NEW ORLEANS — In post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, almost 100 inner-city pupils got to attend classes for the first time this school year Oct. 17.
St. Louis Cathedral Academy, a small grade school located in the French Quarter, was the first school in New Orleans to reopen and bring children and families back to the city center. Cathedral, like many schools in the area, is “twinning” — welcoming students and staff from other diocesan schools that were devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
One of its new students is Diamond Newton, 10, a fifth grader who recently returned from Houston, where she was evacuated with her family. She and her little brother, Dynae, 5, used to go to St. Frances Xavier Cabrini across town, but that school sat under 10 feet of water for three weeks and likely will have to be bulldozed.
Their father said his children were happy to be back at school and regain a sense of normalcy.
“It will be a transition going to a new school, but they've already seen a lot of their classmates from Cabrini,” Kevin Newton said. “They'll need a lot of one-on-one attention at school to get over what they went through, and learn how to move on.”
Newton, a police officer who stayed in New Orleans after the hurricane hit, said talking to his children has given him some insight into how they're coping.
“I think my kids are adjusting pretty well,” he said.
Helping the children make transitions at Cathedral are five Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia, based in Nashville, Tenn., and 10 lay teachers, who welcomed the preschoolers through eighth graders, and got them back into the rhythm of the classroom.
“The children are smiling and saying they're even excited to have homework,” said Dominican Sister Mary Rose Bingham, principal of Cathedral. “What has surprised me the most is the parents’ gratitude for us opening and getting their kids back in school. They're saying now their kids and families have a reason to move back.”
Within the first week, the number of students jumped to more than 160; enrollment was expected to reach 220 students by the end of October. Last year, the school served 125 children.
Sister Bingham, who with the nuns evacuated to Houston before the Aug. 29 storm, attributed the school's reopening to God's work.
“When we came back from Houston and saw the grounds and four destroyed classrooms, I said, ‘God, if you want this school to make it, you have to help us; I give the school over to you because I can't do it alone.’ He is not outdone in generosity,” she told the Register.
Over the next few weeks, Sister Bingham said, many people and organizations stepped in “at the right place and the right time.”
The young people from Youth for the Third Millennium and a Regnum Christi Boys Club from St. Louis were two such organizations. Youth for the Third Millennium is an evangelization initiative of young “missionaries” who go into parishes or door to door to spread the faith, and Regnum Christi is the apostolate movement of the Legionaries of Christ.
“The guys were at a parish helping elderly people clean up and repair their houses when the pastor introduced them to the Dominican Sisters,” said Kenneth Davison, executive director of Catholic World Mission, a Legionary apostolate that provides disaster relief in Central and South America.
It launched Mission Hope with Youth for the Third Millennium to reach out to Katrina victims in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, helping Catholic schools absorb additional students and supporting displaced priests in New Orleans and other communities affected by Katrina.
With classrooms out of commission, the young people spent all night framing walls in the auditorium. A member of the National Guard directed them to a local Lowe's home improvement store where they could buy sheet rock, but the store was closed. They found an employee to open it up, and Lowe's decided to donate the materials. A truck driver happened to be there and offered to transport the material to the school.
Resuming Ministry
The school's new vice principal is Peggy LeBlanc, who was principal of the closed Cabrini School.
“God orchestrates everything,” she said. “The only thing we can hold on to is that in the end there will be some real good coming out of the schools melding together.”
Of LeBlanc's 383 students at Cabrini, 95% lost their homes in the storm. She said Catholic schools have a special way to minister to their traumatized students at this time.
“At Catholic schools, you can talk about God, goodness and God's love, and how it will all come out in the long run for the better,” LeBlanc said. “We can teach love and demonstrate love and provide kids with a place to talk.”
In her first-grade classroom, teacher Consuella Williams tried to help her students process what they've been through over the last few months.
“We talk about Katrina and they can draw what happened to them,” she said. “When I ask them to explain their pictures, they express what they experienced: how their house was under water and how they lost their bikes and their dolls and toys.”
Williams said she has seen the children improving over the last few days.
“At first, they were crying when they had to leave their parents because they were afraid of being separated from them,” she said. “But when they feel the warm spirit and open arms here, they feel better. I talk to them when they cry, and that comfort zone helps them open up.”
As superintendent of Catholic schools for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Father William Maestri has been busy overseeing the reopening of 51 Catholic schools serving nearly 30,000 students; 48,725 students attended 107 schools in the archdiocese last year.
“Having the first school back on the east bank is once again another sign of the Church's presence for the good of the community, and the importance of Catholic education that is essential to the history of the region,” he told the Register.
Sister Bingham also sees the reopening of Cathedral and its ministry to the city's children as a source of pride.
“If Catholic schools didn't open and the role we play in the preaching of the Gospel were taken away, we would be such a poor city,” she said. “The Catholic schools leading the way and meeting the needs of the people is remarkable and is a reason to be proud of Catholic schools in America.”
Annamarie Adkins is based in St. Paul, Minnesota.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Annamarie Adkins ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Ashes to Ashes, Prayers to God DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:Ellen and Nicholas Brumder, along with stonework artist Holly Kincannon, had more in mind than just a final resting place for their clients’ loved ones when they set out to design a new burial ground.
They envisioned a site that would combine the natural beauty of the Texas hill country with Catholic prompts to prayer about life in this world and the world to come.
It was to be a fitting place to pray, in particular, each Nov. 1 and 2, feasts of All Saints and All Souls, respectively.
The Brumders had been inspired by their travels through the ancient cemeteries of Europe, where sculpture, masonry and ironwork lift heart and mind to God.
And so Our Lady of the Rosary Cemetery of Georgetown, Texas — as much an outdoor sanctuary as a graveyard — was launched.
So successful were the founders in turning their vision into reality that their cemetery was awarded the Premier Award for Total Concept Design in the Stoneguard Phoenix Award, an international competition whose latest ceremonies were held in London, England, in July.
Assessors for the competition made specific allusion to the prominent level of community involvement in the design of Our Lady of the Rosary Cemetery, as well as the “sympathetic integration” of memorials in the environment.
While the cemetery serves as a place of quiet reflection, they noted, the natural environment will also serve as a learning center about plant life and offer nature trails for exploring.
When the Brumders built the cemetery, they were responding to a real need in their diocese. The Diocese of Austin is home to more than 125 parishes and more than 400,000 Catholics.
Temples Interred
On my recent visit to Our Lady of the Rosary Cemetery, I encountered — before even exploring the lovely grounds — a wonderful witness to the Catholic faith. This came in the person of Ellen Brumder herself.
Here, I thought, is a Catholic living out the universal call to holiness within the parameters of the apostolate in which God has placed her. You wouldn't expect a person associated with a graveyard to be filled with childlike faith and joy over her work, but that's exactly what you find in Ellen.
Surely this spirit of consoling yet joyful hope is exactly what bereaved family members need to see when they come to visit their loved ones’ graves.
What's more, Ellen Brumder evinces real concern over the ways in which secular society denies and trivializes the meaning of death. And she expresses her concern in the language of one who thinks with the Church.
“One of the theological points [people need to bear in mind] about death is that everyone is so focused on the soul,” she points out. It's easy to forget, she adds, that “the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. We want to reflect the faith and life of every person who is buried here. “Catholic cemeteries enable the faithful to carry out a corporal work of mercy by burying their beloved departed,” she continues, “while teaching respect for life and the dignity of those who, even in death, remain part of the Church.”
Texas Tabernacle
Physically, Our Lady of the Rosary Cemetery is as memorable as any beautiful basilica.
The main entrance signals the Catholicity of the cemetery with a soaring iron cross designed and created by Nicholas Brumder. I learned that plans are under way to erect supporting obelisks on either side.
A horse pasture, complete with roaming mares, tall grass and a “Texas fence” of tree limbs and barbed wire borders the driveway on one side. On the other is the wooded Walk of the Beatitudes.
As you enter, the 20-acre expanse opens into view. In the spring, the grounds are carpeted in Texas wildflowers dominated by the state flower, bluebonnet; you'll also spot Indian paintbrush and verbena.
The eyes are immediately drawn to the 20-foot Resurrection Cross and Circle on the hill. This cross, too, is a creation of Nicholas Brumder.
The area around the Resurrection Circle is reserved as the final resting place for priests and brothers of the diocese. In spring the hill is awash in lavender verbena, the Church's color for Lent.
Four gardens surround the cross: the Marian Garden with a Walk of the Rosary, St. Francis Garden, John Paul II Garden and St. Florian Veteran's Garden.
A special area for miscarried, stillborn and early-death babies is set aside in Our Lady of Guadalupe Garden of Precious Love.
Tree-canopied walks are abundant all around the cemetery, most notably in the Walk of the Beatitudes, Mother Teresa Grotto and Path of St. Francis. Benches and pathways are dotted throughout to give the visitor many choices of quiet areas to reflect and pray.
Artists from Texas and as far away as Austria are involved in the ongoing creation of this unique final resting place. June Doerr sculpted the beautiful bronze bust of Mother Teresa located in the Mother Teresa Grotto. Father Andrew John Wincheck cast in bronze the statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe for the Garden of Precious Love. (Father Wincheck was a personal friend and confessor to Mother Teresa.) And Austrian Marie Rohrmeyer is creating the Franciscan tiles for the Path of St. Francis.
The feasts of All Saints and All Souls may be the best two days of the year to visit Our Lady of the Rosary Cemetery. But this is one place where it's fitting to pray deeply about life, death and the life to come every day of the year.
Zeta Angelich writes from Austin, Texas.
Planning Your Visit
Our Lady of the Rosary Cemetery will celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12 with schoolchildren from nearby St. Helen's hunting for white roses on the Walk of the Beatitudes. These they'll bring to the statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe. There will also be a guided nature walk and refreshments will be served. For more information, go to olotr.com or call (866) 999-9657.
Getting There
The cemetery is 30 miles north of Austin, Texas, on Interstate 35. Exit in Georgetown on Hwy. 29 off I-35. Travel east 3.7 miles. Turn left on Berry Lane. Entrance is on the right. For more information, go to olotr.com or call (866) 999-9657.
----- EXCERPT: Our Lady of the Rosary Cemetery, Georgetown, Texas ----- EXTENDED BODY: Zeta Angelich ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Mary, Mother of All Christians DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:THE PRAYER OF MARY: LIVING THE SURRENDERED LIFE
by Keith Fournier with Lela Gilbert
Thomas Nelson Books, 2005
198 pages, $13.99
To order: (800) 251-4000
or thomasnelson.com
If Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants are to engage their common enemies of humanism, relativism, the culture of death and what Keith Fournier aptly calls “the disordered love of things” — as Pope Benedict XVI insists they must — then The Prayer of Mary might be essential reading for folks from all three branches of Christianity.
That it's written by a Catholic and an evangelical Protestant together — and produced by Thomas Nelson Books, a leading evangelical Protestant publisher — marks it as a significant milestone for all Christians.
Then, too, it's a very good book. Fournier, a Roman Catholic deacon of the Diocese of Richmond, Va., who also serves that Melkite Greek Catholic Eparchy with permission, is a constitutional lawyer and public-policy advocate with degrees from Franciscan University of Steubenville, the John Paul II Institute of the Lateran University, the University of Pittsburgh and St. Thomas University. He has written widely on issues concerning faith, life, evangelization, ecumenism, family, political participation, public policy and cultural issues.
The Prayer of Mary, Fournier's eighth book, is written with Lela Gilbert, an evangelical whose publishing credentials are also impressive. A poet, Gilbert is also a Gold Medallion-winning freelance writer and the editor of some 40 evangelical books. Her book Windows to Heaven: Introducing Icons to Protestants and Catholics, written with Russian Orthodox author Elizabeth Zelensky, also aimed toward mutual understanding among the three traditions.
Pope Benedict's insistence on the importance of this united front isn't new. Ecumenism among Christians was a strong suit of Pope John Paul II, and a shared zeal for evangelization was at the root of the ongoing Evangelicals and Catholics Together initiative.
As for this new entry in that unfolding process: As it has since the Reformation, dialogue between Catholics and Protestants still tends to run aground when the talk gets around to the Virgin Mary. Fournier writes:
“Unfortunately, within the Western Church, Mary has too often become a point of division. As is the case with many of the differences between Protestant and Catholic Christians, theological reflection on Mary has devolved into argument rather than evolving into an opportunity for grace. Yet, the reflections on Mary continue because there is much to be learned from her life and her witness. … The Prayer of Mary is offered as a bridge to heal the factions within the family of the Church, the body of her Son, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The purpose of this book is to focus not so much on devotion to Mary as much as the devotion of Mary.”
And that focus is precisely why Every Christian — Catholic, Orthodox and Protestants of all persuasions — can find in Mary's simple fiat and beautiful Magnificat a pattern for daily living, as well as a resource for effective interfaith communication. The idea is not for either author to proselytize, but rather to present the truth about Catholic devotion to Mary as something shared by the Orthodox and something that can enormously enrich Protestant understanding and practice.
Fournier's carefully constructed prose, coupled with Gilbert's evocative poems and copious citations of Scripture from both Old and New Testaments, shows how Mary modeled the surrendered life of humility and loving obedience that her son desires for every believer. This book has the potential to lead even reticent believers to follow the Blessed Mother's gracious example.
Ann Applegarth writes from Roswell, New Mexico.
----- EXCERPT: Weekly Book Pick ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ann Applegarth ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: He Says, She Says DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:It all started with an innocent comment.
We were on our way home from Mass one Sunday morning when my dear husband turned to me and said, “You should get your hair done.”
Now Dan is a man. Like most men, his usual mode of communication is a kind of foreign language I call man-talk. I had no idea at the time, but apparently, in man-talk, “You should get your hair done” means something akin to, “I love you and I know looking nice is important to you. You work so hard and you never think about yourself. You deserve to take a little break to go out and have your hair done. I'll gladly watch the kids. Why don't you make an appointment this week sometime?”
I should have realized that. But then, I am a woman. I do not understand man-talk. In fact, I specialize in an entirely different dialect — woman-talk. Unfortunately for my husband, in woman-talk, “You should get your hair done” loosely translates into “You look so old and frumpy, I am embarrassed to be seen in public with you. Fix yourself up, would ya?”
