning and information in the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, said the novena is part of a widespread effort since last spring to fight partial-birth abortion at the grass-roots level.
“There's a lot of stuff percolating at the local level,” said Alvaré. She outlined a strategy that included postcards and letters to senators, attempts to arrange private meetings with senators at the local level and in Washington, and efforts to refute misinformation about partial-birth abortion on a point-by-point basis.
The postcard campaign, a continuation of the effort against partial-birth abortion that began in January, has resulted in requests for 14 million cards from around the country and a “steady stream” of messages to Congress, Alvaré said.
A videotape aimed at helping Catholics send personal messages to Congress also is getting extensive use at the parish level, she said.
The 12-minute video, prepared by the Pro-Life Secretariat and the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment, outlines how individuals can help stop partial-birth abortion and includes comments from both Republican and Democratic congressmen on the importance of letters from constituents.
The ultimate goal of all the messages is to convince at least three U.S. senators who voted against the partial-birth abortion ban last year to change their votes. The 1997 Senate vote was 64-36, three short of the two-thirds majority necessary to override the veto.
“There are very few among the 36 who aren't a bit queasy” about voting in favor of partial-birth abortion, Alvaré said.
“Only a few are bold and really proud of their position.” And in light of President Clinton's recent admission of sexual misconduct with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, many of the president's supporters “may want to get the vote behind them,” she added.
Alvaré also has been doing a word-for-word analysis of the Senate debate before the 1997 vote and sending letters correcting any misinformation that senators might have communicated on the Senate floor. Those letters go to the senators themselves and to local newspapers covering the debate.
“Many things were said that are contradicted by the facts,” she said. “You ought not to be able to say just anything on the floor of the Senate.”
Although the issue has been getting little national coverage since the Clinton-Lewinsky story broke in January, there has been a lot of interest at the local level because of lawsuits against partial-birth abortion bans, state referendums, and candidates'stands on the issue, Alvaré said.
Another aspect of the Pro-Life Secretariat's work on partial-birth abortion is to communicate with editors of both Catholic and secular newspapers about the facts of the partial-birth abortion debate.
Through a new campaign called “True to Life,” the Pro-Life Secretariat will be sending to editors around the country “hot sheets” with facts on partial-birth abortion. Anew version of the sheet will be sent out every two or three days to the editors, as well as to “various political pundits and commentators,” Alvaré said.
Nancy Frazier O'Brien writes for Catholic News Service.
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Nancy Frazier O'Brien ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: For No. Ireland's Unborn, 'Good Friday' Peace Accord Has a Dark Side DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:DUBLIN, Ireland—One might think that everyone would fully welcome Northern Ireland's Good Friday Agreement, but pro-lifers say the agreement is bad news for the unborn.
Since April 1987, it has been the policy of the British Labor Party to extend the provisions of the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland. The party is now in power and the Good Friday Agreement, once enacted into UK law, will give it the ability to go ahead with its plans. Northern Ireland escaped the “abortion-on-demand” that exists in the rest of the United Kingdom, because when the Abortion Act was passed by the Westminster parliament, Northern Ireland had its own independent assembly.
Even when the Northern Ireland Assembly fell in 1972 and the province came under direct rule from Westminster, successive British governments avoided liberalizing the province's abortion laws because Britain claimed — and still claims — to rule in Northern Ireland by consensus. The desire to promote this view also helped the province escape the deeply unpopular poll tax and cuts in spending on public housing and social services introduced elsewhere in the United Kingdom.
But the need to maintain the artifice of consensus ended with the Good Friday Agreement, which allows for the creation of a new assembly to govern Northern Ireland's affairs. Though the new assembly's members have already been elected, the assembly will not have law-making powers until the Northern Ireland Bill is passed in Westminster. This will happen soon after the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London, reconvene in October after their summer break. Under the terms of the agreement, the new Northern Ireland assembly has powers over most of the areas controlled by a national government. The one major exception is criminal legislation which was included in the agreement to allay fears that former terrorists would have control over security matters.
The pro-abortion groups were told to stay out of the limelight and not make any public statements on liberalizing abortion law.
However, in the UK abortion law is part of criminal legislation. This means that the Northern Ireland Assembly will not have any control over the regulation of abortion facilities and, once the agreement is enacted, the UK parliament will have the clear right to impose abortion laws on the province.
According to the pro-choice journalist Eamonn McCann, this loophole in the Good Friday Agreement was deliberately kept quiet by the British government. He claims the pro-abortion group Voices for Choice were told by the British government's Northern Ireland Office to stay out of the limelight and not make any public statements on liberalizing abortion law before the two referenda on the Good Friday Agreement took place.
In recent years, the British Labor Party has become increasingly pro-abortion. At present, the party's selection procedures militate against pro-life candidates. An internal party fund, named Emily's List, provides additional campaign funding to female candidates on one condition: that they support legal abortion. Because of their access to additional campaign funding from Emily's List, party branches are more likely to select pro-choice candidates. The irony is that the fund is named after the 19th-century women's suffragette Emily Pankhurst who was also a leading Victorian pro-lifer who described abortion as “an abomination.”
Despite Labor's massive parliamentary majority in Westminster, Labor Members of Parliament (MPs) are being subjected to a three-line whip when the house votes on the Northern Ireland Bill and on the proposal to extend the provisions of the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland. The three-line whip, a party disciplinary procedure, demands that all Labor MPs attend the House of Commons for the debate and vote according to the party line. To do otherwise, would mean expulsion from the party. In the past, Westminster MPs were allowed to vote ‘according to conscience’ on abortion legislation.
When the bill creating a new devolved Scottish Assembly was placed before the House of Lords last July, a similar whip was placed on government peers demanding that they vote against an amendment that would give Scotland control over its abortion law. Because of the whip, the amendment was defeated by almost two-to one and Scottish abortion law remains under the control of London.
There is no doubt that abortion is opposed by the majority of people in Northern Ireland. Abortion is opposed by all the major political parties in the Northern Irish Assembly except for members of the Women's Coalition and Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA. Nuala Scarrisbrick, who was named a Dame of St. Gregory by the Pope in 1994 for her pro-life activities, told the Register: “The sanctity of human life is the one thing that politicians of every hue, nationalist and unionist, Catholic and Protestant, agree on. Abortion is the one issue where you will find the Rev. Ian Paisley sharing a platform with Catholic campaigners. I am not surprised Sinn Fein are pro-abortion, they have been connected with enough killing in the past. But the people of Northern Ireland don't want abortion, the pressure is coming from England.”
Betty Gibson of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC) in Belfast agrees: “The majority of the people, whether orange [unionist] or green [nationalist], are not in favor of killing babies. We've come through 30 years of very terrible trouble and the majority of people in Northern Ireland have never lost their respect for life.”
Bernie Smyth of the Northern Irish pro-life group Precious Life points out that in the past 30 years more people have died in the United Kingdom because of abortion than have died because of the violence in Northern Ireland.
“Since the 1967 Act, 3 million babies have been killed before they were born, the Northern Ireland Troubles have only led to just over 3,000 deaths,” she said. “These are the facts we are trying to highlight to prevent abortion being forced on Northern Ireland, but the government's plans have been kept quiet to make sure the Good Friday Agreement succeeds. In the politics of Northern Ireland, the peace process comes before everything else, including the life of the unborn.”
Among pro-life politicians there is a great deal of confusion over whether or not they can stop the Labor Party in London from forcing a liberal abortion regime on Northern Ireland. Ian Paisley Jr. of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) told Precious Life he believes little can be done. However, the Rev. Geoffrey Donaldson of the Unionist Party says he thinks the House of Lords may succeed in amending the bill so that a referendum on abortion would have to take place in Northern Ireland beforehand.
In the House of the Lords, the rebellion against the government is being led by Peer Lord Alton, a Catholic who hopes to succeed in amending the legislation so that powers over abortion legislation are devolved to the new Assembly in Belfast. Lord Alton says he has been informed by Lord Strathclyde, the Conservative's chief whip, that the proposal would be the first item for debate in the House of Lords when the peers return from their summer recess. However, the Liverpool pro-lifer is confident that his group can stage a major revolt against the British government, saying: “I hope the initiative will come from both sides of the divide.”
Cian Molloy writes from Dublin, Ireland.
------- EXCERPT: CULTURE OF LIFE ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cian Molloy ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:Pope John Paul warned in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae that new scientific techniques designed to overcome problems of infertility are not only immoral, but pose a threat to the life of children conceived by these methods.
“The various techniques of artificial reproduction, which would seem to be at the service of life and which are frequently used with this intention, actually open the door to new threats against life. Apart from the fact that they are morally unacceptable, since they separate procreation from the fully human context of the conjugal act, these techniques have a high rate of failure: not just failure in relation to fertilization but with regard to the subsequent development of the embryo, which is exposed to the risk of death, generally within a very short space of time. Furthermore, the number of embryos produced is often greater than that needed for implantation in the woman's womb, and these so-called ‘spare embryos’ are then destroyed or used for research which, under the pretext of scientific or medical progress, in fact reduces human life to the level of simple ‘biological material’ to be freely disposed of” (14.1).
------- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Couples Find Answers to Infertility in Prayerand Science DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:Special ministries offer guidance in line with Church teaching
NEW YORK—After three years of marriage, Ann and Jim C. began to wonder if they would ever be able to have a baby. The New York City couple became so concerned about their child-lessness that they consulted their doctor, who referred them to a fertility specialist. Tests revealed that Jim had a low sperm count, and the specialist indicated that Ann's chance of getting pregnant in the usual way was practically nil.
She felt empty and frustrated, but for three more years the couple tried several options to address the problem. Jim had a surgical procedure known as varicocelectomy to correct blockage of semen, injections of a male hormone to stimulate sperm production, and surgery to alleviate tubal blockage. When nothing worked, the specialist suggested in vitro fertilization.
Although Ann, who did not want her real name used for this article, was a practicing Catholic, she admitted she was tempted by the idea. She badly wanted a child, and at 40, she felt time running out.
She and her husband eventually realized though, that throughout all their efforts with medicine, they “didn't really petition God.”
Ann then asked herself, “Who are we really going to trust, God or science?”
Trust in God is the quality she encourages others in her situation to develop. She meets infertile couples regularly under the auspices of the St. Elizabeth's Hope Ministry in New York, which was started by another woman who suffered from childlessness. Apostolates such as St. Elizabeth's developed out of real-life needs and the wish of Catholic couples to do what is right in the eyes of the Giver of Life.
Apostolates such as St. Elizabeth's developed out of real-life needs of Catholic couples.
Often barraged by an array of technical options in baby-making, many Catholic couples are subject to confusion. Many do not know what is right and wrong in assisted reproduction.
“St. Elizabeth's is a teaching ministry to help people protect their bodies and their souls,” explained founder L.A. Doyle, an obstetrics and gynecology nurse. Many fertility techniques are not only contrary to Church teaching, she said, but can be damaging physically and emotionally.
Twice a year, couples meet at a convent of the Sisters of Life in the Bronx, a community of nuns founded by John Cardinal O'Connor to pray for and promote a sense of the sanctity of life. Speakers discuss the problem from both spiritual and medical perspectives. Some offer resources and information on adoption and natural family planning. Couples are then invited to attend bimonthly holy hours.
Infertility has been on the rise in recent years because of delayed marriage and childbearing, the long-term effects of venereal diseases, and the use of the pill, the intrauterine device, and other contraceptives. Childless couples are boosting a $2 billion a year industry that markets everything from fertility drugs to “custom embryos” made by selectively matching donor egg and sperm to enhance the intelligence and good looks of the resulting child.
What's more, human cloning is appearing to be more and more a possibility. The recent successful cloning of mice in Hawaii seemed to confirm the breakthrough made last year by Scottish researchers. Dolly the sheep was the world's first clone of an adult mammal, an advance that put man a step closer to human cloning.
Advances in the technology have encouraged a mentality that “if it can be done, it should be done,” said Dr. Kevin Reilly, director of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center in Bronx, N.Y. A significant number of couples will try just about anything to have a baby, believing they have a “right” to a child, he said.
But looking at a child in any way other than as a gift from God reduces him to the status of a product or commodity, many Catholic thinkers point out.
Catholic teaching states that the child is not “an object to which one has a right, nor can he be considered as an object of ownership: rather, a child is a gift, ‘the supreme gift’ and the most gratuitous gift of marriage, and is a living testimony of the mutual giving of his parents. For this reason, the child has the right, as already mentioned, to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents; and he also has the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception” (Donum Vitae, 7).
The St. Elizabeth's Hope Ministry — named for the mother of St. John the Baptist, who was thought to be sterile but conceived in her old age — was founded in the summer of 1996 after Doyle said she was “horrified” hearing the news that some 3,000 frozen embryos created in Great Britain by in vitro fertilization were scheduled to be thawed and destroyed because they had reached their five-year storage limit.
Doyle realized that couples often receive bad advice from fertility specialists, support groups, and the media, and need not only knowledge of what techniques are moral, but support in prayer.
“In this ministry, we go to God as Creator,” she explained. “We have couples pray together because it's a couples problem.”
After four miscarriages in six years of marriage, Doyle began to feel that doctors were putting a Band-Aid on her problem rather than going to its root. She too was about to agree to a specialist's advice — in her case to use a drug that stimulates egg production.
“He wanted to give me the same drug [Iowa septuptlet mother] Bobbi McCaughey was taking,” she told the Register. “But he said that if there was a multiple pregnancy, he would recommend a ‘fetal reduction.’This is the man who was supposed to help me have children, and he was willing to destroy them. I never went back.”
McCaughey's doctor recommended aborting some of the unborn babies so the others would have a better chance of surviving. She and her husband, devout, pro-life Baptists, declined, saying they would trust in God. All seven children, born last November, are still doing well.
The Church has not condemned the use of such drugs, but couples employing medication such as Pergonal or Metrodin “would have to be well advised,” in the words of Msgr. William Smith, professor of moral theology at St. Joseph's Seminary in the Archdiocese of New York. He said that if the doctor can determine via sonogram that the medication has produced more than three ripe eggs, it would be better for the couple to refrain from intercourse until the next cycle.
“We are designed to be born one at a time,” he said. “The womb is not constructed for overcrowding.” Having so many fetuses increases the chance for premature birth, with its concomitant problems of low birthweight, underdeveloped lungs and skin, and the possibility of birth defects.
Donum Vitae (Gift of Life), the 1987 Vatican document that formally condemned in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other artificial techniques, explained that it is wrong to generate human life outside the marital act.
“These procedures are contrary to the human dignity proper to the embryo, and at the same time they are contrary to the right of every person to be conceived and to be born within marriage and from marriage” (Donum Vitae, 5).
Techniques that help intercourse achieve its objective of procreation but do not substitute for it are morally licit. But IVF, artificial insemination, surrogate parenting, and techniques that involve the freezing or donation of sperm or eggs entail the dissociation of husband and wife by the intrusion of a person other than the couple.
“The freezing of embryos, even when carried out in order to preserve the life of an embryo-cryopreservation-constitutes an offense against the respect due to human beings by exposing them to grave risks of death or harm to their physical integrity, and depriving them, at least temporarily, of maternal shelter and gestation, thus placing them in a situation in which further offenses and manipulation are possible” (Donum Vitae, 6).
Also immoral are techniques involving only the married couple but that dissociate the sexual (unitive) act from the procreative act.
That includes artificial insemination, even when the husband's own sperm is used.
Father Russell Smith, theological consultant for the Diocese of Richmond, Va., sees Donum Vitae as building upon a 1949 address of Pope Pius XII to an organization of Catholic physicians.
“What he said still holds true,” Father Smith told the Register. “Medicine is not a matter of being artificial or natural. But if one spouse becomes unnecessary in the reproductive process, it is not a worthy way of bringing forth life.”
What options are open to a faithful Catholic couple?
“Most Catholic hospitals have fertility clinics,” said Father David Liptak, cofounder of the John Paul II Bioethics Center at Holy Apostles Seminary in Cromwell, Conn. “This would be the first instance of inquiry.”
Procedures that assist but do not replace the conjugal act would include surgical treatments for tubal blockage, reversal of tubal ligations, and medical or surgical treatment of endometriosis, where tissue that is normally confined to the lining of the uterus is growing outside that area, such as in the ovaries.
There are also procedures that, because they are relatively new and subject to further study, the Holy See has not yet determined to be moral or immoral and can be considered “an open question, pastorally,” said Father Smith. Some Catholic hospitals offer Gamete Intra-Fallopian Transfer (GIFT), for example, which extracts an ovum, places it near sperm cells in a catheter and then inserts both into the uterus. Conception follows in vivo — in a woman's body.
There is debate among medical ethicists concerning GIFT, which was developed in 1988, when Donum Vitae was issued. Critics say that everything that intervenes in the conjugal act is so invasive that it renders the husband virtually unnecessary. But Peter Cataldo, director of research at the National Catholic Bioethics Center (formerly the Pope John Center for Medical Ethics) in Boston, said that a modified form of GIFT can be used as long as masturbation is not involved. Semen may be collected during the conjugal act by using a special perfo-rated sheath (not a condom) that allows for a quantity of semen to pass into the woman before it self-seals, collecting the remainder. The device has a chemical composition that is not hostile to sperm.
“If fertilization occurs, it would be as a result of the conjugal act,” Cataldo said.
Added Father Smith, “Assisted insemination is as medical and technical as other things but it doesn't replace the conjugal act. Neither spouse is made unnecessary.”
There are also a number of “lowtech” solutions that Catholics may try, including natural family planning (NFP), which is normally used for spacing births for serious reasons.
Many cases of childlessness are due to “bad timing,” missing the fertile time in the woman's cycle, said Nona Aguilar, author of The New No-Pill, No-Risk Birth Control, a book about NFP (MacMillan, 1986). Couples have a 27% chance of conceiving a child once they isolate the day in which the wife is ovulating.
Marilyn Shannon, author of Fertility, Cycles, and Nutrition (Couple to Couple League, 1996), believes that obtaining enough vitamins and other nutritional elements is crucial to fertility. She said Americans are not receiving enough essential fatty acids because of the country's low-fat craze, for example. She cites instances where taking flax oil, which contains those acids, has made a difference.
“We recommend couples to try all of this low-tech stuff for six to nine months,” said Shannon. “Then, if they still don't get pregnant, we recommend that they seek ethical, prudent medical care.”
For those for whom nothing seems to work, Donum Vitae offers consolations. It calls infertile couples to find in sterility “an opportunity for sharing in a particular way in the Lord's cross, the source of spiritual fruitfulness.” It suggests finding “other important services to the life of the human person,” for example, adoption, various forms of educational work, and assistance to other families and to the poor or handicapped children.
Dioceses around the country have adoption services, as does Catholic Charities USA. Ann and Jim were offered a nine-month-old girl with “special needs,” and were unsure about what to do. They were still praying for a baby of their own as well.
“We wanted a guarantee that everything would be perfect but realized that any way you have a child there are risks and that she would need a lot of love,” Ann said. When the couple brought the child home, they “just fell in love” with her. She could not sit upright, was very frail and underweight, did not like to eat and did not make eye contact.
But by her first birthday, the girl was “scooting around” in a walker. “The more she was loved, the more she responded, and now, at age three she's making eye contact.”
Stories abound of couples who adopt and then find themselves expecting one of their own, and six months after adopting, Ann became pregnant. She wasn't sure how to explain it, except as the answer to their prayers, since Jim's last test showed his blockage had come back and his sperm count still low.
Ann said she feels her life is “full” and looks back at how God's plan has worked itself out in her life.
“I thank God now because if I had conceived naturally from the beginning, I'd never have my adopted daughter. And I couldn't imagine life without her.”
St. Elizabeth's Hope Ministry may be contacted at 914-526-3905; the National Catholic Bioethics Center may be contacted at 617-787-1900. For information about local instruction in NFP, couples may call their diocese or the Couple to Couple League, 513-471-2000.
John Burger writes from New York.
------- EXCERPT: CULTURE OF LIFE ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Burger ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Canadian Student Lobbied for Por-Life at U.N. Meetings DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:There's ‘little awareness’ of right-to-life message, 26-year-old reports
TORONTO—A Canadian student is back in Toronto after nearly six weeks of lobbying for the pro-life, pro-family position at two United Nations conferences in Europe.
Charmaine Graves, 26, an international relations student at the University of Toronto, traveled to Rome in July to represent the International Right to Life federation and Canada's Campaign Life Coalition at meetings to establish an International Criminal Court (ICC). It was a heady time for Graves, given some of the controversies surrounding the creation of this new international court.
After a brief return to Toronto, Graves flew to Lisbon, Portugal in mid-August to attend the First World Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth. The conference was called to find ways of allowing young people to take on greater decision making “at all levels and spheres of society.”
In Rome and Lisbon, Graves and her pro-life colleagues lobbied national delegations to ensure that the right to life voice was not lost in the diplomatic shuffle.
Pro-life, pro-family organizations have made it a priority to send lobbyists to international conferences to counter what many see as the United Nations' increasing support for radical feminist objectives. The Holy See has also made numerous interventions at past UN gatherings to defend the dignity of the human person and the traditional family.
Often, however, pro-life and pro-family voices are swamped by other voices calling for new definitions of marriage, family, and gender roles. The Women's Caucus for Gender Justice attended the Rome meeting and has been a major player at previous UN conferences.
Graves had little idea she would be working on the international stage when she was hired in May as a summer student with Campaign Life Coalition, Canada's leading pro-life organization. However, the Cape Breton, Nova Scotia native quickly found the international experience eye-opening.
“We didn't enjoy total success at the conferences, but I found it exciting to bring the right to life viewpoint to international delegates,” Graves told the Register. “So many of them seemed open to our message. It was surprising how little awareness there is about the right to life message among these people.”
At the Rome conference, pro-life lobbyists were leery of a proposal to include the term “enforced pregnancy” in the list of crimes that could be tried by the International Criminal Court. Many saw the use of the term enforced pregnancy — even if it was the result of rape — as an attempt to undermine any federal legislation limiting abortion on demand.
Just prior to the Rome conference, for example, the Vatican expressed concern over the use of the enforced pregnancy language on the international war crimes list. Other Church groups, including the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, voiced similar concerns. In a recent letter to Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, Montreal's Archbishop Jean-Claude Turcotte, president of the Canadian bishops'conference, called for “forcible impregnation” to replace the term enforced pregnancy.
“The distinction between enforced pregnancy and forcible impregnation is a vital one which may have been overlooked in the legitimate and understandable haste to make this aggravated form of rape subject to clear and effective sanctions,” Archbishop Turcotte said. “We are very concerned that if the term enforced pregnancy is retained, pregnancy itself could be considered a crime, or abortions compelled to avoid prosecution, and that the perpetrators could escape without accountability.”
This was also the view of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, a New York-based organization that monitors United Nations activity.
In a report published on the Institute's Web site, director Austin Ruse said concerns about the United Nations' International Criminal Court overriding national sovereignty are not unfounded, especially when it comes to right to life issues. Ruse is one of many North American pro-lifers who believe the United Nations has shifted away from its humanitarian founding principles to embrace a contraception mentality.
“The concern of the pro-life, pro-family world has always been that this [UN] tribunal could be used for purely ideological and destructive ends,” Ruse said. “With the proposed International Criminal Court statutes, there exists language that could make pro-life advocates war criminals simply by working on behalf of the unborn child.”
Although delegates to the Rome conference changed the term enforced pregnancy to a more narrowly defined “forced pregnancy,” pro-lifers are wary that the ICC could be the first step in a concerted effort to outlaw any restrictions on abortion.
Despite some lingering concerns, Graves was inspired by the overall experience in Rome. She said she did not feel overwhelmed as a young person among so many experienced diplomats and world travelers.
“In many ways it was inspiring to share our information with the delegates. I was eager to note if they are aware of some of the anti-family elements of the United Nations'agenda,” she said.
Graves recalled being positively received by most groups at the two conferences, particularly delegates from Africa and Third World countries. Unfortunately, she added, the Canadian delegation, along with those from western European countries, were unreceptive to pro-life overtures.
“We more or less avoided them with our efforts,” Graves said, “because we knew they would be unfavorable to the right to life position.”
In Lisbon, Graves was preoccupied with efforts to have a pro-family attitude enshrined in an international declaration of the rights of young people. She was gratified to see the inclusion of the family and marriage “as the basic units of society” added to the official Lisbon Declaration.
Nonetheless, the declaration also contains a number of problem areas for pro-life supporters, particularly its support for youth access to “reproductive health care” and family planning methods of their choice. By UN definition, reproductive health care and family planning refer to access to abortion and contraception.
Furthermore, the Lisbon Declaration contains no references to parental responsibility in children's access to reproductive health information. Graves said this could mean parents having no control over the kinds of family planning information available to their children.
Graves believes her experiences in both Rome and Lisbon have given her a deeper commitment to uphold right-to-life values on a larger scale. She echoed the view of many Canadian pro-life activists that United Nations' initiatives must be closely monitored for their tendency to downplay or ignore long-held humanitarian ideals.
As Jim Hughes, president of Campaign Life Coalition, advised Graves prior to her departure overseas, “We can't underestimate the very serious danger to life and family inherent in these UN initiatives … as they attempt to bypass elected legislatures and local customs to impose a radical social doctrine on all the nations of the world.”
Mike Mastromatteo writes from Toronto, Canada.
------- EXCERPT: ProLife ProFile ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mike Mastromatteo ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: India Bans Notorious Sterilization Drug DATE: 08/30/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 30-September 5, 1998 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Quinacrine, a chemical pellet used for sterilization, has been banned in India. Although no government has officially approved Quinacrine, it has caused more than 100,000 sterilizations in the Third World, about one quarter of them in India.
The pellets, which are inserted into the uterus to burn and scar a woman's fallopian tubes, have been distributed in Asia, Latin America, and Middle Eastern countries by two Americans, Stephen Mumford and Elton Kessel. The largest number of sterilizations have occurred in Vietnam; India ranks second.
Catholic teaching prohibits sterilization. In addition, there are significant side effects of Quinacrine — including possible ectopic (tubal) pregnancies — and the potential link between the drug and cancer remain unclear. Poor women often are tricked or forced into the painful procedure, which is done without the use of anesthesia.
The Wall Street Journal and the Register published extensive reports on Quinacrine earlier this summer (see “Population Control Advocates' Sterilization Program Exposed,” July 5-11). The Journal article is thought to be directly responsible for Sipharm Sesseln AG ceasing production of the drug. The Swiss pharmaceutical firm has been the world's sole manufacturer of the drug. Mumford and Kessel are seeking a new producer.
The Population Research Institute (PRI) of Falls Church, Va., has strongly opposed Quinacrine. In expressing support for the Indian government's action, Stephen Mosher, president of PRI, said, “For years, experimenters in Quinacrine have been hiding behind the letter of the law, which did not forbid the use of this chemical, to experiment on tens of thousands of Third World women in their attempt to develop the ‘perfect’ population control drug.”
Chile, another country where Quinacrine sterilizations have been carried out, also banned the drug recently. Speaking of both countries' action, Mosher added, “PRI applauds this action, and hopes that other countries throughout the world will take similar steps to outlaw this dangerous practice.”
Franciscan Father Germain Kopaczynski of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Boston, also expressed approval. Quinacrine, he said, “is a bad thing for women's health. The notion of using women as guinea pigs is wrong.”
In addition to his grave concern about the practice of sterilization, the priest continued, “There has to be a better way to improve the quality of life for women without subjecting them to the very real risks of life and limb on the part of so-called American fertility experts.”
India's action, which took place Aug. 17, appears to completely remove the prospect of any future use of Quinacrine in the world's second-largest country. The new law prohibits the importation, production, and dissemination of the drug. Penalties for violations include imprisonment and fines.
Joseph Esposito is the Register's Washington Correspondent
------- EXCERPT: CULTURE OF LIFE ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Esposito ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: New Cardinals 'Reflect the Church's Universality' DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:Two U.S. prelates-Archbishop Francis George and J. Francis Stafford-are among 22 named.
VATICAN CITY-Pope John Paul II has named 22 new cardinals who will assist and advise him in Church matters. Among those to receive the honor is Chicago's Archbishop Francis George OMI, who will also join the ranks of those cardinals eligible to vote in the next papal conclave.
The Pope made the announcement Jan. 18 during his customary recitation of the Sunday Angelus. He said the prelates would formally be elevated at a ceremony, known as a consistory, to be held Feb. 21. It will mark the Pope's seventh consistory since his election in 1978.
A second American, Archbishop J. Francis Stafford, former archbishop of Denver now serving in the Vatican as head of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, was also among the newly named cardinals. Others included the archbishops of Toronto, Mexico City, Vienna, Austria, and Madrid, Spain.
Prelates in Taiwan, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Tanzania, France, and Italy were among those named cardinals, along with the heads of various Vatican departments whose leaders traditionally receive the red cardinal's hat. Pope John Paul II also named bishop Adam Kozlowiecki, a Polish missionary in Zambia, who had been imprisoned in the Nazi death camp in Dachau during World War II.
“The choice of the new cardinals, coming from various parts of the world, reflects in an eloquent way the universality of the Church,” the Pontiff said in making the announcement from the window of his study to pilgrims and tourists in St. Peter's Square.
The Pope appeared in excellent form as he made the surprise announcement on a sunny and mild winter day. A thunder of applause erupted in the square from the thousands of people who were on hand to see him.
The identity of two of the 22 new cardinals, the Pope said, would remain in pectore, (from the Latin meaning “in my breast”) for the time being. This rarely used procedure is intended to protect the identity of cardinals where a public announcement could endanger the prelate or the local Church. Sometimes the Pope will later reveal the identity of the secret cardinals when they are no longer in potential danger, or after they die.
Cardinals are the Pope's closest advisers in Rome and around the world. Those under the age of 80 are known as “cardinal electors” and can enter a conclave to elect a new pontiff. Nineteen of the newly named are cardinal electors.
The Pope's health has led many to speculate that this may be the final consistory of his pontificate, now in its 20th year. He last held a consistory in 1994.
Pope John Paul II has now named 88% of the 123 cardinals eligible to vote for his successor. The total membership in the College of Cardinals has been boosted to 168.
With the new nominations, the Pope said he had made an exception to Church rules, which normally limit the number of cardinal electors to 120, to reward three Italians for dedicated service to the Church. This appeared to be a one-off exception and not a permanent change to Church regulations.
During his pontificate, Pope John Paul II has altered the composition of the college of cardinals away from Europe and more toward Africa, Asia, and Latin America. After the consistory next month, Europe will account for only 55 cardinal electors.
With the two American appointments, the United States will have 11 cardinals eligible to vote for a new Pope, second only to Italy's 23.
Cardinal-designate George, 60, began serving in Chicago last year, replacing Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who died in November 1996. The Chicago-born prelate had been archbishop in Portland, Ore., prior to taking up the post as head of the United States'second-largest diocese.
Cardinal-designate Stafford, 65, first caught papal attention in 1993 when the Pope traveled to Denver for World Youth Day. The soon-to-be cardinal was Denver's ordinary for 10 years before the Pope called him to Rome in 1996 to head the Vatican office that oversees the role of the laity in Church affairs worldwide.
Some observers say the next pope may very well be chosen from among the newly named cardinals because many of the existing cardinals are getting older.
One of the rumored papabili (favored candidates for the papacy) from the new group is Christoph schon born, Archbishop of Vienna. At 53, he is the youngest of the newly named cardinals.
Pope John Paul II's selection of new cardinals increases the possibility that the next pope also will be a non-Italian. Although seven of the latest group are Italian, none are considered by Vatican observers to be likely candidates for the papacy.
In announcing the new cardinals and the date of the next consistory, Pope John Paul II said he had intended to include one additional name-Bishop Giuseppe Uhac, secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of People. Unfortunately, the Pope explained, Bishop Uhac died the morning the new cardinals were named.
Stephen Banyra writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: STEPHEN BANYRA ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Growing Hispanic Population Means Big Pastoral Challenges For U.S. Parishes DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:In 25 years, more than 50% of U.S. Catholics will be Hispanic
CHICAGO-A glance into a crystal ball might reveal the following in the not-so-distant future:
ï St. Patrick's Day has been dwarfed by the more popular Our Lady of Guadalupe Day, complete with parades, parties, and even Hallmark greeting cards for the occasion.
ï Teenage girls get more excited about their quincea&ntild;era than about the prom.
ï Every Catholic parish in the United States offers at least one Mass in Spanish.
That future is not so far away, say those who work in Hispanic ministry in the Church. Within the next 25 years, Hispanics are expected to become the U.S. Church's largest ethnic component-a majority, in fact. Already, with 30 million Hispanics, the United States is the fourth-largest Spanish-speaking country in the Americas.
If those statistics haven't already affected parishes in Everytown U.S.A., they will soon. In the northwest suburbs of Chicago, they already have. An afternoon Spanish Mass is becoming more and more common at parishes in the formerly all-white suburbs, where jobs and affordable housing have lured Hispanics away from inner-city neighborhoods. Already outdated 1990 census figures showed that Hispanics accounted for 5.3% of the population of 10 northwest suburbs, with a high of 14.4% in Prospect Heights.
To respond pastorally, parishes in Prospect Heights and nearby Mt. Prospect decided to collaborate by hiring one bilingual priest to coordinate Hispanic outreach for the five parishes, with a weekly Spanish Mass at one site.
“This is a moment of grace for the U.S. Church because it gives us an opportunity to be welcoming,” said Divine Word Father Sonny de Rivera, a Filipino who ministered in Chile for many years and is now coordinator for the regional ministry.
He claims the reaction from most Anglos has been overwhelmingly positive. But Graciela Contreras, Hispanic ministry coordinator for the Archdiocese of Chicago's Vicariate I, acknowledges that some Anglos feel threatened by the growing Hispanic presence. “That's something we have to face,” she said.
Ronaldo Cruz, head of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Hispanic Affairs, also believes there can be tension between Anglos and Hispanics, especially when a former national parish, such as an Irish, German, or Polish one, sees an influx of Hispanics.
“This is a delicate matter,” Cruz said. “We must certainly be sensitive to the traditions and history of a parish. But we must also do education and teach people that to be Catholic is to accept diversity.”
Cruz called Chicago “a microcosm of the Church in the United States.”
What Prospect Heights is facing this year, towns across the country will face in years to come. According to Church figures from 1994, Hispanics account for nearly one-third of the more than 60 million U.S. Catholics. Fueled in large part by immigration, that number is expected to mushroom within the next quarter century, resulting in a U.S. Church that is more than half Hispanic.
“Already we have dioceses or archdioceses in America where Hispanics are a majority,” said Cruz.
Those statistics are constantly on the minds of those who minister to American Catholics. Whether it's the recent Synod of Bishops for America in Rome or the frequent political wrangling about immigration laws, U.S. Church leaders find themselves constantly facing the issues related to the growing Hispanic population in the Church.
“The demographics are clear,” Bishop Anthony Pilla of Cleveland, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, said during the bishops’ November meeting. “We want and need to respond to that reality.”
At that meeting, the U.S. bishops took two steps toward reaching out to and unifying Hispanic Catholics. First, they voted to hold a fourth Encuentro (Spanish for encounter or meeting) in the year 2000. The national symposium, the first since 1985, is designed to bring together Catholic leaders to discuss how to speed the integration of Hispanics, especially young people, into the full life of the Church.
