NEW DELHI, India — Amid a worsening female feticide situation, the Catholic Church in India is mobilizing to join the fight against the gender prejudice that lies at the root of rampant sex-selective abortions.
“This is very, very saddening,” Bishop John Baptist Thakur of Muzzafarpur, chairman of Catholic Bishops Conference of India's Commission for Women, said July 28. “We are trying to involve all our institutions in an effective campaign to counter this.”
Bishop Thakur made his comments following the release of a pioneering study by a Christian health forum on the skewed male-female sex ratio among children in the Indian capital of New Delhi that has resulted from sex-selective abortions in India.
In families that had a third child after two girls, there were only 219 girls per 1,000 boys, according to the study released in mid-July by the Christian Medical Association of India. Similarly, when a family's first child was a girl, there were only 558 girls for 1,000 boys among subsequent births, noted the study after scrutinizing 370,000 birth records in the capital's eight leading hospitals over a 10-year period.
“Our study shows that parents are deliberately aborting female fetuses. Otherwise, there cannot be such a skewed sex ratio among children,” said Dr. Joe Verghese, coordinator of the medical association's Policy Advocacy & Research Group.
Verghese said that his group decided to carry out the in-depth study of the female feticide after the 2001 national census found alarming trends in the sex ratio, with fewer than 800 girls per 1,000 boys below 6 years old documented in several areas. This further reinforced an existing trend in India, where the sex ratio for the population has declined from 970 women per 1,000 men in 1970 to 929 women per 1,000 men in 2001.
Cultural Prejudice
According to Bishop Thakur, whose diocese is located in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, female feticide is “a serious concern and the Church will strengthen its efforts to ‘conscientize’ the people to overcome the strong gender prejudice.”
“It is a fact that many families do not celebrate the birth of a girl child. This mindset has to be changed,” added Bishop Thakur.
According to Hindu tradition, a father cannot attain moksha (salvation) unless he has a son to perform his last rites. This religious sanction — which renders daughters less desirable than boys — also contributed to India's dowry system, which makes daughters a substantial economic liability for families.
Recent media reports showed that the prejudice against girls is so deep-rooted that Indian doctors working abroad have reported instances of Indian couples settled in Western countries traveling back to India to obtain sex-selective abortions, which are difficult to obtain elsewhere.
And while the Indian government officially has banned sex determination tests on unborn children, they are carried out illegally even in villages due to the powerful social prejudices against girl babies.
Along with cultural and social prejudices against girls, India's two-child population control policy has played a critical role in “worsening the female feticide scenario,” said Verghese.
“If the first child is a girl, the parents are desperate to ensure that the second child is a boy,” he said. “So, they go for sex determination test and abort the fetus if it is a girl.”
Under the population control policy, the federal government limits child education benefits to a family's first two children. Six Indian states have also enacted legislation that bans those with more than two children from contesting village and municipal elections, and denies housing loans, government jobs and even admission to government educational institutions to large families.
“Certainly, there is a definite link between the two-child norm and the growing number of female feticides,” said Sister Lilly Francis Poovelil, executive secretary of the Indian bishops’ Commission for Women.
“The girl child now has become God's endangered gift,” added Sister Poovelil. “We need to adopt a multi-pronged strategy and involve every section of society to change this mindset.”
In a nation of over 1 billion people, the 16-million strong Catholic Church in India runs more than 20,000 educational institutions educating more than 5 million students.
“It is not enough we concentrate on the children. We will try to reach out to their parents and others,” said Sister Poovelil.
The growing concern over female feticide was evident last month when the Delhi Medical Association, a forum of 10,000 doctors in the Indian capital, urged the medical community to avoid abortions beyond 12 weeks after conception.
It was found that 95% of abortions carried out after 12 weeks were sex-selective, Delhi Medical Association president Dr. K.K. Aggarwal said July 11.
“In the present situation, pregnancy can be detected in five to seven weeks,” Aggarwal said. “If the couple approaches a gynecologist for abortion after 12 weeks, it is a clear case of sex-selective abortion.”
Alarmed by the Christian medical forum's report, India's National Commission for Women has called for stringent laws to curb the killings. Currently, there are almost no restrictions on abortions in India, which legalized the practice in 1971.
The National Commission for Women, the watchdog group for women's rights, has called for amendments and strict punishments under the existing law that prohibits sex-selective abortions, and is preparing additional amendments intended to elminate such abortions.
The commission has also launched a massive awareness campaign with the blunt slogan “Stop female feticide.”
Mary's Help
Since the Indian bishops’ conference decided in 1997 to dedicate Sept. 8, the feast of the Birth of Mary, as the “day of the girl child,” the Church has steadily increased its programs to counter the cultural preference for sons.
Bishop Thakur said that progress is being made, pointing to roadside ads bearing slogans like “To kill a girl in the womb is a crime.” The ads have started appearing even in remote places in his home state of Bihar, one of India's most underdeveloped regions.
“This is a positive development,” he said. “We should strengthen this campaign to change the biased attitude to girl children.”
Anto Akkara writes from New Delhi, India.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Anto Akkara ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: You Won't Go Far Without Buy-In DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:FAMILY MATTERS
I've moved up to a new leadership position, replacing someone the employees really liked. I want to make some changes, but even the minor moves I've made so far have met with a lot of resistance and some outright anger. What can I do to move us forward?
I can see why your boss put you in this position. You aren't just waltzing in with the sole intent of blending in and staying out of trouble. You want to lead this organization to a better place and you have some ideas about how that can be done. You're rolling up your sleeves trying to find a way to do it well. Kudos to you.
But this is a big challenge. Since your predecessor had the respect and loyalty of the staff, they won't mind a few cosmetic changes — but they are puzzled. They're probably thinking, “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.” When they see you trying to change their ways, they feel defensive.
As Christians, we tend to want it both ways when it comes to leading people. We have the gift and command to be loving and accepting — but we also want people to grow and be transformed. Accepting and changing at the same time is so tough, most people opt for one or the other.
Before you charge in and shake things up, you should do a hard self-examination. Ask yourself: “Do I want to make these changes to assert my will? Or to improve the organization and help our customers and employees? What's driving my desire for change?”
Once you understand your own motivation, you'll want to understand theirs. A mistake many leaders make is in imposing a solution from the top-down — that is, without making a serious effort to understand key players’ perspective on the issue at hand.
Make no mistake: Buy-in is an integral part of the solution. If people don't feel like they're in on a key decision, they won't be motivated to implement it with passion and conviction.
It sounds like you have some specific changes in mind. Good for you. But hearing your staff out on what you have in mind — or, even broader, on the mission and vision of your business — is a good place to begin making those changes. And making them stick.
If your people feel their positions are understood, cooperation should increase and defensiveness should recede. Besides, you're sure to hear some good ideas you hadn't thought of on your own.
This could occur at an off-site or retreat where you and your key employees get together to identify the most important goals and to clarify the organization's vision and mission. This step will improve the likelihood that your priorities and goals are the ones that everyone will be more motivated to support and work toward.
Move away from the idea of forcing changes on a reluctant group. This group is your team and you will probably get the best solutions working closely with them. You may have to deliver an ultimatum or terminate an employee who can't see or contribute to the mission and important goals. But this is rarely the case when buy-in is actively sought.
Art Bennett is director of Alpha Omega Clinic and Consultation Services (aoccs.org).
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Art Bennett ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Policy Reversal: Catholics Can Adopt DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:JACKSON, Miss. — Dealing with infertility was difficult enough. But not being considered by their town's Christian adoption agency because they were Catholics painfully reminded Sandy and Robert Stedman how misunderstood Catholicism is in the South.
The Jackson, Miss., couple decided to use the media to describe their plight, and the coverage caused the agency's national headquarters to step in and the local agency to reverse its policy of excluding Catholics as adoptive parents.