Hence my hasty and regrettable response: “Well, if I ever had a minute to myself, maybe I could give some thought to my hair!” Then I folded my arms defensively and started to sulk.
Of course anyone fluent in woman-talk would have known that, by my snippy retort, I simply meant: “Your opinion matters a great deal to me and it hurts to think that you might not like my hairstyle. I would love to make an appointment at the hair salon, but I don't want to impose on your free time by leaving you alone with the children.”
But Dan could not guess at the true meaning behind my words. He stared at me in silence, wondering at my resentful response to what he thought was a loving suggestion. Things only spiraled downward from there.
Before I was married, I knew that it was because the sexes are so different that men and women are capable of working so well together. God created us to be marvelously complementary. What I did not know, however, is that it is because of those very differences that men and women are capable of driving one another completely crazy.
St. Augustine once said: “This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.”
Well, there is nothing quite like married life to bring one's own imperfections and shortcomings to light. Sharing a household and raising a family with someone who is so vastly different from ourselves challenges us constantly to improve ourselves and to sacrifice for the good of the one we love.
Part of the beauty of the vocation of marriage, though, is that it's a calling you can get a little bit better at answering, a little bit at a time, with a whole lot of practice every day. It's a calling that is rich with built in rewards and unexpected blessings.
In fact, at the end of that miserable Sunday of our colossal misunderstanding, Dan brought home a small package of M&Ms and presented them to me as a peace offering.
I'm still working on man-talk and he still struggles with woman-talk. But, happily for both of us, chocolate means love — in any language.
Danielle Bean writes from Belknap, New Hampshire.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Danielle Bean ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Campus Watch DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:‘Every Orientation’ Okay
The newspaper noted that the group, “while more inclusive,” will focus on the “special health-care needs” of “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender patients.”
The newspaper reported that the American Medical Association (AMA) became aware of the school's opposition to an overt homosexual organization in June, “voting to back gay medical students’ right to organize, apparently with New York Medical College in mind.”
The AMA also called on medical-school accreditation agencies to require curriculums to cover “gay health issues.”
Brownback Difference
“I am giving you a bit of a different message here today,” he told students at the Benedictine college. “A big core of it,” he said, is about the role of “faith in politics.”
A Catholic convert, Brownback said his hero was William Wilberforce, the 19th-centruy British crusader for whom slavery was the great moral issue of his day. He said abortion was “the defining issue of the difference between the political parties today.”
Saving Christmas
CYBERCAST NEWS SERVICE, Oct. 6 — A “Save Christmas” campaign to protest a tendency of many campuses to “ban anything relating to Christmas,” is one of a number of initiatives of the Campus Leadership Program.
The program has also invited student groups to declare National Sovereignty Day to coincide with this month's United Nations Day and to commemorate Veterans’ Day in November with candlelight vigils and by visiting veterans’ hospitals.
The program is a division of the Leadership Institute, a non-profit educational organization to help prepare tradition-minded students to buck political correctness and to be leaders and activists in public policy.
Rosary and Faith
WNDU, Oct. 11 — A crowd “packed” Our Lady's Grotto on the campus of Notre Dame University in Indiana one recent October evening to pray the Rosary with actor Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ.
Caviezel said his visit was inspired by the story of Irish football coach Charlie Weis granting a 10-year-old boy his dying wish of calling the first play of a game played earlier this season.
In a talk on the need for the young to commit to faith and reject the pervasiveness of sin in the world, Caviezel said Weis’ decision was an “act of faith,” and urged the students to take similar risks.
Flag a Fixture
Kobasa, a member of the Catholic Worker movement, said he believes the flag has no place in a Catholic classroom since the Church “can only function with its prophetic voice by standing outside the state.”
In a statement on its website, the diocese says it has “long believed that the American flag is an important fixture in Catholic school classrooms.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Why Married Priests Aren't the Answer DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:The Vatican's Synod of Bishops and the ongoing Apostolic Visitation of U.S. seminaries has piqued media speculation about the possibility of allowing married men to be ordained priests.
One participant in the synod, Australia's Cardinal George Pell, said last week that he did not favor this possibility. As a student for the priesthood, I agree. Celibacy is an asset for both practical and spiritual reasons. What's more, I am skeptical of the notion that married clergy is the miracle solution to the priest shortage. Here's why.
For starters, I reject the notion that the current crisis of vocations in the Catholic Church is rooted in the celibacy requirement. According to a 2004 USA Today article entitled “Protestant Churches Struggle to Fill Pulpits,” most mainline Christian denominations that allow married clergy are also facing serious recruitment challenges. A life of service to God is a hard sell for every denomination in a materialistic culture that touts six-figure salaries and fast cars as the benchmark of fulfillment.
But if the Catholic Church allowed priests to marry, there would be other complications as well. Father David Medow, 47, of the Diocese of Joliet, knows that first-hand. A former Lutheran pastor who converted to Catholicism in 1996, Father Medow received a dispensation from Rome to be ordained to the Catholic priesthood as a married man.
“It would fundamentally misunderstand the issue if, by allowing married priests, we would automatically ensure numbers sufficient to minister to the people of God,” Medow said. “To ordain married clergy is to trade one set of challenges for another.”
One of those challenges would be maintaining the delicate balance between work and family. Married clergy have made an ultimate promise and obligation to two different entities. According to Medow, the family almost always loses.
“My obligations in my parish work often take me away from time when I would prefer to be with kids. I can't go their ball games, or recitals or school plays,” Medow said.
A second challenge would be financial. Most priests in the United States earn a yearly salary in the neighborhood of $20,000, paid by donations from the collection basket.
Even if that number were to triple, what guarantee is there that droves of married men would leave higher paying jobs to line up at the seminary doors? And realistically, how many Catholics in the pews would be willing to triple their Sunday offerings?
If certain small but vocal Catholic groups want married priests, they have to be willing to put their money where their mouth is.
Third, the possibility of marital difficulties cannot be discounted. How will Catholics react if their parish priest is going through a divorce? To deny that such a thing would never happen is naïve, given the stress placed on the families of married clergy.
Finally, it is categorically false to link celibacy to the sexual abuse of minors, as if to say, “If only priests could marry, then there would be no more pedophiles.”
Sexual abuse is a tragic sin committed across the board by married and single people from all walks of life, though this heinous crime seems to make the front page only if the perpetrator is a Catholic priest.
It is a common misconception that priests are dissatisfied with celibacy and clamoring for change. In his 2004 book, Priests, Father Andrew Greeley noted that most priests surveyed are very happy as celibates, despite the fact that most in our pan-sexual American society look strangely upon their lifestyle.
But more than that, celibacy has value in and of itself for Catholic priests and nuns. It is not primarily a functional matter, adopted so that we can work longer hours. It has a spiritual dimension which is really the primary reason we in the Church regard it as a gift, not an onerous sacrifice.
For one, a celibate is a living sign here on Earth of how things will be in heaven (see Mark 12:25). Furthermore, celibacy is a sign of total dedication to Christ and to the people of God, and becomes therefore a motive for pastoral charity. Any priest or sister will tell you that lay people welcome them with an almost implicit trust and intimacy. As Father William Bausch of Trenton, N.J., put it, “I was a father of no one, yet father to everyone.” I was, he said, “an unspoken family member” of every person in the parish.
The result is often great personal fulfillment. Father Stephen Rossetti of the Washington D.C.-based St. Luke's Institute found that 90% of priests were happy overall. In a 2004 article in America, Rossetti wrote: “The picture of the priesthood as largely populated by single, isolated males made dysfunctional by years of celibate, Catholic living is a fiction.”
Now, I'm not interested in whitewashing celibacy; it does entail an enormous sacrifice. Wearing a Roman collar doesn't make attraction to the opposite sex go away. Nevertheless, I believe that celibacy can be an asset, not a hindrance, in recruiting for the priesthood.
There are many examples today of men and women who have given up far more than I have. I'm thinking of those members of the military who have left behind fiancés and spouses to serve our country overseas; some have even made the ultimate sacrifice. If they responded to their calling, how can I not respond to mine?
In the midst of this crisis, perhaps we need to challenge young people to choose priesthood by emphasizing celibacy, not soft-pedaling it. When the Marines recruit, they don't say: “Well, if you're looking for an easy, comfortable life, join us.”
What attracts young people to the Marine Corps is the challenge; it's tough, but the calling is bigger than you. So is the priesthood. It's about serving a cause greater than all of us.
A recent article in The Washington Times seemed to confirm this. Today's seminarians, the Times reported, are strongly motivated by the image of the priest as a warrior for the good, and are willing to embrace a life of sacrifice to this end.
In his book, The Priest Is not His Own, the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen said much the same. “Could it be that one reason for the lack of vocations is our failure to stress sacrifice? The young … want a mission, a challenge! When we follow the type of advertising appeal used by Madison Avenue to sell toothpaste, when we use commercial techniques in our vocation literature, do not the hearts of the young spurn our distance from the Cross?”
It is true that the pastoral needs of the Church still outweigh the number of newly ordained, but there is good news in that the numbers of men joining the celibate priesthood is on the rise.
Worldwide, vocations are up 75% from 20 years ago, and today there are 5,200 seminarians studying for the priesthood for the U.S. dioceses and orders, reported Father Edward Burns, the Director of Vocations for the Washington D.C.-based U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
There are currently 200 men studying at Chicago's Mundelein Seminary. This fall, the seminary welcomed one of the largest first-year classes in recent history.
Father Medow, who studies part-time at Mundelein, is very confident in the future of the celibate priesthood. “With the men I know at the seminary, it gives me great hope for the Church.”
I wholeheartedly concur.
Raymond Cleaveland writes from Chicago's Mundelein Seminary.
rcleaveland@usml.edu
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond Cleaveland ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: A Turn in the Tide? DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:EDITORIAL
Abortion is being talked about in a whole new way.
Abortion has always been a tough subject for politicians whose natural inclination is to try to please everybody. Politicians try to signal their support to activists on one side of the debate or the other while not offending the “mushy middle” — the many voters who haven't formed strong opinions on the issue and are spooked by strident rhetoric from both sides.
But it seems that in the debate over Harriet Miers, there is a new willingness for straight talk on abortion. Straight talk was forced on President Bush. Facing a revolt of pro-lifers over his new Supreme Court pick, the White House had to make very clear where she stood. So the White House arranged for the right pro-family people to talk to the right people from Miers’ church, and the word was passed: Harriet Miers is pro-life.
Coincidentally, prominent journalists — female and male — have started talking about abortion in a new way.
Patricia Bauer is a former Washington Post bureau chief who has a Down syndrome daughter. She's starting to notice that many people see her daughter not as the beautiful person she knows, but as someone who ought to be dead.
Her Oct. 18 column asks, “Why … do we as a society view abortion as justified and unremarkable in the case of another class of people: children with disabilities?”
Mothers are given tests in pregnancy nowadays whose only purpose is to determine whether their child has Down syndrome so that they can abort them. The columnist is well aware of this — and so are the people she and her daughter meet.
“I know that most women of childbearing age that we may encounter have judged her and her cohort, and have found their lives to be not worth living. To them, Margaret falls into the category of avoidable human suffering. At best, a tragic mistake. At worst, a living embodiment of the pro-life movement. Less than human. A drain on society. That someone I love is regarded this way is unspeakably painful to me.”
Bauer remembers the tempting logic of death she heard from an Ivy League ethics professor who spoke at a party about women's “moral obligation to undergo prenatal testing and to terminate their pregnancy to avoid bringing forth a child with a disability, because it was immoral to subject a child to the kind of suffering he or she would have to endure.”
She compares America today to ancient Greece, where babies with disabilities were left outside to die. Her doctor says he used to have a steady stream of Down syndrome patients, but not anymore.
“They aren't being born anymore,” he says.
Bauer concludes: “I have to think that there are many pro-choicers who, while paying obeisance to the rights of people with disabilities, want at the same time to preserve their right to ensure that no one with disabilities will be born into their own families. The abortion debate is not just about a woman's right to choose whether to have a baby; it's also about a woman's right to choose which baby she wants to have.”
How is this sad state of affairs a turn in the tide? Well, for one thing, the problem is being acknowledged — the first step to recovery. For another, the voice of the mother is starting to be heard. Abortion thrives on silence — particularly the silence of the women involved. If women directly affected by abortion — those who chose it, and those who rejected it — are given a hearing, unrestricted abortion's days are numbered.
Of course, men need to be part of the conversation. Enter influential syndicated columnist Richard Cohen. In an Oct. 21 column that is sharply critical of the legal logic that led to the Supreme Court's legalization of abortion, he wrote:
“I no longer see abortion as directly related to sexual freedom or feminism, and I no longer see it strictly as a matter of personal privacy, either.”
He can now say, “It entails questions about life.” Exactly. Once women tell the story that abortion has not been good for them, life questions can be heard, too.
Where is the tide-change on abortion coming from? Cohen says he knows “plenty of people who no longer think of it as a minor procedure that only prudes and right-wingers oppose. The anti-abortion movement has made headway.”
Indeed it has — witness the new “straight talk” on a procedure previously spoken about in euphemisms and the increasing enlightenment of influential journalists. Which should give us confidence. And inspire us to redouble our efforts.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Accept No Substitutes DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:FACTS OF LIFE
One of the longest and most detailed studies of childcare in the United Kingdom has concluded that — surprise! — young children who are looked after by their mothers do significantly better in developmental tests than those cared for in daycare or by babysitters or relatives. According to Penelope Leach, a leading British childcare expert and one of the study's authors, the social and emotional development of children cared for by someone other than their mother is “definitely less good.”
Source: The Observer, Oct. 2 Illustration by Tim Rauch
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Our Lady of Fatima and the Muslims DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:I was standing in the express line of Shop Rite with my groceries.
A pleasant young cashier soon helped me. As I handed my $15.85 to her, I noticed her tag identified her as Fatima. We chatted. Fatima is a Muslim.
Therein is a story. The extraordinary Archbishop Fulton Sheen wrote a book in 1952 that he called The World's First Love. In that book, he discussed the relationship of Mary of Nazareth and the Muslims. More than half a century later, the archbishop's book stands as prophetic.
First some background. The Koran, the Muslims’ bible, has references to Mary's Immaculate Conception as well as the Virgin Birth. Her genealogy is traced back to Abraham, Noah and Adam. There is reference made to Mary's mother.