Then, in a mail vote, the bishops approved the first Spanish-language Sacramentary written especially for the American Church, a move they hope will standardize Spanish-language Masses in the United States. Until now, parishes have been choosing from among more than a dozen foreign Spanish-language Sacramentaries that vary according to region of origin.
That immense diversity within the larger identification of “Hispanic” adds to the complexity of an effective pastoral response, said the USCC's Cruz. Although Mexicans represent the largest subgroup, they are by no means the only Hispanics in the United States. Non-Mexican Hispanics often complain that mariachi music and devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe does not reflect their cultural traditions. And U.S.-born Hispanics often differ with recent immigrants about how to best serve the Hispanic population.
“It does become quite complicated,” said Cruz. “It takes sensitivity on the part of Church leadership to respond to the diversity of needs.”
Language has been the unifying factor for Hispanic Catholics. Even when Hispanics are bilingual, there is often a desire to worship in their native language. “Culturally we speak to God in our native language,” explained Cruz.
A shortage of priests and others in ministry who are bilingual is already reaching crisis proportions, Hispanic Church leaders say. For recent immigrants, language is even more crucial.
“When we are outside our cultural tradition, it is the Church we look to affirm our identity,” Cruz said. “The Church becomes extremely important in maintaining faith and cultural tradition.” Ultimately, the Church's attitude toward Hispanic immigrants may influence how well they are integrated into American life, Cruz said.
“To the degree that the Church accepts them, they will be integrated,” he said. “But if the Church rejects them, they will become marginalized.”
A welcoming attitude-even more than Spanish-language Masses-is key for parishes who want to reach out to Hispanics, according to Mercy Sister Maria Elena Gonzalez, president of the Mexican-American Cultural Center in San Antonio, Texas.
“The bottom line is that Hispanics want to be welcomed and to have a place to belong,” she said.
Said Cruz: “In the Church, the only passport we're required is our baptism.”
Still, several studies have shown that some Hispanics in the United States are staying away from traditional parish life. One study on liturgical participation found that only 20% of Hispanics connect with a parish, including attending Mass.
Some dioceses have responded by forming non-territorial national parishes for particular ethnic groups. But a lack of Spanish-speaking priests-as well as the diversity within the Hispanic community-has hindered the formation of many such national parishes.
“I don't think Hispanics want their own Church,” said Cruz. “They do want Mass in Spanish, and they want to be included in the life of the Church.”
Too often, such inclusion is hampered by quick judgments on the part of Anglos, when instead an understanding of Hispanics ‘history and culture would help explain differences. For example, Catholics in Latin America don't formally register in parishes, Cruz said. Access to priests is generally very limited, and for many in small villages, lay ministers and catechists are often the only contact with the official Church.
Also, Hispanics are less accustomed to tithing, Cruz said, partially because they have been seen as poor and needing assistance.
“But they do give to the Church,” he said. “They will work very hard for you. Hispanics may not give you $50 a week, but they will make tamales or help paint the church.”
Ultimately such diversity-not only from Hispanics, but from Eastern Europeans, Asians, Africans, and other immigrants-will enrich and renew the Church, those in Hispanic ministry say.
“In America, being Catholic has meant being American, but we have to remember that catholic means universal,” Sister Gonzalez said. “For the first time we are beginning to realize what it really means to be a universal Church.”
Assimilation is not necessarily the answer. And the melting pot theory just doesn't work for people of color, said Sister Gonzalez.
“The problem is that so many Americans are not in touch with their own cultural roots, so they don't know how to respect other people's,” she said.
Eventually, all Catholics will realize how the presence of Hispanics benefits the entire American Church, said Father John Hurley a priest involved with the Chicago suburban community.
“Their vibrancy and enthusiasm for life, as well as strong family life, will be very enriching,” he said.
While those in ministry will find becoming bilingual nearly essential, every parishioner has his or her part in making newcomers feel welcome. “Cultural acceptance gives us a different heart,” said Sister Gonzalez. “Not everyone has to learn Spanish, but we all have to open our hearts and be welcoming.”
Heidi Schlumpf writes from Chicago.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: HEIDI SCHLUMPF ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Watching Over the Flock in Sunny Acapulco DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:Archbishop Rafael Bello Ruiz talks about Mexico: its tourism, missionaries, violence, vocations, faith, and future.
Archbishop Rafael Bello Ruiz cares deeply about the relationship between Mexico and the United States. He completed part of his seminary training in Montezuma, New Mexico, in the mid-1940s. Religious persecution at the time was a way of life in the country, and the seminaries were shut down by the government. Today, Archbishop Bello heads the archdiocese of Acapulco, a favorite vacation spot for U.S. tourists. In a recent interview with Register correspondent Paul Witte, the archbishop spoke about the poverty behind the glitter of Acapulco's luxury hotels, the Chiapas uprisings, and the tumultous changes now occurring in Mexico.
Witte: Mexicans are coming to the United States in increasing numbers. Many speak no English or do not speak it well. Is the Church in Mexico able to help minister to these expatriates?
Archbishop Bello: The Bishops of North America have often asked us to send priests, but there are few priests to minister to the Latin Americans in the United States. A few volunteers have gone, but not enough. We have not gotten ourselves organized at the [regional] level of the Latin American Church to help our compatriots in the United States. The reason is that we do not have enough priests, and those that we do have are not specifically prepared for that apostolate. They are not familiar with the ways of the United States, the culture, and it is a risk to send priests who are not prepared.
It is possible that, following the recent Pan-American Synod of Rome, the bishops of Mexico and the United States might come to some more concrete accords on the matter. It is possible for our priests to receive the formation and the information necessary in order to develop an efficient work among our own in the United States.
Now that the Synod in Rome is over, are the bishops going to get together here in Mexico?
I suppose that on the level of episcopal commissions, it will be done. There is a commission in the United States and a similar one in Mexico, called “Concerning Human Mobility.” It encompasses the apostolate of the seas, the apostolate of tourism, the apostolate of immigrants. In Acapulco we are part of a commission dealing with tourism, but what is of interest to us is not so much the tourists who come and go but rather those who remain here performing services for the tourists-the waiters, the women who work in the restaurants, those who remain behind, because they too need pastoral care.
What are your thoughts regarding the recent Synod?
The texts of the Synod have not been released yet. It appears the outcome of the Synod will be promulgated within the year. It has been said that the documents of the Synod will be collected and the conclusions will be promulgated in Tepeyac [where Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared] in Mexico City for all the Americas.
Archbishop Rafael Bello Ruiz
Current post: Archbishop of Acapulco, Mexico.
Background: Born March 7, 1926 in Tecpan de Galeana, about 100 miles from Acapulco; attended seminaries in Mexico and the U.S.; studied theology in the Catholic Institute of Paris and Canon Law in the Gregorian University of Rome; ordained June 29, 1950; professor and spiritual director in the seminary in Chilapa, Mexico; consecrated as a bishop March 25, 1974; made an archbishop Feb 10, 1983.
Episcopal motto: “He sent me to preach good news to the poor.”
What was of particular interest was the news that the Synod was going to request of the competent authorities of the world that the external debt of the Latin American countries be in part forgiven. That will be a difficult thing to accomplish.
Another important point of the Synod has to do with the relationship between the Church in Latin America and the activity of some Protestant groups. I see that on our part there is a desire to dialogue, but not on their part. Rather, there is hate.
Another point of the Synod has to do with doctrinal orthodoxy. There are theologians in the United States mostly, who are very advanced and far from the sources of revelation. They have a phobia of the Church's Magisterium; they have much confidence in their theological reflections. But they are people who study, who have possibilities, who have many universities. Latin America is like an army of workers who are working very hard in the field and when the time comes to study are too tired. We in Latin America do not have the theologians we need; the United States does.
Is there some way to solve this imbalance?
Insofar as the diffusion of the culture is concerned, yes there are ways. They [the theologians] themselves suggested the solution: utilizing the social media of communication.
In the United States you can have a tremendous mission diffusing correct ideas regarding the Catholic tradition, but in Latin America there are countries like Mexico [where] monopolies dominate the media. In Mexico the Church is not allowed to operate a radio or TV station nor to publish a newspaper that is worth something. We understand that these kinds of communication have to come in time when the Mexican authorities understand that every person has freedom to express himself. But the government has monopolized free speech until now. Only just now are we beginning to have a friendly relationship with the government and we don't want to lose it. So we don't say anything.
How has the relationship between the Church and the state gotten better?
By law. Before, the government of Salinas Gortari reformed the Mexican Constitution in various articles harmful to the rights of the Church. But now the relationship is friendly.
What is the population of Mexico and in what condition are the people?
Mexico is around 100 million people, and the majority of them are poor. Most do not earn a salary sufficient for them to eat well, or to get treatment for their illnesses, to clothe themselves, or to take vacations.
Isn't the situation in Acapulco different? It seems so luxurious.
Yes, but the view fools you. You see international luxury hotel chains and international restaurant chains, great international stores, such that the rich make purchases, but these stores do not stock Mexican merchandise. So you have the saying: Tourism comes and takes the fat out of the broth. What remains? What do the waiters, the cleaning ladies, the police really earn?
We heard much in the United States about Hurricane Paulina. How has that disaster affected the area?
The poor suffered much. A good thing that came from the hurricane was how it awakened the concern of Catholic communities of the United States. Parishes have helped us out economically, in a most beautiful and Christian way. Even children sent funds to help us. Poor parishes from the United States sent aid too: $25 or $50. The bishops, too, have been generous. With this help we have been able to restore our losses — including the destroyed homes of families- thanks to the help of the United States.
Were there losses of church buildings and the like?
One parish was completely destroyed. A school for the formation of the laity was also destroyed, but thanks to Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, we were able to get enough money to buy a school that had been abandoned, and we have been preparing it to replace the school that was destroyed. It would have been a great loss not to have a place to train our laity, to hold retreats for them, to hold classes. Now the apostolic nuncio is coming to bless the new house.
According to what I understand, because of the media in the United States, the drama that was taking place here in Acapulco was broadcast all over the country so that everyone knew about the effects of the hurricane. I have written to all the bishops and people of the United States who help us, but I want to affirm here that the aid of the people of the United States was indeed generous.
What are your thoughts about the ongoing unrest in Chiapas? Are there people trying to destroy the San Andres peace accords established between the guerrillas and the Mexican government?
I believe so. I don't know of any written document which proves it, but there are oral testimonies that attest to that fact. It is supposed that there are many reasons for explaining that barbarous happening, that slaughter. Among other things, there is the context of poverty, of injustice, of violence that has existed in Chiapas and in other indigenous zones of Mexico. Now we are trying to reflect over these things and to better the conditions of life of the Indian people.
What position do the bishops of Mexico take in the face of the killings in Chiapas?
We are getting together on all levels. For example, we recently had a meeting of the bishops of the State of Guerrero. One of the themes was Chiapas and the outbreaks of violence that we have been seeing in our own state of Guerrero. Everyone addressed the state of abandonment in which the Indians have lived: their fields without cultivation, their forests depleted, their rivers and streams contaminated. All this makes us realize that we are obliged from this very moment to better the condition of life of the Indians. This is a general commitment of all the bishops: to better the condition of life of the Indians while at the same time evangelizing them, telling them and the mestizos that we are brothers, we are fellow citizens. Consequently, it is not necessary to think in terms of creating a separate region for the Indians, and another for the mestizos. We are one family and we live in one house. We want to forget the past of rejection and marginalization. These Indian people were chosen by the Virgin of Guadalupe in the person of Juan Diego. This is what the bishops think.
How many Indians are there in Guerrero?
There are 50,000 Indians, in three ethnic groups: Nahua, Mixtec and Tlapanec. They are dispersed throughout the mountains. There are missionaries among each ethnic group. For example, the PIME fathers are with the Mixtecs. The Conventual Franciscans of Chicago are with the Amuzgos [Nahua]. Diocesan clergy are with the Tlapanecs. Each bishop has a different group of native people and he takes care of them the best way possible. We believe that the Indians have the best pastoral attention. Here there are no cases of rebellion, protests, or rejection.
Here in the city, what are the problems for people? What are the challenges?
The challenge for the people is that here there is no fixed work, just occasional work. There is no industry. Manual labor is what the people do.
Another challenge is the lack of safety. The police are not trained and there are many assaults, robberies, and kidnappings. Kidnapping is an industry of criminals who really know their business. Even the government can't find them. The head of the popular Hotel Princess was just kidnapped.
More and more, you hear of the increase of crime in Mexico. What is happening?
I think that for many, respect for the human person has been undermined. Money is more important and has replaced human values. Kidnappers act, not to raise the level of life of others, but for their own selfish gain.
When was the Archdiocese founded?
The Archdiocese was started in 1959 as a diocese first. Then, ten years later, it became an archdiocese. The archdiocese is 25,000 square kilometers, about the size of Palestine.
There are 70 parishes and 100 priests. For five years, we have had a major seminary. The seminarians used to go elsewhere to study.
The faithful of the diocese love the seminary and help us a lot. This is the great advantage of having the seminary here. For example, an Indian village by the name of La Concordia let me know yesterday that they had ten sacks of beans for the seminary. For an Indian village to give the seminary 10 sacks of beans, a staple of the Mexican diet, is, for them, the equivalent of giving us gold.
How does the vocation situation here compare to all of Mexico?
In the coming year I will ordain five new priests-in February. We are getting a good number of priests and it is the same picture in the rest of Mexico.
Why are vocations good in Mexico?
Because the faith is being explained. Now there are more laity who know their faith and who know their Christian commitment. This is resulting in a flowering of vocations, both male and female.
Various religious movements are attracting the laity: movements like the charismatic renewal in the Holy Spirit, the Christian Family Movement, the Cursillo movement, the School of the Cross (Escuela de la Cruz) movement, among others-movements, overall, of lay ministry. We have many permanent deacons, ministers of the Eucharist, lectors. Before, the priest did everything. Now there are lectors who read so well that the people like to listen. In Mexico the laity make up a lovely reality.
What are your thoughts about the PIME Mission in Cuanacaxtitlán?
It has amazed me how the PIME fathers have entered into the hearts of the Indians of Cuanacaxtitlán to such a degree that the people love them greatly. The Indians have suffered much at the hands of the Indian authorities. They are very poor. But they see that the missionary fathers love them. They have captured their hearts in a short time.
I'm aware of only one similar example of such love existing between the Indians and the missionaries and that is when the first Franciscans came to evangelize Mexico. They lived with them; they ate with them; they loved them much. The PIME fathers are truly the “fathers” of the Indians. Padre Luis (Father Luigi Maggioni) has more influence with them than the authorities.
Another thing: the fathers invited various seminarians to go to Cuana to spend some time there; so they have been able to see what it means in practical terms to be a missionary. Father Luis is a great missionary and the young men have been able to see what a missionary is really like on the missions. This is going to have a great effect on them. Those young men who had questions about their vocation are going to decide because of the testimony of the PIME fathers. The presence of the seminarians also benefits the priests. They see that the witness of their lives is seen and appreciated.
These priests are men who have adapted well to the new environment of the mission and of the archdiocese. But I have to point out that the priests received a silent preparation through the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph. They are real saints, very simple in faith. It was because of their recommendation that the PIME fathers came to work in Guerrero. The value of a silent witness like theirs is great.
—Paul Witte
----- EXCERPT: Inperson ----- EXTENDED BODY: Archbishop Rafael Bello Ruiz ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Irish Peace Hopes Alive Despite Murders DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:10,000 mourners, both Catholics and Protestants, attend funeral of an assassinated activist who tried to build bridges
DUBLIN, Ireland–The funeral of Terry Enright in Belfast Jan. 14 was the biggest in Northern Ireland since the death of the IRA hunger strikers in the early 1980s.
Enright was shot outside a night-club in Belfast by members of the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), who are assassinating Catholics in revenge for the killing of their leader, Billy Wright, on Dec. 27. So far, the LVF, which has not declared a cease-fire, has murdered three Catholics since Wright was shot by members of the Irish Nationalist Liberation Army inside the Maze prison.
The LVF is a relatively small terrorist group in Northern Ireland, with a membership known for its virulent hatred of Catholics. The organization does not recognize the current peace talks and has not declared a cease-fire.
It is estimated that more than 10,000 people attended Enright's funeral, among them his wife and two daughters. Because of his activity in cross-community activities for children, he was mourned equally by Catholics and Protestants. It is not known whether the LVF targeted him because of his cross-community activities or whether he was killed because he was the first Catholic they found in a vulnerable location.
At the funeral, Bishop Patrick Walsh of Down and Connor said he had mourned with the families of all three recent murder victims. “In the space of a few short weeks, I have shared the heartbreak in the homes of Gerry Devlin, Eddie Treanor, and now Terry Enright. Why were they murdered? They were Catholics in vulnerable places. Is being a Catholic a sufficient reason in some perverted minds for being murdered? The anger and fear and tension in the Catholic community is understandable.”
The bishop noted that Enright had been born in 1969&mdash a fateful year” that marked the start of Northern Ireland's “Troubles”, and 29 years of “agony piled on agony.” Bishop Walsh asked: “Will 1998 be a fateful year in a different sense, a year that will see the agony over and the darkness of bitterness, suspicion, hatred, and terror scattered in the light of tolerance, respect, love, and peace?”
Hopes are still high in Northern Ireland that a peaceful solution may be around the corner — which may be another reason for the large turnout of mourners at Enright's funeral.
The Irish and British governments have put forward a document entitled “Propositions on Heads of Agreement” that puts firm proposals on the negotiation tables and which has moved the current all-party peace talks in to a higher gear.
The main proposals are: balanced constitutional change based on commitment to the principles of consent; changes to Irish and British constitutional law; a Northern Ireland Assembly elected by a system of proportional representation; a new British-Irish agreement to replace the Anglo-Irish agreement; the establishment of a new intergovernmental ‘Council of the Isles’ involving representatives from Dublin, London, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales; the establishment of a new north/south ministerial council and the creation of bodies to implement the ministerial council's decisions; the creation of systems by new governments covering issues of ‘mutual interest’, including security and European Union affairs; the establishment of a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland; and the adoption of measures to deal with the release of prisoners and with weapons decommissioning.
Unionists, who favor continued British rule and who are predominantly Protestant, are delighted with the proposals, particularly the establishment of a Northern Irish Assembly and the replacement of the Anglo-Irish Agreement which they dislike because it gives the Irish government some say in Northern Irish affairs.
But civil rights activist Father Denis Faul said the “Propositions” document fails because it does not address the Catholic community's biggest concern: the lack of an impartial police force in Northern Ireland. Only 8% of officers serving in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) are Catholic and several of its members have been implicated in helping Loyalist terror groups to carry out sectarian killings.
Father Faul told the Register: “The one thing that is missing from the document is the need for an impartial police force. As soon as Catholics show any sign of making advances, the sectarian assassinations begin. We had assassinations in 1969 when the civil rights movement began; in 1972 when Stormont fell; in 1974 when the IRA declared a truce; in 1991 when the Anglo-Irish agreement was signed; and now again, because the Loyalists believe Catholics are gaining in the current negotiations.
“The big fear in the Catholic community is that if there is an emergency, if there are sectarian assassinations, or people are being burnt out of their homes, can they rely on the RUC for protection? Catholics don't feel secure; that is why the IRA and the INLA are active in Catholic communities… .”
Father Faul also criticized the “Proposition,” document's use of the phrase that there will be “equity of treatment” for Catholics in Northern Ireland, saying ‘equity’ was not the same as ‘equality.’ “They should spell it out: ‘equality of treatment before the law, equality of citizenship, equality of employment,’ that is what we want that is our right. But the top priority is an impartial police force.”
Cian Molloy writes from Dublin, Ireland.
----- EXCERPT: SundayÃs Passages ----- EXTENDED BODY: CIAN MOLLOY ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Welfare Reform Showing Early Signs of Success DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:But some Catholic leaders worry about needy ‘falling through the cracks’
WASHINGTON— When federal welfare reform was signed into law in August 1996, most observers agreed that the United States was embarking on a bold experiment. For more than 60 years, welfare policy had been based on an open-ended system of income maintenance in which funding flowed to individuals based on set eligibility. That system is gone forever.
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, passed by the Republican Congress and signed by Bill Clinton, replaced the entitlement welfare system with a program of block grants and time limits geared to getting former welfare recipients into jobs and keeping them in the work force.
On the surface, things seems to be going well. The welfare rolls are down, dramatically so in some places. Overall, the welfare rolls nationally have declined from 14.1 million people (representing 4.9 million families) this time last year to 10.5 million people (representing 3.9 million families)-a reduction of a full 26%.
In many states, the reductions have been even more dramatic. States for years have been conducting welfare reform experiments since the late-1980s by securing waivers from the federal government, and many states have already discovered a formula for welfare reform success. Since federal law gave the states wide discretion to design and implement their own programs with little red tape, the long-term success of the reform effort will hinge in part on the innovations and efficiencies of state programs. In Wisconsin, where Governor Tommy Thompson has been a leader on welfare reform efforts for more than a decade, caseloads have declined by 55%. The caseloads in Massachusetts have dropped by 42%. Florida has seen decreases of 40%, and Ohio welfare cases have declined by 33%.
In fact, the block grant system that Congress put in place with the 1996 reform has yielded a windfall for many states. The block grants consist of several pre-1996 welfare funding streams that were combined and rationed out to states based on a fixed formula. The amount of the block grant was based on data that was available before the rolls began their swift decline. Therefore, the states have more funds available as the caseloads decline, while block grants remain the same.
The National Governors Association (NGA) published a white paper Dec. 4 that analyzed current trends in the welfare-to-work movement. The NGA found that states were using these “surplus” funds for a variety of purposes, including childcare, transportation, education and training, and the like. Many are establishing “rainy day” funds for times when the economy slows and more people are in need of assistance.
Even some of those who are concerned about the future of welfare reform seem to agree. “We are seeing some positive trends,” said Patricia King, policy advisor for health and welfare at the United States Catholic Conference. “States are increasing support for low-income working families. They are doing more to keep families off the rolls in the first place. Many states now treat income for working families more favorably than they did before.” By disregarding certain sources of income when determining eligibility for assistance programs and tax benefits, many states are able to help families stay above water and forestall the need for welfare assistance.
“In addition, more than half the states guarantee subsidies for families that need day care,” she continued, noting that the 1996 reform provided approximately $4 billion more in child care funding to the states. “These are all positive signs.”
At the same time that the states are being more creative and innovative than ever before, corporate America, too, is realizing that former welfare recipients are a new source of entry–level labor in a nearly full-employment economy. With two new federal tax credits&ndashthe Work Opportunity Tax Credit and the Welfare to Work Tax Credit-companies also are finding it increasingly cost-effective to rethink their hiring policies to access the full work force.
Major corporate citizens have also banded together to urge companies large and small to hire former welfare recipients moving into the work force. Last year, United Airlines, UPS, Sprint, Burger King, and Monsanto (at the request of the White House) founded The Welfare to Work Partnership, a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization designed to encourage companies to hire and retain former welfare recipients. Less than eight months in after its formation, the group already has commitments from more than 3,000 companies to hire and retain former welfare recipients.
Still, with all these positive developments and an economy growing steadily (unemployment is at 24-year low), there are some disturbing noises in the background. A recent survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that soup kitchens saw an increase of more than 16% in requests for emergency assistance. This increase was higher than in previous years. At the same time, homeless shelters received 3% more requests for assistance than last year.
“This is disturbing given the strength of the economy and the low unemployment rates,” said King. “If these needs continue to persist even in good times, we remain concerned with what will happen when people begin to hit the time limits.” The 1996 reform called for a lifetime limit of five years on welfare, although many states have more restrictive policies.
“We are seeing an increase in demand, and many of these people have fallen through the cracks,” said Susan Gibbs, spokesperson for the Diocese of Camden, N.J. “Alot of people are facing the crunch and having a hard time moving into the work force. As they find jobs, they lose their eligibility for many programs. During the transition, they find that they still need heating or food assistance, and they come to us. This was one of our busiest Christmases in recent memory. We were overwhelmed.”
Keith Fournier, president of the Catholic Alliance, sees the current situation as a unique opportunity for Catholics. “We know we have an obligation to the poor. At the same time, we also understand and believe in the concept of subsidiarity. The Church teaches that the best government is closest to the people. That is why we need the faith-based community, local charitable groups, businesses, and the local government to take the lead. We need to make the case that this is the best way to help the poor–and that it is moral.”
Added George Forsyth, executive director of the Catholic Campaign for America: “Catholics have always felt a strong obligation to help those in need. They believe there is a role for the government in taking care of its neediest citizens. There seems to be a growing agreement among Catholic intellectuals and Catholics at the grassroots that not everything has to be direct from Washington. There needs to be a community-based approach to these issues.
“Of course,” he added, “Church officials at the local levels are finding it hard to meet the demand as the federal role is being scaled back. But the direction we are heading in is the right one.”
Forsyth noted that charitable giving is up, proof that individuals are willing to support local programs that work.
And the Catholic Alliance's Fournier pointed to the many efforts in religious circles and in the government to rethink long-term approaches to poverty issues. “Conservative and liberal are tired labels,” he said. “There are new coalitions being formed across religious and party lines. It is time for us to come to the table and find ways to meet this need. Welfare reform is a reality. That discussion is over. Now we must decide on the proper way to help, those who need us most.”
Michael Barbera, the Register's political affairs correspondent, is based in Washington.
----- EXCERPT: SundayÃs Passages ----- EXTENDED BODY: MICHAEL BARBERA ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Peru's Sterilization Scandal Earns Bishops Wrath DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:Poor women are victims of the government's birth-control campaign, say prelates and congressmen
LIMA, Peru-Since its implementation in 1995, Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori's birth control policy has had an unintended result-women injured or killed while being sterilized, often without their consent.
The Peruvian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CEP), which has categorically denounced the government's birth control campaign since its introduction, claims that poor women in rural areas have been forced (or deceived) into accepting permanent sterilization.
For the past two years, the government has responded that the Catholic Church was just “inventing horror tales” to derail the birth-control program that had been approved by Congress.
A year ago, Peruvian Congresswoman Lourdes Flores Nano, who originally supported the government's population policy, announced that several peasant women came to her office to complain about being deceived and sterilized without consent. The government dismissed her allegations, suggesting Flores, who is thought to have presidential ambitions, was using the issue to gain a higher political profile.
Late last year, when the conservative daily El Comercio issued a series of articles supporting the bishops ‘position with hard evidence and dramatic cases, public opinion began to shift. An unlikely ally, the Lima-based feminist organization Flora Tristan, denounced the program saying that women's rights were being violated by the campaign.
Since then, mild suspicion has turned into a flood of accusations against the government and, in particular, the Ministry of Health. The disturbing cases of Hilaria Supa, Felipa Cusi, and Angelica Condori, and other women from poor shanty towns either killed or severely damaged during ill-performed sterilizations, were featured prominently by El Comercio and even the Miami Herald and Associated Press.
“Two years ago, bishops from rural areas in the Andes and the Amazon basin began claiming that women were either forced to undergo sterilization or offered material benefits in exchange for their acceptance,” said Bishop Alberto Brazzini, chairman of the Life and Family Commission of the Peruvian bishops’ conference. “Each bishop spoke independently, but all described the same pattern.”
Giulia Tamayo, a lawyer for the Flora Tristan organization who is assisting women to obtain restitution from the Ministry of Health, said “Different means and forms of pressure were applied without making any distinction between married and single women, young or old. The only two clear patterns for the government's policy were: women and poor.”
Independent Congressman Rafael Rey, who leads a task force investigating the allegations, claims that he has 1,000 well-documented cases and some 300 testimonies of health workers who confirm the charges. “What you read in the press is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
According to Rey, the government's population policy is marked by what he calls “two rigid parameters: permanent methods and quotas.”
“With those two factors, which force health agents to push for a fixed number of sterilizations and to favor them over other non permanent methods, you can imagine the rest.”
Rey's investigation has demonstrated that medium-level officials of the Ministry of Health must meet determined quotas for each region in the country, and can incur professional “penalties” for failing to attain them. Regional directors, in turn, distribute their quotas among each hospital or health center, even among those who have no facilities or adequate equipment to perform the surgical procedures. The load is ultimately borne by the rank-and-file health workers, normally young doctors, nurses, and obstetricians, who desperately attempt to meet the quota.
“This policy, from a managerial perspective is, highly efficient, but from the human side, it's devastating,” said Rey.
Congresswoman Nano agreed, and said that her week-long investigation in the southern Andes showed that “there were no moral limits for health workers in their effort to meet the pre-established number of tubal ligations.”
Nano said she found evidence of:
ï Women offered food, clothing, and sometimes even money to agree to a tubal ligation.
ï Women being menaced and called ignorant for not consenting to the operation.
ï Town people offered money to “tip” health workers about potential targets (women of reproductive age with more than three children).
ï Women sterilized without consent after giving birth.
ï Women threatened with being banned from receiving health treatment unless they consent to tubal ligation.
Bishop Brazzini said that most of the affected women normally direct their rage at health workers.
“Often they are really population-control zealots, but we have also seen that several obstetricians and nurses hate to do it, but in practice are unable to make a conscientious objection because they would lose their jobs.”
“Threats are nearly always implicit and often explicit,” the bishop added.
The vice minister of health, Alejandro Aguinaga-regarded by many as the real force behind the population campaign- has energetically denied that any coercive measures have been “promoted, suggested, or even officially accepted by the government or health authorities.”
Rey responded that, in a strict sense, the health ministry official's statements may be true, but wonders aloud whether such incidences … are the predictable consequences of establishing quotas and imposing them upon health workers.”
Aguinaga insisted that “there have been, in fact, isolated cases [of abuse or coercion], but they are just an exception in an impeccable population policy that respects personal freedom.”
The government has publicly punished one doctor-whose botched surgery resulted in the death of a mother of three-and announced that another rebuke will follow. Further investigations have also been promised, together with assurances that the birth control policy will continue promoting permanent methods such as sterilization.
So far, the official figures since the policy was implemented place the number of dead women at 10 with more than 100 severely injured, but Peruvian bishops claim that the numbers are even greater. All the bishops have been asked by CEP secretary general Bishop Luis Bambaren Gastelumendi to provide any information to help confirm such cases. Bishops will bring pictures, medical reports, recorded testimonies, and even affidavits confirming that sterilization has been imposed upon poor women, and quotas upon health workers.
“Last year, 110,000 sterilizations were performed according to the law. They all had to be freely accepted by women who supposedly signed letters of consent. Where are those 110,000 letters?” Bishop Brazzini asks.
According to the prelate, “the government only pays lip service to freedom and women's rights, because it insists on the quota policy that has been rejected even by the [United Nations’] Cairo summit.”
In fact, late last year, President Fujimori opened the 11th Latin American Conference on Sexually Transmitted Diseases by saying that his government policies has resulted in 1 million couples now using birth control methods and that he was expecting another million by the end of 1998.
“These are the kind of statements that become policies, that become quotas, that result in more pressure and violations,” said Bishop Brazzini.
By Jan. 30, the Catholic bishops, at the end of their annual meeting, are expected to issue one of the harshest documents ever written against a government policy. They are expected to point to foreign aid, namely the U.S. Agency for Interamerican Development (AID), as the culprit in promoting the campaign.
The Register had access to excerpts of the bishops’ draft, which said in one paragraph: “The dramatic and scandalous cases of victims of the population policy have been presented by the authorities as exceptional anomalies of an allegedly positive program. We want to say to our people that this is not true. The violations against liberty and the right to life are a predictable consequence of the anti-life logic, which places figures and quotas above our concrete men and women. How can the government speak of a personal freedom-respecting program when at the same time the president announces a quota for this year?”
The bishops don't want this policy modified, they want it stopped–altogether stopped, explains Bishop Brazzini. “If we do not do our best to stop it, the deaths that have occurred, and those to come, will be on our consciences.”
Register Latin America correspondent Alejandro Bermudez writes from Lima.
----- EXCERPT: SundayÃs Passages ----- EXTENDED BODY: ALEJANDRO BERMUDEZ ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: What is the Official Catholic Teaching on …? DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:Contrary to popular opinion, the Church is far from obsessed with defining a Catholic's every thought and action. In fact, there are few restrictions concerning what Catholics may and may not believe and do.
Appearing as a guest on a talk radio show recently, I received a call from a man who wanted to know what the “official Catholic teaching” was on “how much body mass you can lose before you lose your soul.”
The caller was serious. Odd as the question was, it was just one of the many “strange but true” inquiries into Church teaching I've encountered as a Catholic apologist. On the Internet, in magazines, and in other media, I frequently run across the notion that the Catholic Church must have an “official teaching” on absolutely everything. One noted apologist has remarked on the same phenomenon and says he has considered drafting a series of mock answers to those hard-to-believe questions. In moments of whimsy, he's considered a working TITLE: “The Catholic Church's Official Favorite Beatle and Other Answers to Questions about the Faith.”
What is going on here? Apparently, many people-including some Catholics- labor under the illusion that the Church operates according to the “that which is not forbidden is compulsory” model of totalitarian micro-management and thought control. The idea seems to be that, since the Church is hierarchical, its teaching must codify every picayune detail of life.
Evolutionary Dogma?
I have observed conversations on the Internet proceed in this fashion: Somebody declares, for instance, that “the Pope has officially declared that evolution is true.” (The logic: If the Pope has not declared evolution 100% false, the only alternative must be that it is 100% dogma.) Much speculation then ensues about the motive for this “radical reversal” in Catholic teaching. Cyberspace chatroom participants speculate about whether this might not be a gambit by Rome to prepare the way for other reversals of dogma like “married priests” or even apostolic succession (one wonders how apostolic succession might be reversed). Much bustle ensues as participants in the conversation attempt to cast some nuanced magisterial statement into concrete dogmatic galoshes and demand that it dance.
What never seems to occur in such conversations is the thought that the Catholic Church, far from being obsessed with defining everything down to the last jot and tittle is, in reality, profoundly disinclined to define her tradition unless she absolutely has to. Thus, in the case of John Paul II's statement on evolution, the Pope was aiming to open various channels for reflection, not cram all Catholics into some narrow rut.
He said, in essence, that certain aspects of evolutionary theory do not pose a theological problem to Catholic faith, but that Catholics could not, of course, accept a strictly materialistic philosophy to account for the creation of human life since this is counter to one of the basic truths of the faith. This is a far cry from saying that “evolution [which theory?] is dogma.” On the contrary, it is the declaration that a Catholic is free to accept or reject the possibility that God may have somehow used creatures, whether angelic or ape-like, to create the body of the first man. The only thing a Catholic is not free to believe is that the soul is merely a function of matter (as some forms of naturalism claim).
Constant Through the Ages
This is neither a new idea nor a “reversal” of Catholic teaching. St. Augustine speculated 15 centuries ago about whether God made Adam immediately or over a long period of time. Pope Pius XII, in Humani Generis, made substantially the same comments as Pope John Paul II nearly 50 years ago. Catholics have felt themselves free to speculate on this and thousands of other questions since the founding of the Church, for they have always understood that such questions are, to a very large degree, a matter of liberty and even ambiguity, not dogma.