Here's how the story unfolded:
About a year ago, the Stedmans decided they wanted to adopt a child. They found out that the best place, locally, was the Jackson office of Bethany Christian Services of Mississippi, which is an independently operated office affiliated with the Presbyterian Church of America.
Bethany, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., has about 80 branch offices in 32 states. According to its website, it bills itself as a “not-for-profit, pro-life, Christian adoption and family services agency.”
Bethany's national office requires that all applicants sign a “statement of faith” to ensure that the prospective parents share the Christian mission of the organization.
But the statement has one paragraph that prevents Catholics from signing it, according to Father John Trigilio, president of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy.
The paragraph states that “in all matters of faith and life, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the final authority. The Scriptures point us with full reliability to Jesus, God's Son. The Scriptures tell us that we receive forgiveness of sins by faith in Jesus Christ, and that God provides salvation by grace alone for those who repent and believe.”
Father Trigilio said the excerpt presents the typical Protestant axiom, sola scriptura.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “The inspired books teach the truth. Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures” (No. 107).
But since there are different interpretations of the meaning of Scripture, says the Catechism, “all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgment of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God” (No. 119).
The Catechism quotes St. Augustine saying: “But I would not believe in the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church already moved me.”
Those theological points “do prevent Catholics from signing since they would deny the teaching authority of the Church in doing so,” said Father Trigilio. “It is not that the Church or her magisterium are superior to the Word of God; rather, Jesus Christ himself founded the Church and authorized her alone to faithfully interpret the Word of God, both the written word (for example, sacred Scripture) and the unwritten word (for example, sacred Tradition).”
Bethany has no current plans to revise the statement of faith, said John VanValkenburg, national spokesman.
“The ‘Statement of Faith’ reflects our beliefs as an agency,” he said. “This is who we are.”
The Stedmans would have signed the statement — if they had been given the chance, Robert said. But they never did because they heard from a Catholic friend that the Jackson office did not accept applications from Catholics.
“I was speechless,” Robert said. “I just kept saying over and over, ‘But they're a Christian service.’ It didn't make sense.”
So they found another agency and applied there. This summer, Sandy found a Bethany pamphlet tucked away in a desk drawer.
“The sick, sad feeling” from a year ago returned, Robert said.
This time, Sandy called the director of the Bethany office in Jackson and was told that the agency's “statement of faith” did not agree with Catholicism, Robert said.
He decided to write about Bethany's policy in his local paper, where he is a contributing writer.
“It was a matter of principle,” he said. “If you're Catholic, it's hard to find an agency to place you [locally] if Bethany is not going to help you.”
The local and national press picked up the story and the resulting furor resulted in the board of directors of Bethany's Jackson office voting on July 19 to accept Catholics as potential adoptive parents, which is the national board of directors’ policy, said VanValkenburg.
Bethany's Jackson office issued an apology on July 20, saying it regretted “any pain caused to families, especially to our Catholic brothers and sisters in Christ” in its “too narrow a view in assessing adoptive applicants.”
Meanwhile, the national board also issued a statement after its regularly scheduled quarterly board meeting in July, re-affirming its policy that all branch offices should follow the national office in allowing all families who sign the “statement of faith” — including Catholics — to be eligible to adopt, said VanValkenburg.
In an interview, Glenn DeMots, president and chief executive officer of Bethany Christian Services’ national office, emphasized that Catholics had not been excluded in other branch offices. During 2004, out of all the children placed by Bethany, 16% ended up in Catholic families, he said.
He also said that the Jackson office was not excluding Catholics because they were not Christians, but because they were “trying to serve the families which they considered most close to their historical roots and identity of their office.”
He added that it was important to point out that “it was not a negative attitude” toward Catholics that made the Jackson office follow their previous policy.
The Stedmans were pleased by the change of heart.
Ada White, director of adoption services for the Child Welfare League of America, said it is not against the law for faith-based adoption agencies to place children with adoptive parents who have the same religion as their birth parents. She said it is also legal for agencies to have a “statement of faith” for prospective applicants to sign.
The Catholic Charities’ office for the Diocese of Jackson accepts applicants of all faiths, as long as there is a demonstrated spiritual foundation, said Linda Raff, the executive director. She said the publicity about the plight of Catholics in Jackson has turned out to be beneficial.
She pointed to an article the local paper is going to publish on the history of Catholicism in Mississippi, mainly because so many people discussed the Bethany situation on radio talk shows and in the papers.
Catholics make up about 3% of the population in the state, and, as a result, the religion is misunderstood, Raff said.
“There are some old line ideas about Catholics worshipping Mary,” she said. “That's the information that's out there … It's turned into a positive educational opportunity for the Catholic Church.”
Carlos Briceño writes from Seminole, Florida.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Carlos BriceņO ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Campus Watch DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:Statue Stays
HIGHEREDUCATION.COM, Aug. 2 — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has ruled that it was not important whether a controversial statue on the campus of Washburn University was a state-sponsored anti-Catholic message but that the university “had not endorsed that message.”
The Higher Education website described the bust, “Holier Than Thou,” as representing an “ironic recollection” of the artist's first confession, which the artist has described as an encounter with a priest “who had the power to condemn me for my evil ways.”
The statue shows a menacing bishop in an oddly shaped miter; some have said the miter is intended as a phallic symbol.
A former professor and a former student filed the suit, accusing Washburn, a state university in Topeka, Kan., of violating the Constitution's establishment clause because the university seemed to be promoting a religious posture that was anti-Catholic.
New and Traditional
CATHNEWS.COM, July 27 — Campion College, Australia's newest Catholic institution of higher education, will hold its first open house for prospective students Aug. 28. The school will open in 2006.
Campion will offer “a return to traditional education … in a modern and nurturing environment,” reported the Australian Catholic website of the college's liberal-arts curriculum.
The college is located at the former seminary of the Marist Fathers in Old Toongabbie, some 25 minutes from downtown Sydney in the Diocese of Parramatta.
Parramatta's Bishop Kevin Manning has endorsed the college, as has Sydney Cardinal George Pell.
Soul of the Apostolate
FRANCISCAN UNIVERISTY, July 31 — Enduring a 13-hour flight to attend the university's annual catechetical conference in Steubenville, Ohio, was worth it for Lisa Sagers, youth minister of St. Nicholas Church in North Pole, Alaska.
More important than the educational strategies and curriculum ideas, said Sagers, was the “call to holiness, trusting in God and the importance of being a contemplative in the world.”
Nearly 300 catechists, youth ministers and religion teachers gathered for July's 10th annual St. John Bosco Conference.
Chief of Hearts
Father Vollenweider taught history at the college but became deaf by middle age. “He couldn't hear, but you always had the impression he knew everything that was going on,” said one former student.
“He had a good word for you, he always had a smile on his face,” said Henry Boudreaux, a 1973 alumnus. “You couldn't be in a bad mood around him.”
Growing Enrollment
Freshman enrollment this fall is expected to be about 240, compared with 177 a year ago.
“We're aggressively pursuing parochial high schools … and we're also doing more innovative things like having potential students stay on campus overnight to experience the environment and meet students and faculty,” said Benedictine Sister Margaret Stallmeyer, president of the liberal-arts college.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Youth Day Pilgrims Made Big Sacrifices DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:COLOGNE, Germany — When Pope Benedict XVI arrives here on Thursday, Aug. 18, organizers expect that 800,000 people from around the world will come to see him.
The 20th World Youth Day celebration will be the Pope's first trip outside of Italy, as well as his first trip home since succeeding Pope John Paul II. The youth, many of whom will be traveling away from home for the first time, feel the sacrifices they've made in getting to Germany will be spiritually well worth it.
The idea to attend World Youth Day first hit 17-year-old Trista Rassier of Clearwater, Minn., at her confirmation last year at St. Luke's Church. It was there that St. Paul and Minneapolis Auxiliary Bishop Richard Pates asked the group if they were going to World Youth Day, singling out Rassier.