In the Muslim tradition, when questions are asked about the possibility of a virgin birth, Mary takes on the questioner. The tradition has her asking, “Do you not know that God, when he created wheat, had no need of seed?” Mary pushes further, “God by his power made the trees without the help of rain.”
The Koran speaks of the Annunciation, Visitation and Nativity. The 19th chapter of the Koran has 41 verses on Jesus and Mary. The 41st chapter appears to have been borrowed from the Gospel of Luke.
The only possible rival to Mary among the Muslims is Fatima. She was the daughter of the seventh-century Mohammed. But after Fatima's death at around age 26, the sorrowful Mohammed penned a message to his child, “Thou shalt be the most blessed of women in Paradise after Mary.”
And this brings us to the famed Fatima of Portugal. Mary appeared to shepherd children in Fatima in 1917. Before the vision, this hamlet was a cipher to both Portugal and Europe at large. The question before 1917, when asked at all, was, “Can any good come out of Fatima?” Today we know the answer.
Ironically, the Marian phenomenon that happened to this once unknown hamlet may prove the salvation of both Portugal and her sister countries in post-Christian Europe. On two different occasions, then Christian Europe almost fell to the Muslims.
On the first occasion, the Muslims reached Tours in west central France in the eighth century before being defeated. The second time in the 16th century the Muslims rudely struck on the gates of Austria's Vienna. They were defeated at the naval battle of Lepanto off Greece in 1571, Mary played a significant role. That naval victory occurred in October, the month traditionally given to honor her.
Sheen believed that Mary deliberately chose to be known as Our Lady of Fatima in the early 20th century. She wished to better appeal to Muslims. He believes that one day through her Muslims will also accept her Son as their Savior.
The archbishop reminds us that Portugal was occupied by the Muslims from the eighth century through the 13th. This hamlet of Fatima has of course strong name recognition to Muslims everywhere.
Sheen contended that the Muslims will one day become Christians. But he asserts this will not be accomplished by the Christian catechism but by Mary. For a start, Muslims already venerate her. Mary is for them the authentic Sayyida (Lady). Tradition says that Fatima herself said, “I surpass all the women except Mary.” Once again, it will be ad Jesus per Mariam (to Jesus through Mary).
Then the choice of Fatima for Mary's apparitions was no accident at all. Neither is her almost century-old title, Our Lady of Fatima. Mary is telling Muslims everywhere that she is user-friendly. She comes to them with batteries already provided.
The Muslims have not failed to salute her. Her pilgrim statue of Fatima has been joyously saluted in the countries of Africa and Asia where it has visited. During these festivities, Muslims came to our churches to fete Our Lady of Fatima. Processions were allowed to proceed in front of mosques and there prayers were recited. Sheen wrote in 1952, “In Mozambique, the unconverted Muslims began to be Christian when the statue of Our Lady of Fatima was erected.”
We must convince the Muslims that Mary could not be the most blessed among women without being responsible for some stupendous event. That event of course was the birth of the God-Man. We must show them that without his birth Mary, in the archbishop's words, “would be nothing.”
Those of us, who have misplaced our rosaries, must relocate them. We must use those beads for the conversion of Muslims. We prayed that same prayer successfully for the downfall of communism following the Russian Revolution in 1917. That was the year Mary visited Fatima. Was she telling us something?
Mary will not fail us. But neither must we fail her.
Father James Gilhooley is the author of Reflections on the Sunday Gospels (4th edition) available at 1-800-566-6150.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Father James Gilhooley ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: ZORRO SWINGS AND MISSES DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:Eight years ago, The Mask of Zorro was one of the year's best surprises.
Thrilling, heartbreaking, witty, romantic and largely family-friendly, it was at once true to the spirit of the classic period actioners and also thoroughly of its own time.
With its PG rating, The Legend of Zorro is ostensibly even more family-friendly than the PG-13 original. Alas, that's just about the only category in which this belated sequel outdoes the classy original. Director Martin Campbell is back, along with returning stars Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones — though Anthony Hopkins as the original Zorro is sorely missed. And so are the thrills, wit and romance. After the high standard set by the original, The Legend of Zorro ranks among this year's biggest disappointments.
Ratings notwithstanding, is The Legend of Zorro really even more family-friendly than The Mask of Zorro? Certainly the filmmakers are courting family audiences in a new way this time around. If a horse burps, swigs wine, puffs on a pipe and even gets CGI-enhanced reaction shots in which his eyes widen at impending danger, it must be a family film.
The swordplay is even less deadly this time around, though characters are killed in other ways, notably involving nitroglycerin explosions. And certainly there's nothing like the original's gross-out scene with a decapitated head in a jar of water (though one bad guy watches wide-eyed as a drop of “nitro” falls toward his face; the actual explosion is mercifully off-screen).
Yet which of the four credited writers thought that family audiences — or anyone else — wanted to see the 10-year marriage of Zorro II (Banderas) and Mrs. Zorro (Zeta-Jones) on the rocks? Who thought we wanted to see Alejandro served with divorce papers just as he was about to go home and beg his wife's forgiveness? Was it meant to make matters better or worse that Elena divorced her husband only partly because she was angry at him, but also — unbeknownst to him — partly as a ruse enabling her to take up with an old flame from Spain (Rufus Sewell) in order to spy on him and discover his nefarious plans for California?
Didn't anyone have misgivings about the soirée scene in which a jealous Alejandro furiously chugs glass after glass of wine, then drunkenly brawls with Elena on the dance floor in a pathetic, cringe-inducing echo of the first film's sultry tango scene? Didn't anyone realize that we want the hero of a Zorro movie to be above this kind of loutish behavior?
It was different in The Mask of Zorro, where Alejandro's rough edges were offset by the grace and class of Hopkins's Diego de la Vega. Alejandro may have started out as a drunken lout, but Mask didn't ask us to accept him as a satisfactory Zorro until he had made a lot of progress from there. Whether it's plausible that Alejandro might slide back into his loutish behavior is beside the point — the point is that it's no fun.
What are Zorro and Mrs. Zorro fighting about in the first place? In their first scene together, Elena accuses Alejandro of caring more about being Zorro than about his own family, and not even knowing his own son. Are you tired yet?
You may be thinking about how The Incredibles, one of the best family films in years, covered similar territory. But Brad Bird's CGI heroes quarreled with far more humanity, depth, affection and nuance than Campbell's live-action cartoon characters. Elastigirl would never have threatened Mr. Incredible that if he walked out that door, he wasn't sleeping there tonight. And if for some reason she had gotten that mad at him, Mr. Incredible would never have walked out the door.
Although Alejandro and Elena each seem to think that the other is at least partly at fault, the filmmakers, as far as I can tell, seem basically to agree with Elena. Only Alejandro wrestles with self-doubt and weakness. Only he is rebuked by the priest, who tells him not to bother coming to confession until he goes back to Elena (reasonable advice, but why doesn't he say the same to Elena?). Only Alejandro is repeatedly humbled, from the drunken brawl at the soirée culminating in Elena slapping his face, to a crucial scene in which, held at knifepoint and forcibly stripped of his mask in front of his enemies and family, Alejandro solemnly tells Elena on his knees that “Family is my life.”
Cartoonish Charm
Yet by the end, without any evident change of heart, Elena is suddenly much more accepting of Alejandro's masked alter ego. “It's who we are,” she smiles, seeing him off to save the world with her blessing. Couldn't she have taken that line at the beginning of the film and saved all that trouble? Or are things different now because Alejandro finally has his priorities straight? What, specifically, is going to be different from now on? It's almost as if Alejandro doesn't really have to change, as long as he admits he was wrong.
What about Zorro's positive religious milieu? Here The Legend of Zorro is a mixed bag. In general, the Church is positively portrayed, with one priest in particular supporting the heroes against the villains to the point of heroism. Another less sympathetic priest is the butt of some silly Home Alone-style slapstick. The really dissonant religious element, though, is a nasty, racist villain with a cross-shaped scar carved in one cheek, who sneers constantly about “doing the Lord's work.” (By the way, in the end, Alejandro and Elena are remarried by a priest, which makes no sacramental sense.)
What about action? Here at least Legend manages to entertain, if not thrill. Mask of Zorro was thrilling because the action, while exaggerated, was more or less within the realm of what could really be done, if not necessarily by a real masked vigilante in actual combat situations, at least by skilled stand-ins in front of cameras in carefully rehearsed stunts. Legend, though, goes way beyond that, kicking up its hero past Batman-level acrobatics to near Spider-Man level super-heroics. The film's big set pieces play like a parody of a Zorro movie, though on that cartoony level they're enjoyable enough.
The rest of the movie, though, is more like Fantastic Four: a would-be “funny family action film” whose key qualification as kid entertainment is that it isn't good enough for grown-ups. Too bad. Our kids deserve better. For that matter, so do we.
Content advisory: Much stylized violence; marital discord and divorce; mixed depiction of religious figures including a weirdly religious villain. Okay for teens and up.
Steven D. Greydanus is editor and chief critic of DecentFilms.com.
----- EXCERPT: Sequel lacks the optimism of the original ----- EXTENDED BODY: Steven D. Greydanus ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Time to Cash In and Move On? DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:FAMILY MATTERS
My mother is 90 years old and lives in Omaha, as do many of our relatives. Omaha is the area we are both originally from. I would like to sell our home and move back there. My husband will do this, but considers it unwise since he is 67 and I am 63. To move, we would have to sell our home and cash in about $90,000 in mutual funds. What do you think?
I encourage you to consider your question from three perspectives. First, as it relates to your marriage, second as it relates to your mother's needs and, finally, considering your financial situation.
Remember the importance of considering the needs and concerns of your husband. It is important for you to discuss the various issues involved with him in order to honor your marriage sacrament. Remember the words in Genesis 2:24, “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”
An open, loving discussion between the two of you can go a long way toward better understanding the pros and cons of each option, and drawing you together as you make a decision.
Here are some starter questions. Does your husband have any concerns, other than financial ones, regarding relocation to Omaha? Would you both prefer to live in Omaha even after your mom passes on? I'm sorry to mention that, but it's an important question. I'm sure you and your husband will come up with additional issues that should be considered as well.
Second, obviously you'll want to make a decision that honors your mother, remembering St. Paul's words to Timothy: “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8). What you and your husband will need to work through is determining the best way for you to be involved with your mom.
If other family members are in a position to take the lead regarding Mom's care, and your desire to move is more a function of being close to your mother and your family, you could consider making periodic, extended trips to Omaha. You might find that fulfills your desire to be close while also providing a good answer as it relates to your finances.
The third area to consider is the financial impact of a move. I would encourage you to prepare a “pro-forma” budget for the Omaha scenario. Such a budget should take into account changes in income and expenses related to such a move. Ask yourselves whether now is the right time to put more of your resources into a home and relocation. Do you have to dip into your savings to such a level that you are concerned about being able to make ends meet? Do you have adequate funds set aside for retirement if you tap into the mutual funds you mentioned? Remember to take into account any taxes you would incur on the sale of the home and of the mutual funds.
Once you have taken into consideration the needs of your marriage, your mother and your financial circumstances — and you have spent time in prayer with your husband — you'll be in a position to make a decision that honors your mom and your marriage.
God love you!
Phil Lenahan is available to present his seminar
The Road to True
Financial Freedom to parishes and other groups.
For information, go to catholic.com/seminars.asp.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Phil Lenahan ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Letters to the Editor DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:HARRIET MIERS: FRIEND, FOE OR UNFORMED?
In your editorial titled “Give Miers a Chance” (Oct. 16-22), you ask: Which is Harriet Miers — the dangerous unknown, or the overly familiar?
Here is the answer. She is dangerously unknown to all of us, and unfortunately, overly familiar with Mr. Bush — which doesn't give us any assurance that she will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, but precisely the opposite. The White House spokesman, Mike McClellan, all but said that Mrs. Laura Bush, who is pro-abortion, was pleased if not instrumental in selecting Ms. Miers. Mr. Bush also doesn't believe in the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
When are we as Catholics going to learn that those in public office who do not acknowledge the evil of every abortion, and fight against it are not on our side, but on the other side? Let's remember what Christ said: “What you do to the least of my children you do unto me.”
Do President Bush and others who are in favor of abortion for those children who are victims of rape, incest and other unwanted situations represent this?
DONAL MCGUIRE
Springfield, Pennsylvania
Your editorial “Give Miers a Chance” (Oct. 16-22) knocks down a straw man, is shockingly naïve and is an affront to your readers’ intelligence.
It is always uncomfortable to admit that one has been misled and used, but it is ultimately never helpful to cover over difficult truths with wishful thinking and platitudes. While he is capable of repeating some stock pro-life phrases on the campaign trail, when it comes to spending political capital, for president Bush pro-life issues are a very low priority. There is simply no other tenable interpretation of the Miers nomination.
The president is ready to put himself on the line for a John Bolton and the war in the Middle East; his pro-life supporters, however, have to content themselves with symbolism and unfulfilled campaign rhetoric. The promise to appoint a Scalia or a Thomas to the high court was an applause line designed to motivate pro-lifers to vote Republican, and it succeeded tremendously. Turnout of core supporters was the key to Mr. Bush's recent election victory.
The political capital of the president and the Republicans in Congress was earned on the backs of pro-lifers. Our support was bought with the promise of a Scalia and repaid with a contemptuous “Trust me on this one.” Would anyone buy a car knowing nothing about it except the dealer's plea for trust?
Pro-lifers need to shed their preconceptions and withhold their support from the president unless Miers is withdrawn. While matters might be difficult at this point, they are not impossible; Miers is not yet confirmed and criticism is growing.
Yet the thinking of the Register is so stereotyped to accept the pro-life image of the president (one carefully crafted for political gain) that it misses the gravity of this situation.
PHILIP HAROLD
Steubenville, Ohio
Talking about Teaching
I read with intense interest “Safety Programs in Dioceses Raise Questions” (Oct. 23-29). Your reporter, Judy Roberts, does an excellent job in highlighting several concerns regarding these programs, which were intended to protect children in our schools and extra-curricular activities from sexual predators.