Contemporary culture is about 2,000 years behind the times, however, when it comes to comprehending Catholic theological liberty and ambiguity. Hence the confused reaction to Pope John Paul II's expression of disapproval for the death penalty in Evangelium Vitae (when he said, in essence, that there was hardly ever justification for the death penalty anymore and that, if a criminal could be punished without taking his or her life–a life that comes from God–then human life should be spared).
Many commentators wondered how the Church could “reverse itself” on this topic. The reality is, this opinion of the Pope is no more dogmatic than previous teaching that allowed for the death penalty. All such teachings have been but prudential judgments, based on a reading of “the signs of the times,” which the Church asks the faithful to consider seriously as they form their own consciences.
The bottom line is, there is no official teaching stating unequivocally that the death penalty is always wrong, just as there was never an official teaching that it was always right. Prudence seems to indicate increasingly that it is, in almost all circumstances, a greater evil than the evil it seeks to avoid. So the Pope counsels against it. Still, he makes no dogma.
Freedom to Think
Such is the case with the bulk of the Church's tradition. There are a few-very few-restrictions concerning what Catholics may and may not believe and do, but one can be a perfectly faithful Catholic and believe, disbelieve, or care nothing about evolution, farm subsidies, tax reform, just war theory, pacifism, or smoking. One can hold all sorts of opinions about the duration of Purgatory, the music of Spike Jones, the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, the question of whether there is time in Heaven, whether Our Lady died, and whether we should have fought the Vietnam War. The Church has no “official position” on these and a billion other questions. She prefers freedom whenever possible. This is why, in 2000 years, the number of dogmatic definitions the Church has formulated is so very, very small.
It is also why, strangely enough, I often encounter an odd reaction from those who set out to criticize the Church for being rigid, dogmatic, and obsessed with angels on pinheads. For when they suddenly find that the Church is diverse, variegated, miscellaneous, and “catholic,” and discover that the Church has no “official teaching” on whether Mary died, or if Purgatory is instantaneous, or farm subsidies are the eternal will of the living God, then they react with tremendous confusion and resentment.
“What?” they ask. “The Church doesn't know?! But if it can't even answer an elementary question like this, why should we put any faith in her claim to be infallible in larger things?” The curious thing is that many of the people who protest most loudly against the Church's “overbearing authoritarianism” also object when the Church refuses to tell us what to think. They complain the Church is dogmatic about everything and then they complain that it isn't dogmatic enough.
It seems that in this regard the world has gotten things almost exactly backward about the Church. The world often has a philosophy that treats all matters of Catholic dogma as open questions and many open questions as dogma. “Is there a God?” Maybe. “Is smoking the locus of all evil in the universe?” Absolutely. “Did Jesus actually say what is attributed to him in the Gospels?” Don't know. “Is homosexuality inborn, natural and God-given?” Absolutely. “Are the Mosaic laws against adultery valid in our day and age?” That's debatable. “Can an office full of cubicled bureaucrats micro-manage an elementary school room 3,000 miles away?” Absolutely.
Many Faces of Catholicism
Chesterton once remarked of H.G. Wells that he held two bizarre and contradictory philosophies. One of his philosophies held that everything is absolutely unique and therefore unclassifiable (making a common morality impossible). The other philosophy argued passionately for the need of a World State. Chesterton remarked, “It is a quaint and almost comic fact, that this chaotic negation especially attracts those who are always complaining of social chaos, and who propose to replace it by the most sweeping social regulations. It is the very men who say that nothing can be classified, who say that everything must be codified.”
In contrast to this is the Catholic vision of a free human being. Catholics are certain about a few basic facts concerning the nature of the cosmos; facts sketched in the Creeds, offered in the sacraments and fleshed out in the few dogmatic pronouncements the Church has made. Beyond that, though, they are gloriously different and rather enjoy the fact that they do not see eye to eye on many things in the world. Submitted to God they find they are taller when they bow, freer when they wear the “shackles” of dogma, and wiser when they allow the Church to insist on the very few doctrines she cannot compromise. But the world, seeking to be free of the big laws, does not get freedom. It gets the small laws, the petty dogmatisms, and the mental slavery that forces it to not think (in a hundred ways) about Jesus, but allows it to think in only one way about whatever ideology is the going thing at the moment. Catholics, having no detailed dogmatic program to go on besides “Love God and love your neighbor” can look like William F. Buckley, Dorothy Day, Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa, Richard John Neuhaus, or Oscar Romero. They can be all over the map once they leave Mass, for they are all one in Christ at the altar. For Catholics, as Chesterton said, agree about everything. It is only everything “else” they disagree about.
Mark Shea, author of By What Authority: An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition, writes from Mountlake Terrace, Wash.
----- EXCERPT: Indepth ----- EXTENDED BODY: MARK SHEA ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Pope Tells Rome: 'Prepare for Jubilee 2000' DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:ROME-Pope John Paul II called for “a spirit of cooperation” among the citizens of Rome, as the Italian capital and the Vatican began their two-year countdown to the Holy Year 2000. Making a landmark visit to City Hall, the Pope said the Eternal City must “set an example for the whole world” during celebrations for the new millennium.
“Dear Romans, it is for good reason that we define this day as historic,” he said Jan. 15 in the city's Capitol Square. “Together we are writing another page full of projects and hopes in the annals of Rome-civil and spiritual capital to which all of humanity looks.”
During the two-hour stop at the seat of Rome's city government, the Pope addressed the mayor, the city council, and some of the capital's oldest and youngest citizens. Yet, he made it clear his visit had one aim: to foster collaboration between the city and Church in preparations for the Jubilee Year.
“Rome must show itself both inwardly and externally renewed when the Jubilee arrives; the city must be a beacon of civilization and faith,” the Pontiff stressed. “May you rise to the heights of your glorious past for the occasion.”
The Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 is arguably the biggest organizational effort now under way anywhere. Officials note that unlike the Olympic Games or huge international conferences, the Jubilee is a yearlong event.
Conservative estimates say it's due to bring more than 21 million visitors to Rome-more than double the current annual average. Celebrations will concurrently be held in the Holy Land and in local Churches throughout the world.
Rome's mayor Francesco Rutelli assured Pope John Paul II, the city “will be ready.” He said his administration had already launched many projects to improve transportation and tourist accommodations in time for the year 2000.
City officials will primarily be responsible for transporting, sheltering, informing, and feeding the expected multitudes of pilgrims. The mayor did not hide the fact that the scope of Holy Year celebrations has posed challenges.
“The preparations and development for the biggest jubilee in history will also generate discomfort,” he admitted in his speech to the Pope and a special session of the city council. The increased flow of people, Rutelli said, will put the city to “a tough test.”
For his part, Pope John Paul II urged “civil and Christian Rome” to unite in their “desire to show the city's best face” during the Holy Year.
It is “the duty of Christians to renew and purify the face of the Church,” he said. Yet the Pope noted that civil authorities also have a special obligation-in light of Rome's relationship to Christian history-to ensure that its citizens “experience the grace of the Jubilee in an exemplary way” with “a quality of life worthy of humanity.”
The papal visit to City Hall was a high-profile event. Posters publicizing the occasion appeared on buses and billboards two weeks prior, and the trip itself was broadcast live on national television.
As surprising as it may seem, it was the first time in his more than 19-year pontificate that Pope John Paul II traveled the one mile distance from the Vatican to the Capitoline Hill on which the municipal complex rests. It also represented only the second visit by a pope to City Hall since Rome became the capital of Italy in 1870.
Pope Paul VI stopped there briefly in 1966 to thank the city for helping host the Second Vatican Council. That visit unofficially marked a thaw in relations between the Holy See and Rome following the confiscation of the Papal States in the 1800's and the subsequent retiring of the papacy to the Vatican.
Yet today, Church relations with the city are cordial; Roman officials are working closely with the Vatican in preparing for the Holy Year and other projects of mutual interest.
In his speech to the mayor and city councilors, Pope John Paul II touched on the many changes which have taken place in Rome.
“How many transformations have characterized this city through the ages,” he asked rhetorically. “From the capital of the Papal States to capital of the Italian state. From a city enclosed within the Aurelian Walls to a metropolis of nearly three million residents. From a homogenous community to a multiethnic community in which, besides Catholics, there live people of other creeds and also people whose vision of life is nonreligious,” he said.
The Pontiff, who is also Bishop of Rome, said his appreciation of the city's people has grown steadily throughout the years. During visits to 265 of Rome's 328 parishes, the Pope said, he has seen signs of “a concrete love” that freely offers moral and material support to the needy.
After his speech, the Pope stepped outdoors to address thousands of people gathered in the square designed by Michelangelo. He was met with applause, the fanfare of a military band, and a flutter of red and yellow flags in the colors of Rome.
“Rome, a city fearing neither time nor progress… Rome, my Rome, I embrace and bless you and all your children and projects,” he said.
The Pope then went on to greet the city's oldest citizen, a 103-year-old woman. He also blessed an infant girl- the first baby to be born in Rome in 1998-and met the families of immigrants.
Walking slowly and with some difficulty, Pope John Paul II was accompanied throughout the visit by Mayor Rutelli, who wore a green, white, and red sash in Italy's national colors.
At one point, as the two men surveyed the Forum which was the capital of Ancient Rome, the Pope reminisced about his student days in the city.
“I would often come to the Roman Forum when I was a student, and later after being elected a bishop,” the Pope told the mayor. “I used to take long walks here and meditate.”
Before leaving City Hall, the Pope was presented with a 3-foot high block of marble believed to have been part of the Coliseum, painted with the image of two saints. The archeological fragment will be put on permanent display in the Vatican Museums (although it will officially remain property of the City of Rome which, by law, is prohibited from giving away its cultural patrimony).
In addition, Rome officials unveiled a marble plaque in the city's council chamber, inscribed: “In remembrance of the universal works carried out by His Holiness John Paul II, the mayor and civil administration mark the visit to City Hall by the Successor of Peter and Bishop of Rome, who has summoned a Great Jubilee at the start of the third millennium.”
Stephen Banyra writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: STEPHEN BANYRA ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: At Some Schools, Getting a Spiritual Life Is Serious Business DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:Campus ministers across the country are beginning to make headway in the attempt to form Catholic hearts and minds
The well–being of the Catholic Church and of society itself depends on campus ministry, according to Dr. Donald McCrabb. McCrabb, executive director of the 1,200-member Catholic Campus Ministry Association (CCMA), sees it as “vital” because it provides an educational and pastoral presence to college students at a critical, formative moment in their lives.
“Society thrives when people know what they value, who they are, the difference between right and wrong-and when they're able to be other-centered rather than self-centered,” he says. “Campus ministers have to be there to bring the Gospel, to bring community, to bring values, to bring a sense of morality and decency, and to encourage people to be formed in the mind and heart of Christ.”
With the weakened religious identity on many Catholic campuses and the fiercely guarded separation of Church and state on public campuses, campus ministry isn't a task for the faint-hearted. But McCrabb, who describes those in the trenches as “very bright, well-educated, and very hard-working,” says it's a wonderful time to be in campus ministry.
“Modernity doesn't work any longer, so people are more open to considering how we are held by this gracious mystery we call God,” McCrabb explains. “And the students are so thirsty. When you invite them to start talking about conscience formation, they say, ‘Wow!’”
Armed with the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 1985 pastoral letter, Empowered by the Spirit: Campus Ministry Faces the Future, campus ministers across the country have waded into the sometimes deeply troubled waters of academia. And they're beginning to make some headway as they rein-tegrate the spiritual life with the intellectual life on campuses.
University of St. Thomas
“Can we be Catholic and unashamed?” That's the question Father Jeffrey Huard has been asking since he became campus ministry director seven months ago at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. A diocesan priest, Father Huard hopes that question and others will help his alma mater get in touch with its religious roots.
“My immediate concern is to strengthen the Catholic identity of the university,” he says. “Campus ministry has a role to proclaim the Gospel and to keep that very clear from the pulpit even if it's not particularly clear in the classroom.”
Five thousand undergraduates study at St. Thomas, 60% of whom are Catholic. About 850 attend Sunday Mass on campus. Currently only 11% of the student body attends St. Thomas because it's a Catholic university. “It's my strong desire that a much higher percentage will leave St. Thomas as convinced and clear-sighted Catholics,” Father Huard says. “While I certainly want to send out loving and understanding people, I find so much of the emphasis on aspects of political correctness and some of our secular culture's agenda to be absolutely lifeless and unsustainable.”
Campus ministry has great value, he adds, as a key place where the Catholic mind is put forward. “I sit in a number of meetings related to the institutional life of the university,” Father Huard explains. “I come, not as the academic dean or vice president of student affairs, but as a person who is there to be very thoughtful about our Catholic nature. I can raise issues such as the role of moral teaching when we're discussing sexual health on campus.”
Father Huard takes heart from the growing desire among students for the sacramental life and for service to the poor, from the school's strong retreat program, and from the popularity of the new Catholic Studies Department that was started to clarify the campus’ Catholic identity. But he relies on the power of the Gospel to transform students and campus life: “Jesus Christ is ever attractive, and as the beautiful line from the liturgy says, ‘From age to age he gathers a people to himself.’”
St. Edward's University
At St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, Brother Joe Barry, CSC, has worked closely with the administration during his eight years in campus ministry. “As director, I answer directly to the president,” he says. “He sees campus ministry as a vital, integral part of who we are as a Catholic university.”
Brother Barry and two other full-time campus ministers serve St. Edward's 3,100 students, about 60% of whom are Catholic. But they don't do it alone. “Faculty and staff are very supportive of what we do and of the students’ spiritual development,” Brother Barry says. “They take an active interest in helping students make practical applications of what their faith tells them. That's one of the things I really like about campus ministry at St. Ed's.”
Approximately 400 students attend the two campus Masses on Sunday; an average of 24 go on weekend retreats; and about 25 people participate in the confirmation program, including five who will be coming into the Church at Easter. Brother Barry says these are good numbers “for our size.”
With the help of the campus community, Brother Barry tries to move students from an adolescent faith to an adult faith. “My hope is that they'll be just as well situated spiritually as they are academically by the time they get out,” he says. “That they'll have a good base that'll help them weather the experiences of life spiritually as they get older.”
Franciscan University of Steubenville
Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, has been committed for two decades to reintegrating a spiritual element into campus life. “Twenty years ago we made a real investment in campus ministry,” says Mary Kay Lacke, dean of evangelization. “Then, in 1985, using Empowered by the Spirit as one of our resources, we restructured campus ministry and student life to integrate faith into all dimensions of our life.”
Today, campus ministry, chapel ministry, residence life, works of mercy, leadership development, and evangelistic outreach all fall under the Student Life Office umbrella. “There's a tendency to look at the chapel as campus ministry, but there are many ministers in Student Life,” says Lacke, who counts residence hall chaplains, residence hall directors, and RAs among the University's campus ministers. “Our goal is to facilitate the development of a strong faith environment where students can see what a strong faith life looks like and have a choice to live it or not.”
Steubenville's nearly 2,000 students must like what they see because their sacramental participation is “off the charts” compared with other schools. According to a spring 1997 student survey, 73% say they receive the Eucharist daily or several times per week, and 66% say they seek the sacrament of reconciliation at least monthly.
Though Franciscan University offers an astonishing array of spiritual programming, Lacke attributes the high student participation to the Holy Spirit. And to households. Since 1975, students have been encouraged to form small faith-sharing groups of five to ten students, called households, and to meet weekly for prayer, sharing, and socials. Some 50 households involving 60% of the residential student body strengthen residence life and provide peer support for growing in the faith.
“When I see a person of the Church, I see someone who is in love with Christ, with Christ's people, who is ecumenical in nature, who's compassionate, and able to serve,” Lacke says. “We're all growing into that, but there are many graduates from here whom we can look at and say, ‘They really are doing it.’”
Next week: Bringing the Gospel to non-Catholic colleges and universities.
Lisa Ferguson writes from Steubenville, Ohio.
----- EXCERPT: The Education Page ----- EXTENDED BODY: LISA FERGUSON ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Catholic Heritage in an Anglican Country DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:There is a great deal of history in England-traditionally known as “Mary's Dowry” for its wealth of churches, monasteries, and shrines-to attract the Catholic traveler.
The rich Catholic heritage to which this nickname refers might better apply to northern regions of England, where adherents to Roman Catholicism fared better in the wake of the Reformation than those nearer London. Yet it is in the Southeast, within a roughly 200-mile radius around the Reformation's epicenter, that a Catholic traveler may find some of England's most edifying destinations and be inspired to hum London Bridge while gazing upon the real thing.
The Tower of London
The roll of martyrs who gave their lives for Christ and his Church here evokes familiar names: More, Campion, Fisher, Southworth, Howard, and others less famous but no less brave. One could make a busy pilgrimage in this city alone.
After you check into your $50-a-night breadbox-sized bed & breakfast room (shared bath down the hall), take the tube down to Tower Hill where you will emerge at roughly the same spot where St. Thomas More was executed in 1535 for refusing to recognize the validity of Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn, and the king's subsequent claim to headship over the Church in England. Squinting past a brass monument (to the technological discoveries of mankind, not the saint) and scores of preening teenage tourists, the view of the sprawling Tower complex closely resembles the last thing More saw before the executioner's ax fell.
If you can brave the hordes of daytripping schoolchildren to follow an entertaining tour given by one of the Tower's Yeoman Warders (known commonly-and to this day, inexplicably, as “Beefeaters"), you'll find that the Tower of London is hardly that. Rather, it's a hodgepodge of dozens of towers, walls, gates, chapels, and houses dating from different periods of the last millennium.
Built along the Thames River, which afforded easier access to London than the dangerous roads, the Tower (900-years-old in its most ancient sections) has served as the official royal residence, as well as prison, fortress, and safety deposit box for the Crown Jewels, and execution spot for a very privileged few of Henry's disfavored wives and enemies.
The Beefeaters can be surprisingly frank, even cheery, as they relate the Tower's history of confinement and torture. Most visitors have heard the story of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and the rest, but the Yeoman Warders (who following tradition still live within the walls of the complex) re-tell it as a medieval soap opera-ignoring (or perhaps ignorant of) the tragic sundering of Christendom that it sparked.
But in dealing with the Catholics imprisoned there for more than a century after the Reformation, they are respectful even oddly reverent, praising Thomas More as a man who “kept his faith,” and pointing almost apologetically to a painting in the Tower's St. Peter's Chapel showing Henry gesturing to his son Edward VI, who stands triumphant before a sad-looking pope weighed down by the words “idolatry and superstition” on a stole draped around his neck.
Many of the major towers at one time or another housed Catholics imprisoned for clinging fast to the old faith, but most notable might be the Salt Tower, in which Jesuit Sts. Edmund Campion and Henry Walpole were held (although the location of the “cell of little ease,” where Campion was kept, in which it was possible neither to stand, stretch nor lie down, is not known), and from which another “Douay” Jesuit, John Gerard, escaped in 1594.
In this and some of the other towers can be seen carvings in the walls made by condemned prisoners, sometimes names but more often simple phrases and sketches testifying to faith in Christ and his Church. Unfortunately, the Bell Tower, where Thomas More spent the last year of his life, is officially part of the Queen's residence and thus accessible to the public on only a handful of dates throughout the year, and then only by special permission. In Beauchamp (pronounced “Beecham”) Tower is an information desk, with a loose-leaf binder containing a list of the prisoners of the Tower (right up to Nazi spy Josef Jacobs in 1941), their crimes and punishments.
The list from mid-6th through the 17th century contains hundreds of prisoners guilty of being “a Catholic,” a “recusant Catholic,” a “popish priest,” and the fates they suffered: most were executed, some banished, a handful “renounced Romanism.” A certain poor Thomas Harding was put to death in 1578 for being “probably a Catholic.”
Many of the major towers at one time or another housed Catholics imprisoned for clinging fast to the old faith.
Martyrs at Tyburn
Most of those executed met their fates not within the Tower walls (this was reserved for a fortunate few), though. Many of them died a few miles away at a part of London called Tyburn, an ancient execution spot for criminals where more than 100 witnesses to Christ gave their lives on huge triangular gallows from 1534 to 1681. Prisoners were bound and dragged by horses to the site, where most met death by simple hanging. But some of the more illustrious and annoying “papists”-Father Campion, for instance, convicted of a spurious treason charge-were drawn and quartered also, their entrails displayed throughout the city as a warning to all “recusants.”
The Tyburn site lies near the Marble Arch tube station, by the north end of Hyde Park. The exact spot falls, sadly, on a concrete traffic island dividing a busy corner (note: in crossing to see where the martyrs died, remember to look right, lest you join them before your time), and is marked by an inconspicuous cross rendered more so by the soap buckets of enterprising wind-shield-washers who work the congested intersection.
West a bit up Bayswater Road, however, on the north side, sits the Tyburn Convent, inhabited by the Tyburn Benedictine Sisters, a semi-contemplative order which looks after a small crypt housing relics and memorials to the English Catholic martyrs, most of them hanged at the “Tyburn Tree.” More than 1,000 people visit the crypt annually to see and pray before a piece of Thomas More's hairshirt, bone fragments of Edmund Campion, John Southworth, Philip Howard, and others, and paintings, statues, vestments, coats-of-arms, and other memorials of the Tyburn martyrs.
Tour times are seasonal and sporadic, but the sisters seem glad to oblige visitors at other hours, too. The sisters offer an informative booklet called “They Died at Tyburn,” which offers a history of the spot and brief biographies of each of its victims. Also, at the north-most corner of Hyde Park, one can find Speaker's Corner, site of regular Sunday debates conducted earlier this century by apologist Frank Sheed's Catholic Evidence Guild, and still a place for public theological disputes- during my visit between two Muslims and a Seventh-Day Adventist.
The Other Westminster
After you fight your way through the crowds at (Anglican) Westminster Abbey in the shadow of Big Ben, visit Westminster Cathedral, the chief church of the Archdiocese of Westminster. Built in the heart of London between 1895-1903, following a period of greater freedom for Catholics in the mid-19th century, the cathedral mixes a Byzantine interior with a neo-Renaissance exterior of Siena-red brick (or bricks; more than 12 million of them).
True to its form, Westminster houses gorgeous mosaic work and Eastern-style crucifixes. One highlight of Westminster Cathedral also draws on the post-Reformation English legacy: the body of priest and martyr St. John Southworth, hanged and dismembered at Tyburn in 1654. His body was smuggled to the Continent, and then lost during the French Revolution, not to resur-face until 1926. Brought to the cathedral in 1930, Southworth's memorial features the saint's body laid out in priestly vestments, his silver-gilded face and hands visible. The cathedral, a short walk from Victoria station, is open daily 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., with several daily and Sunday Masses, plus Sunday Benediction and daily Vespers.
Next week: Oxford, Canterbury, and elsewhere.
Todd Aglialoro recently visited England.
----- EXCERPT: The Catholic Traveler ----- EXTENDED BODY: TODD AGLIALORO ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A History of Marching for Life DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:For 25 years, Nellie Gray has organized the pro-life movement's most famous annual event from her Washington basement
WASHINGTON–In the fall of 1973, Nellie Gray and about 30 other pro-life activists from the mid-Atlantic region began gathering at the retired federal worker's home on Capitol Hill to plan a January demonstration on the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision legalizing abortion.
Gray recalled with amusement her naiveté back then: “We just thought we were going to march one time and Congress would certainly pay attention to 20,000 people coming in the middle of winter to tell them to overturn Roe v. Wade.”
Twenty-five years later though–with abortion still legal in the land-Gray's commitment to eradicating abortion remains steadfast, and she continues to play the key role in organizing the mid-winter protest that has during the years drawn hundreds of thousands of abortion foes to the nation's capital every Jan. 22.
In the early ‘70s, Gray was only tangentially involved in the fledgling pro-life movement, she said. Today, the energetic and youthful 73-year-old is president of March for Life, the Washington-based non-profit that sponsors the annual protest and works in pro-life lobbying and education efforts.
Gray's commitment to the cause escalated in 1973, when she was approached by a group from Long Island who had been battling newly passed abortion-rights laws in New York state and who wanted to take their cause to the national stage after Roe. They asked Gray to host their initial meeting because she lived closest to the Capitol-the first venue for the protest, which later became the March for Life.
“I always say … ‘Be careful who you let in your dining room because you may wind up being the president of a corporation,’” chuckled Gray, a devout Catholic who never married.
Rally of Support
In 24 years, Gray has never missed a march, and has acted as the sole emcee at every rally preceding the 21-block trek that begins at the Ellipse behind the White House, travels along the National Mall, and up Capitol Hill to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“[Gray] is amazing personally for sticking to this rally and this march year in and year out,” said Helen Alvaré, director of planning and information for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities. “The phenomenon of abortion is just so huge that one often feels small and insignificant trying to work against it … and when you go to this rally, you realize that tens of thousands of other people are with you.”
The March for Life is largely a grassroots Catholic effort relying on countless volunteers- from local leaders who organize the Washington-bound contingents to the bus drivers who get them there. It operates on a $200,000 annual budget. Gray said neither she nor the two other full-time staffers draw a salary from March for Life, which she continues to run from the basement of her Capitol Hill townhouse.
A self-described “longtime activist,” Gray credits the lessons learned from World War II as her prime motivation for challenging the legalization of abortion.
“From the Nuremberg Trials we learned that nobody has the capacity to authorize the intentional killing of an innocent being,” said Gray, who served as a corporal in the Women's Army Corps during the war. “It impressed upon me that if everybody's rights are not protected, nobody's rights are protected.”
To Gray, who believes life begins at fertilization and once personhood is established on that premise all law applies equally to the fetus, the battle against abortion is more a matter of basic human rights than religion.
“The individual person is extremely important to me. When I heard about abortion, I really could not believe that America was entering into … killing its own innocent children. I just could not believe this and I just said, ‘Not in my country, you don't do that.‘”
Gray said in 1973 she was unaware of Rome's strong pro-life stance. But after a fellow panelist on a TV talk show accused her of being a knee-jerk Catholic parroting the Church, Gray began to investigate where the Vatican stood on abortion.
What she found “delighted” her, she said. “When I began to look at the documents of the Roman Catholic Church, I was so pleased to see the very straightforward … position that the Church had been taking since the early days.”
Gray is particularly inspired by the 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii (On Christian marriage) by Pope Pius XI that states life begins at conception and, therefore, “the lives of the mother and child must be preserved at any expense,” she said. The life principles developed by March for Life embody the same sentiments.
‘No Compromises’
At a time when some in the pro-life movement are content to gain any ground limiting abortion, March for Life remains unflinching in its stand to pass legislation-including a constitutional amendment, if necessary-that would ban all abortions with no exceptions, said Gray, who is also a legislation attorney. She refers to exception clauses as “the Achilles’ heel of the pro-life movement.”
Undaunted by critics and compromisers, Gray is certain that in the end March for Life's hard-line position- “No exceptions! No compromise! Not even a little bit of abortion"-will prevail.
She said, however, “the battle will not be won” until the entire pro-life movement and every community of faith works relentlessly “to establish personhood for the pre-born children.”
“It takes the Church as the total body… coming together and saying, ‘In America, we will not tolerate this.’”
Michael Paquette writes for Religion News Service.
----- EXCERPT: Pro-Life Profile ----- EXTENDED BODY: MICHAEL PAQUETTE ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Birth Control Pill for Men Is Due Soon DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:Catholics raise objections, both physical and moral, to development
by GREG CHESMORE
If researchers from the United States and Italy have their way, soon women won't be the only ones popping pills to avoid bearing children. A new contraceptive pill for men is being tested and applauded by many in the scientific community as a “breakthrough” in reproductive health care. The only study with human beings as research subjects was conducted in Italy in 1996. That study focused on eight men who took two pills, twice daily for 16 weeks. The pills contain a synthetic hormone called Cyproterone, which is similar to the female hormone progesterone. The hormone inhibits the production of testosterone and blocks sperm production.
In the Italian study, the sperm count of one of the men was reduced to zero, while sperm counts of the remaining men fell to levels low enough to be considered “infertile.” Immediately after the small study, researchers called the results “hopeful” and expressed their intention to have a “male pill” on the market as soon as possible.
Currently the only form of contraceptive available to men is the condom, although sterilization by means of vasectomy remains popular. Increasing the availability of contraceptive choices for men-“relieving” women of the primary burden of family planning - are cited as driving forces for the male pill research.
Earlier attempts to develop chemical methods of male contraceptives have run into major problems such as long-lasting side effects. In addition to a pill, researchers released another study in 1996 that involved a weekly injection to inhibit sperm production. The technique involved injecting testosterone into the muscle, producing a hormone overload and causing the testicles to stop testosterone production. The result was a cessation of sperm production.
Side effects of this method have included severe acne, weight gain, decreased sex drive, impotence, and long-term infertility. Similar side effects are feared with the male pill.
The research surrounding the development of a male pill is supported by a wide variety of institutions - including the U.S. government. In 1992, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a call for researchers to explore the development of a male pill. The Contraceptive Development Branch of the Center for Population Research and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (both branches of the NIH) offered federal grants to researchers to study the “design, synthesis, and testing of male contraceptive agents that inhibit testicular sperm development.”
One of the NIH grant recipients was the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) of North Carolina. Researchers at RTI developed and tested new compounds that made rats and mice infertile, without affecting mating behavior. The results of the study, which researchers found promising because sperm levels were lowered without affecting sex drive, were published in a 1995 issue of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. The success of these experiments on rats and mice prompted similar experiments on human beings.
One of the researchers studying the male pill is William Bremner, a researcher at the University of Washington and Veterans Medical Center in Seattle, who helped conduct
the Italian study. Bremner hailed the results of the study, but stressed that obstacles to a male pill remain, including side effects and lack of interest on the part of pharmaceutical companies.
While researchers claim that their main objective is to offer men more choices in contraception, Bremner is not shy about another goal-population control.
“I think it's important [the study results] but I wouldn't want to make it sound like it's the cure to the population problem,” he told The Washington Post after results of the Italian study were released.
Bremner and other researchers are hopeful that a pharmaceutical company will be found to produce the male pill.
However, the potential for lawsuits is frightening many pharmaceutical companies away, meaning the marketing of the pill may be several years away.
Researchers also fear that men will reject the notion of daily pills or injections. To relieve those fears, they plan to conduct larger studies of a male pill that would last several months.
Even with the hurdles, researchers remain optimistic that men may soon be able to chemically alter their bodies to stop their sperm production.
“It's a hopeful finding, and encouraging to try to work to improve the techniques,” Bremner said.
The male pill is not without detractors, however. Judy Pittack, education program director at the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction in Omaha, Neb., warned that the new pill will come with many side effects-both physical and moral. In addition to the physical side effects, which Pittack claims will be similar to the negative side effects associated with a vasectomy, she also fears a male pill will further erode the bond between man and woman.
“There are procreative and unitive qualities to the marriage bond,” she said, referring to the teaching of Pope Paul's 1968 encyclical Humane Vitae (On Human Life). “Intercourse is the most personal commitment of a man and a woman. If you're going to come at it from a playboy mentality, treating intercourse as a form of play, you're looking at your partner as a play thing.”
Pittack, who is an instructor of the Creighton method of Natural Family Planning, said that artificial contraception attacks the sanctity of marriage and sexuality.
“Your partner should be seen as a source of continued or new human life,” she said. “When you shut down that life-giving quality by medication, barrier, or surgery you are literally taking the spark of life out of the relationship.”
Pittack believes few men will accept the pill as a contraceptive option. Most men see family planning as a woman's responsibility, she said. She also predicted that many men would be concerned about what the pill will do to their “maleness.”
Greg Chesmore writes from Bloomington, Ind.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: GREG CHESMORE ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Abortion Primer for Pro-Lifers DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:There are a number of medical and legal terms for the different types of abortion, both intentional and unintentional. Listed below are some of those terms.
n Complete abortion: When all of the contents of the uterus (i.e., the pre-born baby and the placenta) have been expelled from the uterus.
n Criminal (illegal) abortion: Any abortion committed outside the parameters set by law. For instance, an abortionist commits a criminal abortion if he aborts a minor without her parent's permission in a state with parental consent laws, or if he commits a D&X abortion on a woman at 28 weeks gestation for convenience purposes in a state where third-trimester abortions are banned except in the case of severe fetal anomalies.
n Early abortion: An abortion within the first trimester (i.e., first 12 weeks) of a pregnancy.
n Habitual abortion: Spontaneous abortion (i.e., miscarriage) occurring in three or more consecutive pregnancies. Women who suffer from habitual abortions account for the majority of miscarriages.
n Incomplete abortion: An intentional or unintentional abortion in which parts of the pre-born child and/or placenta remain within the uterus.
n Induced abortion: An intentional abortion brought on by mechanical (surgical) or chemical (abortifacient) means.
n Inevitable abortion: Acondition marked by vaginal bleeding and cervical dilation that indicates an impending miscarriage that cannot be prevented, and follows a condition of threatened abortion (see below).
n Infected abortion: An abortion associated with, and possibly caused by, an infection of the uterus or the genital tract, such as a venereal disease.
n Missed abortion: When a woman does not miscarry a pre-born child who died more than eight weeks previously.
n Septic abortion: An abortion associated with, and possibly caused by, an infection of the uterus.
n Spontaneous abortion: The medical term for a miscarriage. This term is very important for pro-life activists to remember because many medical statistical categories and subsequent medical treatments (such as delivery of a child) do not distinguish between intentional and spontaneous abortion.
n Therapeutic abortion: The current medical literature equates “legal abortion” with “therapeutic abortion.” However, the definition of the word “therapeutic” means “treatment of disease.” The use of the term “therapeutic” … implies that pregnancy is a disease, an assertion many abortion advocates have made.
n Threatened abortion: A condition that usually includes vaginal bleeding but not cervical dilation, and may or may not lead to a condition of inevitable abortion.
Source: The Facts of Life: An Authoritative Guide to Life and Family Issues, by Brian Clowes PhD (Human Life International, Front Royal, Va.) Reprinted with permission.
----- EXCERPT: FACTS of life ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Joan Andrews Bell Returns to Jail DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:PITTSBURGH–After refusing to comply with the terms of her probation before a Pittsburgh judge Jan. 15, pro-life activist Joan Andrews Bell was carried from the court room by four officers and began serving a jail sentence of three to 23 months. More than 100 supporters who came from as far away as Tennessee and Chicago, began singing, Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow, as she was carried out, and her husband and their two children looked on in stunned silence.
“She is truly considered a political prisoner,” her husband, Chris Bell, said to reporters who crowded outside the court room. “It is a political issue she is being sentenced on. She will cooperate in no way with the legal system that allows the killing of innocent little children.”
After receiving the sentence from Judge Raymond Novak in the Allegheny Court of Common Pleas, Bell lay down on the floor in a form of non-cooperation. She has used such passive resistance in most of her more than 200 arrests during more than 10 years of peaceful protests against abortion with Operation Rescue.
The response to the sentencing was swift and harsh.
“This dramatic action on the part of Judge Novak is a reprehensible attack on any semblance of free speech and human rights in America,” said Father Richard Welch CSsR, president of Human Life International in Front Royal, Va. “Joan's story illustrates the great moral divide in America and draws a stark contrast between those who sacrifice self in place of the cause of life, and those who sacrifice life in the interest of self.”
In an eloquent, heartfelt affidavit Bell filed with the court, she said that medical science proves that life begins at conception and her Catholic faith requires her to resist unjust laws. She cited John Paul II's 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) and the example of Martin Luther King, on whose birthday she was sentenced.