“He pointed me out,” said Rassier. “I said I didn't know if I would have enough money. He told me I should just go.”
By the time confirmation rolled around this year Rassier still wasn't registered to attend. While serving as her friend's confirmation sponsor, Bishop Pates again asked Rassier if she was going.
“I told him there weren't any spots available,” Rassier said. “He told me, ‘Don't worry, I'll get it worked out.'”
The next day, she had a call from the bishop's office securing a spot for her with a pilgrimage group from the Catholic Aid Association, a St. Paul-based fraternal benefit organization.
Rassier hasn't had much time to raise the necessary funds to attend. She's spent much of her spring and summer raising funds for the trip. Her family has also pitched in, using their alpaca ranch as a way to help finance the trip.
This spring, the Rassiers held a raffle, offering other alpaca owners the opportunity for a free breeding to one of the family's herd sires. That resulted in approximately $400 toward the total cost of $2,800.
On July 24, they held a golf tournament and steak dinner benefit to meet Trista's remaining expenses.
“Trista's been soliciting for door prizes for a silent auction. She's made flyers, and advertised in local newspapers,” said Terry Rassier, Trista's father.
Bishop Pates also helped out. When the bishop came to the church for confirmation, St. Luke's gave him a stipend. Rather than accepting the money, the bishop told the Church to use the money for any youth that needed help getting to World Youth Day.
In 2000, Kim Burke of Cincinnati coordinated a group of youth from St. Gertrude's Church to attend World Youth Day in Rome. Three years ago, he did the same thing for 69 youths at World Youth Day in Toronto. This year, he is once again the WYD coordinator.
“World Youth Days are, to a person, life-changing,” said Burke. “The types of changes that youth experience are all rooted in their Catholic faith. They differ, but all revolve around an increase in the intensity of their love for Jesus.”
Burke was especially touched by something he witnessed at the papal welcoming ceremony in Toronto. As Pope John Paul's automobile snaked through the immense crowd, youth pressed against the fence that marked the roadway hoping to catch a glimpse of the Holy Father.
“The group grew and moved along with him. The youth gathered around him like a beehive as he passed through several hundred thousand youth,” said Burke. Burke fully expected his own group to do likewise.
“I expected to be chasing down youth who were following the Pope,” said Burke.
Instead, as Pope John Paul passed, youth in Burke's group immediately gathered in groups of seven and eight, sitting on the hot asphalt to pray.
“I had never seen anything like that in terms of their response to the Pope,” said Burke. “It was very moving to see the youth reacting in this fashion.”
According to figures provided by Christel Sonnekalb with the World Youth Day communication's office in Cologne, 391,000 pilgrims are currently registered for the event. Of that number, more than 60,000 youth and at least 75 bishops from the U.S. and Canada plan to attend World Youth Day. At press time, more than 830 U.S. groups had signed up, representing nearly all the states and 81% of U.S. dioceses and eparchies.
Sonnekalb said that there are more registrants for the diocesan Days of Encounter, the week prior to World Youth Day, than ever before, with 120,000 registered. At least 5,000 youth from the U.S. will participate in the Days of Encounter — an opportunity for pilgrims to stay with local host families to learn about the local culture and Church.
One of the largest U.S. contingents attending World Youth Day will be from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Organizers expect that more than 1,000 Los Angeles youth and their chaperones will attend.
Structured like a mini-Easter, World Youth Day follows a more-or-less set format. However, Pope Benedict XVI has already made some changes to the format for Cologne. This year's events will be held not only in Cologne, but also in the nearby German cities of Bonn and Düsseldorf. World Youth Day also will have more of an ecumenical flavor, with catechesis sessions and other events being held in several Lutheran Churches. In addition, Pope Benedict has added a separate meeting specifically with seminarians in attendance on Aug. 19. He also plans to visit a synagogue and to meet with Muslim and civic leaders while in Cologne.
According to World Youth Day spokesmen, more than 70% of the registered participants are European — including 90,000 Italians and 70,000 Germans. Americans represent approximately 16% of the attendees, with 5% from Asia, 4% from Latin America and 2.5% from Asia.
Burke, of Cincinnati, said that he has witnessed the sacrifices that his pilgrims have made to go to Cologne. They've done everything from car washes to selling handmade blankets to collecting used cellular telephones for re-use to raise money.
“It's not a vacation; it's a pilgrimage,” said Burke. “The rewards that they get will not be something they can hold in their hand, but something they hold in their heart.”
One family that has made tremendous sacrifices to send their children to World Youth Day is the Bissonnette family of Cincinnati. Three of the family's 10 children will be attending the event: Emily, a senior at Franciscan University of Steubenville; Christopher, a sophomore at Steubenville; and Patrick, a home-educated high school junior. Emily and Christopher attended World Youth Day in Toronto.
“When we came back from Toronto we couldn't say enough about how valuable the experience was,” said Emily. “I remember standing in the field after the papal Mass in Toronto and thinking, ‘I want to be in Cologne, Germany.'”
Bissonnette said it's a sacrifice not only for each of them, but also for her parents.
“We've never been further from home than Toronto,” she said. “It's difficult for them to have three of us leaving the country for a week.”
In addition to paying for her tuition, Emily has been working two jobs to help pay for the trip. While she's disappointed that she won't be able to see Pope John Paul II again, she's excited to “to be among the first people to be present to see our new Holy Father.”
Bissonnette's brother, Patrick, has been doing lawn care and other odd jobs to help pay his way. In addition, his youth group at St. Gertrude's has helped raise about one-third of the $2,600 total.
“I look forward to seeing the Pope and meeting the various people around the world who are my age and are Catholic,” said Patrick.
“You have to sleep outside, and there is the rain and the heat, and not knowing the language when you're trying to communicate with others,” said Emily.
“I don't look at the sacrifices because the whole experience is worthwhile and meaningful,” she said. “Even those things that appear to be bumps in the road just add to the experience and make it mean even more.”
Tim Drake is based in St. Joseph, Minnesota. He will be reporting from World Youth Day in Cologne.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tim Drake ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Weekly DVD/Video Picks DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:This Old Cub (2004)
Newly released on DVD, This Old Cub is a heartwarming tribute to Chicago Cubs fixture Ron Santo, who kept his diabetes a secret throughout his distinguished 15-year playing career before moving to the sportscaster's box. Directed with unconcealed devotion by Santo's son Jeff, This Old Cub is less a documentary than an out-and-out celebration of Santo's working-class heroism, good humor amid adversity, life-long devotion to the Cubs and accomplishments on the field.
Not incidentally, it's also a none-too-subtle amicus brief to baseball's Hall of Fame, which has yet to induct Santo — shamefully so in the view of Bill Murray and other celebrity fans. In light of his struggles in the days before pocket glucometers and other advances, Santo's achievements seem particularly notable: a nine-time National League All-Star, he was the first third baseman to hit 300 home runs and win five Gold Gloves.
Now, having lost both legs below the knee, Santo gets around on prostheses, and still manages to throw out the opening pitch in his beloved Wrigley Field. Santo's buoyant spirit makes This Old Cub inspirational viewing for anyone, though it's a special treat for baseball fans and those whose lives have been touched by diabetes or similar hardships.
Content advisory: Nothing problematic. Fine family viewing.
Superman II (1981)
Picking up more or less where the first Superman left off, Superman II ups the ante by confronting the Man of Steel (Christopher Reeve) with a challenge more formidable than Gene Hackman's buffoonish Lex Luthor: a trio of Kryptonian super-villains with powers equal to his own — and an old grudge against Superman's real father.
Superman II also heightens the romantic complications from the first film, bringing the tension of the strange love triangle of Clark, Lois (Margot Kidder) and Superman to a head and, ultimately, offering the definitive interpretation of why Clark can never have Lois and Lois can never have Superman.
As the maniacal General Zod, Terence Stamp creates one of the all-time great comic-book villains, and the dialogue sparkles with wit.