The article points out that some of these programs exclude parental involvement. Even the best of the bunch, “Formation in Christian Chastity” from the Harrisburg, Pa., Diocese, appears to involve parents only peripherally with take-home discussion questions. One program founder even acknowledged that “parents don't know how” to provide this kind of training on their own, even when they are provided with the materials.
Let us state this case more pointedly. Catholic schools are attempting to fill a void in training and formation of children, which is properly the role of parents. If parents are not up to the task of training and forming their children, it is because we ourselves lack formation in those areas. While it may be an easier solution for schools to step in and provide those services directly to their students, a more appropriate response would be to form the parents.
I realize that this has been considered outside the scope and purview of schools. However, new challenges require new responses, even new vision.
For us Catholics, education has always been a necessary part of the formation of character, mind and conscience. This overarching formation is best provided in the context of family. As Pope John Paul II said: “The future of humanity passes by way of the family.”
Successful formation in the 21st century will involve the entire family. It is in this way that the re-Christianization of the culture will take place. Ignoring parents, or allowing them to play only a peripheral role in the formation of their children, will not bring an overwhelming success; it will only perpetuate mediocrity. I would recommend that schools rethink their mission in light of what families need in this era of New Evangelization.
Fortunately, in the last decade or so there have emerged a few good adult-formation programs that have addressed this need. These programs dramatically exceed what is usually expected of “adult education” classes typically provided in parishes. An article about such programs would be most welcome.
PAUL EBY
Whitehouse, Ohio
Disciple of Dissent
Your article “Pope Benedict's Summer of Listening” (Oct. 9-15) gave us news of the Holy Father's visit with Father Hans Küng, a dissident theologian.
It brought to mind an old saying: “A half-truth is worse than a lie.” Your correspondent in Rome mentions that Father Küng “questioned the dogma of papal infallibility” and left out the many heterodox tenets Father Kung is selling still today. Which, to me, is only a fraction of the truth regarding Father Küng.
For example, in his book On Being a Christian, Father Küng denies the divinity of Christ (p. 130), dismisses the miracles of the Gospel (p. 233), denies the bodily resurrection of Jesus (p. 350), denies that Christ founded an institutional Church (p. 109) and denies the Mass is a re-presentation of Calvary (p. 323).
He has never retracted these heretical statements and has caused many other priests to dissent on dogmas.
ROSEMARY T. O'REGAN
Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts
Embryonic Brethren
“The Plan-B Process” (Letters, Oct. 9-15), is an outstanding look at the problems inherent in the so-called “emergency contraception.”
Just one point could have received more emphasis because of the confusion generated by those who fallaciously redefine pregnancy to begin at implantation of the embryo in the womb. That all our lives begin at the fertilization of our mother's ova by our father's sperm is a biological fact, not subject to differing views or redefinition.
Arguing against contraceptives and embryonic stem-cell research, a physician friend puts it this way: “Implantation of an embryo in the womb is only one step, occurring five to seven days into a pregnancy that results in birth, childhood, maturity, middle and old age and death. Truly it is an awesome process from the outset.”
Following the Angel Gabriel's annunciation to Mary that she was to be the mother of God, we read in St. Luke that “Mary went in haste to the town of Judah … and saluted Elizabeth. And it came to pass, when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, that the babe in her womb leapt. And Elizabeth … cried out … ‘How have I deserved that the mother of my Lord should come to me?’”
The distance between Nazareth and Judah is 60 miles, my physician friend notes. Going “in haste,” Mary would reach Judah in three or four days. The awesome reality is that both Elizabeth and her son, John the Baptist, six months in utero, recognized the divine personhood of Jesus before he implanted in Mary's womb. And we also must recognize the dignity of Jesus’ embryonic brothers!
WILLIAM LUKSIC
Rockville, Maryland
Catholic Students Count
Thank you for your insightful Catholic College Survey (Sept. 25-Oct. 1).
Statistics tell us there are approximately 6 million Catholic students in higher education at secular universities and approximately 500,000 in Catholic institutions. Secular schools like Texas A&M, Arizona State, Michigan State, Michigan, University of Wisconsin, and the University of Kansas (and many, many more) all have great Catholic campus-ministry programs and 10,000-plus Catholic students on their secular campuses.
Perhaps one day it would be a great service in which the Register could work with CCMA (Catholic Campus Ministry Association) to highlight these Catholic campus ministries for parents who can't afford tuition at a Catholic university but would like their young adults to attend a school with a great Catholic campus-ministry program.
I enjoy reading each edition of the Register, keeping up to date with matters of the faith.
FATHER DAN COOK
Pastor, Holy Cross Church and Director of Holy Cross Campus Ministry Northwestern State University Natchitoches, Louisiana
Signposts by the Street
Regarding “The Battle Over Roadside Memorials” (Oct. 9-15):
We have activist groups trying to stamp out faith from the public eye and, with it, freedom. A freedom that was purchased with countless lives of men and women who believed in life, who believed in that freedom. All to be thrown away by selfish, money-grubbing and egotistical politicians who claim patriotism. To be tossed aside by court judges who impose and enforce their own ideologies and fanatical anti-religion, anti-life terrorism. A few exceptions are fighting for life, liberty and freedom.
It's starting with “under God” in the pledge, and roadside monuments. Tomorrow it will be crosses and monuments in cemeteries because someone driving by is offended. The next day it will be crosses atop a steeple and stained-glass windows. Can't even put private property in that list; it's already gone with the “eminent domain” ruling our “great court” handed down.
Hope still remains, though: Throughout history, good has won. Jesus trampled death. So why does our Christian culture embrace it so?
Let's just pray that this situation in America, the land of the free, doesn't come to gulags and concentration camps, full of political prisoners that express their faith God, Allah or Buddha. This problem is for all religions. May God help America in our darkest hour yet.
WILLIAM M. BISSON
Westfield, Massachusetts
EWTN Energizes
Relevant to “The Triumph of Rita Rizzo” (Commentary, Oct. 23-29):
EWTN is celebrating 25 years of Catholic broadcasting. It is through EWTN's founder, Mother Mary Angelica, and by her courage and her faith and trust in God, that EWTN is what it is today.
We are all grateful for the wonderful programs on EWTN. They inspire us, educate us and nourish our faith. The network comforts the sorrowful, counsels the doubtful and instructs the ignorant. EWTN is the embodiment of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. EWTN is the beacon of light in an even darkening world.
Let us all thank Mother Angelica for her heroic sacrifice by supporting her with our love, our prayer and our financial help so that EWTN will continue for the next 25 years and beyond.
MARY PHELAN-HAMMEL
Lakewood, New Jersey
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Holocaust Studies Refresher Course DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:“Learning About Atrocity,” an article by Richard Quinn, is historically inaccurate.
It ran in the Asbury Park Press this past summer, but it's like many articles of its kind. It describes how “a half-dozen New Jersey teachers listen to a woman talk about how frustration with the Roman Catholic Church affected life in 1940s France.”
The speaker explained how “anti-Church sentiment angered many who believed the Church didn't do enough to stop the mass killings of Jews and other groups.”
This is not true. Is New Jersey Holocaust selective? Does it include the Jewish testimonials about Catholics? Did this crash course in Holocaust studies include any of these following statements?
The Australian Jewish News (April 16, 1943) quoted Cardinal Gerlier, who strongly opposed the deportations of French Jews and sheltered Jewish children, as saying that he was obeying Pius XII's instructions by continuing to oppose France's anti-Semitic measures.
Catholic leaders protested against the maltreatment of Jews according to The New York Times. In a pastoral letter read from all pulpits of the Diocese of Toulouse in late August, Bishop Saliege denounced the Jewish persecution openly: “In the concentration camps in our diocese, horrible things are happening against the Jews, who are human beings like we are. Every imaginable cruelty is permitted against them. There are rights of man given by God to the human race which should not be violated. Jewish children, women and men are treated like cattle (Sept. 3, 1942, p. 5, col. 1).”
Letters and protests by the Catholic bishops in occupied France were read from Church pulpits urging Catholics to help persecuted Jews: “Many Catholic leaders in unoccupied France are sheltering children of Jews, and their defiance of orders to surrender them has brought about an open rift between the Vichy government and priests” (Sept. 9, 1942, p. 9, col. 4-5).
Early on, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, speaking at Lourdes as Pope Pius XI's delegate to France, for the closing days of the Jubilee Year honoring the 19th centenary of Redemption, described the Nazis as “possessed by the superstition of race and blood,” and declared that “the Church does not consent to form a compact with them at any price.” Describing the speech, The New York Times headlined its story (April 29, 1935): “Nazis Warned at Lourdes.”
In a report filed with the U.S. State Department in 1939, Alfred W. Klieforth, U.S. consul general in Berlin, after a three-hour meeting “to discuss the situation in Germany” described Cardinal Pacelli's views: “He opposed unilaterally every compromise with National Socialism. He regarded Hitler not only as an untrustworthy scoundrel but as a fundamentally wicked person. He did not believe Hitler capable of moderation, in spite of appearances, and he fully supported the German bishops in their anti-Nazi stand.”
On Dec. 25, 1940, The New York Times editorialized: “If the Pope [Pius XII] in his Christmas message had intended to condemn Hitler's system, he could not have done it more effectively than by describing the ‘moral order’ which must govern human society. The Pontiff pointed out that the foundation of the moral order is trust, ‘Fidelity in the observance of pacts.’ Without trust — and this war has demonstrated the truth of his words — the coexistence of powerful and weak peoples is impossible. The moral order cannot be based on hatred, on the principle that ‘might makes right,’ on ‘economic maladjustment,’ on ‘the spirit of cold egoism,’ which leads to the violation of the sovereignty of states and the liberty of their citizens. The moral order, in a word, is in complete contradiction to Hitler's order.”
Pius XII wrote his first encyclical in 1939. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency in New York reported (Oct. 27, 1939): “The unqualified condemnation which Pope Pius XII heaped on totalitarian, racist and materialistic theories of government in his encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, caused a profound stir. … Few observers had expected so outspoken a document.” The New York Times printed the entire encyclical which clearly condemned racism and totalitarianism.
Its reporter Anne O'Hare McCormick wrote: “The Bishops have taken the unusual step of circulating among the people the official protest they have addressed to the Government. … This confirms that the Catholic Church has followed the Jews as the scapegoat of the Nazis” (June 10, 1942).
Michael Tagliacozzo, a Jewish historian and eyewitness, wrote: “Pope Pacelli was the only one who intervened to impede the deportation of Jews on Oct. 16, 1943, and he did very much to hide and save thousands of us. It was no small matter that he ordered the opening of cloistered convents. Without him, many of our own would not be alive.”
Throughout World War II, Pius XII continually condemned Nazi policies. He so provoked the Nazis that they called him “a mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.”
All experts who witnessed that era agree that, if Pius XII had stridently attacked the Nazi leaders, more lives would have been lost. Robert Kempner, the American deputy chief of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal stated: “All the arguments and writings eventually used by the Catholic Church only provoked suicide; the execution of Jews was followed by that of Catholic priests.”
Catholics were engaged in the greatest Christian rescue program in the history of Catholicism. Beyond doubt, Pius XII was a diplomat who steered a careful course through chaos. His many acts of mercy speak for themselves.
There is a current campaign underway to vilify Pope Pius XII, to divide Catholics, and to undermine papal authority. Catholics must confront the unjust and vindictive attacks on Pius XII, aimed at eventually silencing the strong moral voice of the Church in the person of the vicar of Christ, Benedict XVI.
By what right do some critics discount the testimonials of survivors and rescuers?
Religious Teachers Fillipini Sister Margherita Marchione, Ph.D., has written more than 50 books. She lectures widely in North America and Europe.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Sister Margherita Marchione ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: National Media Watch DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:Catholic Senator Contemplates Presidential Run
Brownback first ran for Congress in 1994. After being diagnosed with melanoma in 1995 he reevaluated his life and faith. Three years ago, with the sponsorship of Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., Brownback entered the Catholic Church.
Brownback has led efforts to ban human cloning and embryonic stem-cell research and has proposed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex “marriage.”
Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation said, “I mention him oftentimes to grass-roots people who call me and say: ‘What are we doing? We don't have a candidate in 2008.’”
Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Abortion for Prisoner
That decision came after Justice Clarence Thomas issued a temporary stay preventing the inmate's access to transportation. The full court, however, lifted Thomas’ stay Oct. 17 — without comment or an indication of which justices voted which way.
“We will be complying with the court order in this situation and transporting the inmate for the procedure,” said John Fougere, spokesman for the Missouri Corrections Department. He maintained, however, that transporting Missouri inmates for this elective procedure violates a 2005 law.
Over the past eight years, seven prisoners have been transported to receive abortions at a total cost of approximately $2,800 for Missouri taxpayers. Costs include the expense for fuel, as well as salaries for two custody officers to transport the inmate.
Traditional Orders Attract Young Women
“Young people want to be challenged,” said Sister Wendy McMenamy, of the Ohio-based Sisters of Reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which has grown to eight sisters in just two years. “They want to feel like they're giving up something for Jesus.”
“More traditional orders are attracting more applicants than progressive orders,” said Dean Hoge, sociology professor at The Catholic University of America. But, he added, “neither are attracting that many applicants.”
Diocese Fires Planned Parenthood Volunteer
FOX NEWS, Oct. 17 — Sacramento drama teacher Marie Bain has been fired from her job at Loretto High School by Bishop William Weigand for escorting clients for abortion at Planned Parenthood, reported Fox.
Bishop Weigand described Bain's “public participation in the procurement of abortions … morally inappropriate and unacceptable.”
Catholic schools Superintendent Dom Puglisi said that while teachers can hold private beliefs, their public actions cannot conflict with Church teachings.
Planned Parenthood said that Bain volunteered weekly escorting clients. The organization described the diocese's action as “disappointing.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'Significant Practical Developments' Will Result From Synod DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY — Cardinal George Pell of Sydney, Australia, played a key role at the recent 11th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. He was one of 12 participants charged with drafting the synod's concluding “Message to the People of God,” and one of the four bishops who were selected to discuss the synod's outcome at a concluding press conference Oct. 22.
Cardinal Pell spoke with Register correspondent Edward Pentin during the synod's last week of meetings.
What has been the most successful aspect of the synod for you?