“To accept probation would be to accept the lie that I harmed society by trying peacefully, prayerfully, and nonviolently to save children from brutal death by abortion,” she wrote.
After informing the judge that she would not register for probation, she said to reporters, “I cannot violate my conscience or offend God.”
Her husband, director of Good Counsel Homes, with five shelters for unwed mothers and their babies in the New York City area, said the sentence was unjust but that her jail time will have great spiritual benefits.
“We'll be able to do reparation certainly for our own sins, and hopefully for the sins of abortion,” he told reporters. “Joan has done tremendous good in jail in the past, praying and witnessing to the other inmates.”
Bell's sister, Susan Brindle, who came from Tennessee with her husband and seven of their children, was in tears after the hearing.
“She knows the truth about abortion and that's why she is willing to sacrifice,” said Brindle. “I love her so much. She's doing this for all of us. The judge thought he was doing the only thing he could, but you can't legalize murder. Killing is never the answer.”
Bell's lead attorney, Richard Traynor, head of a pro-life legal center in New Jersey, said he would appeal the sentence. During the hearing he pleaded a necessity defense, that she was justified in committing a lesser offense of trespassing in order to prevent a greater one, the killing of unborn babies in abortion.
“I think this is a disgrace,” Traynor said afterward. “The sentence is a violation of conscience.”
The Pittsburgh case dates back to May 1985, when Bell was arrested at Women's Health Services and convicted in November 1985 for criminal trespass. She was finally sentenced in 1988 and given three years probation by Judge Novak, a former Jesuit priest.
She refused the terms of probation, appealed the sentence, and lost. Awarrant for her to appear in Pittsburgh to register with the probation board was issued in 1990. The outstanding warrant was holding up the adoption proceedings for 8-year-old Emiliano, a handicapped boy from Mexico, and the warrant came up in background check.
She was arrested at her home in New Jersey last Sept. 26, and eventually agreed to appear before Judge Novak. He vacated the warrant so she could proceed with the adoption and gave her until the Jan. 15 hearing. In the latest procedure, she appeared before him the morning of Jan. 15, he asked her to register with the probation board down the hall and return at 2:00 p.m. During that period, she went to Mass, prayed with a group outside the clinic where she was arrested in 1985, and prayed the rosary on the street, while walking back to court house.
In the afternoon hearing, Judge Novak said, “My obligation is not to decide the abortion issue, which has torn our country apart….”
Addressing Bell, he said, “You are following what you believe to be the law of God. I am sworn to uphold the laws of men. If you are right, I have a higher court to answer to. That is not lost on me as well.”
Supporters, though visibly shaken, expressed hope that Bell would serve only the minimum sentence. Attorney Tom Charles, another member of Bell's defense team, was skeptical. “Obviously Joan won't change. It's up to the judge.”
Brian Caulfield writes from New York. Michael Schmeidicke contributed to this story.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: BRAIN CAUFIELD ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Roe Opened Door to Multiple Abortion Rulings DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON–Since its twin rulings 25 years ago in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the Supreme Court has revisited the abortion issue numerous times. Some examples:
n July 1, 1976: In Planned Parenthood v. Danforth and two similar cases, the court declares that because the right to an abortion is fundamental, neither a woman's husband nor a minor's parents may forbid an abortion.
n June 20, 1977: In Maher v. Roe and two other cases dealing with public funding of abortions, the court says in 6-3 decisions that its abortion rulings do not force states to pay for non-therapeutic abortions and do not require public hospitals to perform abortions.
n Jan. 9, 1979: Ruling 6-3 in Colautti v. Franklin, the court strikes down as too vague a Pennsylvania law that required doctors to use care and diligence in preserving the life of a fetus in an abortion.
n July 2, 1979: Voting 8-1 in Bellotti v. Baird, a Massachusetts case, the court strikes down a law requiring consent of a parent or a judge before an unmarried minor could get an abortion. But the justices split 4-4 on the reasons why the law should be overturned. Four claim the girl should be able to bypass her parents and go directly to a judge, while four others hold that even a judge should not have the power to forbid an abortion.
n June 30, 1980: The court, voting 5-4 in Harris v. McRae, upholds as constitutional the Hyde amendment, which prohibits federal funding of abortions.
n March 23, 1981: In H.L. v. Matheson, the court upholds by a 6-3 margin a Utah law requiring parental notification if an “immature, dependent minor” wants an abortion.
n June 15, 1983: Ruling in cases from Ohio, Missouri, and Virginia, the court strikes down several abortion regulations. These include requirements that all second-trimester abortions be performed in hospitals and that a 24-hour waiting period occur before an abortion.
n June 11, 1986: The court, voting 5-4, strikes down Pennsylvania abortion regulations, including requirements that doctors provide women with detailed information on abortion and its adverse effects, that a second doctor be present when a viable fetus is being aborted, and that doctors use the abortion method most likely to save the child. In the case, Thornburgh v. American College of WASHINGTON-Since its twin rulings 25 years ago in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the Supreme Court has revisited the abortion issue numerous times. Some examples:
n July 1, 1976: In Planned Parenthood v. Danforth and two similar cases, the court declares that because the right to an abortion is fundamental, neither a woman's husband nor a minor's parents may forbid an abortion.
n June 20, 1977: In Maher v. Roe and two other cases dealing with public funding of abortions, the court says in 6-3 decisions that its abortion rulings do not force states to pay for non-therapeutic abortions and do not require public hospitals to perform abortions.
n Jan. 9, 1979: Ruling 6-3 in Colautti v. Franklin, the court strikes down as too vague a Pennsylvania law that required doctors to use care and diligence in preserving the life of a fetus in an abortion.
n July 2, 1979: Voting 8-1 in Bellotti v. Baird, a Massachusetts case, the court strikes down a law requiring consent of a parent or a judge before an unmarried minor could get an abortion. But the justices split 4-4 on the reasons why the law should be overturned. Four claim the girl should be able to bypass her parents and go directly to a judge, while four others hold that even a judge should not have the power to forbid an abortion.
n June 30, 1980: The court, voting 5-4 in Harris v. McRae, upholds as constitutional the Hyde amendment, which prohibits federal funding of abortions.
n March 23, 1981: In H.L. v. Matheson, the court upholds by a 6-3 margin a Utah law requiring parental notification if an “immature, dependent minor” wants an abortion.
n June 15, 1983: Ruling in cases from Ohio, Missouri, and Virginia, the court strikes down several abortion regulations. These include requirements that all second-trimester abortions be performed in hospitals and that a 24-hour waiting period occur before an abortion.
n June 11, 1986: The court, voting 5-4, strikes down Pennsylvania abortion regulations, including requirements that doctors provide women with detailed information on abortion and its adverse effects, that a second doctor be present when a viable fetus is being aborted, and that doctors use the abortion method most likely to save the child. In the case, Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the court also reaffirms the “general principles” of Roe v. Wade.
n July 3, 1989: Ruling 5-4, the court upholds Missouri provisions declaring that life begins at conception; requiring physicians to test fetuses for viability; prohibiting public hospitals from performing abortions not required to save a woman's life; and banning use of public funds to encourage or counsel a woman to have an abortion not needed to save her life.
n June 29, 1992: In Planned Parenthood v. Casey the court refuses to overrule Roe v. Wade but rejects Roe's “rigid trimester framework” and-upholding most provisions of a Pennsylvania law-says a state may enact abortion regulations that do not pose an “undue burden” on the pregnant woman.
n June 30, 1994: In Madsen v. Aware Woman Center, the court by an 8-1 margin upholds as constitutional a buffer zone prohibiting protesters within 36 feet of an abortion clinic, but rejected broader restrictions on signs and activity farther away.
n Oct. 3 and 17, 1995: In cases from Virginia and California, the court upholds the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances law, which makes it a federal crime to block the entrance to a medical clinic, and a city ordinance that prohibited “targeted residential picketing,” such as at the homes of doctors who perform abortions.
n Dec. 4, 1995: The court orders the state of Colorado to continue to pay for abortions for indigent women who are victims of rape and incest, despite a state constitutional amendment prohibiting taxpayer funds for any abortions except those necessary to save the mother's life. Similar rulings were handed down in cases involving Nebraska, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania laws in 1996.
n June 16, 1997: The court upholds a Montana law requiring that only physicians be allowed to perform abortions.
HLI Unveils 1998 Public Education Campaign
FRONT ROYAL, VA-Human Life International announced its 1998 public education campaign at the 1998 March for Life on Jan. 22, which marked the 25th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. HLI will distribute thousands of signs and bumper stickers with the slogan: Bill, Do you Feel their Pain? Abortion Hurts Babies, Women, and Families.
HLI President Father Richard Welch CSsR said in a year when Congress will again attempt to override President Clinton's veto of the ban on the so-called “partial-birth abortion” procedure, it is time to challenge the man who told the American people he would make abortion “safe, legal, and rare.”
The partial-birth technique has been labeled by many as infanticide.
When he campaigned for president in 1992, Father Welch said, Clinton adopted the slogan, “I feel your pain,” to express his unity in the concerns of many Americans. HLI is asking him to stop and think of the pain a baby feels when scissors puncture his brain in a “partial-birth abortion,” while being dismembered in the womb, or burned by saline solutions in other forms of abortion.
We remind him of the heartache and pain of the mother who will never forget her child, the HLI president continued. We ask him to consider the pain of countless thousands of women, men, and children whose lives have been irrevocably damaged by their participation in abortion and today suffer from what may become the psychosis of the new millennium-post abortion syndrome.
----- EXCERPT: LIFE NOTES ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Bishop Urges Mother Angelica to Invite Cardinal Mahony on Show DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio-The bishop of Mother Angelica's native diocese of Youngstown has suggested the nun offer “a sincere invitation” to Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony to appear on her EWTN program as an avenue to settle their differences. In November during her show “Mother Angelica Live” on the Eternal Word Television Network, Mother Angelica questioned the cardinal's faith and ministry based on a pastoral letter he issued Sept. 4 titled “Gather Faithfully Together: A Guide for Sunday Mass.” Several days later she apologized but continued to question his teaching on the Eucharist as presented in the pastoral. “Perhaps the cardinal would accept a sincere invitation” to appear as a guest on the show, Youngstown Bishop Thomas Tobin wrote in his Without a Doubt column in the Jan. 9 issue of the Catholic Exponent, his diocesan newspaper.
----- EXCERPT: SundayÃs Passages ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Diocese Severed All Ties to Convicted Child Molester, Bishop Says DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:LAFAYETTE, La.-The Lafayette Diocese severed all its connections with child molester Gilbert Gauthe when the former priest was released from prison, Bishop Edward O‘Donnell of Lafayette said Jan. 7. He denied reports that Gauthe was receiving a retirement pension from the diocese. The diocese bought out its pension obligation to Gauthe with a lump-sum settlement, he said. Bishop O‘Donnell issued a statement after Gauthe-freed on parole and living in eastern Texas- came back into the news over charges he molested a 3-year-old boy in Livingston, Texas, in July 1996. He received seven years’ probation after pleading no contest to a lesser charge of injury to a child.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Example of Priesthood at Sonny Bono's Funeral DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:SPRINGS, Calif.–Sonny Bono's last legacy might be to bring new vocations to the Catholic Church through the young priest who celebrated his funeral Mass. “It is my prayer and hope that many will consider a vocation to the priesthood or religious life through Father David's wonderful example as viewed at the Sonny Bono funeral,” said Bishop Gerald Barnes of San Bernardino. He was referring to Father David Andel, 29, a priest since June 1995 now working at Bono's home-town Palm Springs parish, St. Theresa. “Father David manifests that passion and love of our Catholic faith,” Bishop Barnes said.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Catholic Online and Amazon.com Unite to Offer Books and Videos DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:BAKERSFIELD, Calif.–Through a new arrangement with Amazon.com, the world's largest online book seller, Catholic Online Marketplace now offers Catholic books, videos, and audio programs. “This is a very unique bookstore designed specifically for those involved in the Catholic faith,” said Michael Galloway, president of Catholic Online, a Bakersfield-based Catholic Internet information service. Current categories available at www.catholic.org/bookstore include general, saints, Church history, Roman Catholicism, catechisms, and canon law, with more to come. A reading room featuring the company's favorite selections, book reviews, and new titles is also in the works.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Future of Russian Church Looks Hopeful, Conference Speakers Say DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:FALLS CHURCH, Va.–Ecclesial communion and support for the Catholic Church in Russia were the topics of a fund-raising conference just outside the Washington beltway last weekend.
Aid to the Church in Russia (ACR), a Vienna, Va.-based nonprofit sponsored the event, which included Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, apostolic administrator of European Russia, and Archbishop Sititas Tamkevicius, ordinary of Kaunas, Lithuania, among its speakers. Archbishop Tamkevicius spent eight years in labor camps in Siberia and elsewhere as a prisoner of the former Soviet communist regime.
Others on the platform included Msgr. George Sarauskas, executive director of National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) Office for Aid to the Church in Central and Eastern Europe, author-theologian Father John Hardon SJ; Dr. Warren Carroll, founder of Christendom College in Front Royal, Va.; Canon Dr. Michael Bourdeaux, founder and director of the Keston Institute in Oxford, England; Dr. Roger Pajak, national security advisor for Russian, East European, and Middle East affairs for the U.S. Treasury Department; and human rights advocate, author, and speaker Nina Shea.
The conference participants heard of many encouraging developments in the 300,000-member Russian Church, which has been present in the country for more than 1,000 years. Archbishop Kondrusiewicz said there now 96 parishes in European Russia, up from six at the time of the political changes in 1991. A total of 144 priests from 16 countries minister to Russian Catholics, and 59 native seminarians are enrolled in the five-year program of philosophy and theology in preparation for ordination.
The Russian Church is host to 115 foreign nuns who, together with 10 native religious, work in catechetics and various other ministries. St. Thomas Aquinas College of Catholic Theology, headquartered in Moscow, but with branches in four other cities, is preparing approximately 300 lay people for work as catechists and social workers within the Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church has been promulgated in a Russian version for use in religious education, and a weekly newspaper and 18 hours of daily radio programming are also assisting to form the faithful.
In 1993 the Regina Apostolorum (Queen of Apostles) Seminary was established. Referring to it as the “heart of the Church” in Russia, Archbishop Kondrusiewicz noted that the St. Petersburg-based major seminary, together with adjacent Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary church, are on the site of the first such facility that the Latin Rite Church had established in Russia. It will give the Church its first native clergy in more than 70 years. ACR has contributed $90,000 toward continuing renovations of the structures since its first fund-raising campaign last year.
Msgr. Sarauskas indicated that the NCCB office he heads gives $6 million per year to the developing Churches in 22 European countries.
ACR president, Transitional Deacon Marcel Guarnizo, thanked the faithful of the Western Church for their prayerful support, but said the continued development of the Russian Church, would require more than faith alone. Now is the time to “put our hands to the plow,” said the Virginia native who is the first U.S. citizen to be ordained to the Russian clergy in the post-Soviet era.
Deacon Guarnizo said many people feel insecure about contributing financially to the Church in Russia, whose status may seem precarious in the transition from communism to democracy. He asked the audience, if they feel such support a gamble, to imagine themselves at a r/oulette table. If a beautiful lady, who came from a place where everything is known, told you what to bet on for a sure payoff, would you hesitate? That's what Our Lady did at Fatima. With her, he said, I'm asking you to play “8 Red.”
Archbishop Kondrusiewicz was guarded in response to questions about Russia's controversial new “freedom of religion” law. “Of course I am worried about conditions for the future activity of the Catholic Church in Russia, but I know well that in Russia it was never easy, and yet the Church survived until today. I believe, with the blessing of God, we will continue to survive.” (Peter Sonski)
----- EXCERPT: WORLD ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:Double Wedding for Two of Fifteen Kids
“With 15 children, Mrs. Bernadette Reeves has mastered the art of organization,” said the article in Melbourne, Australia's The Age [Jan. 10].
“Those qualities were brought to the fore yesterday as she added the final touches to the double wedding of daughters Kathleen, 29, and Helen, 24.
“Two brides, two grooms, eight bridesmaids, eight groomsmen, and a flower girl stretched across the front of St. Michael's Roman Catholic Church in North Melbourne as testament to the organization that went into yesterday's wedding.
“Making the event easier for Mrs. Reeves was that she too was part of a double bridal party at the same church 43 years ago.
“Only one of the Trentham-based Reeves clan was unable to attend to watch sisters Kathleen and Helen marry respective partners Dean Crewther and Rodney Smith….
“According to the brides’ mother, there were many similarities to the day she and her sister Margaret married in the same church. ‘Even some of the faces are the same,’ Mrs. Reeves said.”
According to the article, Mrs. Reeves was pregnant for 135 months out of one 22-year span. Her children range in age from 19 to 41.
“The father of the brides, Mr. Alan Reeves, looked relieved,” said the report.
From the Blood of the Martyrs
Korea may be living proof of the maxim that triumph springs from the blood of the martyrs.
“The recent election of Kim Dae Jung means that South Korea for the first time will have a Roman Catholic president-a reflection of the stunning growth of Christianity in one of Asia's most religiously diverse nations,” read a report in The Washington Post [Jan. 15].
“Kim is one of the first Catholics to lead an Asian nation, with the exception of the predominantly Catholic Philippines. In his New Year's address, he alluded to the deep Catholic faith that has influenced his career, calling South Korea's economic crisis and his election ‘God's will,’” reported the article.
The paper quoted Kim crediting God with preserving him despite attempts on his life and years of imprisonment by South Korea's military dictators in the 70s and 80s.
“I have been imprisoned, I was sentenced to death, but I always believed in my cause and trusted in God,” he is quoted saying. “I thank God for what I have accomplished … I try to practice God's words, ‘Love thy neighbors.’ And I'm trying to make a just society, which I think is also God's message.”
According to the article, “the first priest it [the Catholic Church] sent was met at the border and beheaded… In the next 100 years, an estimated 10,000 Catholics were killed, usually beheaded, and their bodies were thrown into the Han River” until the end of the 19th century and an increase in trade with the country.
Pope John Paul II has canonized 103 Korean martyrs, according to the article, so that now Korea has more canonized saints than any non-European nation.
The Catholic Church is the single largest religious organization in Korea, according to the article, though Catholics only make up 7% of the population. Buddhists there are split into thousands of different sects, and the Protestants into more than 400.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:How to Topple a Dictator
When John Paul II made his trips to Communist Poland, and granted its president a 1987 audience, detractors complained that he would legitimize and entrench the ruling regime. The Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989, and a revived Poland held a World Youth Day in 1991.
Early signs are that the Pope's visit to Cuba is shining the same harsh and healing light on the island's communist past.
In newspapers across the country and around the world, story after story focuses not just on the Pope's visit to Cuba-but on the tragic history of the country.
Donald Adderton wrote Jan. 10 in his Sydney Sun Herald Column that while, in America, Cuban ex-patriot “Orlando Hernandez sorts how he will spend his first million-dollar, major-league paycheck, millions of Cubans remain shackled in poverty in Fidel Castro's crumbling socialist economy….
“Nevertheless, Maria Vesa and her husband, Dr. Antonio Vesa, of Biloxi applauded Hernandez's feat, because each defection tosses Castro's treachery into the world spotlight.”
The Vesas had been married three years when “La Revolucion” came to power. They thought it might be good for the country. But the two ended up in prison, according to the article.
Mrs. Vesa is quoted saying, “If you go to church they will take privileges away from you… they will deny you an education and a future.
“It is not only the poverty… the young people have lost their dreams.”
She praised the Pope's visit, and a Mass he will hold on January 23 in her hometown.
“It is such a blessing that he is coming to Cuba… He is giving the Cuban people papal nourishment.”
Castro Spies Bug Pope
“A surveillance bug was found in a room Pope John Paul II will use during his historic trip to Cuba-and Catholic Church officials are worried it was planted by Fidel Castor's spies,” reported the New York Post [Jan. 11].
“The discovery threatened to derail the Pontiff's Jan. 21-25 visit to the Communist-ruled island, the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported yesterday.
“The Vatican's secretary of State protested to the government and threatened to reconsider the trip.
El Pais reported that the Cuban government claimed the microphone was left over from the 1950s, before the communists came to power.
The New York Post said that a Vatican source called the explanation “laughable.” Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls would not comment on the situation.
Experts said, in El Pais, that the bug was too new to have been installed so long ago, and speculated that the Cuban Secret Service must have planted it.
Laws Against ‘Mind Control’ Turned Against Church
“A network of psychiatric, legal, media, and socialist groups are pressuring European governments to outlaw or curtail the activities of well-known religious organizations, a new report states,” writes Larry Witham of the Washington Times in a story that appears in the December 14, 1997 weekly edition of the paper.
“With groups such as Catholic charismatics, Hasidic Jews, Baptists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Quakers, Buddhists — and the YWCA — now being listed as ‘dangerous sects’ by state panels, American human rights groups are raising concerns.”
“Without being alarmist,” the paper quotes Massimo Introvigne, a Roman Catholic scholar in Turin, saying, “we think an international discussion should be started.” The movement is made up of “liberal rationalists,” he said, “They criticize the ‘rising tide of irrationality.’”
According to the article, Introvigne presented a paper in Washington, D.C. on the subject, in which he reports that Germany lists 800 groups on its list of dangerous sects. Belgium lists 187 and France lists 172. France's list includes Baptists. Other targeted groups include Opus Dei and Campus Crusade for Christ.
Catholic Bishops in France and Italy have criticized the lists and “alarm bells went off in Vatican circles,” the article quotes Introvigne saying.
Boy Destroys Controversial Photo of Crucifix
In what might be called a post-modern reverse-iconoclasm, a 16-year-old Catholic Australian destroyed a photograph in the Australian National Gallery of Victoria.
The boy “destroyed the controversial photograph … to vent his anger at [its] ‘deep and bitter attack on his religious beliefs,’” reported The Age, a Melbourne daily newspaper, Dec. 9.
“The Children's Court was told that the boy, then 16, decided to smash the photograph with a hammer after watching his mother cry when the Catholic Church failed in its supreme Court bid to ban the photograph's exhibition…” He was fined and allowed to return home on bond, according to the report.
“The police prosecutor, Sergeant Paul Snell, told the court that on 12 October the boy, armed with a hammer, went to the Andres Serrano exhibition…. A friend-who faces similar charges in the Melbourne Magistrates Court- allegedly distracted security guards by kicking a photo called The Klansman.
“The defendant took the hammer from his belt and hit the glass-framed print nine times. He then dropped the hammer and gave himself up.
“The photograph was insured for $88,809.95.
“In defense, Ms. Nancy Grewcock said her client's family were committed Catholics and the boy's mother had wept about the photograph's depiction of Jesus Christ bathed in urine.”
hoto called The Klansman.
itted Catholics and the boy's mother had wept about the photograph's depiction of Jesus Christ bathed in urine.”
hoto called The Klansman.
----- EXCERPT: SundayÃs Passages ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Stand Against Death DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:Even as participants in the March for Life return home from a chilly 25th annual visit to Washington, D.C., abortionists throughout the nation continue their lethal but lucrative trade to kick-off the next quarter-century's statistics on prenatal deaths.
If statistics hold, more than 700 pre-born babies perished in the United States during the four hours of the Jan. 22 March for Life program and walk from the Ellipsise to Capitol Hill.
Take heart, though. Nothing lessens the essential value of witness and sacrifice by millions of Americans who strive through prayer, action, works, and free speech to bring this national tragedy to an end. And nothing lessens the victory for human life that will come, sooner or later, if pro-lifers don't quit.
It has been quoted many times, but Mother Teresa's response to those who said her work for the poor was futile remains valid: “We are not called to be successful, but to be faithful to the Word and will of God.”
Mother Teresa tried to reach one person at a time. In doing this, she was both faithful and successful. Perhaps everyone who marched in Washington or elsewhere Jan. 22 did indeed save one life from destruction. An unknown woman who planned to have an abortion may have thought hard and been moved to change her mind after hearing word of a march on a car radio, or in a conversation.
Faithful Catholics and others who recognize the intrinsic evil of abortion can take solace in knowing had they not spoken out, marched, prayed, and worked these many years for the preservation of innocent human life, the staggering volume of tragic deaths would be worse-and the future darker.
Drew DeCoursey
Only perseverance and faithfulness will help the nation overcome the evil of abortion-just as it overcame the evil of slavery, which lasted far longer than 25 years. Among the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit is strength, or “fortitude.” That strength includes spiritual and moral perseverance. It demands that we remain faithful and not fret about what may sometimes seem a fruitless effort. In the long haul, fortitude promises success, as does full adherence in faithfulness to the Word and will of God.
Perhaps the particularly egregious act of “partial-birth” abortion may become the issue on which abortion-on-demand turns, and falls. For the first time, it appears, the scales have fallen, at least somewhat, from the eyes of many who consider themselves pro-choice.
What we allow ourselves to see as evil we will, if honest, be forced in time to acknowledge as evil. But like the three monkeys carved near the entrance to the temple at Nikko, some will neither see, hear, nor speak out against the obvious evil, lest in seeing they must believe, and in believing they must act either for good or for evil. That is the true reality of “choice.” Deuteronomy clearly states that we have been shown life and death, blessing and curse. It is up to us to choose life if we expect ourselves and those who will come after us to live. Ultimately it's not such a difficult choice at all.
The abortion question spills over into all other areas of life. We move rapidly down the slope from selective deaths of our own next generation, to physician-assisted suicide today, and, inexorably, to selected non-voluntary euthanasia tomorrow.
In one of his finest novels, the late Catholic writer and physician Walker Percy spoke troubling words through the mouth of his physician protagonist: “You are a member of the first generation of doctors in the history of medicine to turn their backs on the Oath of Hippocrates and kill millions of old useless people, unborn children, born malformed children, for the good of mankind-and to do so without a single murmur of protest from one of you.”
If we choose life, as we say we do, we must continue to speak out unceasingly for the dignity and protection of all human life from conception to natural death. In that, lies our own survival and that of our children.
Drew DeCoursey is the author of Lifting the Veil of Choice, a book of essays on abortion. He works with Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity at a soup kitchen in Newark, N.J., and at an AIDS hospice in Manhattan.
----- EXCERPT: GUEST EDITORIAL ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Feminism Below the Surface DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:God or Goddess? Feminist Theology: What Is It? Where Does It Lead? by Manfred Hauke; translated from German by Dr. David Kipp (Ignatius Press, 1995, 343 pp., $17.95)
In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, we saw the rise of “the second feminist movement.” In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, we saw, in the United States and most of the First World, its triumph-in secular society at least. In the Catholic Church, there has continued to be a certain resistance and a conflict-over the refusal of the Church to agree to the ordination of women. For the most part, however, the world has moved on from “political” to social issues. We are seeing a new interest in “what went wrong” with the response to the feminist movement and “what lay behind” that movement-feminist ideology and theology.
Manfred Hauke's book God or Goddess? is one of the best available road maps to what we are now dealing with. To all appearances, feminist theology has made a major contribution to the disintegration of family life and to confusion about what it is to be a man or a woman.
To that contention, many nowadays would say, “guilty as charged.” But according to Hauke, a professor of dogmatics in the Catholic Theological Faculty at Lugano, Switzerland, we cannot just deal with the results, but must address the underlying problem. The bad results come from the way feminist theology undermines not only Christian belief, but even more, how it undermines the understanding of what it is to be a human being.
In the English-speaking world, Hauke is known almost exclusively as the author of Women in the Priesthood (Ignatius, 1988), probably the leading study by a pro-Vatican Catholic theologian on the ordination of women. His approach is a bit “softer” than the more recent statements by Pope John Paul II and the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, but for most practical purposes is the same.
God or Goddess? is concerned with the origins behind the ongoing feminist theology debate in the Church. Most of the book is an evaluation of feminist theology as compared with the key points of Catholic doctrine: scripture and tradition, God, Christ and redemption, Mary, Church, liturgy, and eschatology. At all these points, leading feminist theologians prove to be hardly orthodox-in fact, hardly theist.
Hauke concludes with one of the more insightful evaluations of feminist theology from the point of view of an orthodox theologian. He puts his finger on the key point-what he calls anthropology in the sense of our understanding of human nature. Underlying feminist theology is a non-Christian ideology that “shatters both the human personality and cooperative social order.” The result is an approach that not only calls into question traditional Catholic teaching, in dogmatic and moral areas as well as pastoral and social areas, but also leads to harmful proposals for restructuring human life.
Hauke's book is clearly written and well translated. While its conclusions end up casting feminist theology in a negative light, the book is analytical rather than polemical. He lets the feminist positions speak for themselves. He treats the main line of American feminist theology, with which he seems to be conversant. For Americans he has the added advantage of giving a treatment of feminist theologians in the German-speaking world and giving the Marxist background to the whole movement, a background to which many Americans are oblivious. Hauke doesn't address the vigorous evangelical feminist movement, which proceeds somewhat differently from its parent, the feminist movement in the Catholic and mainline Protestant Churches.
One significant question is whether the word ‘feminism’ can be rescued.
There isn't another book in English quite like God or Goddess? Father Francis Martin's The Feminist Question also treats feminist theology, but it is more a discussion of the nature of theology than an overview of the feminist take on it. While Father Martin would substantially agree with Hauke that the movement as a whole is not orthodox, his concern is more with the methodological underpinnings of the issues raised. As an overview of what orthodox Catholicism faces in feminist theology, Hauke's book is more useful.
A third valuable study of feminism is Donna Steichen's book Ungodly Rage (also Ignatius Press). For those unfamiliar with the outworkings of the theology that Hauke treats, Steichen's book should be eye-opening. It, however, is concerned mainly with feminism in practice in the Catholic Church, not with providing a theological analysis of feminist theology. It makes an excellent companion study to God or Goddess? The two together provide an orthodox treatment of “Catholic” feminism that covers the main bases in an effective way.
We are, according to Hauke, dealing with a theology that “presents opportunities for the Church, but that also poses a preeminent danger, which pertains to the substance of being human and of Christian belief.” In an ironic way, Hauke is making clear that we are dealing with an extensive and influential group of people who usually call themselves Catholic, who identify their writings as Catholic theology, and who occupy many Church positions and instructional positions. They are, however, not only not orthodox but, for the most part, not Christian in any recognizable sense.
Speaking of certain types of feminism, John Paul II once said: “It is not merely a matter of some people claiming the right for women to be admitted to the ordained priesthood. Where this issue is carried to extremes, the Christian religion is itself in danger of being undermined. Sometimes forms of nature worship and the celebration of myths and symbols take the place of the worship of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, this type of feminism is encouraged by some people within the Church, including some religious whose opinions, attitudes, and behavior no longer correspond with what is taught by the gospel and the Church. As pastors, we must oppose individuals and groups holding such opinions.”
One significant question is whether the word “feminism” can be rescued. Those now in possession of the word are not likely to subscribe very readily to the Pope's view that ‘in civil society and in the Church too, the fact that women are equal and different has to be recognized.” Nor are they likely to agree that “the true promotion of women consists in promoting them to that which is proper to them and suited to them as women-that is, as creatures different from men.”
There seems to be a new recognition in society of the innate differences between men and women and the need to find an approach to human life that recognizes and builds on those differences. The Church certainly could help in that task. To do so, however, modern Catholics will have to recognize and understand feminist theology, its preponderant role in so many Church situations, and what it leads to. For this, Hauke's book is, for the moment, the best source available.
Steve Clark writes from Dexter, Mich.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: STEVE CLARK ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Searching Cynic Finds Catholicism DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:The Cheese Stands Alone by David Craig (CMJ Associates, 1997, 220 pp., $12.50)
Those who aren't familiar with the delightfully offbeat poetry of David Craig, the Catholic Pulitzer-prize nominee, now have the chance to read Craig's first foray into fiction, The Cheese Stands Alone. The book is written in Craig's signature unrhymed meter, following the rhythm of real speech with a wonderful poetic redundancy (for example, this description of modern culture: “Big Brother with the gladdest of hands, slapping your back, directing your life, killing your children”).
The Cheese narrates the conversion story of an eccentric but lovable angry young man in today's world. It's an unusual story of a counter-cultural faith. Instead of leading him from rags to riches and fame, James Bailey's return to the Catholic Church leads him to taking up the idiosyncratic ministry of a Midwestern cab driver.
Initially, Jim Bailey is the cynic of all cynics, an Ohio college dropout who's seen and done it all and is on an erratic search for the meaning of existence. In the beginning of the book, he and his drunk girlfriend Judy drive off to Cleveland to start life over. But even Jim is sarcastic about the chances of uncovering anything really satisfying. “Who knew, maybe I could find something there for me in this new place, some electric jolt, what I needed to make it through this toucan night. Some power jell or jive, maybe enough sex, money, radishes to make it worthwhile.”
Craig's narrator is a modern hippie, unshaven, dabbling in high culture, dropping in and out of school. But unlike his girlfriend who loves the material glamour and otherworldly philosophy of the New Age, he yearns at times for a modest happiness surrounded by real people. “I was for cut speech, a wisp of beard, old porches, banjos, barefooted kiddlings in patchwork jeans. I wanted a Rottweiler neighborhood, rusted Belvederes with bad mufflers out front, multi-cultural kids riding their bikes up and down the streets, yelling in foreign languages.”
His unconventional viewpoint enables him to give an honest and often very funny assessment of much in the modern world, from the New Age movement to the charismatic renewal, from crass capitalism to bleeding-heart liberalism.
And despite his self-hatred, he likes many of the people he meets, from drunk construction workers to dope runners, from savvy intellectuals to born-again hitchhikers, from would-be pals to the many women he falls in love with (to Jim, there is apparently no such thing as an unattractive woman).
Estranged from all family and committed relationships, addicted to drink and hard drugs, Jim plays with words and at times dimly becomes aware of his need for some type of transcendent answer. When a drug deal gone wrong sends him running from the cops, he finds himself hiding out at a rural Canadian retreat house which is a thinly veiled version of Madonna House. Jim works on the house's farm and gradually finds himself becoming what he pretends to be-a serious Catholic.
His almost-inevitable conversion and baptism in the Holy Spirit are merely the beginning of a long and hard journey towards holiness. After leaving the farm on a spiritual high, puffed up with his own self-importance, he rationalizes himself in and out of his faith before he finally comes to grips with the challenge to live a Nazareth life, hidden and unassuming. It is the funny and at times sad story of an angry, violent man trying hard to become St. Joseph, a meek and loving companion to the Blessed Mother and her Son.
Craig's gritty poetry/prose is the perfect medium for this human story. Under his deft word-sculpturing, Jim is believably transformed, letting go of his virulent self-hatred without losing any of his wry and accurate humor.
Craig captures the weird habits and individuality of his characters, especially the goofy humor of Generation X. Jim's friend Periwinkle greets him after a long absence: “‘Oh, oh, Jimmy is here, Jimmy is here,’ her short hair bouncing like a Kewpie doll's. ‘Crush him, crush him,’ she said as she gave me a big hug, spun around with me a couple of times.”
The occasional typographical error in the book is unfortunate, as is the publisher's awkward decision to replace all the strong language with confusing blanks. While realizing that the intent was not to offend readers, surely a more aesthetically pleasing compromise could have been reached.
Readers should applaud the new publishing house, CMJ Associates, for taking the risk to bring us this exceptional and well-crafted book by a man who is pulling his weight admirably as a Catholic voice in the field of modern poetry. Those who enjoy The Cheese Stands Alone should search out Craig's other books of poetry, especially the Pulitzer-nominated Like Taxes: Marching Through Gaul.