Content advisory: Much action violence; mild innundo; ambiguous presentation of a non-marital sexual encounter (nothing explicit). Okay for discerning teens.
Top Hat (1935)
Debuting this week on DVD along with other Astaire classics, Top Hat is the quintessential Fred-and-Ginger vehicle, featuring some of the most glorious, memorable dance sequences ever filmed. The Irving Berlin score includes perhaps the duo's best-known number, “Cheek to Cheek,” as well as Astaire's signature solo number, “Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails.”
Like many of their pictures, Top Hat opens with Fred making a bad first impression on Ginger, then spending much of the film trying to get on her good side. This device seems to fit Astaire's insouciant, sometimes annoying screen persona, though he's more sympathetic and likeable here than in some pictures. Their early scenes, especially the sequence in the rain at the park, are appropriately light and charming, with Ginger especially believable as the young woman annoyed but not entirely displeased by Fred's attentions.
Then the plot takes a turn for farce with a contrived case of mistaken identity, as Ginger confuses Fred with her best friend's husband. It's typical Depression-era escapist fare — but when Fred and Ginger are in motion, the magic is timeless.
Content advisory: Romantic and marital complications, including suspicions of infidelity and references to divorce. Teens and up.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Steven D. Greydanus ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Hungry for Hope DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:EDITORIAL
The story of Susan Torres is powerful because the world is hungry for hope.
Doctors now say the vicious cancer that would kill her was there, dormant, as she went to college at the University of Dallas and met the two loves of her life — the Catholic faith and Jason Torres. She and Jason dated, married, had a son.
Jason had to rush his four-months-pregnant wife to the hospital the day before Mother's Day this year. There, doctors discovered that the cancer had reached her brain and declared brain dead.
Doctors literally kept Susan's body going by machines until they delivered the baby by on Aug. 3, two months premature. It was a girl.
“We were overjoyed at the birth of baby Susan,” said Jason's brother, Justin, the family spokesman. “But we knew what was coming next.”
Susan received the sacrament of the sick from Arlington priest Father Paul Scalia — the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia — and then the machines were turned off.
It is tempting to make Susan a poster child for one pro-life cause or another — but there's a more profound meaning in her life than that: hope. It is ironic that Americans so profoundly lack hope. We have reached a nearly unprecedented level of affluence. We live an air-conditioned life in which overeating is the threat, not lack of food, surrounded by entertainments.
Yet, at the same time, our suicide rates are higher than ever and clinical depression has reached epidemic proportions. The high divorce rate shows the level of dissatisfaction married people have with their lives.
More than ever before, we have the means to bring about a certain happiness in this world. And more than ever before, we are despairing because we find that it's just not enough.
Selfishness and hopelessness go hand in hand, as the Catechism points out (No. 1818). The more we focus on the comforts in this life, the more we forget the true happiness promised in the next.
It's no wonder the most popular saints of our days are saints of hope.St. Padre Pio's canonization ceremony broke attendance records; he was a stigmatist who lived a life of deprivation. St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) are popular worldwide; they both perished in Nazi concentration camps.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux's life was marked by sorrow, sickness and an early death. Mother Teresa suffered through 50 years with the sense that God was absent from her life. Pope John Paul II — the subject of Witness to Hope and author of Crossing the Threshold of Hope — lost every member of his family by age 20, and lived nearly all his life under totalitarian oppression.
Hope provides the power in all of their stories. We love these saints because they remind us that there's a deeper source of happiness, one that doesn't depend on the material circumstances of life — a happiness that can survive suffering.
Father Werenfried Van Straaten, founder of Aid to the Church in Need, once wrote to a newspaper editor and suggested what a Catholic newspaper ought to do.
He said: “Strengthen in us the conviction that Catholicism in the wide world is flourishing in its full vigor of love so that we can share in this fullness and find the courage also to be ready for sacrifice.
“Arouse in us by sweeping examples the consciousness that we, too, are capable of doing good, and that a man who is full of God is able to do supernatural deeds and is even capable of martyrdom. We beseech you, search the whole Catholic world for such examples. We are convinced you will find them. For heroism can never be missing from God's Church.”
We have found these heroes of hope, and not just in the lives of the saints. After Sept. 11, we heard about the rescue workers — mostly Catholic — who received general absolution and then climbed into the burning World Trade Center, knowing it could collapse. We've heard of the Catholic troops — many of them immigrants — who left friends and family to make the ultimate sacrifice overseas.
And we've told you about people like Terri Schiavo, whose devout parents were determined to give her the chance to live despite her physical handicaps.
All of them, exemplars of hope.
Now we have Jason and Susan Torres, who literally brought new life from death.
“Her passing is a testament to the truth that human life is a gift from God,” Justin Torres said, “and that children are always to be fought for, even if life requires — as it did of Susan — the last full measure of devotion.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Producing Peacemakers DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:Facts of Life
The yen for conflict may run in families, but it takes a bad environment to produce a bully. So say researchers at the University of Quebec in Montreal. They also concluded that reducing physically aggressive behavior (such as hitting) in toddlers might help prevent the development of social aggression (such as picking fights) as children get older.
Source: Child Development, July/August 2005 Illustration by Tim Rauch
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Abstinence-Before-Marriage Programs Taken to Heart DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — Like many teens, Leslie Morrow envisioned falling in love in high school and getting married. And, like many girls her age, she read the advice of some magazines, which encourage use of condoms and the birth control pill if girls are going to have sex.
Then, one day at school in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Leslie heard a message about abstinence until marriage and how pre-marital sex can damage relationships. The two-hour presentation was given by Mary Beth Bonnacci, founder and president of Real Love Inc., based in Denver.
Bonnacci's talk about abstinence and the downside of pre-marital sex “really motivated me to save myself for marriage,” Morrow said. “My faith in God is what cemented the whole idea of chastity and living it. Maybe you feel like you're accountable to your parents and you may be tempted to be dishonest. In the end, I knew I was accountable to God and you can't lie to him; he knows you inside and out.”
Today, she is Leslie Morrow Fischer, having married Sebastian Fischer in August 2004 — and having remained chaste until their marriage last year.
Fischer is like many young people today who show increased support for abstinence. In June, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released initial results from a study of 2,310 students participating in four abstinence-only education programs. The survey, conducted by Mathematica Policy Research Inc., found “highly credible estimates of the impacts of abstinence-only education on attitudes and perceptions that may be related to longer-term teen risk behaviors.”
Youths in three of the four programs were “significantly more likely than their control group counterparts to pledge to abstain from sex until marriage.” Youths in three of the four programs also had more supportive views of abstinence or less supportive of teen sex than did youth in the control group. Mathematica's final report is due next year.
Spreading the Word
Healthy Respect, based in New York, has been bringing the message of abstinence to students in public schools in the New York metropolitan area since December 2003. The secular program has provided more than 1,000 students with 20 hours of education over several weeks, beginning in the sixth grade. The theme is reinforced as students hear the message again the following year, tailored for their older age.
“Our objective is to help foster child-parent communication and provide the resources and tools to both parent and child,” said Healthy Respect Executive Director John Margand.
Senior instructor Malika Warren said some motivation to adopt an abstinent lifestyle comes from a child's own home life, where there may be divorce and/or early pregnancy. Warren said the Healthy Respect curriculum includes information on sexually transmitted diseases, how alcohol and tobacco are linked to sexual activity, building a child's character and self-image, and the media's influence on sexual attitudes.
“It is helpful for them [students] to have a more critical eye of what they are watching, hearing and seeing,” Warren said. “It is a very counter-cultural message; we are definitely climbing uphill.”
While Healthy Respect does include information on condoms in its program, Margand said the information is provided only to point out the condom's limitations in respect to preventing certain viral infections.
“In our view, there is a serious pedagogical problem in challenging a young person to achieve an abstinent lifestyle, have the endorsement of the teacher, but in the second breath to say, ‘If you fail, use a condom,'” Margand said. “It says ‘We don't have confidence in you that you'll maintain this achievement.'”