A couple of things. One very obvious point which we can take for granted and that is the unanimity on the essentials of the Eucharist. I don't think there's one bishop who has not endorsed the classical Catholic teaching on the Eucharist. That's a source of considerable comfort.
And a smaller thing is the hour for the free discussions — the new format has certainly been an improvement.
So overall the synod was a good opportunity for discussion?
Yes. Whether we need synods every three years, I'm not sure of that, or every three, four or five, but it's certainly a very important opportunity for representatives of the bishops from around the world to get together to express their mind, to hear what the Holy Father has to say, and also to inform the Curia and the Holy Father as to what the different Churches are thinking.
Some criticize synods for being consultative and not deliberative and therefore not very useful. What is your view?
[Being consultative] doesn't impair its usefulness in any sense at all. Obviously, 250 bishops are not 4,700 bishops, which is the number of Catholic bishops throughout the world. The fact that it's consultative — I wouldn't use the word “only” consultative — if there's a strong consensus on any point whatsoever by a synod, that is of great moral significance for the whole Church and for the Pope, though he's not bound to follow it. But he'll certainly deal with it very, very respectfully and that's very powerful.
He's been listening hard, hasn't he?
Yes, for sure.
It's been said in the past that popes have usually made up their mind before a synod. Do you think that's true in any sense?
Do you think there'd be many important Church issues for which a pope hadn't a clear idea of what he would like?
Were great advances made on the issues of priest shortages and the Eucharist for divorced and remarried Catholics?
There have been no spectacular theological developments or breakthroughs, but nobody expected that. Even recently there's been a lot written officially about the Eucharist. But there have been significant practical developments.
The endorsement of adoration — of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament — was one of the emerging, Catholic signs of the times but in some parts of the Catholic world in Australia and Oceania, this represents a novelty because in pockets there's still a reluctance on the part of priests to encourage prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.
It is significant that there was a bit of a push for the ordination of the viri probati [married men of “proven virtue”], and the synod has reaffirmed the importance of mandatory celibacy in the Church. That is one of the consequences of us refusing to, in any significant numbers, go down that path.
It's interesting that in the small groups, a non-Catholic Christian observer was pointing out very vigorously that ordination of viri probati wouldn't answer the spiritual challenges that we're facing.
Not a lot was said about the new English translation of the Mass.
No, there wasn't, because of the fact that these translations are going ahead, everyone knows that they're coming. It's an accepted fact, and I think there'll certainly be a significant improvement on what we've had. A lot of the work has been done already. It shows there's no great hostility to the new translations at all.
At what stage are you on the new translation? Is there a date for publication scheduled?
ICEL [the International Commission on English in the Liturgy] is drawing up a timetable, and not necessarily the approvals but the translations will probably be completed round about the end of 2007. But ICEL is working on a timetable now and I think that's a useful development.
What are the main difficulties still to be ironed out?
It's just getting competent translators who know the Latin. It is difficult work to write beautiful and appropriate sacral English that faithful translates the Latin. If you want mediocre English and want to abandon difficult elements of the Latin for theological or other reasons, then of course it's much easier to pump something out. It's much more difficult to do something accurately sometimes, and takes time. But it is being done, and being done well.
Many of the interventions from the developing world were about the Eucharist and social justice. What was your view on this?
The bread of life for a broken world — undoubtedly you're celebrating the Eucharist at its best and most effective when it's bringing consolation to people in the midst of suffering. I think it would be a bit unreal not mention these sorts of difficulties.
What are your own views on how to increase vocations and Mass attendance?
There's no quick fix, there's no easy answer. It's just long, hard, slow work to the call to conversion, and there's no substitute for faith and prayer.
What will you take back to your own flock in Australia?
One of the things I will mention to them is the boost that the synod has given for prayerful adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, which is supplementary to the Celebration of the Eucharist.
Digressing slightly, I was just talking to one of my auxiliary bishops today and telling him how successful the meeting of the youngsters, the first Communion with the Pope, was. That's perhaps something we might try to do.
The emphasis on the homilies, set of themes during the year, provides background on the Eucharist, Writings from the fathers, the Catechism and the Scriptures will help priests teach more effectively on the nature of the Eucharist. I think the Holy Father's point that the Eucharist is a sacrificial ritual as much as it is a meal is obviously very important.
Edward Pentin writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Edward Pentin ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Reflections on the Eucharistic Synod DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., attended the 11th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops.
The synod officially brought the Year of the Eucharist to a close Oct. 23. Bishops from all over the world came together to discuss “The Eucharist: Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church,” and Pope Benedict XVI was an avid observer of the sessions. And, after each of the sessions, the Pope held one-hour “free discussions,” where synod fathers could explore different themes with the Holy Father.
Bishop Skylstad, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, spoke by telephone Oct. 10 with Register Correspondent Edward Pentin.
What aspect of the synod has made the most impact on you?
This is my first synod, and what I found most remarkable was the sense of universality of the Church.
When you have 256 bishops from all over the world — to listen to their varying viewpoints, the richness of their tradition and culture, and being profoundly in communion with the Church universal and the Holy See — I find it all really very remarkable. That's the first thing.
The second, for me personally, is the opportunity to meet and chat with those bishops, especially during the break times, people whom you hear give interventions in the hall and have the opportunity to chat with them, or a few of the bishops I've not seen for quite a few years since I was on the board of Catholic Relief Services and had a chance to visit them either in Latin America or Africa. Some I haven't seen for 10 or 12 years, so for me it's been a chance to restore those relationships.
Certainly for me, overall, the richness of the universality of the Church is just tremendous, and to listen to their own insights, their struggles, their own challenges — I find this very enriching.
The Holy Father introduced the chance to have a free discussion for an hour at the end of each day of the synod. Some say this “open forum” has encouraged more debate. How useful has that been to you?
I think it's been very good. It's the first time that they've had this, and actually it's been a fairly lively session — not so much debate as bishops simply offering their own reflections on the interventions that have been made during the day. It's interesting to note that the Holy Father made himself available for that session in the last hour of the day, just a remarkable spirit of generosity on his part in his wanting to listen to what the bishops have to say.
Do participants feel free to bring up any issue they choose during these free discussions?
Very much so. They're coming from all over the world, bringing different insights about the Church and especially about the liturgy and the Eucharist, differing challenges — some of them the same, some quite different. But yes, the bishops do feel free to share what they honestly feel in their heart.
Some commentators said the free discussions have “changed the culture” of the synod. Is this a true assessment?
I can't say because I've not been to a synod before, but certainly the open hour, later in the day, has given the bishops the opportunity to give a more immediate response. Before, the interventions were longer; now they've been reduced to six minutes. And the time of the synod has been shortened considerably. That is partly to make the time more efficient, but also because bishops’ lives, perhaps more than ever, are very busy, and it's hard for them to be away from their dioceses for an extended period of time. I find listening to the interventions — even though there's one after another, and especially in these early days of the synod — really gives you a sense of what's going on all over the world and the challenges people have. I would also say that so far we have only had one small group meeting. There are 23 [participants] in my English-speaking group and, because of the smaller numbers, and representing only the English speaking world, that has been a very lively and interactive discussion.
Is the synod more consultative or deliberative in your view, and how much do you think the fruits of the synod will impact the Church?
Certainly, the synod itself is a consultative synod, but that doesn't mean that whatever comes through from the discussion is going to be taken lightly. The fact that the Holy Father has been there for a good many of the sessions shows that he is wanting to listen. Everyone is deeply concerned about how we address the Eucharist, how we can make it more vibrant and alive in the Church. The Second Vatican Council told us that this is the sacrament that is the source and summit of our life in the Church, where we see, in at least some parts of the world, a dropping off in attendance of the Eucharist dramatically, but some less so.
How do we make this sacrament really vibrant and alive in celebration and worship in our Church? That's something we're all facing, given the fact that, all of a sudden, as we look to a world that has become in some ways more and more secularized, we need to ask how can we help people appreciate the gift of the Eucharist, to be faithful to it, and make sure that it's a very important part of their spiritual lives.
In response to the secularization you mention, there have been certain rather controversial points raised which, of course, were picked up on in the secular press, such as the possibility of a married clergy to compensate for a shortage of priests, and the “rights to the Eucharist” for Catholics who have divorced and remarried. How much do you think these issues are being seriously considered?
I think, as we look at the secularization of cultures in many parts of the world — it has impacted us considerably in the United States, but there are European cultures too that have been greatly secularized — we need to ask how do we, as Church, address that in terms of evangelization.
I like Father Ronald Rolheiser's comment that secularization has come about, been spawned by the Church in terms of helping people to become educated and develop their gifts and talents and individual persons. But on the other hand, that can go too far in terms of people becoming too independent or moving into rugged individualism. How do we evangelize that culture? How do we evangelize the sense of secularism? That is the challenge.
And hearing from other participants from other parts of the world helps bishops rise to the challenge?
Yes, I think we all struggle with that and you have to remember that we're really relatively new in the world community with its continuous communication, with television, with mobility. That's all very, very new, and how can we address that reality in terms of secularization, and helping people to appreciate the value of the gifts that touch our lives and are life-giving? And certainly, the Eucharist is that in a superb way.
Before the synod began, some Vatican officials voiced concern that some bishops have not been abiding by recent Vatican and papal instructions on the Eucharist, and allowing abuses in the liturgy to continue. Is that a concern of yours? And do you think a “tightening up” of liturgical practice, as one official put it, will be something the bishops will take back to their dioceses?
There might be some of that. I know the document [Instrumentum Laboris] refers to the “shadow side.” But what has come up in the many interventions is that, yes, there are some shadow sides, but far more positively, the power of the liturgy in terms of what has happened since the Second Vatican Council has been tremendous. So, yes, there's always going to be a bit of slight abuse here and there. You don't want to see it, try to make sure it doesn't happen. But we need to look far more positively on all the tremendous good that has happened because of the liturgy. I think it's far greater than the shadow side.
What will happen at the end of the synod? What will be the final contributions of the bishops in the list of propositions?
I'm sure they will be somewhat involved in the discussion of the propositions and input will be given. Who knows exactly what those will be? There's only speculation at this point. I do think in general, though, that the bishops have a strong sense of solidarity and making sure that the Eucharist does stay at the center of the Church's life. Almost universally, there is a strong sense of feeling that we help our Catholic people in general all over the world, make sure that their spiritual lives are centered in on the Eucharist. That's an ongoing challenge for us and, to my way of thinking, an exciting one. The rich tradition of our sacramental celebration in the Church, and especially the wonderful tradition of the Eucharist, is just a powerful one and one for which we, as Catholics, need to be very, very grateful.
A recurring theme has also been the importance of catechesis?
That's right, and I think in general there's a feeling that we need to do a lot more catechesis, and that's a tough challenge, especially with people's lives filled with so much media today. If you take a look at the United States, the life of families, and the life of parents and so on, is very, very busy. How can we make people fit that in, in a way that they can appreciate the Eucharist and so that the decisions that they make, make provision for the Eucharist in their lives?
Edward Pentin writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Edward Pentin ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Synod of Bishops Delivers Final Recommendations to Pope DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY — The Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist dealt with some hot-button issues — optional celibacy, ordination of married men, Communion for divorced and remarried, denying Communion to pro-abortion politicians — and expectations of change were widespread.
What happened instead, the synod's final propositions show, was a reaffirmation of Church teaching and discipline.
Besides, changing rules never was the purpose of the three-week meeting, which ended Oct. 23.
Entitled “The Eucharist: Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church,” the synod coincided with the end of the Year of the Eucharist. Both the synod and the special year were called for by Pope John Paul II and brought to a close by his successor, Pope Benedict XVI. It was the largest gathering of bishops for a synod, aimed to bring about “a rebirth” of the Church's most precious and important sacrament.
And, although a “new evangelization” centered on the unfathomable and immutable Eucharistic mystery was this synod's long-term goal, its main role was to take the pulse of the Church for the benefit primarily of Pope Benedict.
So there was no recommended change on the sensitive topics of priestly celibacy — promoted by some Catholics as a means to alleviate the priest (and Eucharist) shortage in many parts of the world — and the ineligibility of divorced and remarried Catholics to receive holy Communion. While both issues were of great concern to the assembled synod fathers, Church teaching on both was also strongly reaffirmed.
On the issue of ordaining married men, most participants concluded that relaxing the rule on celibacy smacked of a “quick fix” that wouldn't resolve the underlying problem.
Ordaining viri probati (married men proven to have sufficient virtues to be priest) “would open another can of worms,” said one expert.
That caution was reinforced by representatives of Eastern Catholic Churches, such as Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir of Lebanon's Maronite Catholic Church. The Maronite Church allows married men to become priests, and he said half of its diocesan priests are married.
While admitting married men into the priesthood would solve some problems, it would “create other equally serious” problems, Patriarch Sfeir said in an Oct. 7 talk.
A married priest has to provide for his wife and children and their education, he said. It also becomes difficult, if not impossible, for the bishop to transfer a priest and his whole family if tensions arise in the parish because the priest “does not have a good relationship with his parishioners.”
So the synod fathers opted to underline “the importance of the inestimable gift of ecclesiastical celibacy in the practice of the Latin Church,” and agreed that ordaining viri probati was not a proper response to the shortage of priests which, for many, is due more to a “crisis of faith.”
The fathers instead called for renewed efforts to encourage priestly vocations and for priests to be “open to a more equitable distribution of clergy.”
The other hot button issue for the synod — that of divorced and illicitly remarried Catholics — proved more of a struggle.
“Of all the issues that caused a great deal of concern and anguish, that was the one,” said Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of Westminster.
In the final synodal message, entitled “The Eucharist: Living Bread for the Peace of the World,” the synod fathers stressed that divorced and remarried Catholics, while not able to receive the Eucharist, are not excluded from the Church, and that the bishops wished to tell them “how close” they are to them “in prayer and pastoral concern.”
The teaching on denying Communion in such cases is not ecclesial but divine, stressed Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. That means that it did not originate from a Church decision that could therefore be changed by the Church; it originated in Christ's teaching, and so the Church has no power to alter it. The synod noted, however, that practical improvements were possible, such as improving the efficiency of marriage tribunals.