Regina Doman writes from Front Royal, Va.
----- EXCERPT: SundayÃs Passages ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: New Marian Dogma DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:Your article, “Father Dulles: Naming Mary ‘Co-Redeemer’ Would Confuse Catholics” (Dec. 7-13), has some truth to it. The average Catholic would probably be confused because the Catholic press is doing very little to educate and offer them a balanced and objective presentation of the theological discussion.
But “confused Catholics” are nothing new. Many are confused about Church teaching on contraception, abortion, women priests, etc. The proposed dogma is not heterodoxy. It is part of the continuous and consistent teaching and tradition of the Roman Catholic Church going back not only to the previous millennium, but even to the patristic period and the Scriptures themselves. Your article reports Father Dulles as acknowledging this fact.
Unfortunately, few actually hear or read the Holy Father's Wednesday audience addresses. If they did they would see that, rather than distancing himself from the proposal, the Pope is, in fact, explaining the principles of a new Marian dogma.
Many reputable people support this Marian development, including Cardinal John O‘Connor of New York, Cardinal Jaime Sin of Manila, Cardinal Edouard Gagnon, Archbishop Christoph Sch&omul;nborn of Vienna (general editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church), and the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
The proposed Marian dogma has nothing to do with “making” Mary a part of the Trinity or “equal” to Christ. These are false and ludicrous accusations that detract from serious theological discussion. The proposed dogma simply seeks to clarify her role as the first (in every sense) disciple. It would better articulate Christ as the one unique Redeemer of a co-redemptive Church: Mary, in a special way, and all the baptized members of the Body of Christ sharing in his mysteries.
Sister Mary Jeremiah OP, STD
Lufkin, Texas
----- EXCERPT: SundayÃs Passages ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:Legal Adversaries
David Link, Dean of the Notre Dame law school, is correct when he declares the ethics of the legal profession are in great need of improvement ("Notre Dame Law Dean Says Legal System Has Hit Bottom,” Dec. 28-Jan. 3).
He is in error, however, when he puts partial blame for this condition upon the adversary system of the administration of justice.
As a retired lawyer with 40 years of active trial experience, I found the adversary system to be the most effective in getting to the truth. Where both sides of a dispute are permitted to put on their best case, and to search out defects in the adversary's case, the truth is usually the winner.
Indeed, the Church adopts the adversary system in the canonization of saints. Does it not employ a devil's advocate to test and challenge the evidence supporting canonization before the ultimate decision is made?
Because men are flawed, all systems devised by human beings are flawed. Government, the administration of justice, the Church, the military, are all subject to commission of errors and abuses because they are administered by people. The adversary system for the administration of justice should not be scrapped because the people who participate in it are less than perfect.
Jerome Downs
San Francisco, California
----- EXCERPT: LETTERS ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: With Dictators And Some Others, Death Can Be a Boon DATE: 01/25/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 25, 1998 ----- BODY:Everyone grouses about death. Maybe we should take a look at the human condition and be grateful that God has provided us with an “out.” We should be grateful that, at the Fall, human nature fell sufficiently far. It's bad enough to find our reason impaired and our passions largely outside of our control. It would have been inconceivably worse, I suspect, to find ourselves unreasonable, impassioned, and immortal. Yes, it's unpleasant to be under an inescapable penalty of death. But the sum total of human misery would have been compounded if God had granted fallen man freedom from death or even just a far longer, though still finite, life. Consider the latter.
Modern medicine and hygiene haven't succeeded in stretching the biblical three score and ten by much, and it is unlikely that any degree of scientific manipulation of our bodies will ever permit the average to go much beyond four score. Some people look at this as a horrible limitation. They dread the prospect of medical progress approaching, a limit. They secretly hope for some breakthrough that will add decades to the average life. But I look at the eventual end to biological fine-tuning as a liberation-from ourselves.
Imagine the misery the world would suffer if life expectancy were five score and 10.
Assuming he would take power in his fourth decade, a dictator could remain in control for seventy or eighty years. Thirty years of Stalin were bad enough; an extra forty might have meant World War III several times over. As it is, the current life expectancy of seventy years gives most who rise to power only half a lifetime of active “public service"–which, often enough, is already more than their subjects can take. Twice that would be unbearable. Had Hitler not died in the bunker but at the biblical age, his passing would have occurred in 1959-an extra fourteen years of sorrows. Under the alternate scheme of longevity, he still would be going strong today, not due to expire until next year.
Dictatorial heads of state keep their positions because they act resolutely and-dictatorially. (Wimps do not become dictators.) Once in power, always in power, or so it seems to those at the receiving end of a dictator's ministrations. He thinks he deserves to remain in power because he already is in power. He would stay there roughly forever if the Grim Reaper didn't intervene. Of course, the dictatorial attitude is not confined to the world of politics. It's found also within the Church, which suffers from dictatorships of its own at times. Unlike in politics, these dictatorships are almost always toward the bottom, not toward the top. Or so it seems, perhaps because the bottom-feeding dictators are the ones that snap at our heels.
Imagine the misery the world would suffer if life expectancy were five score and 10.
I have a friend who edited a diocesan newspaper. A competent writer and a believer, he was brought in by a good bishop who gave him sufficient authority to transform the paper into something a Catholic could read without damage to his faith. The editor took to his job with alacrity, but there was persistent opposition from a clique of priests, mainly men ordained in the ‘60s and ‘70s and anxious to keep control of the diocese.
Their opposition to the new regime at the paper was not a personal thing with them. The editor always treated them well, giving their parishes a fair share of the publicity. No, the opposition was ideological, and the priests put on the pressure. They acted as little dictators, working around the periphery, undercutting the editor whenever they could, complaining to the bishop about imaginary faults, insisting that the editor get sacked or they'd take their toys and go home. At length they prevailed, and the editor was given a severance package. The bishop, the editor told me, didn't know what else to do; the dictatorial priests were dictating to him, subtly threatening to subvert the diocese unless they got their way. The rebellious sons were pushing their father around .
Complain about the bishop, if you will. Admittedly, his backbone was not as strong as his intentions. But the real problem was the dictatorship of the priests. What to do about them? Even a good bishop is limited. He can give early retirement to a priest here, a priest there, but what if many (or, God forbid, nearly all) of his priests are unwilling to comply with basic Church law? What if they have a united agenda that undercuts his? Sometimes, all a bishop can do is wait them out-or, at least, wait until death takes some of them and he is able to ordain new men, thus shifting the balance of power and loyalty in his favor. If it weren't for the biological hourglass running out, some dioceses would never be straightened out.
It's a sad thing to see death take a good bishop or a good priest or a good statesman (yes, there still are a few of those). But, on the whole, I think we're fortunate that time will effect a clean slate no matter what, thus saving us from perpetually living under the worst manifestations of the Fall.
Karl Keating is founding director of Catholic Answers.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: KARL KEATING ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Class Struggle on a Sinking Ship DATE: 01/11/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 11, 1998 ----- BODY:Extraordinary effects and a classic ‘poor boy meets rich girl’ story aboard the Titantic
April 14, 1912, the world's largest and most expensive ship–the Titanic-hit an iceberg and sank. Fewer than 700 of the 2,200-plus passengers survived. Most were from the first-class section. Nearly everyone in the second class or “steerage” section died. The catastrophe captured the popular imagination of the time and instantly became a legend.
At that moment in history movies were becoming a popular art form, and as their audience consisted mainly of blue-collar workers and immigrants (all of whom would have traveled steerage class on the Titanic), many films had as their subject the difficulties of working-class life. But producers wanted to expand their market to include the middle-class. So they latched onto a staple of turn-of-the-century theatrical melodrama-the cross-class fantasy in which poor boys courted rich girls, or rich men married poor women.
The genre had certain rules. In its stories, the working people were always poor but virtuous; and the rich were idle but laden down with vices. In addition, as aesthetic counterpoint to these sermonettes on class differences, the audience of those films was always rewarded with an inside, almost voyeuristic look at the decadently extravagant lifestyles of the upper-class. The genre's popularity on screen continued into the 1920s with such feature-length hits as Idle Rich, Fools and Riches, culminating in Cecil B. DeMille's 1924 classic, The Triumph.
James Cameron, writer-director of this year's $200-million version of Titanic (there have been almost a dozen others), has revived this old-fashioned cross-class melodrama to tell the story, preserving, for better or for worse, the genre's simplistic morality about class differences. His movie has both the energy and innocence of those early 20th century silent films as well as their creakiness of plot.
Cameron's epic begins in the present time with a high-tech treasure hunter, Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton), who is electronically scouring the sunken hull of the Titanic for the priceless blue diamond necklace, “The Heart of the Ocean,” that was lost when the ship went down. These opening documentary-like sequences were filmed in the actual Titanic wreck, and as the frame of an old chandelier floats by, or the camera pokes around the remains of a first-class stateroom, the story about to be told takes on a ghostly reality.
When Lovett has broadcast on TV a drawing he has just found of a young woman wearing the jewel, he receives a phone call from the 101-year-old Rose Dawson Calvert (Gloria Stuart), who claims to be the person in the picture. She is flown out to Lovett's expedition, and the rest of the movie is told in flashback as she recounts what she experienced during the catastrophe.
The 17-year-old Rose (Kate Winslett) was engaged to marry arrogant Pittsburgh-steel tycoon, Cal Hockley (Billy Zane). It's a marriage of convenience forced upon her by her mother (Frances Fisher) because the family fortune has run out. To Rose's restless heart, the Titanic doesn't seem like the greatest luxury liner of all time but rather “a slave ship taking me to America in chains.”
As Rose suffers in the midst of sumptuous wealth, the action moves to the other side of the tracks where working-class artist, Jack Dawson (Leonardo Dicaprio), is winning a card game whose pot includes a coveted ticket to America on the Titanic- steerage class, of course. He makes it on board only minutes before castoff, and among the first things he sees is the beautiful, moody Rose. His fellow steerage passengers assure him that snooty debutantes like her are way out of his reach.
Rose has become so depressed by the hopelessness of her condition that she attempts suicide by throwing herself off the ship. The ever curious Jack just happens to wander by and save her, and the romance is on.
As thanks for his gallantry, Jack is invited to dinner in the first-class section where his good looks and integrity captivate Rose. But the obstacles against the young couple getting together again seem insurmountable.
Roughly the first half of the movie's three hours and 14 minutes chronicles the struggles of their blossoming love against Rose's mean-spirited, upper-class keepers, who are as crudely stereotyped as in a DeMille silent. Rose's mother is a cold-blooded, ambitious social climber. Her fiancé, Cal, considers himself superior solely because of his breeding and money and puts Rose down at every opportunity. Their blue-blooded friends seem fixated on observing the minutiae of outdated social customs and smile only when thinking of their own great wealth. Against this background, Rose and Jack project a purity and charm that win the audience's favor, and the doom, which we know lies waiting for them, makes us root for them to stay together.
The sinking of the ship itself, which takes up the movie's second half, is Hollywood at its best. Cameron's message is that too much faith in technology can be foolish and dangerous, and his grandiose images are worthy of the tragedy he's trying to evoke. Some examples: a huge tower of water overwhelms the exquisitely ornate dining room as the ship slowly sinks; an elderly couple waits in doomed embrace for the flood to wash over them; and the great liner props itself up vertically in the water before dropping to the bottom.
But the extraordinary (and very costly) special effects are not what remains in our memory at the end. It's Rose and Jack's sweet smiles and the look of adoration in their eyes whenever they meet. In this version of Titanic, young love still conquers all, even cornball plot twists and a simpleminded view of class differences that most of us thought disappeared about the time the ship sank.
The USCC classification of Titanic is A-III: adults. The film is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America.
Register arts & culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: Arts & Entertainment ----- EXTENDED BODY: JOHN PRIZER ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: FILM clips DATE: 01/11/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 11, 1998 ----- BODY:Following are VHS videocassette reviews from the U.S. Catholic Conference (USCC) Office for Film and Broadcasting.
Brassed Off (1997)
British story set in a depressed 1992 Yorkshire mining town where the mine's band leader (Pete Postlethwaite) insists the group carry on with their music sessions in hopes of winning a national band contest. Writer-director Mark Herman's spirited drama goes overboard in its indictment of Tory social policies, but is otherwise a winning, warmly human story of a working-class community coping with economic ruin. Brief sexual innuendo, fleeting locker-room nudity, minor violence, and intermittent rough language. The USCC classification is A-III. The film is rated R. (Miramax, rental)
Career Girls (1997)
British drama of a woman (Lynda Steadman) renewing her friendship with a former college roommate (Katrin Cartlidge) on a weekend visit that recalls their frenetic, uncertain lives as undergraduates and how much each has changed in the six years since then. Written and directed by Mike Leigh, the impressionistic narrative is loosely assembled from scenes of past and present, relying mainly on improvisational performances but the result is too disjointed to add up to more than a tentative understanding of how much progress the two have made in their lives since college. Sexual encounter with brief nudity, sexual situations, recurring rough language, and occasional profanity. The USCC classification is A-IV. The film is rated R. (FoxVideo, rental)
The Game (1997)
Twisty drama about an arrogant San Francisco investment banker (Michael Douglas) whose birthday gift from his estranged brother (Sean Penn) is membership in a bizarre game club that puts the banker's life and fortune in constant danger from unknown assailants. Directed by David Fincher, the wildly imaginative proceedings are absorbing, suspenseful, and patently illogical. Stylized violence, occasional profanity, and frequent rough language. The USCC classification is A-III. The film is rated R. (Polygram, rental)
Mr. Klein (1977)
French drama about a dealer in art objects (Alain Delon) who buys family heir-looms from Jews needing cash to escape the Nazi terror, then is himself mistaken for a Jew and handed over to the Germans, as were 13,000 others on what is known as Black Thursday, July 16, 1942. Directed with great sensitivity by Joseph Losey, it is exceptional in viewing the Holocaust as a universal experience, as meaningful to gentiles as to Jews. Subtitles. The nature of the theme, and some incidental nudity make this a film for serious viewers. The USCC classification is A-III. The film is rated PG. (New Yorker, rental)
Nothing to Lose (1997)
Coarse comedy in which a bumbling carjacker (Martin Lawrence) helps a despondent ad executive (Tim Robbins) rob his boss of a fortune, then the adman has second thoughts and insists they try to return the money before its absence is discovered. Writer-director Steve Oedekerk's manipulative buddy plot goes for cheap laughs while implying circumstances may justify grand theft. Ambivalent attitude toward crime, comic treatment of violence, a fleeting sexual encounter, and constant rough language. The USCC classification is A-IV. The film is rated R. (Touchstone, rental)
Orchestra Rehearsal (1979)
Italian production about an orchestra whose members are constantly being distracted by each other and the inane questions of a television crew until a union dispute leads to violence and ultimately chaos. Director Federico Fellini's failed fable about the tension between authority and the individual becomes a disjointed series of gags and jabs at music, nationality, television, art, sports, sex, and so on in this minor work from a great director. Subtitles. Mature themes and treatment. The USCC classification is A-III. The film is rated R. (Fox Lorber, rental)
Pixote (1982)
Harrowing and poignant Brazilian drama about a gang of boys living on the streets of Rio and the terrible things they do to survive. Directed by Hector Babenco, this powerful movie is definitely not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach because it involves sordid violence and graphic sexuality. Subtitles. The USCC classification is A-IV. The film is not rated by the Motion Picture Association of America. (New Yorker, rental)
When the Cat's Away (1997)
Seriocomic tale of a lonely Parisienne (Garance Clavel) who gets lots of help searching for her lost cat, particularly from older women, but others prove more interested in romance than locating the missing feline, until the picture's sweetly hopeful ending. Writer-director Cedric Klapisch's wistful picture of a single woman whose search for a pet turns into a quest for the right man with whom to share her life is treated earnestly yet with humor in an odd series of unsuitable encounters before a real prospect finally turns up. Subtitles. Several restrained sex scenes, sexual references, coarse expressions, and occasional rough language. The USCC classification is AIII. The film is rated R. (Columbia TriStar, rental)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Pro-Lifer Scheidler Won't be Stopped By Court Defeat DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:NEW YORK—Two days after being found guilty of conspiracy, extortion, and racketeering by a Chicago federal court, Joe Scheidler was at Villanova University declaring victory for the pro-life movement and vowing to fight abortion “till the day I die.” The pro-abortion groups who sought monetary damages and legal fees against him under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law are on their last legs and will grasp at any straw to stop the effective and life-saving methods of pro-lifers, he said at a conference sponsored by Villanova's pro-life club.
The following day, Scheidler delivered the same message at a pro-life gathering in Minnesota and announced that he will organize a national pro-life convention this summer in Chicago, featuring those who testified on his behalf in the case, National Organization for Women v. Scheidler et al.
“We want to start a new movement of prayer and sidewalk counseling to galvanize and re-energize the movement,” he told the Register. “FACE [Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act] has pretty much ended rescue, that's a thing of the past, so we'll put all our energies into prayer and counseling,” he said, referring to the federal law that imposes heavy monetary penalties and jail time for Operation Rescue-type activities.
He has won the support of a wide range of political commentators, both liberal and conservative, and Cardinal Francis George OMI of Chicago said the archdiocese may file a brief in his behalf.
Scheidler, director of Chicago's Pro-Life Action League, associates Tim Murphy and Andrew Scholberg, and Operation Rescue National were found guilty in the civil suit April 20 by a six-person jury on 21 acts of extortion under RICO, including blocking entrances to abortion clinics, harassing clinic clients, and issuing threats to abortionists in effort to shut down the industry. The defendants are working on post-trial motions and an appeal that they predict will succeed.
They were hit with almost $86,000 in damages against two abortion clinics that stood as plaintiffs and claim to have spent that amount in extra security. Judge David Coar can triple the damages under RICO and slap the defendants with plaintiffs’ legal fees, which amount to more than $1 million in the protracted 12-year trial. As a federally declared racketeer kingpin, Scheidler also may be sued by any abortion clinic in the nation that claims economic injury due to the activities of any pro-life activist who can be linked to the defendants.
He and the other defendants also face a possible “Randall Terry” injunction against all pro-life activities and “disruptive speech” at a June 30 hearing before Judge Coar. Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, was dismissed as a defendant earlier this year for submitting to such an injunction to free himself of legal entanglements during his run for Congress in upstate New York.
Every pro-lifer is in danger of being sued if the verdict is allowed to stand because each one, from rescuer to sidewalk prayer supporter, could be charged as a co-conspirator in Scheidler's “racketeering” enterprise.
G. Robert Blakey, professor at Notre Dame Law School, who was the main author of RICO in the early 1970s, testified at the trial that the law was aimed at organized crime and specifically written to exclude prosecution of conscientious protesters. He argued for Scheidler in 1994 before the Supreme Court, which kept the case rolling by ruling that RICO could be used against demonstrators who do not have an economic motive.
Cardinal George stated that the decision “equates freedom of speech with racketeering” and will have a chilling effect on freedom of speech and religion for those who oppose “the violence of abortion.” The defendants have his prayer and support for their prayerful and non-violent actions and defense of free speech rights, said the cardinal.
In closing arguments April 15 defense lawyer Tom Brejcha pointed out the inconsistencies of much of the plaintiff's evidence, pleaded the right to conscientious protest and read from Martin Luther King's Letter From Birmingham Jail, equating pro-life activists to the civil rights protesters of the ‘60s.
He told the Register that RICO is vague and “tramples the First Amendment.”
First Amendment Threat
In the wake of the trial, Scheidler has received widespread support from the Chicago media and opinion makers across the country who see the decision as a grave threat to First Amendment free speech and association rights that could be used against any group involved in public acts of conscientious protest.
“This is one of the most dangerous decisions that has come down in many years,” said New York Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff, a staunch First Amendment defender. “If there were ever a case of selective use of a law, this is it.”
Dennis Byrne, a self-described liberal and an editor for the Chicago Sun-Times, pointed out that the pro-abortion feminists who applaud the women who years ago chained themselves outside the door of the Illinois Senate to force passage of the Equal Rights Amendment are the same ones who now proclaim the decision against Scheidler a victory for freedom. Likewise, liberals cheer anti-war activists who chain themselves to the gates of munitions factories or destroy Pentagon property, he said.
“The difference between me and the hypocrites on the left is that I still believe in the necessity of moral protest and civil disobedience,” wrote Byrne. He said that NOW's suit is designed to put such a “fear of destitution into the hearts of people of conscience, that they'll think twice about speaking their minds.”
A New York Times editorial dismissed comparisons to civil rights lunch counter sit-ins, stating, “Those acts of civil disobedience, for which many went to jail, did not involve threats of violence or attempts to destroy the businesses.”
Hentoff, who was involved in some of those ‘60s demonstrations, told the Register that the Times is blind to civil rights abuses when abortion is involved. King and others “engaged in serious sitins” that were designed to close down restaurants in the South unless blacks were admitted on an equal basis, he said.
Scheidler told the Register that he “sat down” with King in Montgomery, Ala., during a civil rights protest.
“That was okay then, but if you're doing it to try to save babies, then you're a racketeer,” he said.
Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, testified at the trial that Scheidler was acting within the bounds of American political tradition in breaking a minor law like trespassing to pursue the greater good of saving unborn babies from abortion. If such heroic action had been taken by German citizens in World War II, he said, the atrocities at Dachau and Auschwitz may never have occurred.
NOW lawyers tried to lessen the weight of Hyde's testimony by asking that he not be referred to in court as “congressman” or “honorable.” The judge ruled in their favor and Brejcha was restricted to calling him “Mr. Hyde,” a name that NOW lawyers slyly associated with “Dr. Jekyll” in cross examination. Brejcha did manage to get the congress-man's title on the record, however, by simply asking what he did for a living.
The defense was hamstrung by such restrictions throughout the seven-week trial. Norma McCorvey was prohibited by the judge from mentioning anything about her role as “Roe” in Roe v. Wade, and Sandra Cano was likewise not identified as the “Doe” in the 1973 companion case, Doe v. Bolton. Both women are ardently pro-life and could have given eloquent accounts of how they were used and discarded by pro-abortion advocates seeking legalization of abortion.
“I was under a gag order about who I was,” McCorvey said in a Register interview from her home in Texas. “If that had been told to the jury that would not have been good for the pro-aborts.”
Joan Andrews Bell, originally named as a defendant in the case, said that she was deeply saddened “by the grave injustice against a great pro-lifer.”
Her husband, Chris Bell, who runs four homes for unwed mothers and their babies in New York, called the suit “a last gasp of the evil of the other side trying to prevent the successful work of pro-lifers.”
Appeal Prospects
Professor Blakey thinks Scheidler has a good chance on appeal. He said Judge Coar did not instruct the jury carefully and the verdict was almost inevitable given the one-sided presentation. He added that RICO was rewritten in the early 1970s after Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) objected that the law could be used by the Nixon Administration to go after anti-war demonstrators. The law as passed includes four areas of offense—murder, kidnapping, arson and extortion—and the last one does not include the acts that Scheidler and the others have been charged with, said Blakey.
“Extortion is a technical legal term which refers to a property offense,” he said. “To be guilty of extortion, the person has to get—to obtain—the property in question, not just destroy it or not just cause someone to lose income as a result of an action.”
He said that to block entrances and dissuade women from going into clinics is a form a coercion, a petty offense that Judge Coar “has morphed into extortion,” a federal offense. “He's rewritten the statute in a way Congress did not want it written. It's outrageous.”
A 1981 Supreme Court decision, NAACP v. Clayburn, should be cited as a precedent in the appeal, said Blakey. In the case, the court upheld the legality of a well-orchestrated boycott that was designed to coerce a store into hiring black employees.
Redemptorist Father Richard Welch, who recently had a five-year RICO case against him dropped in Puerto Rico, said the NOW suit is “part of a massive campaign to silence the pro-life movement.”
Father Welch, president of Human Life International, said the “co-conspirators” in the campaign are “the judicial and legislative branches of government, together with the captive liberal media, [who] are pawns of the abortion industry.”
The priest was arrested eight times for rescues in Puerto Rico but was never convicted. The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy in New York City represented three abortion clinics seeking $1.2 million in damages against him. Pointing out that the Church and bishops in Puerto Rico and his religious superior were originally named in the RICO case, Father Welch said the suit was brought as a form of intimidation.
Brejcha, who was threatened with contempt many times for using words the judge had banned, will wait until after the June 30 injunction hearing to file an appeal. Meanwhile, he has filed for a mis-trial and entered motions for the judge to dismiss the verdict. One point of motion, he said, is that NOW lawyers made repeated references to bombings and shootings during the trial and in closing arguments, which the judge had ruled out in pre-trial hearings.
“Our clients’ positions were stigma-tized repeatedly during the trial,” he said. A letter Scheidler had written against a statement of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin was highlighted to make Scheidler appear at war with his own Church, but the judge did not allow the chancellor of the Chicago archdiocese to testify that Scheidler was given a pro-life award from Cardinal Bernardin.
Whether the appeal succeeds or not, Scheidler protected himself against monetary damages years ago by divesting himself of all property and assets.
“I can't in conscience give a nickel to an abortionist. I'll be a pauper all my life,” said the one-time Benedictine monk.
Never one to lose his sense of humor, he added that the examination of his every word and action during the past 15 years was “like a rehearsal for the Last Judgment.”
Brian Caulfield writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: 'Racketeering' conviction roundly decried by First Amendment supporters ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Caulfield ----- KEYWORDS: -------- TITLE: Treaty Promising a More Unified Europe Awaits Ireland and Denmark's Approval DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:DUBLIN, Ireland—European Unity will take another major step forward this year when the European Union's (EU) 15 members ratify the Amsterdam Treaty, signed last June by their heads of state and governments. Once enacted, the Treaty will hand over more power than ever before to the European Parliament, the European Commission, and the European Council of Ministers in deciding issues of foreign policy, internal security, labor relations, and human rights.
Of the 15 members of the EU, Ireland and Denmark are the only two whose national constitutions demand that a referendum be held before the Amsterdam Treaty becomes part of domestic law. Elsewhere, all that is required is the assent of the various national parliaments. Yet, despite this loss of national independence and sovereignty, the Treaty looks likely to be passed with little opposition or controversy in almost all European countries. In the Republic of Ireland, there is such a lack of public debate about the Treaty that the leader of the Labor Party, Ruairi Quinn, warned of the existence of “a cozy consensus.”
There is only one explanation for the lack of public debate in Europe about the Amsterdam Treaty: the vast majority of the EU's 371.9 million citizens regard greater European unity as a worthwhile and positive goal. This regard is based both on the economic and political success of the European Union and the political ideals that have lead to a united Europe. The EU is rooted in the Coal and Steel Treaty negotiated in the years following World War II by Addenauer of Germany, Schuman and Monet of France, and DeGasperi of Italy. All four statesmen were Catholics, horrified by the massive destruction caused by Two World Wars in less than half a century, who sought to create a new climate of cooperation in Europe that would create long term peace between nations.
CATHOLIC INFLUENCE
As Catholics, they were strongly committed to the ideals of social justice and as a result, much of the European Union's policies on employment and social rights are rooted in Catholic social teaching. The Coal and Steel Treaty's provisions were strengthened and expanded to other areas of economic interest, including agriculture, by the Treaty of Rome in 1956, which was signed by six European nations. The Treaty of Rome lead to the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) which Ireland, Britain, and Denmark joined in 1973. Very quickly, the EEC's brief went beyond the purely economic and included social and cultural issues, the word “economic” was dropped from its title, and it became officially known as the European Community (EC). As the EC expanded, the original aim of promoting peace remained behind the decision to allow entry to new members, particularly those from southern Europe.
When Spain, Portugal, and Greece joined, all three countries were fledgling democracies recently freed from military rule and EC membership was seen as a way of protecting that democracy.
In 1987, following the Maastricht Treaty, the European Community became the European Union (EU) in a move that gave greater powers to the European Parliament and European Commission. Maastricht also laid the foundations for European Monetary Union (EMU) and the creation of the Euro, a new pan—European currency that will replace the pound, the French franc, the Deutsch (German) mark, and 12 other national currencies.
One of the main benefits of EMU is that it allows European citizens in different countries to compare more easily their wage levels and the price of goods and services across Europe. The Maastricht Treaty included a “social chapter” which improved employee protection against unfair dismissal and the right to trade union representation. One clause forces multinational companies to set up European Workers Councils and to facilitate meetings between staff representatives working in different countries. The EU's most recent members, Finland, Austria and Sweden, brought the total membership to 15 countries. With EMU fast approaching, these countries did not wish to be left outside the new pan—European market—and the end of the Cold War also reduced the need for their neutrality. The EEC's original aim of providing social solidarity with poorer nations and regions has proved a great boon to Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and Spain, which have benefited from a wide range of subsidies for improvements in roads, housing, and basic infrastructure. Farmers have also benefited greatly from the EU's agricultural policies in the form of subsidies and grants.
TREATY OBJECTIVES
With so many benefiting from the EU's largesse and cooperation between France and Germany at an all time high, it is little wonder that there is hardly any opposition to greater European Union.
The Amsterdam Treaty has four main objectives:
• to place employment and citizens’ rights at the heart of the Union;
• to strengthen security and remove any remaining obstacles to freedom of movement;
• to give Europe a stronger voice in world matters;
• to make the Union's institutions more efficient with a view to enlargement.
National governments will bear primary responsibility for efforts to reduce unemployment, but the EU will also coordinate policies to tackle unemployment. While European taxpayers will not be asked to pay extra for job creation projects, the EU will use “the margin available in the current budget as far as possible” and the new European Investment Bank will make low interest loans available to small businesses. Every member of the EU will have to introduce a minimum wage and limit the working week to a maximum of 48 hours—two measures strongly influenced by Catholic social teaching. Fundamental rights, laid down in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, will now be monitored by the EU that will have the power to impose sanctions on member states which “systematically violate” those rights. The Treaty of Amsterdam also includes a non—discrimination clause that may cause problems for Churches who refuse, for example, to employ homosexual teachers or staff who do not support a Christian ethos. In an effort to increase “open government,” EU citizens will have the right of access to documents originating with the European Commission and the European Parliament. The Council of Ministers, too, must make the minutes of its meetings available whenever it acts as legislator.
These provisions have been criticized by the National Union of Journalists in Britain and Ireland who say that Europe is paying only “lip—service” to the idea of open government. On matters of security, cooperation between European police forces will be increased through a new body, Europol, that gathers crime data from the whole of Europe and which will also have investigative duties and responsibilities. Europol's work takes place behind the scenes, because only the police forces of the individual member states are allowed to make arrests. Identity checks at the internal frontiers of the European Union will be abolished, though not at the borders of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Controls at external frontiers, ports, and airports will be strengthened and “implemented with equal vigor throughout the European Union.”
EU member states will also harmonize their rules on issuing visas and granting asylum to people from outside the EU. Human rights groups claim that this will create a “Fortress Europe” denying the benefits of prosperity to the people of the Third World and increasing the “North—South divide.” The Amsterdam Treaty now includes “sustainable development” as an EU goal and allows for the introduction of minimum standards of air and water pollution across Europe. Member states are allowed to apply more stringent standards if they want to. In the area of public health, for the first time ever, the EU may set minimum standards for the quality and safety of blood and human organs, to combat the risk of infection from the HIV virus and hepatitis. The EU may also introduce pan—European anti—drugs legislation.
The European Parliament is granted greater powers and will have the final word on a wide range of policy issues. More importantly, the European Parliament will have a say on appointments to the European Commission, the EU's civil service. Foreign policy decision making will be streamlined. Member states who do not agree with a particular EU policy—military intervention in the Gulf, for example—will refrain from voting and thus have no say. This is the greatest criticism of the Amsterdam Treaty by the Green Movement in Ireland, Denmark, and Sweden, who argue against the loss of their countries’ neutrality and independence in foreign policy.
RELIGIOUS LEADERS’ CONCERNS
So far, the Irish hierarchy has not discussed the impact the Amsterdam Treaty may have on the recruitment of Church personnel. But in Britain the anti—discrimination provisions are causing concern among Catholics, Anglicans, and Presbyterians. Last year, British Home Office officials met representatives of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, and the Free Church Council to discuss their fears about the convention that is due to be incorporated into British statute shortly. British Church leaders fear the convention will allow legal action against clergy and parishes by people including: those refused Communion by priests; gay couples refused Church weddings; and those refused employment by the Church because they reject Christianity.
Nicholas Coote, secretary to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, said: “In the United Kingdom, Catholic priests act as assistant registrars at weddings, so they perform ‘public acts.’ What we fear is that when we refuse to ‘remarry’ a divorced couple we would be faced with a court judgment stating that this was incompatible with the convention.
“The Home Office is very reluctant to make an exemption for the Churches. They told us ‘You are saying you support human rights, except when they apply to you. ‘But if push comes to shove, we will not remarry divorced people, no matter what the law might be.”
Another concern is the convention's effect on employment law. While Catholic schools in the UK, for example, may openly advertise for staff who support their Christian ethos, there may be problems when it comes to terminating contracts. Coote said: “It is not clear what would happen in cases of dismissal where a male head teacher takes up, in very public circumstances, with a boyfriend. He could be in sympathy with the Catholic ethos, but behave in a way that contravenes that and such a person might try it on in a test case.”
Church of England spokesman Steve Jenkins said Anglican fears also included: would a future government force the Church of England to consecrate women bishops and would it be illegal for parishes opposed to the ordination of women to refuse the appointment of a woman priest? But the mainstream Churches’ concerns are about this one detail of the Amsterdam Treaty and not its overall thrust—indeed the primate of all Ireland, Archbishop Sean Brady of Armagh, has welcomed the fact that the treaty will help end discrimination against the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland.
The Green Movement's objections are much more firmly rooted ideologically. In Finland and Sweden, Green opposition is effectively neutered by the fact that only the Greens are in opposition and the Treaty needs only government approval. In Denmark and Ireland, where referenda are due to take place, the Greens are trying to mobilize public opinion against the Treaty. Irish Green Party spokesperson Jan O‘Carroll said: “We are wary of the EU usurping the role of the United Nations in the area of international peace and security or the role of local, regional, or national governments in the determination of economic and agricultural policy.
“We believe in strong, democratic control of decision making and therefore support de—centralization. The Amsterdam Treaty will move democratic control further away from the people. The two biggest EU institutions—the European Commission and the Council of Ministers—will have their powers boosted if the treaty is ratified—neither of these are directly elected by the people. The Treaty also fails to address the unaccountable nature of EU affairs. If it is ratified, the workings of the EU will remain deeply secretive. Furthermore, the new police force, Europol, has very little judicial control.”
The Irish referendum will probably take place May 22. O‘Carroll says that because public opposition to the Amsterdam Treaty is higher in Denmark, the Irish referendum on the issue will take place before the Danish vote—"in case a Danish ‘No’ influences the Irish electorate.”
She added: “An Irish ‘Yes’ would also boost the pro—treaty side in Denmark.” At present, it is almost certain that the Amsterdam Treaty will be passed by the Irish electorate, as the treaty is supported by both the government and the two main opposition parties—indeed, the opposition parties were in office when the treaty was negotiated.