Abstinence-Plus
Not everyone found comfort in Mathematica's report. Advocates for Youth, based in Washington, D.C., said the federal government is acting like a “flat earth society” in promoting and funding programs “with no credible science to bolster claims” that abstinence-only initiatives are working.
“The problem with these programs is that, by federal statute, they prohibit information about condoms and birth control for the prevention of pregnancy and disease,” said Advocates for Youth President James Wagoner. “The only thing that can be measured in these programs is failure rates. As a public health matter, it is clear these programs have little merit.”
The organization recommends an educational initiative that includes abstinence, “particularly for younger teens, and information about contraception, so when young people become sexually active, they have the knowledge to protect themselves,” Wagoner added.
While abstinence obviously prevents the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, Wagoner said that condoms also provide protection and are highly effective in the prevention of HIV and pregnancy. “As a matter of reality and people's health, it's a slam-dunk,” he added. “Science and 25 years of research show that a comprehensive approach works.”
But Fischer believes that young people receive a mixed message when they are educated simultaneously about condom use and abstinence.
“That's like telling someone not to commit suicide, but if you're still going to do it, I'll tell you where to get the gun,” she said. “I think it is ridiculous to tell teenagers something totally opposite of what they just heard.”
Fischer, a high school French teacher, has served as a confirmation instructor for the past seven years and continues to talk to youth groups and high schools about abstinence before marriage.
Chastity “is something that God expects of us,” she said. “It is something we are called to do. We talk about vocations in the youth groups. You don't know what your vocation is, so you have to keep yourself pure for whatever God is calling you to do.”
She said that her husband was “very accepting” of her choice of chastity before marriage, even from the time they met as freshmen at Creighton University, a Jesuit school in Omaha, Neb.
Fischer said the pair continued to live separately even after their engagement, “so living together would be a holy part of our marriage.” Chastity remains important in their lives today with the couple's choice of natural family planning.
Wayne Forrest is based in Providence, Rhode Island.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Wayne Forrest ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: SUPERHEROES LITE DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:Less than a month after Fox's dumb, trashy Fantastic Four somehow passed itself off as a family-friendly superhero comedy comes Disney's Sky High, a film that actually fills the bill.
The notion of an otherwise ordinary family inhabiting a world of colorful comic-book adventure is not exactly a revelation these days. Spy Kids set the bar high four years ago, and last year's The Incredibles took the concept to the pinnacle of achievement. In the shadow of these films, Sky High comes off underachieving and derivative.
Yet in fusing its familiar super-powered trappings and squeaky-clean PG milieu to the venerable clichés of the John Hughes-style coming-of-age films today's parents grew up with, Sky High manages to be at once completely familiar and at the same time a little different from any film you've ever seen before.
From the themes of true friends and false popularity to the familiar closing strains of the 1982 Modern English hit “I Melt With You” (“I'll stop the world and melt with you/I've seen the future and it's getting better all the time”), Sky High is carefully pitched to be watchable by the Breakfast Club generation and their young kids.
It's hardly inspired, but it's competent, wholly inoffensive and consistently entertaining, if mildly so. Measured against the summer's other family fare, it registers somewhere between the superior March of the Penguins and the lackluster Herbie: Fully Loaded, and is neither as visionary nor as maddening as Tim Burton's schizophrenic, inspired/self-indulgent Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Set in an airborne high school for the children of superheroes, Sky High tells the story of underdog freshman Will Stronghold (Michael Angarano, Seabiscuit), offspring of the dynamic duo of The Commander (Kurt Russell, Miracle) and Jetstream (Kelly Preston, The Cat in the Hat). Like Harry Potter, Will comes with the expectation of greatness, yet arrives at school with no known powers.
Will is pretty much like any other teenage hero in a high-school comedy, I guess. His best friend is Layla (Danielle Panabaker), an attractive, idealistic member of the opposite sex whom he has never considered romantically, though she's secretly in love with him. He starts out socially with the uncool crowd (in this case, future sidekicks, or “hero support” as they're more euphemistically known), but things change for him around the time that a gorgeous, popular senior named Gwen Grayson (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) takes an active interest in him. Soon he's swept up into a new social set, only later to realize the importance of being true to your friends.
Hurt by his insensitivity, Layla feigns attraction to Will's arch-rival (Steven Strait), a brooding student with an old grudge against her real love. Things come to a head around the time that Will's new friends invite themselves to his house for an out-of-control party ended only by the unexpected return of Will's parents. By this time, conniving Gwen has revealed her true colors — she's been using Will all along for her own ulterior motives, and has spitefully sent Layla away in tears.
Will's wrap-up monologue, in which he summarizes how his girlfriend became his enemy, his enemy became his best friend and his best friend became his girlfriend sounds a lot like the ending of a lot of high-school comedies. The superhero stuff is likewise off the shelf — a villain with an old grudge schemes to infiltrate the heroes’ defenses, steal a critical weapon and have vengeance, but is thwarted when underdog heroes rise to the occasion and prove their worth. Somehow, though, the fusion of the two sets of conventions manages to hold together for an hour and a half or so, and the film knows better than to overstay its welcome.
The rehashing of parallel genres will probably seem freshest to those with least previous exposure to either. Not only do you not have to be a fan of superhero movies or high-school coming-of-age tales to enjoy Sky High, but casual viewers might actually enjoy it more than special fans.
Having grown up steeped in both genres, I found myself wishing the film had gone a bit further creatively: It might have offered characters who go beyond the familiar stereotypes and plot complications that avoid the obvious clichés. But Sky High is what it is. It sets modest goals for itself and achieves them without particular effort or distinction.
A slight PC vibe runs through the film: Layla, the idealistic best friend, is not only an environmentalist-vegetarian, but also turns out to be one of the most powerful characters in the film, though she has a scruple against displaying her powers except when absolutely necessary. (Layla's mother says that animals, with whom she has a telepathic bond, don't like to be eaten. Since Layla is a vegetarian despite her power involving a similar bond with plants, I guess plants must not mind.)
Layla's high-minded objection to the whole hero-sidekick hierarchy (“We're all just people”) reminds one how brave and subversive was The Incredibles’ broadside against celebrating mediocrity and suppressing differences in order to make everyone feel equally special.
When Will's world-class powers kick in and he's promoted from sidekick classes to the hero track, we're meant to feel this as some sort of betrayal of his sidekick friends — as if, like Layla, he should accept sidekick status despite his great power, in solidarity with his friends.
Yet is it unfair or demeaning for schools to have honors courses for some and general or remedial courses for others? And if you have the ability for honors work and others don't, is it noble to stay in general study because that's where your friends are, or because you object to making divisions between people?
Content advisory: Recurring stylized violence, romantic complications. Should be okay for most kids.
Steven D. Greydanus is editor and chief critic of DecentFilms.com.
----- EXCERPT: Sky High stays back a grade ----- EXTENDED BODY: Steven D. Greydanus ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Catholics Fight the Slave Trade In America DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON — The slave trade is bigger than you think — even in the United States — and the Catholic Church is an integral part of the solution. Typical was the human trafficking ring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators recently uncovered.
Thugs were bringing illegal aliens across the United States-Mexico border and into “safe houses” where the women were raped repeatedly by the smugglers.
The highly lucrative trade is the third largest source of profit for organized crime, trailing slightly behind drugs and guns.
Victims often are desperately poor people who are tricked, kidnapped or sold by family members — mostly in cases of extreme poverty. They are coerced into domestic servitude or work in sweatshops. In some parts of the world, children as young as 3 are made to work, sold as camel jockeys, soldiers or prostitutes.
In the United States, labor slaves are sometimes migrants or immigrants — legal or not — duped into debt bondage and subjected to cruelty or torture.