Most bishops were less focused on the issue of whether Catholic politicians, whose public policy stands are in opposition to Church teaching on crucial issues like abortion, should be denied Communion, an issue seen by many participants as mainly a U.S. concern. No. 46 of the list of 50 propositions agreed upon by the synod and presented to Pope Benedict XVI stated that Catholic politicians must show “Eucharistic coherence,” and avoid promoting laws that go against human good, justice and natural law.
But there was no declaration that Communion should be automatically denied when such politicians fail to comply. Instead, “bishops should exercise the virtues of firmness and prudence, taking account of concrete local situations.”
One of the most recurring themes raised by the synod fathers was poor Mass attendance and lack of understanding among Catholics of the Eucharist. Many bishops highlighted the need to catechize Catholics on the importance of interior preparation and Confession to prepare properly to receive Communion.
The synod's final propositions suggested a “Compendium on the Eucharist” be published, while the final message advocated “better formation” in families and to “re-establish a strategy” for catechesis.
For developing world bishops, social justice was a key concern. The synod final message stressed that the gap between rich and poor is an injustice, which “cries out to heaven,” and affirmed that such sufferings cannot remain “extraneous” to the Eucharist.
In the field of ecumenism, the bishops stressed that sharing of the Eucharist among members of different confessions could not be utilized as a means of achieving a unity in faith that did not already exist. Consequently, non-Catholics cannot generally receive Communion, the synod fathers noted, and their final message pointed to the “healthy discipline” of precise regulations that prevent “confusion and imprudent gestures that might further damage true communion.”
One liturgical issue that received attention was the sign of peace. A number of bishops advocated that it be moved to another point of the liturgy, to minimize the possibility that it will distract attention from reception of Communion. The final list of propositions suggested consideration of moving it to somewhere before the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
At the conclusion of the synod, Pope Benedict authorized publication of the synod's 50 propositions, a break from the usual practice of utilizing them as a private resource to be drawn upon for the traditional post-synodal papal exhortation.
That gesture was interpreted by some as an indication that the Holy Father might not write an exhortation at all, in keeping with a comment he made recently in a Vatican Radio interview that “my personal mission is not to issue many new documents.” But speaking at the synod's conclusion Oct. 23, the Pope said that the postsynodal exhortation will “portray the face of the ‘Catholic’ community” that finds its strength and unity in the Eucharist.
In fact, if the participation of the Holy Father is widely seen as key to the synod's significance and effectiveness, then the omens are good: Benedict attended nearly all of the sessions, took the opportunity to meet and spend time with every delegate and was observed listening intently to each contribution.
(CNS and Zenit contributed to this report. See additional synod coverage on page 5.)
Edward Pentin writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Edward Pentin ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Prolife Victories DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:Catholic Leadership
He told his female patients that fertility was a gift and not something to be medicated for like a disease.
Hassan said he might have acted sooner if he had witnessed another doctor do so first, and he hoped that his action will give others “something to think about.”
Catholic National Communications Director Lyndsay Freer said she knew of other Catholic doctors who would follow Hassan.
Awake Again, Naturally
REUTERS, Oct. 6 — Salvatore Crisafulli, 38, awoke from a two-year long coma after having been declared “nearly dead” by doctors who had given up treating him.
Crisafulli's case highlights a decision — made the same day he “woke up” — by the Italian National Bioethics Committee to recommend that the state must make it mandatory that such patients not be starved or dehydrated to death as in the U.S. court-ordered death of Terri Schiavo earlier this year.
Committee President Francesco D'Agostino said, “To feed an unconscious patient through a tube is not a medical act.”
Getting a Response
INDYBAY.ORG, Oct. 13 — Sometimes you can judge the success of a program by the response it ignites from opponents.
That was visible in the website's coverage of the pro-abortion Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights’ announcement that it would hold a rally to “mobilize people to counter the ‘Walk for Life’ that will be held on Jan. 21.”
The coalition, described by the activist website as “one of the Bay Area's oldest” pro-abortion groups, was “recently re-formed to mobilize resistance and raise awareness” in response to the pro-life movement.
The coalition reports that it is suffering under the “negative pressure” that was brought to bear by “5,000 members of the anti-choice community [who] marched in San Francisco streets” last January.
Race No Cure
The Oct. 22 race was expected to start in front of the high school as in past years, but school computers would not to be used to tabulate results as has been the case in the past.
“To support an organization from which moneys would be going eventually to a pro-abortion organization would be inconsistent” with Church teaching, said a diocesan spokesman.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: ADORATION: We've only just begun DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:Pope John Paul II gave clear counsel to all in 2004 in Mane Nobiscum Domine, his apostolic letter for the Year of the Eucharist.
“During this year,” he wrote, “Eucharistic adoration outside Mass should become a particular commitment for individual parish and religious communities.” He directed us to “deepen through adoration our personal and communal contemplation” of Jesus really present in the Blessed Sacrament.
Many parishes took his word to heart. From one end of the country to the other, they started or expanded Eucharistic adoration. Because it produced many wonderful fruits and blessings for individuals and parishes, many have decided to keep adoration going even after the Year of the Eucharist officially closed last week.
In Anchorage, Alaska, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church began Eucharistic adoration in May on the feast of Corpus Christi. From no adoration at all, the parish dove right into the perpetual variety — keeping vigil around the clock every day of the year. Nearly 450 parishioners out of 1,300 signed up to fill the hours under the leadership of Father Craig Loeker, their pastor at the time.
When their new pastor, Father Tom Lilly, arrived in June, he was astounded at their response and what he discovered.
“In hundreds of different ways, God is reaching out, strengthening our people, our families,” he says. “How profoundly God is working in their lives.”
The priest says he's edified to see families praying together. When he talks to adorers day or night, they tell him of the impact this has made in their home life and the great graces they're receiving. He also finds a sense of community and an increased reverence for the liturgy and the Mass.
“The beautiful thing is that God is drawing all these people to his Son,” remarks parishioner Katie Reed. “Collectively, Jesus is bringing us together into his family, and that's really the biggest miracle.”
“Daily Mass has tripled in attendance since Eucharistic adoration started,” she adds. People say their families have become closer and communication is flowing much better.
“And this parish is becoming more of a family,” she says. “Jesus is drawing us together as a parish family. This is another grace I believe came from adoration.”
In Concordia, Kan., Father Barry Brinkman, pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, explains how, six years ago, the parish started adoration one day a week from morning Mass to evening, but few people came.
During the Year of the Eucharist, the parish invited a priest from the Missionaries of the Blessed Sacrament to preach on adoration. The idea was to push for more hours, get more people coming and praying. Father Brinkman also preached. Letters and phone calls followed.
Everything came together perfectly in what Father Brinkman describes as a “perfect storm of grace.”
Parishioners responded generously, allowing the parish to launch adoration one 24-hour day every week, from the end of Monday's 7 a.m. Mass to the beginning of Tuesday's Mass.
The pastor notices many positive effects. For one, parishioners aren't strangers to each other anymore. They've gotten to know others from signing in. And families bond in different ways. Some fathers come with their sons during one time, and some mothers with daughters another time during the day.
“We're trying to add little things as we go along,” Father Brinkman says. “The next step now is to post petitions so they're praying for the broader needs of the diocese and broader needs of the world.”
What's happening as the year officially closes? “The Year of the Eucharist,” says a happy Father Brinkman, “was a springboard for continuation of adoration in the parish.”
In Trumbull, Conn., the same holds for St. Theresa Church. In response to the Year of the Eucharist, the parish began adoration five days a week, from after 8 a.m. morning Mass to just before 5:30 p.m. evening Mass, on the feast St. Nicholas.
“It was the specific response to the Holy Father's call and the call of the people,” says Msgr. Peter Dora, the pastor. “They came and they initiated it. That was the beauty; it didn't come from me, it came from them.”
He points out many changes he's seen since adoration began. For one, he's seen people become “calmer.”
“People who have been struggling have now found themselves,” he explains. “They come to a sense of serenity in adoration.”
Rosemarie Martin, one of the organizers, is moved to see the comfort some seriously ill people receive from their daily visits to the adoration chapel.
“I find that, when sitting with the Lord quietly, he gives you answers and makes you feel right about them,” she says about personal questions she has. “There's just such a peace when you go in there.”
Agnes Clarizio, who spearheaded the efforts to start adoration, is uplifted to see home schoolers bringing their children — and the surprising reverence of all children who come to the chapel.
One day she remembers joining a woman and three children in the adoration chapel. The children were sitting very quietly, reading books and praying.
“Then the woman got up and left,” Clarizio recalls. “I had assumed she was their mother. After a while a young woman with a baby came in. She was their mother and just went to change the baby. All the time they didn't make sound. That amazed me.”
What she calls another “side effect” of adoration is its spurring people to pray for one another's needs.
“They tell me [who needs what], and I tell Msgr. Dora,” she says. “This brings the parish down to more of a community level.”
At the same time, parishes are reaching out through adoration.
As Father Lilly puts it, “I'm going to give the adorers some homework. I'm encouraging people to use part of that time to pray for vocations to the religious life.”
He already has an answer he wants others to find through adoration.
“I think it's the most exciting apostolate that's ongoing in our parish,” he says. “If I could wish and pray for one thing in a parish, it's for people on their knees before the Lord.”
Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Mother Teresa's Message DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:PROLIFE PROFILE
Everything Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta did around the world came wrapped as a living pro-life message.
“She was a major pro-life figure, from conception to natural death,” reminds Missionary of Charity Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, postulator for the canonization of Mother Teresa.
Now to keep her teachings, message and inspiration constantly available to new generations, her Missionaries of Charity order recently launched the Mother Teresa of Calcutta Center. Father Kolodiejchuk is also director of the center.
Whether via today's website or in the four physical locations in the works, the center will be the source on Mother Teresa, with the goal of spreading devotion to her, protecting her words and image from misuse, and encouraging people to love and serve Jesus — particularly in devotion to the Eucharist and the poor.
“Because Mother Teresa was a major Church and world figure,” explains the priest, “we want to preserve the legacy and also keep Mother Teresa's message and mission alive in the Church.”
People looking to the center can be assured they're getting the real deal, he adds. “One of the key words at the center is authentic Mother Teresa.”
To fulfill this aim, the center is already hard at work in world of publishing, making sure texts and translations by others are true to Mother Teresa. (Many out there are not.) And they'll be publishing their own books and devotional materials.
“Hopefully we'll be able to have the Mother Teresa Center logo on books,” says Father Kolodiejchuk. “As soon as you see the logo, you can have confidence that this is dependable and authentic.”
The logo has already attracted attention. On his recent visit to a Missionaries of Charity's house in New England, the sisters told him of a handicapped couple they help. When the couple saw the logo on a center pamphlet, they were inspired to make a carrying bag. They stitched the logo in white on one side and “Mother Teresa Center” on the other, then gave it as a surprise gift to the sisters.
“I'm going to put it in the center in Tijuana,” Father Kolodiejchuk says. “Mother would love that story.”
The Mother Teresa Center will also offer physical places for people to come and meet the saint-to-be in museum-like exhibitions, a library, multimedia exhibits and artifacts — possibly her sari, her sandals and letters she wrote.
“But in that center there will also be a Mother Teresa chapel with relics,” says Father Kolodiejchuk.
He points out visitors to Mother's tomb and chapel in Calcutta already see a “mini-exhibition” that includes pictures, a chronology and quotes from her.
Since many people can't go to Calcutta, but do travel to Rome, the Eternal City will serve as the site of another center. So will Tijuana, Mexico, and the United States.
Right now the main center vehicle is the website motherteresa.org, where people can visit while the center works toward setting up the other facilities.
The website was launched on the feast of the Sacred Heart this June 3 because Mother loved the Sacred Heart. By the end of the first week, there were 40,000 hits.
Thomas Gallagher, special assistant for administrative affairs of the center, explains the center's challenging task: Mother was truly a modern disciple of Christ, traveling the world to spread the Gospel, so the center must have a global perspective.
“We are not U.S.-centric in our mission,” he says. “We have to address the needs around the world. People everywhere yearn for Mother's message.”
Archbishop Harry Flynn of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, who has encouraged and supported the center from the beginning, agrees.
“Mother Teresa, as everyone knows, had a tremendous reverence for life and the culture of life,” says the archbishop. “Now with mass communication via the website, recordings, film and other things, that message can be extended globally. I think the center is a means of keeping that reality that was hers alive.”
Plans also call for four physical locations where people can learn that reality.
“Ideally, we want to have a Mother Teresa Center near or next to a Missionaries of Charity house,” says Father Kolodiejchuk. “When Mother spoke to all kinds of audiences she'd like to say, ‘Come and see.’”
Once the centers are built, visitors can learn Mother Teresa's pro-life message and also experience it in action in the order's nearby homes, like the Gift of Love home caring for AIDS patients in Greenwich Village or the Shishu Bhavan orphanage in Calcutta, or the homes for elderly in Tijuana.
Archbishop Flynn explains that, at a recent archdiocesan Eucharistic Congress, a Missionary of Charity reflected on how Mother Teresa saw Christ in everyone.
“This is something we need today in the Church and society,” he says, “and a center could make that message so much stronger and clearer to people to see Christ in others, no matter who the others might be.”
The ideal U.S. Center location would be by the Missionaries of Charity house in the Bronx, which is the primary home of the sisters in the Americas. According to Gallagher, the center is working hard to make that come to fruition and looking for help finding an appropriate building there.
Already major help in another form came from the Knights of Columbus. With them, the center produced and sent almost 1 million copies of the first official novena to the Missionaries of Charity's 700 houses that gave them to the poor and the friends of the order on Mother's first feast day, Sept 5, 2004.
This summer, again with major help from the Knights and Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, the center produced nearly 1 million pieces of devotional material in several languages and distributed them at World Youth Day. And youth hungered for the messages.
“One Missionaries of Charity priest in Cologne observed that none of the Mother Teresa materials were found on the ground or left behind,” says Gallagher. “It's an important responsibility of the center to constantly be bringing Mother's message, which is inherently pro-life, to the next generation of young people.”
“We feel the center is helping to evangelize the world,” adds Gallagher. “Most people cannot travel to Calcutta. We need to bring Calcutta to the people.”
Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.
Information
Mother Teresa Center
Web: motherteresa.org
Phone: (203) 637-7578
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: New Embryonic Stem-Cell Technique Gets Mixed Reception DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Recent claims to be able to develop embryonic stem cells for medicine without destroying human embryos have been greeted with cautious optimism.