Looking to the future, Labor leader Ruairi Quinn said that the Amsterdam Treaty will further contribute to European stability and growth while increasing the EU's standing across the globe. He predicted that Europe's new currency, the Euro, will quickly join the U.S. dollar and the Japanese Yen as a reserved currency. More radically, early in the next millennium, he predicted that oil will “be quoted in Euro per barrel instead of U.S. dollars.”
“This change will come about because the Euro will be a more stable and less volatile currency than the dollar,” he added.
Cian Molloy writes from Dublin, Ireland.
----- EXCERPT: Catholic leaders are mostly supportive but remain concerned on some points ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cian Molloy ----- KEYWORDS: -------- TITLE: With Octavio Paz's Death, the World Loses A Literary Giant and Grand Moral Voice DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:LOS ANGELES—One can easily imagine foreign bankers who regularly calculate the profitability of yet another new high—tech venture in Mexico City scratching their heads over all the fuss Mexico recently made about the death of an elderly poet.
Octavio Paz, not only Mexico's leading writer, but one of the century's last literary giants, died April 19 in Mexico City after a long struggle with cancer, at age 84.
One can equally imagine investors in the new “American—style” Mexico greeting with a shrug the news that Pope John Paul II plans to visit the country next January to canonize Blessed Juan Diego, the Indian convert to whom the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared at the dawn of Mexico's modern history, and to rededicate the Americas to her.
No, a vision of the transcendent potentialities in human culture— Paz's legacy, and the vision of a hemisphere drawn together under the mantle of Guadalupe, where the continent's historic ethnic struggles meet a mother's call for justice and reconciliation—hardly figure on the balance sheets of the global traders.
But they should. Spirituality, culture, a unique historical vision born of a unique historical experience: Far more than oil, timber, or manpower, they are Mexico's most profound assets.
Those sentiments were echoed in the Pope's April 24 press release on the death of Paz aired over Vatican Radio. A papal spokesman lauded the Mexican literary figure as “the poet of freedom,” praising Paz's espousal of literature's “moral dimension,” and the witness of a life dedicated to the freedom of the human person, rejecting as he did the political enticements of both fascism and communism.
The Vatican statement also praised the poet for his universality, his openness to other cultures—particularly those of the indigenous peoples of Latin America— and to the cultures of India, where he served as Mexican ambassador for six years in the 1960s.
While the universality of Paz's poetic range is beyond dispute—he won the 1990 Nobel Prize for literature—Mexico mourned him not only as a great writer, but as part of its soul.
The Mexico City daily Reforma called Paz's state funeral April 23 in the capital's Art Deco Bellas Artes building “an eclectic affair,” drawing leaders from across the country's political spectrum, its cultural elite, military leaders, and throngs of simple people, especially the young. (Paz's funeral was the largest national funeral since popular Mexican actor Cantinflas died five years ago.)
There in the gleaming black and white marble palace of culture, with its famous murals by Mexican painters Siqueiros and Tamayo upstairs, Paz's body lay in a simple wooden coffin for three hours under the tri—color Mexican flag to receive what Reforma called “a quiet good—bye,” with both people and leaders “submerged in silence.”
According to reports, there were many displays of emotion as the crowds, lined up outside, filed past the coffin and paid their respects to Paz's widow (his second wife, Marie—Jose Tramini, whom he married in 1964) and his daughter Helena by his first marriage.
Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, after consoling the family, lamented in his tribute to the poet that the country and the world “had sustained an irreparable loss by his death,” but that the poet's “critique [of the country], most fully articulated in his famous 1950 essay on Mexico, The Labyrinth of Solitude, remained,” and that the poet's “presence” would always be felt.
During the afternoon, a young poet in blue jeans approached Paz's widow and expressed his sorrow for not having known “the maestro” personally. Paz is widely credited with having a major influence on young people—especially young poets.
“The poet has not died,” she responded. “In his books and his words, his life today begins to transcend itself.”
Firebrand Family
Born in 1914 into an anticlerical family living in genteel poverty—"the grandson of a rebel, the son of a revolutionary,” as one biography put it—Paz had all the right credentials to be a 20th—century Latin American intellectual.
His paternal grandfather was a journalist and novelist who fought with Benito Juarez against the French occupation of Mexico in the 1860s. His father was a veteran of the Mexican revolution of 1910 who went into exile to represent the peasant guerrilla leader Emiliano Zapata in the United States.
As Paz described it later, “our tablecloth smelled of gunpowder.”
The hours the poet spent in his grand—father's ample library—he called it “an enchanted cave"—bore fruit when, at age 19, he published his first book of poetry, Sylvan Moon.
Like many Mexican intellectuals of the left, Paz went to Spain in the late 1930s to fight for the Republicans against Gen. Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Everywhere he went, the poet absorbed literature with a passion. During a late—30s exile in Paris, Paz found himself drawn to the French surrealists with their sense of “imagination, liberty, spiritual adventure, vision.” In America, he devoured Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, and Ezra Pound.
Early in his literary career, Paz's restless intelligence also earned him an honored place as one of the century's great essayists. His clarity of thought, balance, and wide—ranging interests produced literary essays on archaeology, music, art, philosophy, religion, and politics.
In the mid—40s, however, Paz had staked out what would prove a 20—year stint in the diplomatic service—a career that allowed him to “explore new poetic worlds.” As Mexican consul and ambassador, he lived in San Francisco, New York, Paris, Tokyo, and New Delhi.
In all his travels though, he never forgot Mexico. In fact, his most famous works, The Labyrinth of Solitude, still an essential, if unflattering analysis of Mexico, and, as critic Irving Howe writes, “a central text of our time,” and his epic poem Sunstone on the enduring spirit of pre—Columbian civilization, are centered on the Mexican historical experience.
Moral Champion
But what makes Paz “the poet of freedom,” as the Vatican statement calls him, a witness to the “moral dimension in literature”?
First, Paz was always, and remained to the end, a political gadfly, an independent voice in a region where 20th—century intellectuals, especially in Latin America, have routinely associated themselves with socialism and communism.
In a 1983 interview the poet told The New York Times that “intellectuals have a semi—religious attitude [toward socialism], so it's difficult for them to criticize their own religion.”
An early and prescient critic of fascism and communism as inimical to human freedom and integrity, Paz went on to wage a highly criticized campaign against Soviet and Cuban intervention in Latin America in the 1970s. He also opposed the Cuban—supported Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.
In one of his finest poems, the Nocturne of San Ildefonso, Paz wrote succinctly: “The good, we sought the good: to straighten out the world. We did not lack integrity: We lacked humility. What we wanted we wanted without innocence.”
Nearly alone among Latin American intellectuals, Paz expressed sympathy for Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974.
In the midst of an appreciation of the Russian writer's account of the Soviet gulag, the labor camps, for example, Paz noted that “Solzhenitsyn's Russian Christianity … is [one] which has passed through the central experience of our century—the dehumanization of the totalitarian concentration camps—and has emerged strengthened…. [He is a] witness: In a century of false testimonies, a writer becomes the witness to man.”
But the poet was nothing if not consistent.
In the most dramatic political act of his career, Paz resigned from his post as Mexican ambassador to India in 1968 after government troops massacred student protesters in Mexico City's Plaza del Tlatelolco, unmasking, as Paz saw it, the authoritarian face of Mexico's one—party political system. This act not only put Paz on the side of genuine democratic reform in Mexico, but made public his long—simmering critique of the “revolutionary” Mexico of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) his own family had done so much to create.
Even so, despite his support for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 and economic reform in Mexico generally, Paz had as few illusions about capitalism as he had about socialism.
“The market, blind and deaf, is not fond of literature or risk,” he told The New York Times four years ago, “and it does not know how to choose. Its censorship is not ideological: It has no ideas. It knows all about prices, but nothing about values.”
I am a man: little do I last and the night is enormous. But I look up: the stars write. Unknowing, I understand: I too am written, and at this very moment someone spells me out.
—Octavio Paz (1987)
But it wasn't merely the poet's political stances that made him a moral force in Latin America; it was also the symbolic opening to cultural reconciliation his work represents. Paz, for example, helped to rediscover key Mexican colonial figures, such as the 17th—century Catholic poet Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz—this in a time when few Latin American writers credited the Colonial Age (and the Christianity that shaped it)—with anything but oppression and intolerance.
Paz, however, was criticized at the time, with good reason, by some Catholic academics who pointed out that the poet, in denouncing the Mexican nun's 17th—century religious superiors, had misread the religious motives behind her decision to destroy some of her poetry late in life.
Perhaps Paz's colleague, frequent critic, and sometime rival, novelist Carlos Fuentes said it best when he wrote in a 1976 homage to Paz that, apart from being “the greatest living poet of the Spanish language…. I know of no other contemporary writer who has given so much individual expression to a poetical form that transcends him in order to establish the common voice of the hidden fraternity of civilizations.”
An American poet echoed that sentiment when Paz visited Georgetown University in 1988: “Paz's poetry breaks down all cultural barriers,” he said. “More than a poet,” he went on to say, “Paz is a sage.”
In this, Paz's career echoes that of Czech president and playwright Vaclav Havel, a signal representative, like Paz, of the great European liberal humanist tradition, who also broke with communism and the left, made human freedom and dignity the central pivot of his thought, and, however tentatively, gave voice to a vision of the transcendent meaning of human experience and the essentially spiritual character of art.
“Faced with the Escorial palace,” Paz wrote in a 1964 essay, “or a Titian canvas or Mozart's music, man perceives a truth vaster than his own…. In works of art, time makes use of men to fulfill itself.”
It's perhaps not surprising, then, to find that Paz appreciated the religious humanism of Pope John Paul II, his concern for the dignity of man in the face of both utopian and neo—capitalist threats, and was among the first Mexican intellectuals to meet with the Pope when he stopped there in 1979.
Pope John Paul plans to visit Mexico next January to urge a deeper union of the Americas. When he does so, he will greet a country that the work of Octavio Paz, “the poet of freedom,” has helped to prepare for that call.
Gabriel Meyer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: Vatican lauds Mexican Nobel laureate as 'poet of freedom'; ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gabriel Meyer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Brothers in the New Technologies DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:Archbishop Emilio Carlos Berlie Belaunzarán
Archbishop Emilio Carlos Berlie Belaunzarán, ordinary of the southern Archdiocese of Yucatan, is a former president of the Commission of Communications of the Mexican bishops’ conference and a member of the Social Communication Commission of the Latin America bishops’ council (CELAM). The archbishop was one of the 15 Latin American bishops attending the Conference on New Technologies and the Human Person recently held in Denver. He spoke with Register correspondent Alejandro Bermudez at the conference.
Bermudez: What is the most important challenge that the Church in Latin America faces as regards the new technologies?
Archbishop Berlie: Nobody can doubt that new technologies, especially in the field of communications are presenting computer technology one of the biggest and most important challenges of the end of the century. As we have discussed in the conference, new communication technologies are reshaping the face of the world making it smaller and providing more and more people with the opportunity to reach millions of homes with almost any kind of message.
Therefore, this is not the world as we know it with just another “tool,” it is rather a world somehow culturally redefined by the new technologies. New opportunities are being created, but also new challenges that have to be clearly assessed. The NewTech Conference, in this sense, has provided us with a starting point for an ongoing conversation.
What opportunities do you see forthe Catholic Church in the area of new communications?
Obviously—if the mission of the Church is to announce the Good News of Jesus Christ—faster, more effective, and at the same time, personalized tools of communication provide an opportunity that the Church cannot reject. Moreover, they also create an environment, a “cyberspace,” in which the Church must be present. The technology has to be used as a new and better way to evangelize today's people.
Using these technologies and analyzing their consequences for the life of the human person and the Church has become a common interest that is helping achieve the increasing communion the Holy Father wants between North and Latin America. Despite our real differences, as one Church, we can use the new tools and face the new cultural challenges together looking forward to achieve the new evangelization needed in the new millennium.
What steps have been taken in that direction at the conference?
Suggestions have been discussed, but the current technological status of the dioceses represented at the conference, as well as the social and cultural environment, is quite diverse. It does not mean we cannot make common policies, but it means that most of them will have to be applied according to each particular situation.
Among the common policies, we have agreed on the need to increase the level of consciousness among the Catholic leadership, as well as in all those responsible for communication in our dioceses and episcopate. But since new technologies are so pervasive, another conclusion has been to train pastoral agents, especially seminarians and young priests, in the use and meaning of the new technologies.
How to achieve this will be a matter of further discussion. What is clear is that the awareness of new technologies as a challenge and an opportunity must be addressed at all levels: in our dioceses, parishes, Catholic organizations, movements, and schools.
How will new technologies assist in the task of evangelization as we approach the third millennium?
The upcoming great Jubilee moves us to prepare a big celebration for the 2,000th anniversary of Our Lord Jesus Christ's birth. We need to renew our desire to make everybody love and know him. This is the essence of the mission of the Catholic Church and we need to proclaim this message inviting everyone to follow him and live as he did.
Our lives, as bishops, priests, religious, or laypersons must be identified with his life because only in this way can we proclaim, celebrate, and serve our brothers and sisters, seeing Jesus Christ in each of them. In this context, new technologies, both as tools and as a “new Aeropagus” in which the Word must be proclaimed cannot be ignored. But the technologies must not be overestimated either. Human persons continue to have the same real needs and Christ is also the same.
Is the Catholic Church in Latin America taking advantage of the new technologies?
It is not easy to make a general assessment, but I can say that, in general, the interest is significant and is increasing, limited more by the lack of means than by the lack of a sense of the technologies’ importance. Mexico is a good example of the interest in Latin America. At present, half of the 80 Mexican dioceses have a Web page on the Internet and a project for an electronic news agency is on its way. But we are also improving our participation in the traditional mass media.
At present, the Catholic Church in our country maintains newspapers, radio stations, and a cable television channel named Clara Vision that transmits Catholic programs. Each Sunday, the Archdiocese of Mexico distributes about 715,000 copies of the paper among the houses of the capital city, giving them Catholic news, catechism lessons, and publishing articles with the Catholic perspective about the daily problems of our country. In my archdiocese there is a weekly TV program transmitted by the regional television channel.
New technologies are being assumed and integrated with “traditional” technologies. At a continental level, CELAM and the Pontifical Council for Social Communications have been fostering a computer network of the Church in Latin America, which is trying to give to each episcopate in the region the possibility of access to the new media and computer networks. From Web pages and the use of e—mail for faster communications, we are moving to the field of data bases and electronic libraries. Networking is useless if there is not a great deal of good content to share and communicate.
What advantages do you expect will come with these technologies?
For one, the improvement of two—way communication between the bishop and the pastor, the bishop and the parishes, the parishioners with their pastors and so on. I am also envisioning an improvement in the capacity of my seminarians to reach better information more quickly.
Besides, the use and application of the new technologies puts us in contact with experts who will be exposed to the Word of the Lord. This is important, because we need them as close cooperators in the task of the New Evangelization.
How can the Church in Latin America improve its use of the new technologies?
One of the most important fields is education. It is urgent for us to have in our seminaries special programs to prepare the future priests to become good users of the new technologies. The seminarians need to receive information about how to use the new media and how to be open to emerging technologies.
Our Catholic universities must be close to the bishops and available to share with us their intellectual richness in these fields. We need to use the youth and human potential—guided by good teachers—that exists in their classrooms to evaluate and understand the use, the applications, and the consequences of the new tools.
In addition, we have to improve the formation of our priests, perhaps through special courses, to make them understand that today it isn't enough to proclaim the Word, we have to penetrate the different cultural environment with the Gospel, inviting everybody to an authentic conversion, using those specific technologies as instruments to bring people to God.
What did the NewTech Conference mean for the Church in Latin America?
After my participation in the Synod for America, I see in this event the continuation of the great, fraternal relationship started between Latin and North American bishops.
For a long time, the Holy Father has spoken about the new methods that we— as bishops and priests—need to have in order to proclaim the Gospel at the onset of the third millennium. I am convinced that after the NewTech Conference we will be able to face as brothers, despite natural and cultural differences, the great challenges that the new millennium is presenting to us all.
—Alejandro Bermudez
----- EXCERPT: Will better communications bridge the gap between North and Latin America? ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Archbishop Emilio Carlos Berlie Belaunzaran DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:Born: Nov. 4, 1939 in Aguascalientes, Mexico.
Current positions: Member of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People; head of the Economic Council of the Latin American Bishops’ Council (CELAM); member of the Supreme Council of the Knights of Columbus in Mexico; member of the Communications Commission of the Mexican Bishops’ Conference.
Background: Received doctorate in philosophy at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas (Angelicum) Rome; ordained a priest by Pope Paul VI; spiritual director and professor of dogmatic theology at the seminary of Aguascalientes; appointed bishop of Tijuana in 1983; delegate of the Mexican episcopate at the Latin American Bishops Conference in Santo Domingo in 1992; appointed archbishop of Yucatan in 1995; delegate of the Mexican episcopate at the Synod for America in 1997.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Ten Major Markets to Get Catholic Radio in $58.2 Million Deal DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:Ignatius Press and Franciscan U. will collaborate on venture
SAN FRANCISCO—Ignatius Press and Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio have become partners in a radio venture that will bring 24—hour Catholic radio to 10 major markets across the United States by this fall.
On April 17, representatives of Ignatius Press and Franciscan University signed a definite purchase agreement for 10 AM radio stations that will be known as the Catholic Radio Network (CRN) for a purchase price of $58.2 million. They will broadcast 24—hour talk radio in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Minneapolis, Kansas City (Kan.), Dallas, Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and New York. There is a possibility that two more stations may be added to the deal in the coming weeks.
“The goal is to reach the widest possible audience with radio that is based upon Catholic principles,” said Father Joseph Fessio SJ, president of Ignatius Press, which publishes Catholic books and magazines, including The Catholic World Report and Homiletic and Pastoral Review.
“Specifically Catholic doctrine or teachings will probably not be a big part of our program base, but it will be a part of it. We are trying to go out and reach the non—committed people of good will, even non—Catholics, with contemporary issues from a Catholic point of view,” Father Fessio said.
The purchase of the stations will not be finalized for three or four months, pending FCC approval. If all goes according to schedule, the CRN could begin broadcasting by Sept. 1. CRN will also be available to a worldwide audience over the Internet and through satellite technology.
Catholic Radio Network is supported by a foundation that will accept charitable contributions, but CRN will own the radio stations as a for—profit business, unlike the non—profit Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). Father Fessio explained that the for—profit status was necessary in order to finance such a large transaction.
“This could not be done by donations, so we simply had to make this a commercial enterprise. If we succeed spiritually and are able to reach a large audience—even 1% would be enough to make this viable—then we can pay for it through the advertising because we will have national, network, and local commercial advertising on these stations,” Father Fessio explained.
“It is meant to support itself,” he added. “It is meant to give a return on investment for investors. The primary goal, of course, is to help to change our society and help support a Catholic voice in this country.”
The announcement of this Catholic radio venture comes on the heels of a national conference held in Denver last month on implementing technology and communication to spread the Catholic faith. Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput OFM Cap., who co—hosted this conference, is serving as the episcopal advisor to the CRN project.
“Archbishop Chaput is a strong believer in radio as a cost—effective way to get the message out,” said Francis Maier, chancellor of the Archdiocese of Denver.
The CRN will provide “solid, reliable Catholic material, and will be a force for conciliation in the Church, not division,” Maier added.
John Lynch, president and CEO of the Catholic Radio Network, said that there has been a “tremendous reaction” to the announcement of this project.
“I have gotten calls from many veteran broadcasters who have come out of the woodwork and said that they are devout Catholics and want to be involved in this,” he said.
Lynch, who was formerly the president of Noble Broadcasting, is in the process of hiring staff for the CRN. Much of the broadcast day at the 10 stations will be filled with network programming, and there is a possibility that a few of the programs from WEWN, Mother Angelica's short—wave radio enterprise, may be aired on the CRN. Lynch said that they also hope to have some local programs produced in each of the CRN cities.
There are approximately 10,000 radio stations nationwide, 1,600 of which have a Christian programming format—though only a handful are Catholic. Lynch said that they are learning from the example of the Christian stations.
“We know the strengths and weaknesses of Christian radio—we are trying to glean from the best,” Lynch explained. “We want to create something that really has appeal and will reach a very broad audience.”
“[Dr. James] Dobson is one of the best at what they do. We would like to do some things together, and discuss our similarities and differences,” Lynch said.
This venture may be just a first step for the CRN.
“We want to extend our reach through purchasing more stations and through increased network affiliation,” Lynch said.
Catholic radio consultant Chris Lyfort is very pleased about the growth of Catholic radio represented by the acquisition of these stations by the CRN.
“I think that the good thing is that something so big is happening,” Lyfort said. “It needed someone who is a Father Fessio to put this deal together.”
The stations being purchased by the CRN were formerly part of the Children's Broadcasting Corporation. Lyfort said that this will make for a “huge transition” for these stations.
“All 10 have been kid's stations, so there is no base—listenership for adults,” explained Lyfort. “There will be a 100% transition from what is being aired now and what will be aired.”
Lyfort used to work full—time for the Catholic radio station in Portland, Oregon, before starting his California—based Lay Catholic Broadcasting Network (LCBN). The LCBN produces shows for Catholic stations already on the air, and is developing a Catholic Music Service that can be fed, via satellite, to stations across the country. The LCBN also holds conferences to give those interested in Catholic radio the essential information about becoming involved in this very complicated business.
“There are many, many pitfalls in this business,” Lyfort stated. “Father Fessio and the CRN are walking through a jungle with a machete, and they've actually gotten pretty far in. We need to pray for them and support them to the full extent that we can.”
Molly Mulqueen writes from Colorado Springs, Colorado.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Molly Mulqueen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: India's Fisher People Find a Leader Who's Unmoved by Money DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:NEW DELHI—Among India's fisher people, Redemptorist Father Thomas Kocherry, 57, is something of a legend. For three decades, he has worked to improve the lives of the eight million people along the Indian coast whose livelihood comes from the sea.
Last month, the priest became the first Indian to receive the U.N.'s Earth Day International Environment Award. A U.N. statement accompanying the award said Father Kocherry's “relentless fight for marine conservation will go a long way in protecting the environment and [furthering] other earth issues across the world.”
In November, he was unanimously chosen by delegates of 32 fishing countries as coordinator of the World Forum of Fish workers and Fish harvesters (WFF), an organization with 100 million members.
But the real news from the New Delhi meeting wasn't his new title. Headlines came when he rejected the $150,000 award of the Pew Foundation of Massachusetts, calling the prize, sponsored by the Sun Oil Company, “blood money.”
“The Sun Oil Company is one of the worst polluters of the sea. I would be betraying the fisher people if I received this,” said Father Kocherry.
During a two—month stay in the United States (to attend the Redemptorist General Chapter), Father Kocherry had realized the PEW Foundation, set up by oil baron Joseph Pew Jr., has been guilty of disregarding government regulations related to the environment.
“The heirs of yesterday's polluters are the allies of today's environmentalism,” the priest said. With money gained from illegal operations, these foundations turn “environmentalists into compromisers rather than principled battlers.”
The Pew Foundation says it wants marine conservation. But Father Kocherry and other critics contend it has done great damage to the environment in Asian countries.
“For us, what is important is not the award or money,” the priest said, “but the forces that destroy marine resources and put fisher people's lives in danger.”
After his ordination in 1971, Father Kocherry became vicar of the coastal Punthura parish in the southern Thiruvananthapuram diocese in Kerala, India. The priest collectively owned a fishing net with 15 other fishermen and set to sea almost daily with them. Gradually he started to organize the illiterate fisher people at a time when mechanized boats were taking away more than half their catch.
The Kerala government was forced to set up a committee to look into fisher people's grievances following protests sparked by the Redemptorist. The fisher peoples’ forum, launched in 1978 by Father Kocherry, spread to several fishing pockets along the nearly 4,000—mile coastal belt of India. In 1983, the National Fish—workers Forum (NFF) was formed under his stewardship.
The widespread unrest and court cases to ban high—tech deep—sea vessels from traditional fishermen's areas carried on into the 80s. Undeterred by the protests, the government gave licenses to 200 foreign industrial trawlers in 1991. But the factory trawlers often encroached on the 100—mile from—the—coast nautical limit. Their infringements resulted in vigorous protests led by Father Kocherry.
By the mid 1990s the priest and his associates were involved in countrywide strikes that led to a parliamentary debate on India's fisheries policy. Father Kocherry went on an indefinite hunger strike and ended it only after the government agreed to reconvene the review committee that had been set up to study the problem.
In February 1996, a 41—member review committee on which Father Kocherry was the lone representative of traditional fisher people, recommended the cancellation of licenses of foreign trawlers due to their impact on traditional fisher people and their aggravation of marine resources.
In August 1996, after the government continued failing to enforce the ban on the commercial high—tech fishers, Father Kocherry resumed his hunger strike. The federal minister for food processing later flew to Mumbai to assure Father Kocherry that the ban would be enforced. His struggle finally bore fruit earlier this year when the government decided not to renew the licenses of bull trawlers in Indian waters.
It's not patriotism that has driven Father Kocherry's campaigns. The priest pointed out that hauls of fish and marine resources have declined with the presence of 25,000 factory trawlers worldwide.
They don't mind destroying marine resources in blind pursuit of profit,”
“The trawlers are environmentally destructive. It is not sustainable fishing at all. They don't mind destroying marine resources in blind pursuit of profit,” the priest said.
Father Kocherry's work has raised awareness of fishery issues, including by the U.N. secretary general who, in his “Ocean Development” report to the organization, cited the priest's success “in scaling down the number of joint venture fishing vessels in collaboration with the national government.”
Father Kocherry's pioneering work in organizing the fisher people has led the government to concede to several of their demands. In teaching them, however, he earned a reputation as a rebel in the eyes of several bishops. They especially took exception to his association with leftist trade unions. Nuns and priests who associated themselves with Father Kocherry's NFF were blacklisted by some bishops.
Today, Father Kocherry is no longer suspect in Church circles. The Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) labor commission now stands firmly behind the priest who also enjoys the support of national trade unions in the campaign for fisher people's rights. The Indian Church's change of heart toward Father Kocherry was evident late last year when it “belatedly” recognized the “rebel” priest's “yeoman service to fisher people” and his winning of the Pew Fellowship. The bishops even gave him a reception at the CBCI secretariat.
The priest is accustomed to “both opposition and support” in his work.
“The bishop who appointed me was always with me. When the new bishop came, he also urged me to stay on but later, he asked my congregation to take me back (in 1982) from the parish I had worked since 1971. They said my work is highly political and the Church already had a lot of problems with the government,” recalled Father Kocherry.
The Redemptorist says he has never been a “leftist” as some branded him. “I am not supporting any political party. We stand for marginalized people and in our struggle, take support from one and all. Trade unions of all [political] hues are supporting us.”
Said Bishop Leon Tharmaraj, the CBCI labor commission chairman: “Earlier, the Church failed to understand [NFF]. We did not listen to them. But, now the Church has realized the good work they have done. They were not creating problems but trying to solve some of the problems with which the Church is really concerned now.”
Bishop Tharmaraj, whose Kotar diocese in the southern Tamil Nadu state where most of the 400,000 Catholics are fisher people, said the Church, through such work as Father Kocherry's is attending to the “spiritual needs and the human needs of the people.”
Anto Akkara writes from New Delhi.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Anto Akkara ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:An Occasion to Teach about Communion
When a South African Catholic priest violated rules guarding the Blessed Sacrament in order to give President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton Communion, the incident touched off a spate of confusing stories by reporters unfamiliar with Catholic doctrine. Misleading comments from the White House and from the responsible parish didn't help.
One consequence of the incident can be welcomed, however: secular newspapers are publishing articles about the Real Presence.
For example, The Washington Post (April 18) described that Catholics recognize that “when bread and wine are consecrated at Mass, they are actually transformed into the body and blood of Christ, even though their outward appearance does not change.”
It noted, “Catholics are required to fast for one hour before Communion … and to be in ‘a state of grace’” when receiving Communion, which “prohibits divorced Catholics who have remarried without obtaining an annulment from receiving Communion.”
Bishops also took the opportunity to teach their own flocks that it is Catholic beliefs about the Blessed Sacrament, not about other religions, that bar inter—communion.
Bishop Donald Wuerl published an op—ed article about the Eucharist (Pittsburgh Post—Gazette, April 18) that began by pointing out all the Catholic Church has done to work toward true ecumenical reform. Then, to critics, he said, “It is not particularly helpful … to frame the profoundly theological issue of the meaning of the Eucharist in the simplistic context of ‘mutual hospitality.’ If the issue were truly that clear, it would have been solved long ago.” Then, he carefully explained Church teaching on the Eucharist.
On the issue of Christian unity he added, “To give the impression that one is in full communion and shares the Catholic understanding of the nature of the Church, the Eucharist and the meaning of Holy Communion when one does not offers nothing to advance true and lasting unity.”
Rolling out the Carpet for Atlanta Latinos
A carpet company CEO has given $1 million to a northwest Georgia Catholic Church to help it accommodate a new wave of Mexican, Central, and South American immigrants, said an Associated Press article published April 18.
Carl Bouckaert, whose Dalton—based company Beaulieu of America claims to be the third—largest carpet company in the world, said that the Hispanic community is good for the Church—and good for the carpet business.
Both those principles are at play at St. Joseph's Catholic Church—whose mere 200 seats put many of its 1,700 parishioners onto its carpet. With Bouckaert's gift—and $2.5 million more it has raised—the Church is well on its way to building a bigger facility.
Hollywood Angels vs. the Real Thing
A New York Post article (April 20) listed some attributes of angels, asking “Who ya gonna believe: Hollywood, or Holy Scripture?”
Hollywood angels, according to the article: Make great boyfriends (City of Angels); guzzle beer and party hearty (Michael); are excellent marriage counselors (The Preacher's Wife); dress like Dieters and hang out in German libraries (Wings of Desire); dress like Ralph Kramden and save folks from suicide (It's a Wonderful Life).
Biblical angels are very different. Real angels: “[A]re not cute creatures that we incorporate into our fantasy life, but bearers of the truth to which our lives should conform,” Father Richard John Neuhaus told the paper.
Can be “terrifying,” often look like humans, but are “messengers” of God's will having “nothing to do with sweetie—pies who rearrange chairs so people don't stumble,” said Rabbi Jacob Neusner, of New York's Bard College.
Are misrepresented by Americans who “tend to see religion only as something to comfort us,” evangelical theologian Doug Groothuis told the paper.
Pro—family activist Rabbi Daniel Lapin's quotation seemed to sum up the article: “I think if America has to turn to Hollywood for spiritual direction, we're in worse shape than anyone knows.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:African Nation Silences Catholic Radio
The BBC reported April 20 that “The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has suspended broadcasts by a Catholic radio station in the eastern city of Kisangani.”
“In a BBC interview, the deputy interior minister, Faustin Munene, accused Radio Amani of dabbling in politics. He said it should stick to religious affairs.
“In addition to its own output, the station rebroadcasts programs of the BBC World Service. Security forces have been stationed in the radio's offices since the suspension on Saturday.
“Correspondents say that journalists in Congo have come under increasing pressure in recent months not to criticize government policy.
“A newspaper editor—Andre Ipakala of La Reference Plus—was reported to have been arrested on Sunday.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:Pope's Home to Include Historic Marian Mosaic
Some people call the mosaicist a modern—day Michelangelo. But the public may never see the unusual work of an Orthodox Christian laboring away at a Marian mosaic to celebrate the Jubilee Year 2000, according to a report in England's The Guardian (April 18).
The work, made of some 100 million pieces, will adorn a chapel in the most sensitive part of the Vatican: the Apostolic Palace, which houses the Holy Father's apartments.
Said the report, “For the past two years a Russian mosaicist has been working in virtual secrecy in the Vatican to create one of the century's most ambitious works of art.” Photographs of the Redemptoris Mater chapel show that the ceiling and one wall of the large hall have already been completed.
“The Redemptoris Mater chapel combines several of the Pope's favorite themes,” said the report. It is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, to whom he is especially devoted, and takes its name from an encyclical he published in 1987.
“It also reflects his wish to reunite Eastern and Western Europe and heal the breach between Rome and Orthodox Christianity. The artist, Aleksandr Kornoukhov, is an Orthodox Christian and his work is uncompromisingly Eastern in style.”
His mother was also a mosaicist—ironically, she was responsible for much of the art in the Moscow metro celebrating the Soviets, whose empire was toppled in large part by her son's new boss.
Democracy's Big Gains Since John Paul II
Is the Catholic Church “autocratic,” therefore causing Catholic countries to come easily under the sway of dictatorships? Or, is its doctrine socialistic, luring Catholic countries into socialistic totalitarianism?
Democracy rules in Catholic countries and such questions no longer make sense, Adrian Karatnycky points out in National Review magazine (May 4). “Indeed one of the untold stories of the late 20th century is that dictatorship has been virtually eliminated in countries with a Catholic majority.”
“At the center of this dramatic development has been Pope John Paul II. As he has carried out his global pastoral mission over the last 18 years, the Polish Pope has emerged as the world's most important and effective advocate of freedom and democracy.
“When Karol Wojtyla acceded to the pontificate, 22 of 42 countries with a Catholic majority were tyrannies. Most of these dictatorships have now collapsed, including those in Argentina, Chile, the Czech Republic, Guatemala, Hungary, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Poland, the Philippines, and Lithuania. In addition, Mexico is on the verge of completing its democratic transformation, Peru has installed a democracy (although it was briefly interrupted by a martial—law regime), and Croatia has had free elections, though it has not yet completed its transition. Only two Catholic countries unambiguously remain dictatorships: Equatorial Guinea and Cuba.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: PERSPECTIVE DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:Last Oct. 1, a document entitled Always Our Children, A Pastoral Message to Parents of Homosexual Children was published by the Committee on Marriage and the Family of the U.S. bishops’ conference. Although this document was evidently “approved” by the administrative committee of that conference, and it would seem the correct procedures outlined in conference rules were followed, it should be made clear that the document was composed without any input from the majority of the American Catholic bishops, who were given no opportunity whatever to comment on its pastoral usefulness or on its contents.
As almost always happens when such procedures are used by committees of the conference, the illusion is given, perhaps deliberately, and carried forth by the media, to the effect that this is something the U.S. bishops have published, rather than the correct information being conveyed to the public; namely, that most bishops had nothing to do with this undertaking. I believe one would be justified in asserting that in this case flawed and defective procedures, badly in need of correction and reform, resulted in a very flawed and defective document.
The majority of America's Catholic Bishops were allowed nothing to say about this document. Still less were they permitted any suggestions or comments about the “advisors” and consultants used by the committee, who, by their own boasting and the ordinary “rumor mill,” have been detected to be people whose qualifications in this area of moral conduct are highly questionable. The document, in a view which is shared by many, is founded on bad advice, mistaken theology, erroneous science, and skewed sociology. It is pastorally helpful in no perceptible way.
Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz
Does this committee intend to issue documents to parents of drug addicts, promiscuous teenagers, adult children involved in canonically invalid marriages, and the like? These are far more numerous than parents of homosexuals. The occasion and the motivation for this document's birth remain hidden in the murky arrangements which brought it forth.