The Vatican July 10 released a document in which it said the Church needs to play a larger role in the global fight against the trafficking of women and girls into the sex trade. Given the “dramatic increase in the number of women and girls who are sexually exploited” around the world, said the statement released by the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers, there is “an urgent need for pastoral action” that goes beyond existing programs offered by the Church.
In 2002, Pope John Paul II expressed alarm at the booming business of trade in human persons, calling it a “shocking offense against human dignity and a grave violation of fundamental human rights” and one of the most “pressing political, social, and economic problems associated with the process of globalization.”
According to Nyssa Mestas, a grants and program administrator at the Office of Migration and Refugee Services for the U.S. bishops’ conference, victims of slavery in the United States are often mistaken for illegal immigrants working in factories or sweatshops.
“They have some particular vulnerability: They might be trying to feed their families back home and hear about work as a domestic overseas, or might trust a friend or family member who promises them a job, and then sells them for his own gain,” Mestas said. “They travel a distance, out of their familiar zones and don't know the language or laws, or even where they are sometimes.
“Once they arrive on foreign turf,” she said, “traffickers may confiscate a person's legal documents, brainwash or beat them into submission, or threaten harm to their families back home.”
Mestas said that other victims know they are being smuggled and agree to pay a certain fee. Once across the border, smugglers might sell them as slaves. Smugglers also use another trick: They charge extortion fees of more than three or more times the agreed amount, and then add charges for room and board, making debts impossible to pay off.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently announced the release of the 2005 Trafficking in Persons Report. According to the report, an estimated 800,000 people are pressed into slavery across borders each year. Approximately 80% are women and girls, and up to 50% are minors. Authorities believe that approximately 18,000 slaves enter the United States through established black market trade routes each year.
According to the Helsinki Commission — the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which monitors human rights violations — the largest number of people trafficked into the United States come from East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America, Europe and Eurasia.
The United States — along with other affluent countries such as France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands — is a “destination point,” where consumer demand for slaves is high. According to Marie Smith, international director for Feminists for Life, current statistics do not account for years of accumulated numbers of victims, or for those traded intra-regionally worldwide.
In a recent editorial, Smith also warned about American children who are trafficked within U.S. borders, victims of a “homegrown” sex trafficking industry.
Despite the growing consciousness and increased efforts to combat trafficking on the part of the United States and other governments, the slave trade is thriving. Consumerism, war, and poverty, along with an increasing disparity between the haves and have-nots in the global economy maintain supply and demand.
Steve Wagner, director of the Department of Health and Human Services Rescue and Restore program, said the collaboration of the Church, law enforcement, community and faith-based leaders, medical personnel, social services and alert citizens is crucial for combating slavery.
Rescue and Restore's “Look Beneath the Surface Campaign” is a multi-pronged collaboration that works by disseminating information to people who are encountering victims of trafficking and might not know it. The Department of Justice and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are responsible for investigating and prosecuting perpetrators.
In the largest case to date, 85 Peruvians were rescued from slavery in Long Island, N.Y., due to the joint efforts of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, local law enforcement and Catholic Charities. Working in local shops and living in a hotel, the Peruvians were forced to turn over their paychecks to traffickers.
Wagner said the Church's involvement in these efforts is key.
“One thing that is important is that the Church ought to have a special concern, and is particularly sensitive to this because of the legacy of Pope John Paul and his Theology of the Body,” he said. “The roots of the problem stem from social problems, such as domestic violence, pornography and abortion. The objectification of an individual caught in trafficking is one of the most egregious examples of turning people into objects.”
Health and Human Services involves the Church at the local level. Wagner said that the Church is often the “first responder.”
Many victims, he said, come from a faith background and turn to priests, religious or those whose Catholic sensibilities foster a sense of trust. Some victims, he said, are allowed in public only to go to a doctor or to attend church.
School Sister of Notre Dame Mary Ellen Dougherty, project director for Stop the Trafficking of People, said, “There is an assumption that the problem is somewhere else, that it is too horrible to be here. Most people are incredulous when they hear about the horrors of trafficking in our own backyard.”
The U.S. bishops’ conference receives one of the largest grants from the Department of Health and Human Services. In turn, the Office of Migration and Refugee Services awards grant money to programs across the country.
Rescue and Restore, active in 14 cities, has also begun to enlist the aid of dioceses that are willing to participate in teaching parishioners how to recognize and respond to potential victims in their midst.
In New Jersey, home state of Rep. Chris Smith, a Catholic who has addressed this issue in Congress, several trafficking rings have been broken. According to Wagner, the Archdiocese of Newark has begun to hold parish-based seminars to raise awareness.
In addition, Covenant House operates a trafficking hotline. It receives calls nationwide and directs callers to appropriate resources. Local Catholic Charities offices frequently provide a range of services to victims.
The “Look Beneath the Surface” campaign provides a toll-free number to report possible victims. Because of the danger involved to victims and their rescuers, those who recognize victims are advised not to attempt rescues on their own, but to call the hotline 1 (888) 373-7888.
Irene Lagan is based in Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Irene Lagan ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Letters to the Editor DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:VITAL DISTINCTION
Your back-page article “To Give and Not Count the Cost” (July 17-23) was truly inspirational and almost the epitome of Christian Charity. The act of donating a non-vital part of one's body is a heroic display.
However, the article might imply that it is moral and ethical to donate any part of a human body. It is not. It is neither moral nor ethical to donate vital organs, those without which a person cannot live. To be of value to another person, a vital organ must be taken from a vital (living) person. There is no problem with donating certain tissue or non-vital parts so long as the procedure does not disable or mutilate the donor.
The removal of a vital organ from a “[brain-] dead” person will kill him or her if he or she is not already dead. If the donor is truly dead, then the organ is truly dead; thus, it is useless. No person can know for sure when another person dies — when the soul departs from the body. God has reserved that to himself. Therefore, the removal of a vital organ [from a living person] is futile — if not manslaughter.
I, for one, hope that I will accept a dysfunctional vital organ as a clarion call from God. I will never ask another person to donate his or her life so I could add a few more years to my terrestrial life.
PETER J. HAHN
Hampshire, Illinois
Life and Taxes
In your July 10-16 issue, a letter by David and Elizabeth Maier titled “Dems With a Difference” calls Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., “the most faithful and effective pro-life leader in the Senate.”
Unfortunately, I cannot consider Sen. Santorum to be pro-life. On Sep. 13, 1995, he voted to require that states have family caps in their welfare policies, and to require that states deny support for minors who bear children out of wedlock. However, such provisions will tempt the woman to abort the baby, and are therefore pro-abortion. The fact that they were requirements makes them all the more clearly pro-abortion.
During his 1994 campaign, then-Representative Santorum also said that the federal government ought to require states to include family caps in their welfare reforms. That means he stopped being pro-life before he was even elected to the Senate.
The abortion issue ought to make it clear that the problem of unmarried sexual activity will have to be solved by some other means other than punishing the woman after she is pregnant. The fact that a pregnancy occurs out of wedlock is absolutely no excuse for abortion. When it comes to out-of-wedlock pregnancies and childbirths, avoiding the further sin of abortion simply must have priority over punishing any prior sexual sins.
At the very least, child and dependent tax breaks for the middle class need to be made available to welfare recipients. The simplest way to do that would be to convert the dependency exemption from a tax deduction into a 100%-refundable tax credit, and to make the child tax credit 100% refundable. Indeed, all tax breaks for children and dependents need to be made 100%-refundable tax credits.
Child and dependent refundable tax credits could also be an alternative to raising the minimum wage. Unlike a higher minimum wage, employers would not bear the entire cost. Therefore, there should not be the same problem of employers refusing to hire people. Yet low-wage employees would still get more take-home pay, which is the purpose of a higher minimum wage.