One of the reasons scientists came up with two new procedures to obtain stem cells was to overcome the ethical objections to killing an early embryo. But most pro-life and Catholic scientists and ethicists said the procedures, unveiled in the scientific journal Nature Oct. 17, do not pass ethical muster.
Modern biology texts state that, from conception on, the human embryo is a living human being with unique DNA (distinct from that of the mother's egg and the father's sperm), and is a boy or girl with normal life expectancy.
None of these scientifically verifiable facts is a religious belief. But the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life” (No. 2270).
A spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a statement by the Christian Medical Association also said the studies, done with mice, failed to protect unborn life.
In both cases, the stem-cell scientists who conducted the experiments said pro-life ethical concerns and federal funding restrictions imposed by President Bush at least partly motivated the studies. Neither group is opposed to embryonic stem-cell research.
“I personally don't have any problem with nuclear transfer [cloning]. I realize other people do, so if we can help to resolve the problem, I think it is worthwhile,” said Rudolph Jaenisch, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist whose study elicited the most interest from pro-life scientists and ethicists.
But the news held out hope for scientists like Dr. Markus Grompe, who said, “The fact that people are even doing this — they are implicitly admitting that there is a problem with the ethics, and they are working on finding a way to make it more palatable, and I think that's great.”
Said Grompe, a Catholic and a stem-cell scientist at Oregon Health and Science University, “If enough people put their heads on it and work on it, it will get solved.”
Embryonic stem cells theoretically can develop into any tissue in the body, and many scientists believe they have great potential for a range of therapies, but Catholic teaching opposes destroying human embryos to obtain the cells.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated in the 1987 instruction Donum Vitae, “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” (No. 4).
The Dickey Amendment and Bush administration policy allows federal money for embryonic stem-cell research only if it uses a limited number of embryonic stem-cell lines derived from embryos killed prior to Aug. 9, 2001. Though there are virtually no restrictions on privately funded experimentation, many scientists and patient advocacy groups complain that the Bush policy leaves medicine with too few cells for experiments.
Jaenisch and Alexander Meissner, also of MIT, successfully created “fully competent” mouse embryonic stem cells using a controversial theory called altered nuclear transfer. This theory, developed by Stanford professor Dr. William Hurlbut and purported to overcome the ethical dilemma of destroying human embryos, was recommended for animal testing by the President's Council on Bioethics in a white paper published in May.
The Jaenisch/Meissner study was the first time the altered nuclear transfer theory had been tested.
In that process, the idea is to alter the development of the entity created during the cloning process so a “non-embryonic entity” is created, thus making it ethical to crunch it up for its stem cells. Critics say altered nuclear transfer tampers with the beginning of life and creates a disabled embryo, but an embryo nonetheless — a conclusion disputed by Hurlbut and by Jaenisch.
However, earlier criticism of this technique prompted the development of a modified version of altered nuclear transfer, oocyte assisted reprogramming, also supported by Hurlbut. Animal testing of the oocyte assisted reprogramming theory was advocated in a June 20 Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by Grompe and Princeton professor Robert George, as well as in a paper signed by 35 scientists and bioethicists, including Archbishop John Myers of Newark, N.J. The theory of oocyte assisted reprogramming is that it is possible to program the cell and egg to skip directly to the pluripotent stage and avoid creating any embryo-like entity.
Still, Christian Medical Association Executive Director Dr. David Stevens believes the “entity” is an embryo. “Just because scientists have created a genetic time bomb in the embryo does not change its essential human nature,” he said.
Advanced Cell Technology led the second study reported in Nature Oct. 17, using the pre-implantation diagnosis technique employed to check in-vitro-created embryos for genetic defects. In the study, a cell was removed from an eight-cell embryo and replicated to create an embryonic stem-cell line, apparently without harming the baby mouse born later.
Advanced Cell Technology focuses on embryonic stem-cell and cloning research, and states on its website it owns more than 300 patents or patent applications related to stem-cell therapy.
The President's Council on Bioethics had recommended against even animal testing on the Advanced Cell Technology work of doing a biopsy on an embryo to withdraw a cell to culture. Catholic teaching opposes both artificial reproduction and endangering the baby's health.
David Prentice, scientific adviser to the Family Research Council as well as to Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, said both studies had problems.
“I find it encouraging that at least some scientists recognize that there are ethical concerns about embryo destruction,” Prentice said. “But neither of these two techniques gets around the ethical problems.”
In contrast, there are now scores of successful adult stem-cell therapies, including many using umbilical-cord blood, he said.
Jaenisch said he was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to apply the altered nuclear transfer theory in a research setting with mice. Jaenisch said no embryo is created because the silencing of the cdx2 gene in the skin cell, before it is introduced to the enucleated egg, means “it cannot organize itself.”
Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia and a biologist, disagreed.
“Not many commentators would agree that the cdx2 gene knockdown experiment carried out in Jaenisch's lab produced a non-embryo,” he said. “In fact the authors of the paper themselves refer to it as a ‘cdx2 deficient embryo’ in the final paragraph of the paper. So, a deficient embryo, but an embryo nonetheless.”
Father Pacholczyk was one of the 35 signers supporting animal testing of oocyte assisted reprogramming. He is optimistic that there is great potential within the realm of science “if we are willing to acknowledge and confront the grave moral issues swirling around this research with some creativity and elbow grease.”
Legionary Father Thomas Berg, executive director of The Westchester Institute, a bioethics think tank in Thornwood, N.Y., found the studies to be a step in the right direction.
“Scientific interest in embryos and their stem cells is here to stay,” he said. “We need to work toward ethically sound solutions that can minimize and assuage that interest as much as possible.”
Valerie Schmalz is based in San Francisco.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Valerie Schmalz ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Design or Dumb Luck? DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:HARRISBURG, Pa. — In rural Pennsylvania, a trial that pits Charles Darwin's theory of evolution against the theory of intelligent design has heard testimony on both sides from Catholic scientists and others.
Arguments in the non-jury trial, Kitzmiller et al v. Dover Area School District began in U.S. District Court on Sept. 26, with Judge John Jones III, a Bush appointee, presiding. Court dates are scheduled until Nov. 4.
At issue is the fact that on Oct. 18, 2004, the Dover Area School District Board, by a vote of 6-3, made the following resolution: “Students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin's theory and other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design.”
The school board solidified the policy on Nov. 19, requiring that teachers read a four paragraph statement to ninth-grade biology students studying evolution. The statement says origin of life theories other than Darwin's exist, specifically a theory of intelligent design. It refers students to a book about intelligent design, Of Pandas and People (1993, Foundation for Thought & Ethics) available in the school library.
In response, 11 parents filed suit on Dec. 14 in Federal District Court against the School District, claiming the intelligent design policy is an impermissible establishment of religion under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and has the purpose and effect of establishment of religion.
Proponents of intelligent design hold that aspects of the universe and life are too complex to be explained through evolutionary science and that an unspecified intelligent designer must be responsible.
The district is represented by the Thomas More Law Center of Ann Arbor, Mich. Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the law center, believes much can be accomplished by this case.
“For too long, atheists have been using the theory of evolution, which posits the claim that natural selection is the mechanism by which humans were created, in a stealth campaign to indoctrinate our children into atheism or secular humanism,” he said.
George Sim Johnston, author of Did Darwin Get It Right? (1998, Our Sunday Visitor) agreed.
“My problem is that some Darwinists that teach at the high school level are crusading secularists so they, if not explicitly, implicitly use this as a stick to beat on religion,” he said.
Johnston is not, however, in agreement with the school district's decision.
“I sympathize with the school board members who would like to see ID taught,” he said. “They are reacting to a very aggressive secularism which has permeated the whole educational system, but I think it's premature now at this point to insert this philosophical concept into a high school biology class.”
The lead witness for the families opposing intelligent design was Kenneth Raymond Miller, cellular biologist at Brown University. He is a Catholic whose essay “Darwin's Pope: Benedict XVI and Evolution,” was published in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Fall 2005. Miller took the stand Sept. 26 and testified until mid-day Sept. 27.
He insisted intelligent design has no place in the science classroom.
“Scientific theories and hypotheses make testable predictions,” Miller said. “Intelligent design, the proposition that the complexity of living things can only be accounted for by invoking a designer-creator whose actions take place outside of the laws of nature, makes no such predictions.
“The theory of evolution, by contrast, makes testable predictions,” he said, “and 145-plus years of research have borne out those predictions in remarkable detail.”
But Michael Behe, author of the book Darwin's Black Box (1998, Free Press), and also a Catholic, insisted intelligent design should be part of a science curriculum on evolution.
Behe, an expert witness for the defense, testified Oct. 18 that evolution is a theory that alone cannot explain the complexities of the immune system, blood clotting and other molecular intricacies of animals. He said such things may be the handiwork of an intelligent designer.
Under cross-examination, he also said that astrology and intelligent design fit under his “broader” definition of scientific theory, a definition he acknowledged is not accepted by major scientific organizations.
Behe teaches a course at Lehigh University titled Popular Arguments on Evolution, which discusses Darwin's theories and other alternative theories. In August, his colleagues at Lehigh posted a statement on the university's website saying they are “unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory” and hold the position that “intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific.”
“You're not even able to convince your colleagues” that intelligent design is science, Eric Rothschild, a lawyer representing parents opposed to the school district's policy said to Behe during questioning.
Science or Religion?
When Rothschild read the statement in U.S. Middle District Court, Behe questioned why his colleagues would “swear allegiance to a theory.” Behe also dismissed a statement made by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which said that intelligent design is not science, and that “the scientific consensus around evolution is overwhelming.”
Under cross-examination, Behe said the intelligent designer is God, and he acknowledged submitting an article to The New York Times in which he asked, “Can Science Make Room for Religion?”
Americans United for the Separation of Church and State is co-litigating the case in Dover along with the American Civil Liberties Union.
Robert Boston, assistant director of communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said, “Our organization opposes the introduction of religious concepts into public school science classes. Intelligent design teaches that humans and other living things are so complex that they must have been the product of a higher power. This is a theological concept. It might be appropriate to study it in a comparative religion class, but it does not belong in science courses.”
Defense attorney Thompson differed, saying, “This is science vs. science. If the Dover School District wins this case, school districts across the nation will be adding intelligent design as an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution. Evolution will still be taught as the predominant theory, but students will be informed about the controversy and will be able to critically analyze the competing theories. This is good pedagogy in that it teaches students critical learning skills.”
Dr. David Stevens, executive director of the Christian Medical Association, is among those who believe intelligent design is not a matter of philosophy but of science.
“If macro-evolution is only taught in the philosophy class, it would be appropriate for intelligent design to only be taught there as well,” he said in an interview. “Macro-evolution is a philosophy, a set of presuppositions and beliefs, by which life, including science is interpreted. It presumes there is no Creator but only natural mechanisms at work and therefore scientific observations must fit into this theory. It is a conclusion looking for evidence.
“Intelligent design is evidence resulting in a conclusion and in that regard is more scientific than evolution,” Stevens added. “It doesn't state how the world was formed but simply states that science reveals that humans and animals are too complex in design to have happened merely by chance. Natural mechanisms can't explain what is observed. It is a more valid conclusion than evolution.”
The debate promises to continue, whatever the court decides in Pennsylvania. In the past two years, 14 states have introduced legislation that challenges the current teaching of evolution.
(RNS contributed to this report.)
Mary Ann Sullivan is based in New Durham, New Hampshire.
----- EXCERPT: Origin of Life On Trial in Pennsylvania ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mary Ann Sullivan ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Weekly TV Picks DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:SUNDAY, OCT. 30
Hannibal vs. Rome
National Geographic
Channel, 9 p.m.
Dramatic re-creations, computer graphics and the words of historians ancient and modern tell the story of the expedition against Rome that Hannibal Barca (247-182 B.C.) of Carthage led across the Pyrenees and the Alps in the Second Punic War.
SUNDAY, OCT. 30
Masterpiece Theater:
Kidnapped
PBS, 9 p.m.
This 90-minute program is the first of a two-part BBC production of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Kidnapped, the story of Scottish lad Davie Balfour and his adventures while on the run with Alan Breck, a Scots rebel hunted by the English in 1751. Part II will air Sunday, Nov. 6, at 9 p.m. Advisory: A suicide try, a near-hanging, some bloodshed.
MONDAY, OCT. 31
A Grave in Perm:
The Father Walter
Ciszek Story
EWTN, 6:30 p.m.
Every Catholic child should be told of heroic U.S. Jesuit Father Walter Ciszek (1904-1984). After entering the atheist-ruled Soviet Union as an underground missionary in 1940, he was imprisoned in 1941 and sentenced to 15 years’ hard labor. He secretly said Mass and heard confessions even in an Arctic slave labor camp in Siberia.
MONDAY, OCT. 31
American Experience:
Race to the Moon
PBS, 9 p.m.
This documentary interviews astronauts Bill Anders, Frank Borman and James Lovell about their flight around the moon and back in Apollo 8, Dec. 21-27, 1968.
TUESDAY, NOV. 1
The Merciful Love of Jesus
EWTN, 6 p.m.
This half-hour show details St. Faustina's life and presents “ABCs” of Divine Mercy: Ask (pray) for mercy, be merciful yourself, and completely trust Jesus and His grace.
TUESDAY, NOV. 1
Nova: Volcano
Under the City
PBS, 8 p.m.
A year after the Nyiragongo volcano devastated the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic Congo in 2002, Jacques Durieux's scientists inspect the crater's lava.
WEDNESDAY, NOV. 2
Science of the Bible:
The Last Supper
National Geographic
Channel, 10 p.m.
Catholics rely on the Gospels as the true account of the Last Supper, of course; in this show, archaeologists and historians speculate about its location and Passover fare.
FRIDAY, NOV. 4
Classroom: Yellowstone National Park
History Channel, 6 a.m.
Established in 1872, scenic Yellowstone, the world's first national park, comprises 2,221,766 acres, almost entirely in Wyoming but spilling a bit into Montana and Idaho.
Dan Engler writes from Santa Barbara, California.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dan Engler ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Vatican Media Watch DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:Pope Benedict to Open New Session at University
AGENZIA GIORNALISTICA ITALIA, Oct. 15 — Pope Benedict XVI will chair the ceremony for the opening of the 2006 session at the medicine facility of the Catholic University in Rome on Nov. 25, the Italian news service reported.