Not only does this document fail to take into account the latest revision in the authentic Latin version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church regarding homosexuality, but it juxtaposes several quotes from the Catechism in order to pretend falsely and preposterously that the Catechism says homosexuality is a gift from God and should be accepted as a fixed and permanent identity. Of course, the document, in order to support the incorrect views it contains, totally neglects to cite the Catholic doctrine set forth by the Holy See which teaches that the homosexual orientation is “objectively disordered.” Also, the document's definition of the virtue and practice of chastity is inadequate and distorted.
The character of this document is such that it would require a book of many pages to point out all its bad features, which sometimes cross the border from poor advice to evil advice. For instance, I believe it is wicked to counsel parents not to intervene, but rather to adopt a “wait and see” attitude when they find their adolescent children “experimenting” with homosexual acts. Parents have a grave moral duty to prevent their children from committing mortal sins when they can. It is certainly and seriously wrong to counsel parents to “accept” their children's homosexual friends. In my view parents should be vigilant about the friends and companions of their children. Of course, the document deliberately avoids distinguishing minor children from adult children in its advice to parents and seems to delight in this ambiguity, just as it confuses the acceptance of a person who does immoral acts with the acceptance of such a person's immoral behavior.
Sinners are always the object of Christ's love and so they must also be the object of ours. Loving sinners while hating their sins must mark the followers of Christ even when dealing with homosexual people. However, true love is never served by obfuscating the truth as this document appears to do. Homosexual acts, insofar as they are deliberately and freely done, are mortal sins which place a person who does them in the gravest danger of eternal damnation.
The document says to parents, “Do not blame yourselves for a homosexual orientation in your child.” Many scientists and psychologists say that the orientation is likely and often due to certain parental defects, which are usually unconsciously present, and proper therapy requires that these matters be confronted. The document claims something is “the common opinion of experts” when in fact it is no such thing. One critique of this document says that it is really an exercise in homosexual ("gay” and “lesbian") advocacy. It is difficult not to see it as such.
“Calamity and frightening disaster” are terms which are not too excessive to describe this document. It is my view that this document carries no weight or authority for Catholics, whom I would advise to ignore or oppose it.
Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz is ordinary of the Diocese of Lincoln, Neb. Reprinted with permission from Social Justice Review.
----- EXCERPT: Always Our Children: A Document to 'Ignore or Oppose'; ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Vatican II That Never Was DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:Back in the 1960s, the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin enjoyed the status of a cult figure in some Catholic circles. Enthusiasm has cooled since then, but Teilhard's influence remains.
Teilhard sought to give a Christian account of evolution—or, perhaps more accurately, an evolutionary account of Christianity. He spun out a quasi—scientific, quasi—mystical vision of ceaseless change leading to an ever—higher synthesis. His curious blend of Darwin and Hegel did a lot to form the progressive Catholic sensibility as it now stands.
Anumber of the essays collected in Vatican II: The Continuing Agenda express that sensibility's flowering. A clear statement can be found in the last of them, “Reading the Signs of the Times,” by the book's editor, Anthony Cernera, who is president of Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn.
Cernera, who holds a doctorate in theology from Fordham, rhapsodizes about Vatican II's somewhat uncritical embracing of the signs of the times. It is theology's task, he says, to “scrutiniz[e] the signs of the times so as to hear the word of God being addressed to the Church today.” This can plainly be understood in a sense that is true, just as it can be understood in a sense (i.e., ongoing revelation) that is not. Either way, it provides a necessary starting—point for the progressives’ program of ongoing change.
The program takes many forms, but decentralization, pluralism, and “inculturation” are central to it. Thus, in an essay on ecclesiology, Georgia Masters Keightley makes the claim that “the Council suggests that the local Church is the normative historical form of ecclesial reality.” Keightley, who teaches at Trinity College in Washington, heads a Catholic Theological Society of America task force on “communion ecclesiology and collaborative ministry.”
To say Vatican II suggested that the local Church is “the normative historical form of ecclesial reality” is no small matter. If true, it means the Council took the view that “Church” is present essentially at the local level and only in some secondary, derivative way at the level of the universal Church. The local Church is the standard of faith, worship, and Christian life.
Where then does Vatican II make this suggestion? Keightley's statement is footnoted, but the footnote does not cite a conciliar text; it merely observes that there is “debate about whether the local Church is the diocese or the particular, national Church.”
This uncertainty is itself remarkable. Was Vatican II really that careless about such a crucial point? But let that pass. Keightley is writing here about Lumen Gentium, the Council's dogmatic constitution on the Church. What does it say? A re—reading of that seminal document does not turn up anything about the normativity of the local Church (however defined). Instead, one finds statements like these:
“The individual bishops are the visible source and foundation of unity in their own particular Churches, which are constituted after the model of the universal Church; it is in these and formed out of them that the one and unique Catholic Church exists” (23).
“All the bishops have the obligation of fostering and safeguarding the unity of the faith and of upholding the discipline which is common to the whole Church; of schooling the faithful in a love of the whole Mystical Body of Christ … of promoting all that type of active apostolate which is common to the whole Church” (23).
“This multiplicity of local Churches … shows all the more resplendently the catholicity of the undivided Church” (23).
One could go on, but the point seems clear. Vatican II expressed a healthy appreciation for the local Church, but it did not assign it normative status. Keightley is free to argue that the local Church truly is normative; she is entitled to make the case that Vatican II missed the boat in not declaring it such. But she is not at liberty to say the Council said or suggested something it didn't say or suggest.
Clearly, however, it is necessary that Keightley make this claim. For the normativity of the local Church is the essential ecclesiological foundation for the progressive program of decentralization, pluralism, and ongoing change; the idea that the Church is one, universal, and united in doctrine, worship, and Christian life stands in the way of all that.
Then there is Jesuit Father James Keenan on moral theology. Father Keenan, who teaches at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass., writes that since the Council, “moral theologians no longer believe that moral theology is about determining which actions are right and which are wrong.” Rather, it is about teaching people prudence or “the virtue of reasoning well.”
There are at least two problems with that.
First, when Father Keenan speaks of “moral theologians,” he means moral theologians like himself— that is, moralists of the proportionalist school like Fathers Joseph Fuchs SJ, Charles Curran, and Richard McCormick SJ. It is a slippery political tactic to load one's rhetoric so as to exclude from the category “moral theologians” those with whom one disagrees.
Second, the notion that the proportionalism of Father Keenan's school can be equated with “reasoning well"—indeed, that it is rational at all—has been exploded many times, by critics from Elizabeth Anscombe to Germain Grisez. As the critique of proportionalism makes clear, there is no rational way to do the moral calculus—the weighing of values and disvalues—that proportionalism demands. In the final analysis, proportionalism is not reasoning well; it is moral intuitionism.
But this view of moral theology also is required by the progressive program. The body of clear moral doctrine contained in the Catholic tradition must be set aside, as must the very idea of absolute moral norms. Only then will the way be entirely open to radical pluralism and continuing change.
With variations suited to their subject matter, the same mode of thought appears in other essays in this volume. H. Richard McCord Jr., of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (writing on laity), and David O‘Brien of Holy Cross College (writing on social doctrine) adopt the cheery Americanist view of cultural assimilation. According to this story, the more inculturated Catholics are, the better.
McCord and O‘Brien would do well to read Charles Morris's American Catholic, published last year, for a realistic account by a writer who is not a conservative of the havoc wrought by assimilation in American Catholicism during the last 40 years.
Some of the essays in this volume are sensible enough, and some others are at least innocuous. On the whole, nevertheless, the message here is the message of progressive Catholicism: decentralization, inculturation, pluralism, change. These people have not set out deliberately to harm the Church; they sincerely believe they are helping it. The book's subtitle speaks of a “continuing agenda,” and, sure enough, there really is an agenda here. It's just not the agenda of Vatican Council II.
Russell Shaw writes from Washington D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Russell Shaw ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Rehabilitating the King of Spain DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:One of the ironies of history brought to light in Henry Kamen's recent biography of King Philip, is that for all the opprobrium heaped upon Spain, especially that hot tar from the pen of the 19th—century American historian, J.L. Motley, the fact remains that the Spanish themselves have excelled in a kind of merciless self—criticism. In 1598, the year of Philip's death, not a few of the late king's ministers were heard to hymn the virtues of Elizabeth of England.
Throughout his life, Philip detested adulators, forbidding anyone to write the royal biography during his long reign, 1543—1598. Once, when conducting an afternoon audience, a cleric began to address him in unctuous tones; “Get to the point, Father,” said Philip, by way of interrupting. Indeed, while Elizabeth allowed a cult of her personality to flourish, Philip resisted self—promotion. In current parlance we would say that the king put his own spin—doctors out to pension.
Kamen sums up the situation: “All his great protagonists—Elizabeth of England, William of Orange, Henry of Navarre—became legendary heroes in the memory of their own people. They did so in part because of their opposition to him. Philip alone failed to leave his mark. Roughly from the 1580s, when Spain and Portugal were united under him, he had done everything to relax royal control. Royalist public ritual and monarchic imagery all but disappeared. The title of ‘Majesty’ was dropped from official correspondence. The tasks of government were shared out. At the center ad hoc committees deliberated on everything; in the provinces the nobles were confirmed in their control of authority.”
Such a view of Philip clashes, of course, with that of the Black Legend. While Philip had his own detractors in Spain, Kamen fixes on J.L. Motley as the quintessential spokesman for the Legend: “mediocrity, pedant, reserved, suspicious … bigot, cruel, grossly licentious … a consummate tyrant,” such were the measured epithets which the American historian applied to Philip. In fact, Kamen seems to have Motley in view as he undertakes a rebuttal of this caricature.
The education of the young prince was a prime concern of his father, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. While exposed to the classical authors, and competent enough to converse in Latin, the prince was an undistinguished scholar. He cared far more for tourneys and dances and the customs of chivalry. (Such an absorption in knights and ladies also marked the reading habits of young Teresa of Avila, the Carmelite mystic who would later count the monarch an ally in the cause of religious reform.)
Although not scholarly in his habits, Philip nonetheless appreciated intellectual life. Ordering his tutor Calvet de Estrella to build up a library, the prince surrounded himself with works by Sophocles, Virgil, Aquinas, Boccacio, Savanarola, Petrarch, Copernicus, and the collected works of Erasmus. Thus we see him, at the outset of his career, a thoroughly renaissance prince with liberal reading habits, brought up to reflect, by his breadth of education, the multifarious empire over which he would soon rule. Although he never became the humanist he was trained to be, there is simply no evidence to support a view that Philip's vision was crabbed or narrow or that he was force—fed a diet of religious obscurantism.
Charles V was absent for most of his childhood. Isabella of Portugal, his mother, died in 1539 when Philip was 12. While such deprivation of parental affection no doubt left its mark, the king never struck contemporaries as sullen or morose. On the contrary, his letters to his daughters were doting and playful, while his youth was marked by a decided enthusiasm for parties and ladies. Beware the night life of Barcelona, the emperor wrote him, when Philip was in his regency. Although Philip's marriages were arranged, his third wife, Elizabeth of Valois, became a loved helpmate, whom the king mourned upon her death. Philip was four times a widower, and the father of a handicapped and mentally ill son, Don Carlos, who died at 23; the weight of such events would cast a pall on the most exuberant of personalities.
“I don't know if they think I'm made of iron or stone. The truth is, they need to see that I am mortal, like everyone else,” said Philip in the middle of his reign.
Philip remained all his days a stout defender of the Inquisition, although Kamen argues that the motivation here was ultimately political and not borne out of religious fanaticism. For the king, the disparity of cult brought on by Protestantism could only lead to rebellion, and the virtue of the Inquisition was to snuff the wick of civil discontent. This is not to say that the king lacked enthusiasm for the Catholic faith. He surrounded himself with chaplains and confessors and confessed his sins regularly.
All in all, he was a strong promoter of the Council of Trent; however he brooked the conciliar decrees that seemed to intrude on his royal prerogatives, and made himself for a time an opponent of (later saint) Charles Borromeo, whose campaign for the reform of the laity the king found too zealous. Although the Jesuits were a nascent and potent force in the Spain of Philip II, the monarch had no especial affinity with the order.
Some now think that the Black Legend has been interred. Kamen, while admitting that much of it was fueled by Protestant bias against Catholicism, still thinks that a rounded and fair portrait of Philip II was needed. Philip's defenders in our own century, writes Kamen, gave us “bad history,” while his detractors gave us appreciably better history but not without an animus against his person. The present book adjusts the portrait in a way not unbecoming to the king.
James Sullivan writes from Southport, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: James Sullivan ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:Bennett's Honor
I read your book review of William J. Bennett's Our Sacred Honor ("Help for Politicians in Need of Moral Mettle,” March 1—7). The review brought to mind a discussion Bennett once had with a group of pro—life leaders wherein he roundly castigated those of us who believe that there can be no exceptions to abortion. He told us that our position was politically unrealistic.
He was even less encouraging on the topic of the contraceptive mentality, and more specifically, our expectation that men and women in elected office who call themselves pro—life would be totally opposed to any chemical or device that even had the minute possibility of killing an innocent human being from fertilization.
Why do I bring it up in the context of his newest book? Well, among the most noteworthy of the cardinal virtues is fortitude or courage; I did not see either word in the review you printed. Was there a reason?
Catholic men of high visibility like Mr. Bennett are constantly in our prayers. We ask the Lord to fill them with the spirit of truth so that they are able to articulate without apology the total and absolute defense of all innocent human beings, without exception, and regardless of the price required for such fidelity to the word of God.
It is my prayer that the cardinal virtue of fortitude or courage was merely overlooked by John Prizer, the reviewer.
Judie Brown
American Life League
Stafford, Virginia
Clinton & Communion
The purpose of this letter is to clarify why President Clinton and his wife should not have received Holy Communion ("South African Bishops Say Priest Erred Giving Clinton Communion,” April 12—18) during their recent visit to Africa.
Not only was this regrettable act an affront and an insult to practicing Catholics, but it was also a direct offense against God himself by the unworthy reception of the body and blood of Christ.
We Catholics believe this sacrament is literally and truly the body and blood of Christ.
For worthy reception of this sacrament, a person must believe that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Jesus Christ. His soul must also be free of serious mortal sin. If a Catholic has committed a serious sin, he must first go to confession to receive forgiveness.
An additional requirement is that he must fast from food and beverages except water for at least one hour before receiving Communion.
But why is what the Clintons did so serious? This question is best answered by St. Paul in the Bible: “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup … in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.”
President and Mrs. Clinton would be well—advised to repent for the transgression against both God and their Catholic countrymen. In the meantime, we should all pray that God will forgive them and that they will never again offend others in a sacrilegious manner.
Eugene Brady
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
----- EXCERPT: LETTERS ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Mexico City Policy: A Crucial Case For Pro-Lifers DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:If you wanted to fund a campaign to stop prostitution in foreign countries, and a brothel insisted on receiving funding, would you give it to them? Would you give it to them if they swore on their hearts and hoped to die that they would never ever co—mingle one tiny penny of your money with their own monies? Their own monies that were being used in part to lobby foreign governments to legalize prostitution?
I don't think so.
Then why should the United States give money for “family planning” to international organizations that specialize in activities that increase out—of—wedlock pregnancies and abortion?
Planned Parenthood and other groups provide both contraception and abortion in countries overseas. Even in some countries where abortion is illegal. Many also actively lobby to overturn foreign laws that restrict abortion. But they loudly claim that they must receive U.S. family planning funds in order to reduce the number of out—of—wedlock pregnancies and abortions overseas. They claim that since U.S. law already prohibits them from using the money to actually perform abortions, that U.S. money would not at all be tied in with abortions. They also claim that they will keep U.S. monies, and monies used to lobby for or perform abortions, completely separate from each other.
At least on paper.
But, in fact, studies show that promoting abortion in any society produces an increase in the number of out—of—wedlock pregnancies. As Planned Parenthood's own research affiliate, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, wrote in 1986: “Greater availability of abortion is associated with higher pregnancy rates.” The Alan Guttmacher Institute also acknowledges that some of the surest ways to increase the number of abortions in any population are to do precisely the things that Planned Parenthood and others intend to do internationally: make abortion laws permissive, and make abortions more readily available. The Alan Guttmacher Institute's annual review of international abortion trends regularly concludes that after permissive abortion laws are introduced, numbers of abortions increase, sometimes dramatically.
In short, if you want to reduce both unintended pregnancies and abortions, the one thing you never want to do is to subsidize groups that promote or provide abortion in their family planning programs.
The one thing you never want to do is to subsidize groups that promote or provide abortion in their family planning programs.
So how dumb do Planned Parenthood and others think we are? Paper separations of funds won't prevent for an instant the kinds of abortion fallout described above. Any teenager with two incomes—from baby—sitting and a fast food job, for exam—ple—knows that more money from any source allows you to do things you wouldn't otherwise be able to do! None other than The New York Times (a strong abortion—rights supporter) reported plainly that: “[A]ny government financing for Planned Parenthood's family planning services indirectly subsidizes abortion” (April 9, 1996).
Not to mention, of course, the shame of having U.S.—funded organizations working to overturn or even violate the law of foreign countries. (No matter that Secretary of State Madeline Albright tries to put a pretty face on the former activity, calling it: “exercising the same democratic rights they have in the United States"). The International Planned Parenthood Federation has written policy recommendations to affiliates stating that “action outside the law, and even in violation of it, is part of the process of stimulating change” when it comes to abortion law. (Report of the Working Group on the Promotion of Family Planning as A Basic Human Right, International Planned Parenthood Federation, November, 1983).
So how do we prevent this? Federally, the answer lies in the enactment of the Mexico City policy, named after the 1984 U.N. conference at which rich and poor nations together agreed that abortion should never be used as a method of family planning. For years after 1984, Congress successfully appropriated monies for international family planning going only to agencies who also do not perform or promote abortions.
This year, a variation of that policy is before Congress and the president. It would forbid funding organizations who violate or lobby against foreign abortion laws. (Those who perform abortions legal in the host country could still receive the money if the president waives the restriction). Amazingly enough, President Clinton opposes this policy—to the point that he is willing to sacrifice some other dearly held legislative aims that Congress has tied to the passage of the Mexico City policy. The president and other staunch abortion advocates feel strongly that U.S. monies should flow to groups deliberately disrupting the legal, cultural, and religious values of the sovereign nations who host them.
It is tempting to “turn off” a subject that can involve overseas aid or that seems so legally complicated. But this is really too important a subject for that. The bottom line is this: either the world's largest abortion providers and promoters get your tax dollars to create more abortion and unwed pregnancy overseas or they don't. Please let your federal representatives know that you're keeping an eye on this one.
Helen Alvaré is director of planning and information, Secretariat for Pro—Life Activities, National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Helen AlvarÈ ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: St. Augustine and The Jonesboro Massacre DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:Conversations about good and evil these days naturally turn to the disciplines of biology, psychology, psychiatry, and sociology, but not readily to the Bible, Church teaching, theology, or even philosophy. In the case of notorious murder attempts and actual murders we know that courts will first investigate the sanity of the defendant.
Shortly after Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, killed a teacher and four of their Arkansas classmates, The Boston Globe ran an article discussing theories put forward to explain why boys commit murder 10 times more frequently than girls. Not surprisingly, the scholars interviewed say genes, environment, or a combination of the two. Examples of environmental influences mentioned were rough treatment by parents and exposure to violence on TV and in the movies.
The article concluded with an interesting quote from Jack Levin, who runs the Program for the Study of Violence at Boston's Northeastern University. He said that all the talk of biology covers up the failure of parents to give direction and good habits to their children. “We can blame our genes for violent behavior, we can blame early childhood … we can blame video games and slasher films all we want. But the truth is, when we ask our children to raise themselves, we are not doing a very good job raising them.”
Shortly after the Arkansas massacre, an essay by Jonathan Alter in Newsweek on juvenile crime argued that America should realize prevention is more important than enforcement techniques, such as “trying our juveniles as adults” or “hiring additional police officers” or passing the juvenile—justice bill pending in the Senate that “is overwhelmingly tilted toward more enforcement.”
As examples of prevention Alter mentions “programs” to help children and then opts for a solution that could have been suggested by Pope John Paul II or St. Augustine: “Character education—a greater emphasis on explicitly teaching right from wrong—is also prevention. Today's goal in Washington and state capitols should be to make prevention as much of mom—and—apple—pie issue as, say, hunting.”
Oil and Water
St. Augustine's Confessions, written some 1600 years ago, can still help us formulate the problem of distinguishing good from evil. In one of the most revealing passages in his autobiography he writes, “Oil poured over water is borne on the surface of the water, water poured over oil sinks below the oil: it is by their weight that they are moved and seek their proper place. Things out of place are in motion: they come to their place and are at rest. My love is my weight: wherever I am carried, I am carried by my love.”
That last sentence helps clarify our attitudes and actions. When students become passionate about learning, being of service, or even getting into medical school, the desire to binge drink diminishes accordingly. One love drives out another. St. Augustine's life was torn apart for the longest time by conflicting desires. He longed for the satisfaction of his lust and his immoderate desire to be recognized as a great speaker. As a 16—year—old he was consumed by the desire to do wrong for its own sake and to be accepted by his peers.
That's why he stole pears that he didn't even want: “I went headlong with such blindness that I was ashamed among the other youths that my viciousness was less than theirs; I heard them boasting of their exploits, and the viler the exploits the louder the boasting; and I set about the same exploits not only for the pleasure of the act but for the pleasure of the boasting … I grew in vice through desire of praise; and when I lacked opportunity to equal others in vice, I invented things I had not done, lest I might be held cowardly for being innocent or contemptible for being chaste.”
This remarkable insight into his life conveys the power of shameful loves to carry Augustine into places where there was no rest.
While still a teenager Augustine fortunately developed a love for wisdom after reading Cicero's Hortensius, which was an exhortation to philosophy. “This particular book,” he wrote, “… definitely changed the direction of my mind, altered my prayers to you, O Lord, and gave me new purposes and desires. Suddenly all the vanity I had hoped in I saw as worthless, and with an incredible intensity of desire I longed after immortal wisdom.”
Understanding Evil
With this countervailing desire for the truth, Augustine was eventually able to recognize and put aside his wrongful desires. He didn't fully return to Christianity until he was about 31 years old. He struggled mightily to recognize that he was personally responsible for the sins he committed and to give up his lustful desires. For a long time he accepted the Manichean view that an infinite power or substance, a rival to the good God, was the cause of the evil he did in his life (the ancient version of genes and the environment).
Moved by the love of truth, Augustine eventually came to see that evil was not any kind of substance, but “the perversity of a will (or swerving of the will) which is turned toward inferior things and away from … God, the supreme substance: so that it casts away what is most inward to it and swells greedily for outward things.”
This famous definition of evil focusing on perverse or disordered choices of the will means that we are guilty of sin if we are unwilling to have the kind of existence given to us by God. In other words, as Augustine says in his book on the Free Choice of the Will, “the root of all evils is not to be in accordance with nature.” This means that we can't do various kinds of things or fail to act in a certain way without causing harm to ourselves. We all know that an improper diet and insufficient exercise will eventually cause harm to the health of the body.
There is a structure to the body that we simply acknowledge and respect if we love our life. Likewise, the proper care of the soul requires such things as the observance of the Ten Commandments; the avoidance of the so—called capital sins, i.e., pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust; and the constant effort to seek the truth and to love God and neighbor. Of course, these things are not so obviously right or self—evident. Who has not loved themselves badly or made mistakes in loving others? Who can immediately see without guidance that true love of self and neighbor necessarily includes not breaking the Ten Commandments or not yielding to any one of the capital sins?
Loving the Truth
Augustine's Confessions also helps explain why we don't readily understand how to love well, or recognize the truth. “Truth,” he explains, “is loved in such a way that those who love some other thing want it to be the truth, and, precisely because they do not wish to be deceived are unwilling to be convinced that they are deceived. Thus they hate the truth for the sake of that other thing which they love because they take it for truth. They love truth when it enlightens them, they hate truth when it accuses them.”
We are carried by our loves, and these loves may not respect the structure of the body or the soul or take into account the way things are. Augustine himself loved what caused him a great deal of pain but remained attached to these things, nevertheless. Otherwise stated, strong loves or desires can lead us away from truths that would benefit our lives.
Catholicism's explanation for the power of disordered desires in our life is of course, Original Sin. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that Adam and Eve “transmitted to their descendants a human nature wounded by their own first sin and hence deprived of original holiness and justice; this deprivation is called Original Sin. As a result of Original Sin human nature is weakened in its powers, subject to ignorance, suffering and the domination of death, and inclined to sin (this inclination is called ‘concupiscence’).” Augustine's analysis of the human condition, of course, rests on the doctrine of Original Sin. The inclination to sin present in every individual explains why human beings are prone to disordered desires and to a hatred for truth.
St. Augustine provides another insight into the problem of evil when he discusses the difficulty of acting upon truths finally recognized after intense interior struggles. After recognizing the evil of lust he first prayed, “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”
One Body, Two Wills
The reason for this prayer was the power of habit in Augustine's life, so that he actually had two wills in his soul, the old will to remain in his habits and a new will to obey God and enjoy him. “Because my will was perverse it changed to lust, and lust yielded to become habit, and habit not resisted became necessity…. My two wills, one old, one new, one carnal, one spiritual, were in conflict and in their conflict wasted my soul.”
Augustine realizes that by yielding to his bad habit he has voluntarily been carried to a point where he no longer wishes to be. Why can't he will himself out of the difficulty? He doesn't have the power to will with a single will. “Partly to will, partly not to will … [is] a sickness of the soul because it is so weighted down by habit that it cannot wholly rise even with the support of truth. Thus there are two wills in us, because neither of them is entire: and what is lacking to the one is present to the other.” This is as good a description as I have seen of the common complaint people make of not being able to follow the judgment of their conscience.
The whole of Catholicism offers help to individuals struggling to recognize and overcome sin in their lives. As the Catechism says, “There is not a single aspect of the mystery of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil.” Just think of the teachings that man and woman are created in the image of God and delivered from the power of sin by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. To be in the image of God means that we have a rule to follow, or, more precisely stated, a person to imitate. Being redeemed we have the power to avoid sin through God's grace.
To appropriate the Christian message, instruction in the faith and exhortation take on great importance, along with prayer and a sacramental life. The more we see the truth and desire to live it, the more we can be carried by love to the truly good things. Augustine's life can be a model for us. He sought a serious liberal education and eventually sound catechetical instruction. What he came to see moved him to change his loves and renounce his disordered desires with the help of God's grace. Knowing that the love of truth carried him away from error and sin to the love of God, Augustine wrote his Confessions to stimulate the love of truth in his readers. His approach receives confirmation in 2 Thessalonians 2:9—10 where St. Paul says that the love of truth offers protection from every kind of wicked deception in the activity of Satan. It is also worthy of mention that Augustine's mode of encouragement mirrors the exhortation (paraclesis) found in the New Testament, which must accompany the instruction in the faith wherever it is given.
Does the Catholic Church recognize that people are driven to wrong by their genes or environment? The Catechism briefly addresses this question in the following short statement: “Imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors.”
A disordered family life could surely make it hard or even impossible for children to distinguish good from evil in all instances. Genes surely incline people in various directions. One could go on to give multiple examples. However, Catholicism rejects the view that genes or environment explain all behavior. If this were true, instruction as well as praise and blame would be useless and there would be no responsibility for sin, and no necessity for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
J. Brian Benestad, a professor of theology at the University of Scranton, is 1997—1999 D‘Alzon visiting professor of theology at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts.
----- EXCERPT: Social scientists and cultural commentators have cited genes and the environment in explaining the disturbing phenomenon of young killers. The bishop of Hippo, who worked hard to understand good and evil and to control his own wrongful desires, would probably have taken another view. ----- EXTENDED BODY: J. Brian Benestad ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'Historical Jesus' Scholars Create Christ in Their Own Image DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:One of the nice things about this spring season, apart from the amazing weather in the Northeast, is that Jesus Christ has not been on the cover of any news magazines. At least, not the “historical Jesus.” The Shroud of Turin on the cover of Time is a different matter. What annoys me is the annual spate of articles that try to strip away the “mythological” elements of the Gospels in order to find the “true” Jesus of Nazareth.
Cutting Jesus down to size is a thriving academic industry. It has even created a few minor celebrities. But now the tables have been turned. In an impressive new book, The Human Christ: The Misguided Search for the Historical Jesus (Free Press), Charlotte Allen, a Catholic journalist, takes a hard look at what scholars have done with Jesus over two millennia. Intellectuals in almost every era have tried to deconstruct the Gospels in the name of science. Allen shows that this “science” has never been very objective. In fact, it is always driven by agendas inimical to Christianity.
The attempt to de—divinize Christ got going in earnest in the 18th century, when thinkers such as Voltaire thought it a good idea to apply the new scientific methods to the study of the Gospels. The result was curious: a “historical Jesus” who was an 18th—century deist just like Voltaire.
This has been the pattern ever since: The “true” Jesus turns out to be a self—portrait of the scholar writing the book. The “scientific” search has always devolved into autobiography—or ideology.
For Ernst Renan, author of the enormously popular Life of Jesus (1863), Jesus was a self—absorbed matinee idol like Renan himself. For Oscar Wilde, he was a sensitive aesthete. For 19th—century liberals, an egalitarian interested in progressive politics. Once you rule out the supernatural, it is easy to do a cut—and—paste on the New Testament to produce any Jesus you want.
The most annoying scriptural scholars are those who court publicity. The prototype is David Friedrich Strauss, a 19th—century German who applied Hegel to the study of the Bible and came to the conclusion that Christ was—Hegelian. “Not only was Strauss the first alienated theologian,” Ms. Allen writes, “he was also one of the first alienated celebrities who made money from his doubts.” The members of the Jesus Seminar, who call press conferences to announce that Jesus was not the author of the Lord's Prayer, are his unfortunate posterity.
At least Robert Funk, the founder of the Jesus Seminar, does not hide his motives. He detests the Christian right, and he endorses a new brand of Christianity which promotes “responsible, protected, recreational sex between consenting adults.” Who was it that said that heresies begin below the belt?
Most Jesus scholars pay little attention to the findings of modern archeology. And there is a reason for this.
Modern archeology supports the historicity of both the Old and New Testaments. For example, it seems that the walls of Jericho did come tumbling down (perhaps as the result of an earthquake), while buildings mentioned in the Gospels, such as the temple at Capernaum and the “five porticos” surrounding the pool in the gospel of John, have been identified.
In fact, we now have the curious situation where archeologists in the Near East treat the Bible as a dependable guide, while at places like Harvard Divinity School the one universal article of belief, apart from the tenets of feminism, is that the Bible is literature, not history—to be picked apart and debated but never, ever accepted at historical face value.
Another problem with most Jesus scholarship is what might be called the dating game. Scholars have assumed that the Gospels were written in the late second century, well after the deaths of the apostles.
This makes it easier to present Christianity as a confidence game that somehow got out of hand. But this assumption has been blown away by a number of discoveries, such as a papyrus fragment of John's Gospel dating from around 110 AD.
There is much additional evidence that the Gospels were written by the four evange—lists, especially from external sources like Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch (who are ignored, presumably because they are Christian).
Scholars with no ax to grind now agree that the first three Gospels were known in their current form throughout the Christian world prior to the death of St. John around the year 95, and his own shortly after it.
Such facts are seldom noticed by the media when they turn their jaded eye on the “historical Jesus.” And, as the millennium approaches, it is doubtful that a fine book like Allen's will stanch the flow of bogus biblical scholarship.
George Sim Johnston is a writer based in New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: George Sim Johnston ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Transition to Secular Mind-Set on Campuses Evolved Over Years DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:The cultural movement called the Renaissance was in part an academic quarrel between scholastics, who believed that only systematic logic could lead to truth, and humanists, who favored literary and historical studies. Most universities eventually expanded their curricula to include humanistic disciplines.
Although practically all of the Church's formal theology was pursued in the scholastic mode, the humanists, in attacking scholasticism, were not attacking faith. Their approach did not mean that religion became less important, merely that it might be studied differently (preferring Augustine's Confessions, for example, to Aquinas’ Summa).
The medieval universities had been under Church authority not only in terms of what was taught but also in the sense that, outside law and medicine, virtually all the masters were priests, most of them members of religious orders, and most of the students were at some point ordained at least to minor orders. The Church was by far the largest employer of university graduates.
In the Renaissance, more and more laymen became affiliated with the universities, both as masters and as students, and graduates began to pursue a greater variety of secular careers, especially in the service of civil governments. Thus while humanism did not cause the secularization of the universities, it did to some extent laicize them.
REFORMATION & ENLIGHTENMENT
The Protestant Reformation was to a great extent also fought within the universities—Martin Luther was a professor, and his 95 Theses were intended as a call for an academic debate. Both sides realized that the fundamental issues were theological and had to be addressed by scholars.
The result was that, if anything, the Refor mation strengthened the religious character of the universities by making Church authorities, Catholic and Protestant, highly conscious of doctrinal orthodoxy. Of course as a result of the Reformation many universities that had long been under the aegis of the Catholic Church were lost.
The Galileo case of the 17th century, which turned on the question of whether the sun was the center of the universe, seemed to threaten the very assumption on which the existence of the universities were based—the harmony of faith and reason. For the most part the scientific revolution moved forward outside universities, however, and eventually Galileo's proposed resolution of the conflict—that the Bible was not meant to teach astronomy but merely used the accepted language of its day—was almost universally accepted in Catholic circles.
It was rather the Enlightenment of the 18th century that marked the full—scale assault on religious beliefs. Unlike Galileo, intellectuals like Voltaire did not believe faith and reason were compatible, and they dismissed faith as not having any intellectual foundation. Most of the universities of the 18th century were intellectually rather moribund and, as with the scientific revolution, the great intellectual changes took place elsewhere. The universities remained officially Christian, but their intellectual torpor prevented them from providing vigorous defenses of religion as it came under increasing attack from intellectuals outside the university system.
As often happens with ideas, change was brought about not by debate but by force—the French Revolution abolished the control that the Churches exerted over the universities in Europe. Although attempts were made to restore this control after 1815, they were only partially successful. For much of the 19th century the European universities existed according to either of two quite different models.
Oxford and Cambridge, not directly affected by the French Revolution, continued in fairly traditional fashion. Religion dominated, to the point that students had to belong to the Anglican Church and professors had to be Anglican clergy. Students lived in residential colleges where the faculty took responsibility for their moral and religious lives. Those institutions saw their task as forming educated and devout Christians.
The German model of the university went in an entirely different direction. There, faculties were opened to men who might be skeptical of faith, and students were to a great extent left on their own in terms of their personal lives. Above all the German universities committed themselves to the new “scientific” model of higher education.
According to this model, the universities’ principal task was “research” in the sense of pushing back the boundaries of knowledge through systematic rational inquiry, a task that was to be pursued even if it had a negative effect on religion and other traditional beliefs. Ideally the university was to educate people to be “objective” thinkers, unhampered by prejudice or dogma, who would follow the path of rational investigation wherever it might lead.
CHANGING NEEDS
The German universities did not ignore religion, but the continued presence of theology within their walls actually had negative consequences for the Churches. The “scientific” method was inherently suspicious of all orthodoxy, and theological faculties came to think of themselves as alternative sources of religious authority to that of the Churches themselves. The Bible and other sources of religious belief were to be subjected to the same kind of “objective” scrutiny that other subjects received. The ultimate standard of truth was not any claim of divine authority but prevailing scholarly opinions within the universities themselves.