PAUL D. WHITEHEAD
Falls Church, Virginia
Politics Prevails
With reference to “Pushing Her Party to Protect Life” (Inperson, June 26-July 2), I wish Kristen Day all the luck in the world in trying to change the Democratic Party to be more pro-life. However, if she is relying on Sen. Charles Schumer to be a catalyst in this movement, she is living in a dream world. Next to Ted Kennedy, Schumer is probably the most pro-abortion senator. He is the one who started the filibuster against President Bush's pro-life judicial nominees, and who will lead the Democrats to deny Bush's nominees for the Supreme Court if they are, in any way, pro-life.
If he is backing pro-life Democrats for Senate seats, it is only because he sees that this may be the only chance the Democrats have to win these seats. He is trying to get the Democrats into a majority position in the Senate. If he is successful, it will be back to the policy of catering to the abortion industry and killing as many innocent, unborn babies as possible. It will also be back to the policy of not listening to pro-life Democrats, including the two he is backing.
The only way the Democratic Party will change is if Kennedy, Schumer and the rest of the pro-abortion Democrats are voted out of office — or at least enough of them are voted out so that pro-lifers will be in command of policy decisions.
GERARD P. MCEVOY
Coram, New York
Breast Cancer Boondoggle
Not only do cancer fund-raising businesses put money ahead of women's lives by refusing to tell women about the increased risk of breast cancer after abortion (“Simple as ABC,” Letters, June 26-July 2), but one fund-raiser, The Susan G. Komen Foundation, actually donates some of the money it raises to Planned Parenthood — the largest and wealthiest abortion business in the country.
Anyone who is thinking of joining the Komen “Race for the Cure” fund-raisers around the country should realize that some of the money raised to cure breast cancer will actually go to cause it.
CAROL SUHR
Pine, Arizona
The Casey Way
In the letter titled “Helping or Enabling?” (July 17-23) a Register reader says the late pro-life Democratic Gov. Robert P. Casey was a steadfast abortion opponent, but his own muddle-headed use of government to foster supposedly just aid to the supposedly needy ought not to be honored.
Gov. Casey's philosophy of helping the truly needy saved a baby's life outside an abortion mill one day.
I was sidewalk counseling when I approached a young woman who said she was getting public assistance. She already had two small children and had been abandoned by her husband. She had become pregnant by a man she hardly knew. She regretted it and said it was a big mistake. She was going to abort because public officials at that time were threatening to refuse more aid to welfare recipients who had more children.
I told her that Gov. Casey had said publicly that he wouldn't let that happen in Pennsylvania. I also told her about a pro-life agency in her area. She went on to have her son; later, she sent me a picture of him. She eventually met a nice man with a good job who loved her and her children.
Experience has shown me that most women having abortions are not receiving welfare. But on this particular day, Gov. Casey's words saved that baby's life and saved his mother years of guilt and regret.
Gov. Casey was a man of faith and humility, compassion and perseverance. The Democratic Party would do well to abandon its extreme liberalism and follow the example of this dedicated public servant.
COLLEEN REILLY
Lebanon, Pennsylvania
Contemplating Prayer
If Richard L. Johnson, writer of the letter titled “Off-Centering” (July 3-9) would read William A. Meninger's book The Loving Search for God (Continuum International Publishing Group), he might conclude that what is being called “centering prayer” is none other than contemplative prayer, long practiced by the Church.
Father Meninger's book explains the 14th-century book The Cloud of Unknowing, which gives help to those who wish to practice this historical form of prayer.
PEGGY BATEMAN
Franklinton, Louisiana
Japan Had to Be Stopped
We just received your Aug. 7-13 issue. We do believe the National Catholic Register is one fine paper and read it cover to cover.
This issue is amiss in printing an article on what Catherine and Michael Pakaluk call “our national sin” (“Effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Still Being Felt,” Commentary & Opinion).
If the authors wanted to comment on the dropping of the atomic bomb, they should have covered all the bases. First is the idea that abortion stems from this. Please give us a break.
Second is the statement that women and children were involved. Nowhere does it mention that women and adult children were being recruited to engage in suicide missions when the Allied Forces were to invade the Islands. They also should have covered the suicide missions of their pilots on our ships.
I, for one, as a veteran, have read many historical facts written by Japanese writers that make me realize that the dropping of the two bombs was necessary. It sure kept many women and children of the Allies from being widowed and fatherless. It was estimated this would have been 1 million. We have heard from many of these women, and they all agree with me. I'm sure that, if Michael would have been there to be a part of the invading force, he would have changed his tune.
J.N. AND LOIS BENDER
Minster, Oho
Democratic Decision
I liked “An Open Letter to Caroline Kennedy” by Father James Gilhooley, with its good advice (Commentary & Opinion, July 10-16). It tells me that there are Democrats who are pro-life. I thought there were.
When I studied American history in my senior year of high school in the 1940s, my history teacher, who called himself “Q.E.D.” in his radio news broadcasts, explained both the Democrat and Republican platforms. I was listening closely and decided to be a Democrat. I am extremely pro-life.
We still have the choice to be either a Democrat or a Republican and to vote as we please.
LORRAINE RIES
Tampa, Florida
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: California Considers Parents' Right to Know DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:SACRAMENTO, Calif. — This November, for the first time since Roe v. Wade, California voters will have a direct impact on the future of their state's abortion policy.
The Parents’ Right to Know and Child Protection Initiative, which will go before voters in a special election this fall, is set to restore some measure of parental rights to more than 10% of the nation's parents.
Catherine Short, 46, one of the co-authors of the initiative and a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College, believes the initiative will renew vital communication between adolescents and their parents.
“The initiative is a wake-up call to parents,” Short said. “It's a very busy world out there. It's a world that tends to separate kids from parents. They get out of touch. We also know from other states with similar laws that there is a drop in both teenage pregnancy and teenage abortion when a parental involvement law is passed.”
In fact, abortions could decrease by up to 25% in California, the state's Legislative Analyst's Office estimated. But it said the drop could be due to minors crossing state lines to obtain an abortion in a state where there is no parental involvement law.
The initiative would amend the California Constitution by prohibiting abortions performed on a minor until 48 hours after a physician notifies her parent or legal guardian — in writing — of her decision to have an abortion. The notification would not be required in cases of medical emergency. Currently, 33 states have some form of a parental involvement law governing a minor's decision to have an abortion.
If the initiative passes, California would be the only state on the West Coast with a parental involvement law. Oregon and Washington, along with New York, Hawaii, Connecticut and Vermont, have no parental involvement laws.
On Aug. 4, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops filed a friend of the court brief in Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood, urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold New Hampshire's parental notification law.
Short added that the initiative would help protect teenage girls from sexual predators. Short's co-author, Teresa Stanton Collett, testified in Congress during the summer of 2004 in support of the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act.
Collett said that “in a study of over 46,000 pregnancies by school-age girls in California, researchers found that ‘71%, or over 33,000, were fathered by adult post-high-school men whose mean age was 22.6 years.’ Other studies have found that most teenage pregnancies are the result of predatory practices by men who are substantially older.”
Collett further stated in her testimony that “a number of young girls who obtained abortions without their parents’ knowledge were encouraged to do so by a sexual partner who could be charged with statutory rape. … Parental notification laws insure that parents have the opportunity to protect their daughters from those who would victimize their daughters further.”
Albin Rhomberg, spokesman for California's parental notification campaign, believes the initiative will also shield teens from unscrupulous abortion providers.
“The initiative is a way to prevent the abortion industry from providing clandestine abortions to minors without parents’ knowledge,” he said. “Parents can counsel their children and protect them from a commercial industry. It's parents who pick up the pieces after a daughter's abortion, not Planned Parenthood.”
Rhomberg added that some abortion businesses are guilty of not reporting minors’ older boyfriends for statutory rape, an assertion made by Collett in her testimony before Congress.
“Abortion providers are reluctant to report information indicating a minor is the victim of statutory rape,” Collett said. “Failure to report may result in the minor returning to an abusive relationship.”
High Poll Numbers
According to Rhomberg, voters have responded favorably to the initiative.