Popes John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II also visited the facility at Gemelli university hospital.
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the university's foundation, Benedict XVI went to Gemelli hospital to visit his brother who was hospitalized, and when he was a cardinal he had visited John Paul II there.
Exorcism Course Continues at the Vatican
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Oct. 14 — Regina Apostolorum University is offering a course in exorcism and demonic possession for a second consecutive year, concerned about the devil's lure — particularly among young Italians, the Associated Press reported.
Standing in solemn prayer, around 120 priests, lay people and theology students began the course that is intended to clear up misconceptions and understand what makes people turn to the occult.
The opening class of the “Exorcism and Prayer of Liberation” Oct. 13 at Regina Apostolorum featured lectures about liturgical and spiritual aspects of Satanism and problems related to exorcism.
In recent years, police have discovered sites in the Castelli hill towns outside Rome where they say Satanic cult followers hold black Masses.
“The aim of this course is to express a clear vision of the phenomenon,” said Italian Bishop Andrea Gemma, a leading exorcist who delivered the opening lecture. “Exorcism … is an important prayer of the Church to help those who believe to be, or who really are suffering from a diabolic infestation.”
Church Seeks to Regain Site of the Last Supper
TIMESONLINE.CO.UK, Oct. 13 — The Vatican will offer the historic synagogue at Toledo in Spain to Israel in exchange for the room of the Last Supper in Jerusalem, the website of The Times of London reported.
The proposals, contained in a draft agreement between the Israeli government and the Vatican, come on the eve of a state visit to the Vatican in November by President Moshe Katzav.
Il Messaggero, the Rome daily, said possible reciprocal gestures include the return to Jewish control of the 12th-century synagogue in Toledo, which is now the Church of Santa María La Blanca.
The Upper Room, where the Last Supper is said to have taken place, is also where the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples at Pentecost. It was transformed into a mosque, and since the foundation of Israel, the area has served as the site of Jewish yeshivas, or religious schools.
God, not the State, Creates Rights
AGENZIA GIORNALISTICA ITALIA, Oct 15 — In his first personally signed letter to the leader of a state-run conference, Pope Benedict said “a healthy lay state logically has to recognize in its legislation the moral instances that are part of man's very existence,” the Italian news agency reported.
In his letter sent to the Liberty and Laicism conference in Norsia, where St. Benedict was from, the Holy Father told Marcello Pera, the head of the Italian Senate, it was hoped “that the reflections that will be made on this subject will take into account man's dignity and also his fundamental rights, which are values that are subject to any state jurisdiction. These fundamental rights are not created by law, but are inscribed in the very nature of the human person, and are ultimately due to the Creator.”
The conference, which was held Oct. 15, was sponsored by the Magna Carta Foundation and the Foundation for Relief.
The Pope said, “For a cultural and spiritual renewal inside Italy and the European continent, we need to work so that laicism is not interpreted as hostility to religion, but is seen as quite the contrary. This would mean it is seen as a commitment to guarantee everyone, individually and in groups, the possibility of living and demonstrating their own religious convictions, while fully respecting the needs of the common good.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Video Picks & Passes DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith: PICK
(2005)
MILLIONS: PICK
(2005)
WAR OF THE WORLDS: PICK
(1953)
New this week on DVD, Revenge of the Sith finally taps into the inspiration of the Star Wars original trilogy. The film opens with a rescue sequence climaxing with Anakin piloting a spaceship out of orbit for a crash-landing, like Lucifer falling from the heavens. By the finale, Anakin's descent is complete as he falls in battle with Obi-Wan amid the hellish glow of a volcano planet, a veritable lake of fire.
Sounding intriguingly like a modernist theologian, the evil future emperor tells Anakin that those who seek true mastery in the Force must take “a broader view” than the “narrow, dogmatic views of the Jedi.” Unfortunately, the Jedi “orthodoxy” never finds an equally articulate spokesman. “Only a Sith deals in absolutes,” Obi-Wan insists, rather absolutely. And Yoda's speech on Jedi detachment goes beyond Christian freedom from excessive attachment into Buddhist impassiveness.
Ironically, such extreme detachment is contrary to the humanism with which the whole story ends in Return of the Jedi, where human attachments — filial loyalty, paternal bonds — save the galaxy, destroy the Sith and the empire, and redeem Anakin's lost soul. The grimmest and darkest of the films, Revenge may be too harsh for youngsters. For the moment, the dark side is triumphant — but “new hope” will dawn again.
Danny Boyle's Millions is an unusual film about an unusual young boy — a pious, scrupulous English Catholic lad named Damien who knows the lives of the saints like other boys know stats on their favorite footballers. In fact, the saints appear to him: Francis and Clare, Charles Lwanga, even Peter. Are these heavenly visions, or figments of Damien's imagination? The viewer can decide for himself.
What Damien has to decide is what to do with a duffel bag full of money that fell out of the sky on his cardboard-box hideout. Damien wants to give it to the poor, but that's easier said than done — and other people have other ideas about the money, including a dodgy-looking character who shows up one day.
Damien's saints don't say much particularly profound (apart from a low-key bit from Clare rhapsodizing about the infinitude of heaven) or particularly annoying (apart from an unfortunate speech by Peter endorsing the demythologized version of the feeding of the 5,000). A moral parable rather than a morality tale, Millions is a story of Christmas hope and faith in something more than Santa, which is not to say that St. Nicholas doesn't show up. But when he pops on a bishop's miter rather than the familiar Santa hat, it's clear we're not in Hollywood movieland.
Also new to DVD is Byron Haskin's War of the Worlds, loosely based on the classic H. G. Wells story. The father of all alien-invasion movies, the film offers a worst-case-scenario alternative to the idealistic visions of films like The Day the Earth Stood Still and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Often viewed as an allegory of Cold War fears, the film's overtly religious themes, emphasized by Catholic producer George Pal, become the defining framework in a story about divine providence and salvation for helpless humanity.
Register Summary
More than 40,000 pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square for Pope Benedict XVI's general audience on Oct. 19. The Holy Father devoted his catechesis to Psalm 130, one of the best-known penitential psalms.
Popularly known as the De Profundis based on its opening words in Latin, Psalm 130 is a celebration in three movements of the mercy of God, who is always ready to forgive and to be reconciled with sinners.
In the first movement, the psalmist recognizes from the depths of his suffering that God is a loving Father and reveres him for this.
“It is significant that what generates this fear — an attitude of respect mixed with love — is not punishment but forgiveness,” the Pope said. “Rather than God's anger, what should arouse this holy fear in us is his generous and disarming magnanimity. God is not some implacable ruler who condemns the guilty, but a loving Father whom we must love not out of fear of punishment, but for his goodness and readiness to forgive.”
In the second part of the psalm, Benedict noted, “In the heart of the repentant psalmist arises the expectation, hope, the certainty that God will speak a word to set him free and will wipe away his sin.”
Finally, in the third part, the personal salvation that the psalmist originally sought is extended to the whole community.
“The faith of the psalmist is grafted onto the historic faith of the people of the Covenant, whom the Lord ‘redeemed’ not only from the anguish of oppression in Egypt, but also ‘from all their sins,’” Pope Benedict said.
In his concluding remarks, the Holy Father placed the psalm in the context of the Christian tradition by quoting St. Ambrose, who encouraged believers never to lose hope in God's forgiveness however great the sin, because with God there can always be a change of heart if the sinner acknowledges his offense.
We have just heard one of the best-known and beloved psalms of our Christian tradition, the De Profundis, whose name is derived from the opening words of the Latin version. Together with the Miserere, it is a favorite penitential psalm in popular devotion.
In addition to its use at funeral services, the text is first of all a song to God's mercy and to reconciliation between the sinner and the Lord — a righteous God who is always ready to reveal himself as “a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity, continuing his kindness for a thousand generations, and forgiving wickedness and crime and sin” (Exodus 34:6-7).
It is precisely for this reason that the psalm is included in evening prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours on Christmas and throughout the entire octave of Christmas, and on the Fourth Sunday of Easter and on the solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord.
God Is Just
Psalm 130 opens with a lone voice rising from the depths of evil and guilt (verses 1-2). The psalmist addresses the Lord in the first person saying, “I call to you, Lord.” The psalm is then developed in three movements, all of which are devoted to the theme of sin and forgiveness. First of all, there is a turning to God, directly addressed as “you”: “If you, Lord, mark our sins, Lord, who can stand? But with you is forgiveness and so you are revered” (verses 3-4).
It is significant that what generates this fear — an attitude of respect mixed with love — is not punishment but forgiveness. Rather than God's anger, what should arouse this holy fear in us is his generous and disarming magnanimity. God is not some implacable ruler who condemns the guilty, but a loving Father whom we must love not out of fear of punishment, but for his goodness and readiness to forgive.
At the heart of the second movement is the psalmist speaking in the first person, no longer addressing the Lord but speaking about him: “I wait with longing for the Lord, my soul waits for his word. My soul looks for the Lord more than sentinels for daybreak” (verses 5-6). Now in the heart of the repentant psalmist arises the expectation, the hope, the certainty that God will speak a word to set him free and will wipe away his sin.
The third and last stage in the development of the psalm opens out to all of Israel, the often sinful people aware of the need for God's saving grace: “Let Israel look for the Lord, for with the Lord is kindness, with him is full redemption, and God will redeem Israel from all their sins” (verses 7-8).
Personal salvation, for which the psalmist first prayed, is now extended to the entire community. The faith of the psalmist is grafted onto the historic faith of the people of the Covenant, whom the Lord “redeemed” not only from the anguish of oppression in Egypt, but also “from all their sins.”
The cry of the De Profundis, which originated in the somber abyss of sin, reaches the bright horizon of God, where “mercy” (kindness) and “redemption” prevail, two great characteristics of the God of love.
God Is Merciful
Let us now be guided by a meditation that our Christian tradition has woven from this psalm. We have chosen some words from St. Ambrose, who often reminds us in his writings of the reasons that impel us to beg God for forgiveness.
“We have a good Lord who wants to forgive everyone,” he reminds us in his treatise entitled On Penance. “If you want to be justified, confess your misdeeds,” he adds. “A humble confession of sins undoes the tangle of guilt. You see with what hope of forgiveness he impels you to confess” (2, 6, 40-41: SAEMO, XVII, Milan-Rome, 1982, p. 253).
Repeating the same invitation in his Commentary on the Gospel according to Luke, the bishop of Milan expresses his amazement at the gifts that God adds to his forgiveness: “See how good God is and how ready to forgive sins. He not only gives back what he had taken away, but also grants unexpected gifts.”
Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, was left mute for not believing the angel, but later, forgiving him, God granted him the gift of prophecy in song: “He who shortly before was mute, is now prophesying,” St. Ambrose observes. “It is one of the Lord's greatest graces, that the very ones who denied him should proclaim him. No one, therefore, should lose trust; no one should despair of receiving God's rewards, even when plagued by the guilt of past sins. God is able to change his mind, if you are able to mend your ways” (2, 33: SAEMO, XI, Milan-Rome, 1978, p. 175).
(Register translation)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- *************************** Missing files Word Work File D_2934, Word Work File D_3998 and Word Work File D_438 *************************** TITLE: World Media Watch DATE: 10/30/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 30-November 5, 2005 ----- BODY:Soccer Matches Canceled Due to Threats
BBC NEWS, Oct. 17 — A Ballymena amateur soccer league canceled two of its games at the weekend because of fears of paramilitaries attending, BBC News reported.
The secretary of the town's Saturday Morning League said police warned him Protestant Ulster Defense Association men planned to go to a game between Harryville Homers and Broadway Celtic. Another match was canceled due to threats from Catholic republicans.
There have been a series of sectarian attacks against both Catholics and Protestants in Ballymena in recent months.
League Secretary Brian Montgomery said, “What I think we have to do now is, either through talking to these people or through intermediaries, to discuss what the position is and how we can get it stopped.”
Government Breaks Up Prayer March
Before the march was held, Lito Atienza, mayor of Manila, warned the group from pressing with the march, saying they could face a violent dispersal that could lead to the same bloody incident in 1987, where 17 farmer protesters were killed in a shootout that broke out.
The marchers were protesting the increasingly authoritarian policies being imposed by the Arroyo government. Police barricaded the road leading to the church at Beda College, the marcher's destination and protesters were held back by anti-riot police who used water cannons to disperse the marchers.
Father Robert Reyes said the mere fact that they are preventing the procession to reach its destination only goes to show that the government does not trust even the prelates.
“This is not a rally,” Father Reyes said. “The bishops are here and they say the Rosary. A procession for peace, for enlightenment, it is primarily all the attempts of the government to reimpose some form of martial rule.”
African Catholics Urged to Help Somalis
Speaking in English to bishops from Ethiopia and Eritrea making their ad limina visit to Rome, Benedict said political instability in neighboring Somalia made it “almost impossible to live with the dignity that belongs properly to every human person.”
Somalia formed a transitional government in 2004, but the country remains predominantly a mixture of clan fiefdoms with no government to support them.
Noting that Catholics in the area are a small minority, Benedict encouraged what he called “practical ecumenism” among Catholics and other Christian faiths for joint humanitarian endeavors to alleviate the suffering caused by sickness, hunger and war.
Brazil Part of Holy Father's 2007 Itinerary
MEROPRESS, Oct. 16 — Pope Benedict XVI plans to visit Brazil in 2007 to take part in the general meeting of the Latin American Bishops Conference (CELAM), announced Brazilian Catholic Church officials to the South American news agency.
The date of the CELAM conference has not yet been set, but the gathering is expected to take place in late April or early May 2007 in the city of Aparecida, some 167 kilometers northeast of Sao Paulo.
The Holy Father confirmed his attendance at the meeting during an audience with CELAM leaders Oct. 14 at his Vatican residence, reported the Brazilian National Bishops Conference.
Benedict XVI met with Cardinal Francisco Ossa, the archbishop of Santiago, Chile, and president of CELAM, Cardinal Pedro Rubiano, archbishop of Bogota, Colombia, Cardinal Claudio Hummes, archbishop of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, Buenos Aires’ archbishop.
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