The Puritans of New England valued a learned clergy, so that colleges, which eventually became universities, were founded quite early (Harvard already in 1635). Well into the 19th century most American schools followed the English model in which religion dominated.
However, by about 1820 there was already some dissatisfaction with the orthodoxy of what would later be called the “Ivy League” colleges, so that devout Protestants felt the need to found new schools that would be more faithful than the old appeared to be. In time these newer schools also came to be suspected of heterodoxy, and yet newer institutions were founded, a process that has continued in American Protestantism up to the present.
By the late 19th century Harvard was deliberately moving in a secular direction, because of the intellectual and spiritual collapse of New England Calvinism. Yale and Princeton retained their religious character somewhat longer.
Skepticism was not necessarily the major reason for this secularizing trend. Perhaps more important was the desire to adapt the school to what were seen as changing social needs— preparing students for business and other professional careers rather than for the clergy, and expanding the curriculum to include subjects considered useful to the modern industrial age.
For a time, the best secular universities in America, like Oxford and Cambridge, effected a compromise between the German model and their own tradition. Increasingly they recruited professors with respectable scholarly credentials, but hoped they had sympathy for the institution's religious traditions. Until the 1960s these schools continued to exert supervision over the personal lives of their students.
CATHOLIC ASSIMILATION
The Catholic institutions of higher learning in America came from yet a third educational tradition, which dated to the Renaissance and the Middle Ages (summed up in, among other places, the ratio studiorum of the Jesuit order). By the early 20th century there was some concern in Catholic circles that the very way in which they structured their curricula was unfamiliar to most American educators. Graduates of Catholic schools sometimes suffered discrimination in getting into secular law and medical schools, for example.
Gradually, after 1900, the Catholic universities began to adopt the prevailing American synthesis of the English and German approaches. They broadened their curricula, including professional subjects like medicine and business, and recruited faculty with respectable professional credentials, while at the same time still insuring that Catholic teaching was respected everywhere in the institution and that the moral and spiritual welfare of students was cared for.
As with the some of the secular schools, this synthesis worked reasonably well until the 1960s, when the Catholic schools finally began to feel the pull of secularization.
James Hitchcock is a professor of history at St. Louis University.
----- EXCERPT: Pragmatic reasons, more than skepticism about faith, contributed to the change in the character of U.S. universities ----- EXTENDED BODY: James Hitchcock ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Portrait of a Sad and Sordid Childhood DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:Getting inside a criminal's mind, particularly that of a murderer, is a difficult challenge for a filmmaker with a sense of morality. On the one hand, the criminal's deranged sensibility must be presented as non—judgmentally as possible so that the audience can understand how such a person operates and what makes him or her tick. On the other hand, the effect of the evil perpetrated must be fully communicated.
To achieve good results, the story is usually told from the criminal's point of view. The best example of how to evoke a deviant mentality without losing its moral significance is the cinematic adaptation of French Catholic novelist Fran¸ois Mauriac's classic, Therese Desqueyroux. In it, after the bored heroine tries to poison her husband, she's acquitted in court but doesn't escape punishment elsewhere.
A much hyped instance of the opposite effect is Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, a Gen—X, cult—classic. Written and directed by John McNaughton (Wild Things) in 1990, it creates a self—contained moral universe identical to that of its demented killer. Each crime is gruesomely depicted, and there's no sense of an outside value system that could pass judgment on his behavior.
The Butcher Boy, the most recent cinematic study of the criminal mind, has received glowing reviews from many critics. Based on Patrick McCabe's novel, it mixes together Catholicism, pop culture, Irish small—town customs, and surreal effects to get inside the skin of 12—year—old Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens), an Irish Huck Finn gone mad. Director Neil Jordan (Michael Collins and The Crying Game) has written the screenplay with McCabe, and they've created a perversely upbeat study of an adolescent criminal, most of whose activities are only slight exaggerations of normal childhood pranks. The young boy's overly violent outbursts of anger seem natural, and the Catholicism, on which his community's ethical standards are based, is ridiculed.
It's the early 1960s, and Francie is being raised by his alcoholic “Da” (Stephen Rea) and his suicidal mom (Aisley O'Sullivan). To escape, he and his best friend, Joe (Allan Boyle) have immersed themselves in American TV series such as The Lone Ranger and The Fugitive, grade—B John Agar sci—fi flicks, and Green Lantern comics. This pop culture stew helps set their code of conduct.
Francie and Joe take an Apache blood oath to be true to each other to death, which Francie takes more seriously than his friend. At the same time, America is locked in the Cuban missile crisis with Russia, and the voice of President John Kennedy, an Irish Catholic role model, blares out from TV screens and radio sets, impressing both the boys and the local adults with its soothing gravity.
Francie is a natural leader, clever and outspoken, eager to get into brawls. But he often comes on too strong, alienating those around him without knowing it. His behavior is, in part, determined by troubles at home. His “Da,” once a talented trumpet—player, can no longer hold a job and beats up on him and his mother. She, in turn, is in and out of asylums, and when released, sublimates her inner conflicts with compulsive activities like the manic baking of hundreds of cakes for a small family party.
Francie enjoys bullying his sober, studious classmate, Philip Nugent (Andrew Fullerton), and when the tormented lad's mother (Fiona Shaw) stands up to him, he destroys their home. The filmmakers present Mrs. Nugent as the epitome of uptight, lower—middle class propriety and lead us to take Francie's side in his revenge.
The young rebel is sent away to a reform school run by priests whom Jordan and McCabe make targets of an obvious kind of anti—Catholic satire. In order to avoid hard outdoor labor, Francie claims to have visions of the Virgin Mary (Sinead O‘Connor) which the movie shows us. She uses profanity while addressing the young boy and passes no judgment on his behavior. The clerics are impressed by his claims and give him special treatment. A sexually abusive priest (Milo O'Shea) takes advantage of Francie's situation. But in return for his silence, the young boy is released from the school to go back to his family.
The real world begins to collide with Francie's fantasies in an unpleasant fashion. When he runs away from home, bad things happen he can't deal with. But his greatest pain is the dissolution of his friendship with Joe. First, he learns that his blood brother is palling around with his arch—nemesis, the puny Philip Nugent. Then Francie tries to spring Joe from a Catholic boarding school. His former buddy will have nothing to do with him and elects to remain inside. The rejection is more than Francis can bear, and he takes out his frustrations on Mrs. Nugent in a murderous way.
Along the way, the movie can't resist taking a few more cheap shots at the Virgin Mary and those who venerate her. This blasphemous style of filmmaking has its antecedents in The Last Temptation of Christ. But Jordan and McCabe do the Scorsese film one better by casting O‘Connor as Our Blessed Lady. The pop singer once made a name for herself by ripping up a picture of the Pope on network television, an outrage for which she's alleged to have apologized.
The Butcher Boy's degradation of Catholicism eliminates the only value system that could highlight the evil of Francie's acts to those around him. The result is that early adolescent criminal psychosis is presented as humorous and cool as well as horrifying. It's a slickly concocted nihilism that can damage the soul.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
Butcher Boy is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America.
----- EXCERPT: Anti-Catholicism badly damages critically acclaimed drama of a young criminal ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Character Studies In the Old West DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:Westerns are not a genre usually associated with spiritual values. Violent shootouts are the norm, and revenge is a frequent and much admired motive.
Stagecoach is the exception. When the movie was released in 1939, westerns were primarily low—budget items aimed at the bottom half of double bills. But its mixture of exciting action and penetrating character studies won two Oscars (best supporting actor, Thomas Mitchell, and best score, Richard Hageman) and established the genre for the first time as a possible vehicle for intelligent drama and important themes—it also made John Wayne a star.
Six passengers board a stage in a frontier New Mexico town in the 1870s. Two are respectable citizens; four are not. Lucy Mallory (Louise Platt), a pregnant
Virginia gentlewoman traveling to join her Calvary—officer husband, and Gatewood (Berton Churchill), the local banker, see themselves as socially and morally superior to those around them.
Dallas (Claire Trevor), a dance—hall girl, has been run out of town for her loose conduct by the law—and—order committee. Doc Boone (Thomas Mitchell), an alcoholic physician, has been evicted from his office and living quarters for failing to pay the rent. The other passengers who are outcasts are: Peacock (Donald Meek), a mild—mannered whiskey salesman, and Hatfield (John Carradine), a notorious gambler, who tries to make himself Lucy's guardian because of their common southern heritage.
The U.S. cavalry accompanies the coach, as Geronimo's apaches are terrorizing the countryside. The local sheriff, Curly (George Bancroft), rides shotgun for additional muscle. En route, he arrests the Ringo Kid (John Wayne), who has just escaped from the local penitentiary and puts him inside along with the others.
The soldiers are ordered to leave the coach and search for Geronimo. The passengers vote to continue without their protection. The cramped quarters and ever—present physical danger provoke squabbles and name—calling, forcing each person to reveal his or her true self. The conflicts become so intense Peacock begs his fellow travelers “to have a little Christian charity one for another.”
Four—time Oscar—winning director, John Ford (The Grapes or Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, The Quiet Man, and The Informer), and screenwriter Dudley Nichols (The Informer) skillfully adapt Ernest Haycox's magazine short—story to dramatize the difference between each passenger's status in the community and his or her interior moral qualities. In almost every case, our initial expectations are reversed. The filmmakers want us to take a hard look at what Doc Boone calls “that foul disease called social prejudice.”
During a stopover at dinner, Hatfield refuses to let a gentlewoman like Lucy be seated next to an outcast like Dallas.
At the next stop, Lucy gives birth. Doc Boone sobers up for the first time in a decade and makes the delivery, and Dallas stays up all night to nurse the woman who had previously snubbed her. Doc and the dance—hall girl are shown to be persons of virtue who redeem themselves in the sight of most of the other passengers. Although, Gatewood continues to treat them haughtily. This self—proclaimed paragon of respectability, who has proudly declared that “what's good for banking is good for the country,” is revealed to be a thief who's trying to run away with his depositors’ funds.
Ford, who directed many of our best westerns (My Darling Clementine, Fort Apache, The Searchers, etc.), makes sure that his audience is treated to some action—packed thrills at the end. There's an exciting chase sequence where the Apaches attack the coach, and the Ringo Kid duels with the thugs who killed his father and brother. But the filmmakers use the drama primarily to open their viewers’ eyes to the power of forgiveness and redemption. Those characters who do overcome evil achieve their victory by wrestling with their souls, not by firing a six—gun.
Next week: Fellini's La Strada
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: Stagecoach has more on its mind than just who can shoot a six-gun ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: The Spirit of St. Francis In Wisconsin DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:St. Francis Retreat Center lies on the border of southeastern Wisconsin's resort area of Brown's Lake. The onetime Franciscan monastery is set behind four—story pine trees on 160 acres of spiritually groomed grounds. In the past, visitors were uncommon in this small town of Burlington except for those coming to do business at Hi—Liter Graphics or the Nestle factory down the road. Then something interesting began to happen. The faithful began coming to St. Francis Retreat Center.
The center enables solitude seekers to reenter the secular 9—to—5 workday renewed. First a few visitors came, then hundreds, and later thousands, from Milwaukee, Chicago, and now from all over the United States. The center caters to both solitary soul—searchers and to groups of up to 200 who can take advantage of the center's meeting room facilities.
Few retreatants venture beyond the gardens, but a short walk to the proper—ty's edge uncovers a hidden river that serves as a backdrop to acres of foliage, including a tree reputed to have been three times struck by lighting and which now forms the shape of a cross. The center, which has become known for its sculptured grounds, also has a large chapel where a Sunday 9:30 a.m. Mass and weekday eucharistic adoration occur.
The Franciscan order was established by St. Francis of Assisi in the 1200s. Francis's commitment to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus to all creation inspired millions to follow, including the Franciscan friars of the Assumption BVM province who were founded in 1887. Members of the order placed each stone on this magnificent grotto—laden property that was completed in 1929. With the decline of vocations in the years following, the order decided to convert the monastery into a retreat center. Before long, the friars found it necessary to move to the basement to free up the monastery's 56 single rooms for a spiritually hungry public. The friars minister not only to religious, and to men's and women's groups, but to teenagers, young adults, individuals, and groups seeking to develop their relationship with God and experience his presence in their lives.
Candles mark the monastery's quiet hallways and in each room, masterful icons, statues, and paintings and a Bible opened to the readings of the day help put pilgrims in a spiritual frame of mind. Each wing of the building includes comfortable lounges, meeting areas, kitchenettes, audio—visual equipment, a main dining room, and libraries. The Greccio hermitage is a preferential feature for those in need of solitude.
For day—trippers from Chicago it's a 90—minute drive to the Center—north on Interstate 94 to Wisconsin Route 11 West, right at County Road W for two miles, before coming to the gates just prior to the Route 36 intersection. Milwaukee residents need travel only 30 minutes south.
Visitors in spring and fall will find the most picturesque views and favorable climate. In the summer, retreatants gather in the open air pavilion dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes for Sunday Masses. Beneath the protective arches and shielded by pines, the pavilion provides a tranquil setting for the liturgy while calling to mind St. Francis's great love of nature.
There is a hidden tile and wood image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in nearby shrubbery. At the bottom of a hill flanked by blue spruce trees is an artificial hill of tufa rock where a depiction of Christ's Crucifixions stands. The ivory image of St. Michael the Archangel rests at the base of what has come to be known as the Calvary Grotto. Surrounding the grotto, pilgrims will find mosaic and stone stations of the cross.
A small castle, shielded behind an old oak tree, houses a mosaic reproduction of Our Lady of Czestochowa, patroness of Poland. The original icon is said to have been painted by St. Luke on a cypress table board that belonged to the Holy Family. Legend has it that the original image, painted in Ephesus, came to Czestochowa with King Walter of Opole in 1382. In 1430 Hussites (heretical Czechs) attacked the monastery and church there, removed the icon and, a short distance from the church, threw it to the ground and broke it into three pieces. One of the Hussites drew his sword against the icon, scoring it twice. Upon the third blow, the man was paralyzed. From that moment, all adversaries left the icon in peace and it has been accredited with other miracles including the saving of Poland from Swedish attack in 1856. So, it is fitting that here pilgrims find time to pray for all those facing persecution.
A pilgrimage to the Center would not be complete without a visit to the shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes, recalling Mary's 1858 appearance to Bernadette Soubirous at the Massabielle cave in Lourdes, France. Mary revealed her title as the Immaculate Conception and called all people to a greater devotion through praying the rosary. The grotto at the retreat center presents the 15 mysteries of the rosary in mosaic. Acave beneath the grotto houses a marble relief of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
A short walk from the shrine is a chapel with mosaic art above its doorway. The chapel itself is a replica of the Portiuncula chapel where St. Francis began the Order of Friars Minor and the cross above the altar is a copy of the San Damiano Cross that spoke to St. Francis— calling him to repair the chapel, perhaps the Church as a whole, and to begin his personal ministry. Asmall framed stone of the original Portiuncula in Assisi is set into the wall of its interior.
Upon exiting the side door of the chapel, pilgrims’ eyes are drawn to a shrine commemorating the 1917 apparition of Our Lady of Fatima to young Francisco, Jacinta, and Lucia in Portugal where Mary urged all faithful to examine their daily lives and their faith.
The pilgrim's walk concludes at the open arms of a statue of Christ the King with the instruments of his passion, the crown of thorns and the whip, at the base, as well as a toppled chalice symbolizing Jesus’ precious blood poured out for us. This statue once stood at the entrance to Christ the King Seminary in West Chicago, Ill.
Between Christ the King and the bell tower, there is a statue of St. Francis— humbly waiting in the trees, a bird on his shoulder. From the simple opaque statue departing pilgrims receive a clear message: live by example—as do the respected inhabitants of this friary, inspired by Francis and loved by a countless flock.
Varied spiritual approaches are taken at retreats at the center. Accommodations are $28 per night plus an optional $18 for three meals. For more information, telephone 414—763—3600.
Carrie Swearingen writes from Evanston, Illinois.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Carrie Swearingen ----- KEYWORDS: Travell -------- TITLE: On Campus, an Inhospitable Climate for Pregnant Coeds DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:Pro—Life groups work to alleviate pressure students feel to choose abortion
CHICAGO—College coeds today carry a lot: heavy course loads, steep tuition bills, and career ambitions equal to their male peers. One precious thing they don't carry on campus though, are babies.
From coast to coast the presence of student—mothers and their children on campus is practically nil. Students interviewed for this story typically say they have never seen a classmate with a baby. What happens then, to the multitude of college students who become pregnant?
“The students have such an overwhelming sense that they can't do this [have the baby] by themselves,” says Vanessa Clay. A 1997 Georgetown University graduate, Clay, 23, now directs the Northwest (crisis pregnancy) Center in Washington. “They don't want to put pressure on the boyfriend, who's also usually in school. So they end up terminating the pregnancy.”
The prevalence of abortion among college students is a little—known facet of the U.S. abortion picture. One in five abortions is procured by college students, who face particularly intense pressures to choose abortion if they become pregnant. The women believe there are few resources to help them with their child. Teachers, administrators, and peers tell them that abortion is morally acceptable; boyfriends and parents urge them not to sacrifice their education because of an unplanned pregnancy.
There is no housing for mothers with children and day care is rarely available.
Planned Parenthood, the nation's top abortion provider, exploits the vulnerability of pregnant college women by opening clinics near universities and advertising in school newspapers and similar publications, says Serrin Foster, executive director of Washington—based Feminists for Life, an educational and advocacy group. Administrators of school health clinics, typically pro—abortion, funnel pregnant students to these clinics and fail to mention alternatives, according to Foster.
Sadly, she adds, Catholic universities are no better than others at helping a coed understand there are government programs and non—profit groups that can assist her and her baby. Just as at other universities, students at Catholic colleges who become pregnant almost uniformly choose abortion or drop out of school, Foster says.
Dina Dagrizikas, a student at Loyola University in Chicago, says she has never seen a pregnant student on campus—and she knows why.
“There's a Planned Parenthood clinic down the block on Sheridan [Road],” she says. “Everybody knows about it. Few people know about where to call for adoption, or about Catholic Charities, or Birthright, or a local crisis pregnancy center.”
In fact, Dagrizikas, the head of the student pro—life group, says the campus is generally not receptive to her pro—life efforts. She tried to initiate a forum to discuss resources available to pregnant women and was rebuffed by the women's center and various student groups. When her pro—life group erected a simple memorial to the unborn in front of a campus building, the student newspaper labeled the group as “extremist.”
The university's student health center refused to stock a resource kit prepared by Feminists for Life. The director called the materials “harsh,” though she did decide to add the names and telephone numbers in the kit to the center's resource list. The campus ministry office, however, agreed to carry the kit.
Foster says colleges are particularly hostile environments to pregnant women. There is no housing for mothers with children and day care is rarely available. Many student health plans do not cover pre—natal and maternity costs.
Women's studies professors, seen as an ally to women, are overwhelmingly pro—abortion, and many of these professors vigorously defend abortion “rights” as fundamental, says Foster.
“Our society puts all this pressure on young people to have sex. If you don't have sex, you're not normal,” adds Foster. “Then we pretend we won't have any pregnancies. We put women between a rock and a hard place.”
The college experience apparently convinces women that abortion is morally OK. According to a 1996 Gallup poll, women with a high school education are more pro—life (47%) than “pro—choice” (37%). Women who have completed a four—year program are more “pro—choice” (73%) than pro—life (24%).
College students learn that the contemporary model of a successful woman does not include motherhood, says Helen Zonenberg, a junior at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass.
“We're expected to succeed in the world. Our institution puts forth the idea of education,” she says. “We don't see models of motherhood.”
Zonenberg, a Catholic who belongs to the Wellesley Alliance for Life, says college officials support pregnant students no matter what they choose. Last semester a young mother lived with her child in a dormitory. That was “very refreshing” to see.
Women are given a false choice between their child and their education, says Clay of the Northwest Center.
“So much pressure is put on women to finish college. All their hopes and dreams are tied up in it,” she says. “They feel they're forced to choose between a child and school—but to continue their education is really the best thing for their child.”
Students at Catholic colleges who become pregnant almost uniformly choose abortion or drop out of school.
Some colleges are finally beginning to recognize the dilemma of its pregnant students and taking positive action. Next fall, says Clay, Georgetown University will rent a residence one block from campus to two women who are now pregnant. The residence normally houses four students.
In March, Georgetown also held the first pregnancy resource forum, run by a campus Right to Life group and moderated by Foster. About 65 students and several administrators heard discussion about identifying and developing resources for pregnant students.
With backing from Feminists for Life, pro—life groups at other universities have raised awareness of the plight of pregnant students. Students at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass., blitzed the campus with brochures of Feminists for Life. After Foster gave a talk at Villanova University near Philadelphia, school administrators placed fliers in student mailboxes and an article in the campus newspaper explaining the available services for pregnant students. A pro—life group at Northwestern University near Chicago met with the staff of the student health center and persuaded them to make referrals to a crisis pregnancy center.
The importance of publicizing resources can't be overstated, says Foster. She won't name the school, but in one year at a university in the Northeast 300 of 3,000 female students tested positive on pregnancy tests. Three women had babies; two left school.
The problem at root are societal values, says Margaret O‘Connolly of Americans United for Life in Chicago.
“There's a myth at work, an enmity between woman and child. A child is portrayed as something that can ruin a ‘career.’”
Jay Copp writes from Chicago.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jay Copp ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Without Protests, HLI Gathers Pro-Life Community DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:After three controversial meetings, group's biggest problem this year: a rejected ad
HOUSTON—After three consecutive years of meetings marked by controversy, Human Life International's (HLI) annual conference went off this year with hardly a hitch. The 17th annual conference of the world's largest pro—life, pro—family organization not only failed to attract the problems of recent years at its April 15—19 meeting here, the group couldn't even buy controversy—at least not from the Houston Chronicle.
Last year, the conference—and more specifically HLI's founder Father Paul Marx OSB—encountered charges of antiSemitism from militant adversaries in the Minneapolis, Minn., area where the event was held. The previous year, in Cincinnati, Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women attacked HLI in newspaper ads and picketed the event. In 1996, homosexual activists and unruly abortion and contraception advocates demonstrated in Montreal—particularly the opening Mass at Notre Dame cathedral.
This year's lack of controversy was even more surprising considering HLI's full—page advertisement entitled “It's Time To Tell the Truth About Planned Parenthood,” that appeared in several local papers. The ad, derived primarily from Planned Parenthood's published material, explained the organization's agenda and activities as a major provider of abortion, contraception, and sex education, while detailing the increased levels of U.S. government (taxpayer) funding each year.
Planned Parenthood offered no response. The ad had been designed to run in the Houston Chronicle, the city's largest daily, with a reported circulation of 549,000. The newspaper rejected the ad however, indicating that it did not meet the Chronicle's “standards.” The Chronicle refused to provide the Register with written standards for advertisements or to confirm that such guidelines exist.
HLI immediately placed the ad in the Katy Times, The Leader, the Port Arthur Times, the Fort Bend Star, and the Forward Times. Two Catholic diocesan papers in Texas also ran the ad. HLI media relations chief Don Treshman estimated the alternate ad campaign reached approximately 300,000 households at one—quarter of the original cost.
“We are outraged by the rejection of this ad [by the Chronicle],” said HLI president Father Richard Welch CSsR. “It is a curious situation when a daily newspaper that exists to tell the truth and report facts to the community discriminates against the truth when it comes to the Planned Parenthood organization.”
The priest described the ad as factual and non—libelous. He said it had been thoroughly scrutinized and approved by HLI's legal department.
When asked if written standards or objective criteria were used to approve such advertising, Melissa Beisenherz, the Chronicle's public affairs manager, told the Register that the paper had the right to deny any advertisement. She offered no other explanation for the decision, but admitted that ads were rarely rejected.
Father Welch said the rejection of the advertisement prompted him to consider a lawsuit against the Chronicle.
“The grounds for such action under review include free speech, fair trade practices, public accommodation, and discrimination,” he said.
Treshman noted that the Chronicle had given verbal agreement to publish the ad after learning of its content. Upon receipt, however, it faxed notice of denial and returned the $25,000 check submitted with the ad.
When asked to speculate on the Chronicle's decision, Father Welch told the Register that HLI had discovered the publish—er's wife was a former board member of the local Planned Parenthood affiliate.
“We find in city after city, many of the major metropolitan newspapers are controlled in some way by Planned Parenthood…. There's always some sort of a connection there.”
Renewed Call
The convention drew some 2,000 participants from 59 countries. Notable among the program's approximately 50 presenters were Joan Andrews Bell, Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade), Sandra Cano (Mary Doe of Doe v. Bolton), Dr. Alice von Hildebrand, Father Joseph Fessio SJ, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, and Kenneth Whitehead.
Some of the more than 60 conference sessions included: “Standing up to Anti—Life Politicians,” by Father George Parker; “Dying Palliative Care, and Euthanasia,” by Dr. Josefina Magno; “Breast Cancer and Abortion,” by Dr. Joel Brind; “Fighting Sex Education in Schools,” by James Sedlak;
“The Ravages of Contraception,” by Mercedes Wilson; “Helping the Homosexual Heal Himself,” by Dr. Gerard van den Aardweg; and “Human Cloning: Moral and Philosophical Considerations,” by Father Anthony Zimmerman SVD, STD. Day—long sessions were conducted for medical professionals and chastity teachers. Another session focused on pro—life issues among Latinos.
In a written message to the gathering, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family said “life is the great cause for the third millennium.”
The cardinal renewed the call for life to be taken up in families, schools, local Churches, the diverse groups that make up the pro—life movement, and within each individual heart. In emphasizing that the message and cause for life must continually be brought before governments, the cardinal noted that “there are people in prison today not because they have done any violence, but rather because they resisted unjust laws which allow abortion. We call for an end to this misuse of the justice system.”
Only three weeks before the conference, Joan Andrews Bell had been released from jail midway through a three—month sentence for refusing to accept probation 10 years after being arrested for staging a peaceful “rescue” demonstration at a Pennsylvania abortion facility. After her release, Bell did not return immediately to her New Jersey home. Instead, she stayed in Pennsylvania to seek legal assistance for a fellow inmate who was in danger of losing her preborn child.
HLI presented Bell with its annual outstanding pro—lifer award during the final banquet. Greeted by a standing ovation, the woman often described as a “prisoner of conscience” urged participants to persevere in their witness to the sanctity of life. Citing Mother Teresa, she said Christians are not called to be successful, only to be faithful.
“I'll keep this for all of you,” she said of the award, reminding those in attendance that each member of the pro—life cause has a unique and important calling in the defense of human life.
Later in the program, Nathanson, a former abortionist and co—founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League who has since become a leading voice in the pro—life cause, recognized Bell by reading from her affidavit before being sentenced to jail (see “Refusing to Cooperate with Evil,” Feb. 1—7). Nathanson, who was received into the Catholic Church in December 1996 by New York's Cardinal John O‘Connor, proudly told the crowd that Bell was his “godmother.”
HLI in Rome
Father Welch also announced that HLI would be increasing its number of international affiliates to 89 by opening new branch offices in Rome and Switzerland as well as opening a multimedia production studio at its Front Royal, Va., headquarters.
The purpose of the center in Rome, due to open in June, primarily will be to serve seminarians and members of religious orders—especially those from the Third World—in the city for formation or studies.
“We hope to have some influence on their formation, and get good literature and good resources into their hands about the life issues,” he told the Register.
“We believe that we are the experts on population issues,” he added. “Whatever country you're from, you're going to confront population control problems—Planned Parenthood, abortion, abortifacients, euthanasia.”
He said he hoped the benefits of such a presence would include a “trickle down” effect to influence cultures around the world.
A further advantage of having a Rome office, he noted, was “a closer working relationship with the Holy See.”
Reflecting on the controversy of recent conferences and the rejected pro—life ad, the HLI president said that when an organization effectively proclaims the Gospel of Life, opposition is to be expected.
“What this points out is what is always present underneath—the war that's always going on between two cultures: the cultures of life and death.”
For more information on the conference, or to obtain audio cassettes of the presentations, visit HLI's Web site a www.hli.org, or telephone 1—800—549—LIFE.
Peter Sonski is an assistant editor of the Register.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Peter Sonski ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:The trivialization of sexuality is among the principal factors which have led to contempt for new life. Only a true love is able to protect life. There can be no avoiding the duty to offer, especially to adolescents and young adults, an authentic education in sexuality and in love, an education which involves training in chastity as a virtue which fosters personal maturity and makes one capable of respecting the “spousal” meaning of the body.
Pope John Paul II
(Evangelium Vitae 97.2)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Noble Objectives Alone Don't Justify Fetal Experimentation DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:Proponents of fetal experimentation suggest such studies will lead to advancements in medical knowledge that will vastly benefit the human race. Among many cited “possibilities” are growing organs for transplantation into adult human beings, the elimination of birth defects, and even the “improvement” of the genetic “maps” of all human beings, leading to a jump in evolution that staggers the imagination.
All of these assertions divert attention from the central problem with fetal experimentation: the reduction of preborn children from human beings created in the image of God to mere biological scrap— useful material to be manipulated and disposed of.
We find specific guidelines on fetal experimentation in Donum Vitae, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's 1987 instruction on respect for human life in its origin and on the dignity of procreation:
“Medical research must refrain from operations on live embryos, unless there is a moral certainty of not causing harm to the life or integrity of the unborn child and the mother, and on condition that the parents have given their free and informed consent to the procedure. It follows that all research, even when limited to the simple observation of the embryo, would become illicit were it to involve risk to the embryo's physical integrity or life by reason of the methods used or the effects induced.
“As regards experimentation, and presupposing the general distinction between experimentation for purposes which are not directly therapeutic and experimentation which is clearly therapeutic for the subject himself, in the case in point one must also distinguish between experimentation carried out on embryos which are still alive and experimentation carried out on embryos which are dead. If the embryos are living, whether viable or not, they must be respected just like any other human person; experimentation on embryos which is not directly therapeutic, is illicit.
“No objective, even though noble in itself, such as a foreseeable advantage to science, to other human beings, or to society, can in any way justify experimentation on living human embryos or fetuses, whether viable or not, either inside or outside the mother's womb…. To use human embryos or fetuses as the object or instrument of experimentation constitutes a crime against their dignity as human beings having a right to the same respect that is due to the child already born and to every human person….”
“In the case of experimentation that is clearly therapeutic, namely, when it is a matter of experimental forms of therapy used for the benefit of the embryo itself in a final attempt to save its life, and in the absence of other reliable forms of therapy, recourse to drugs or procedures not yet fully tested can be licit” (Donum Vitae, no. 4).
Source: The Facts of Life: An Authoritative Guide to Life and Family Issues, by Brian Clowes PhD (Human Life International, Front Royal, Va.). Reprinted with permission.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Fact of Life -------- TITLE: Cardinal O'Connor: Proud to Be a 'Single Issue' Bishop DATE: 05/03/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 3-9, 1998 ----- BODY:Prelate and others herald efforts of A Woman's Choice
FALLS CHURCH, Va.—Referring to his strong pro—life advocacy, Cardinal John O‘Connor of New York told an audience here April 22: “I have been called a single issue bishop. I accept the accusation and am happy to do so.”
Despite the great importance of social justice, education, and health, he added, “I proudly call that single issue, human life.”
The cardinal joined Sen. Robert Smith (RN.H.) and Mary Ellen Bork in addressing 450 supporters of A Woman's Choice, a non—profit crisis pregnancy center. The center serves a diverse northern Virginia community with pregnancy testing, counseling, and material assistance. More than 10,000 women have been helped since the center opened in 1986.
“I am tremendously busy. I have a big, complex archdiocese and can't comment on the number of invitations I receive. But when I received this invitation from AWoman's Choice, I considered it a privilege to come,” Cardinal O‘Connor told the Register. “I canceled things to come. As far as I am concerned, what this organization does is infinitely more important than what speeches we make. God alone knows how many lives they have saved and the courage they have given to young people.”
In his speech he emphasized the valuable work being done in such centers around the country. “You are saving the very notion of life itself. You remind people of the very meaning of life,” he said.
He also emphasized the ripple effect of saving unborn children. “You save one human life,” he stressed, “and God knows what impact that might have.”
Although much of his talk focused on the work of the center and its volunteers, he also asked pointed questions about modern American society.
“What is this fierce hostility to human life which has developed in our land? Attorney General Janet Reno has said, 'The whole purpose of the law is to value human life.’ In this culture of death are we actualizing those words?” he asked.
Pro—life activities have been a cornerstone of his episcopacy. He cited two initiatives he has undertaken to strengthen the pro—life movement. One is a campaign he launched in 1984 in which the Archdiocese of New York supports—without reservation—any pregnant woman who needs medical, legal, or financial assistance to have a child. The program, known as the Catholic Home Bureau, has helped thousands, according to the cardinal.
He also mentioned the Sisters of Life, a contemplative and apostolic religious order, with three convents in New York. The cardinal added that the Sisters of Life are praying for unborn children, their mothers, and for those volunteers who are on the front line of the battle for human life. Praying for those in the pro—life movement is important because “you have to wonder at times if anyone is listening, if anyone cares,” he said.
The cardinal also spoke movingly about his work with handicapped children, including those with Down's syndrome. Drawing a parallel with an old woman considered expendable in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, he expressed concern about how “all become vulnerable in a culture of death.”
Smith, who has a perfect pro—life voting record during his entire 13 years in Congress, extolled the crowd for “doing work which you wouldn't have to do if those of us in government were doing the work we should be doing and reversing Roe v. Wade. He expressed disappointment over the lack of interest in the pro—life issue among many of his colleagues. Referring to the Republican party, he said, “If you have a pro—life plank, then support it, don't walk away from it.”
He urged the audience to put pressure on their senators to secure the remaining three Senate votes needed to override President Clinton's veto of the partial birth abortion bill. He expressed confidence that the override will eventually occur and added, “I swear to you we will one day overturn Roe v. Wade.”
And, he stressed, the reason is simple: “When issues like this are not dealt with at the political level, it will be dealt with at the people level.”
Smith, who has been traveling widely around the country carrying a pro—life message, has been mentioned as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2000. He introduced legislation in 1995 to ban partial—birth abortions. He also played a key role in efforts to stop federal funding of human embryo research and led the successful fight to end federal funding of abortions by preserving the Hyde Amendment from attack by pro—abortion forces.
Bork, a lecturer, writer, and Register columnist, is well known and respected in the Washington, D.C. area, where she resides. In her remarks she commended the volunteers who counsel women at the center and who “make a difference every day.” Bork echoed Cardinal O‘Connor's comments in emphasizing the importance of helping women in crisis as well as unborn babies.
This dinner was the first major fundraising effort for the center. Although the Knights of Columbus in northern Virginia took a lead role in organizing the dinner, 16 other local organizations and individuals sponsored it. It was well attended by priests from the Diocese of Arlington, and a closing prayer was given by Archbishop Edwin O‘Brien of the Military Services archdiocese.
A Woman's Choice provides free assistance to about 850 women a year. More than two—thirds of those are unmarried and most are in their 20s. According to Executive Director Edel Finnegan, more than 45% of those who seek the center's assistance have been referred by previous clients. In addition to helping with the costs of pregnancy and child care, the center also encourages chastity among unmarried couples.
Joseph Esposito writes from Springfield, Virginia.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Esposito ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life --------