“Of all the initiatives on the ballot for November, it's the most popular,” he said. “Polls show it at about 75%. It should pass very comfortably. … Some parents want to pass the initiative so they can supervise their teen's abortion. They know an abortion is dangerous and they recognize the immaturity of minors.”
Although the California Catholic Conference, which represents the bishops of California, did not get involved in signature-gathering for the initiative, Carol Hogan, the organization's communications director, said the “bishops will be taking a stand for the initiative.”
Repeated calls to Planned Parenthood were not returned. However, in a May 18 Los Angeles Times article, Mary-Jane Wagle, chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, said abortion rights advocates would fight the measure.
“It puts a barrier between teens and their access to safe, good medical care,” Wagle said. “I have three daughters, and the last thing I want is for the government to force them to talk to me if they don't feel they can. I'm afraid that it would make them do something that would be dangerous for them.”
Critics of the bill contend that forcing a minor to notify her parents of her pregnancy might lead her to desperate acts such as an illegal abortion or even suicide.
Rhomberg believes such cases would be in the minority.
“I can show grisly pictures of what seat belts have done to a person when a car is on fire and the person can't undo the seat belt,” he said. “Airbags have killed hundreds of children. Should we get rid of all airbags and seat belts because of rare cases where they have a bad effect? You don't make public policy on bizarre or isolated cases but on what's the greater good.”
A parental consent law was passed in California in 1987 and upheld by the California Supreme Court in 1996. However, a year later after two justices retired, the court took the unusual action of reconsidering its vote and struck down the law as unconstitutional.
Short said that organizers of this effort decided to make this a parental notification initiative instead of a parental consent one in order “to make it as politically palatable and effective as possible.”
Said Short, “In practice, there's not much difference between the effects of a parental notification law and a parental consent law. We went with one that doesn't allow Planned Parenthood to make the initiative look unreasonable.”
Moreover, “our timing is particularly fortuitous,” she said. “After the 2004 elections, there's been a lot of talk by Democrats to not alienate middle America with the abortion issue.”
Martin Mazloom is based in Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: State's first abortion vote since Roe v. Wade ----- EXTENDED BODY: Martin Mazloom ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: National Media Watch DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:Schools Should Teach ‘Intelligent Design,’ Bush Says
“I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought,” he said, saying the decision should be up to local school districts. “You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is Yes.”
Bush has held his opinion since his days as Texas governor, the Houston Chronicle reported. Running for president in 1999, he said schoolchildren “ought to be exposed to different theories about how the world started.”
The intelligent-design theory views life as too complex to have been created by evolution, implying a higher power must have had a hand in it.
Bush has not said whether he personally believes in one theory over another.
New Gibson Movie to Begin Shooting in October
NEWSMAX.COM, Aug. 2 — Hollywood gave Mel Gibson and his The Passion of the Christ the cold shoulder, from financing to distribution to the Academy Awards. The film ended up as one of 2004's top hits, grossing more than $370 million.
This time around, things are different for Gibson.
The writer-director plans to begin shooting Apocalypto — a Greek word meaning an unveiling or a new beginning — in October. When he offered it for domestic distribution to major movie studios, his production company got an enthusiastic response, NewsMax.com reported. The Walt Disney Co. won the bidding for the right to distribute the film in the United States.
Like The Passion of the Christ, characters in the movie will speak an ancient dialect — Mayan. Gibson is writing, producing and directing the film — set 500 years ago in Central America, according to the Associated Press — but has no plans to star in it. The cast features unknown actors native to the area of Mexico where it is being filmed, the wire service reported, and the plot is being kept under wraps.
Playing the ‘Catholic Card'?
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, July 27 — If confirmed, John Roberts would be the fourth Catholic on the U.S. Supreme Court — an all-time high, the Associated Press noted — causing many to speculate how religion will affect the court's decisions.
If history is any indication, however, it won't be much of a factor. Two Catholics currently on the court, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, are against abortion, the wire service reported. The third, Anthony Kennedy, sided with the 5-4 majority in a 1992 ruling reaffirming Roe v. Wade.
One Roberts opponent said President Bush was “playing the Catholic card” by nominating Roberts.
“Bush is betting he's bought himself some insulation — any opposition to Roberts, particularly because of his anti-abortion record, will likely be countered with accusations of anti-Catholicism,” said Adele Stan in the online edition of the magazine The American Prospect.
However, the Associated Press reported, Robert Destro of The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law said he'd be surprised if religion came up overtly during confirmation hearings because the Constitution states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Long Run DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:When I was a Christian fundamentalist, I believed that Church history consisted of two eras. First came the time of Jesus and the Apostles. Then came the second half of the 20th century. What had happened between those two eras concerned me not one bit.
Growing up, I remember watching Billy Graham whenever he was on TV. As the man who seemed to deserve much credit for jump-starting a revival of “true Christianity” for our era, he represented everything that was right about preaching the Gospel with vigor and directness. Then, in 1992, I finally attended a Billy Graham Crusade in person. (Believing myself already secure within the “saved” camp, I did not go forward for the altar call.)
Looking back today as a Catholic, I believe there is much to admire and respect about Billy Graham, whose June revival in New York City was probably his last. In his prime he was a riveting and dynamic orator, but his great strength is that he knows who he is and what he does well. He usually avoided complex theological problems and thorny denominational issues, preaching instead a simple Gospel message.
If C.S. Lewis is known for “mere Christianity,” Graham might be known for “mere Evangelism” — proclaiming an unadorned, to-the-heart message about man's sin, the Father's mercy, Christ's death and resurrection, and the Holy Spirit's invitation for man to accept the free gift of salvation.
But Graham's strength, I've come to see, is also a weakness. While he apparently transcends many denominational lines, it is at the expense of a substantial ecclesiology. Graham undoubtedly has introduced thousands of people to Jesus Christ. But his is a Jesus who does not have a Church. Or a Jesus whose Church is vaguely defined and not concrete. Or, just as bad, a Jesus with thousands of competing and contradicting churches.
Randall Balmer, professor of American religion at Barnard College in New York, recently said of Graham: “The reach of his preaching — nobody has ever come close, and I suspect no one else ever will. His people claim that he has preached to more people than anyone else in history, and I don't know anyone who would seriously dispute that claim.”
It can be seriously disputed. Graham has had 417 crusades, dating back to 1947, and an estimated 83 million people have seen him preach in person, with many more having watched on television. That's very impressive, But Pope John Paul II rivaled those numbers, especially taking into account he was on the world stage for 26 years, compared to more than 50 years for Graham.
How many millions watched the Jubilee? Christmas Mass every year? How many have read one or more of his 14 encyclicals, 15 apostolic exhortations, 11 apostolic constitutions, 45 apostolic letters and various books of essays, audiences, poems and prayers?
Of course, it's not a contest. Both men benefited from modern technology and knew how to utilize it. Both men proclaimed that Jesus Christ is Lord. Both men were great Christian leaders. But only one was the vicar of the Church founded by Jesus Christ.
So I am Catholic. And I appreciate more than ever the work of the Holy Spirit in guiding his Church not through two eras but 20 centuries — each and every one of them.
Carl E. Olson is editor of IgnatiusInsight.com.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Carl E. Olson ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Europe Suffering From Spiritual Malaise DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:ROME — In his book The Europe of Benedict: In the Crisis of Cultures, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger proposed a role model for today's irreligious Europe — St. Benedict of Norcia.
For the cardinal who became Pope Benedict XVI, it is no coincidence that the Benedictine Order, founded by the sixth-century monk, saved Western Europe from a descent into barbarism after the fall of the Roman Empire and subsequently became the continent's main instrument of learning, literature and cultural revival.
Today, the Holy Father sees that history of decline repeating, but with a new twist. The idea of God, he notes in the book, has all but disappeared from mainstream European culture, with potentially disastrous consequences.
The Europe of Benedict is a compilation of three sermons Cardinal Ratzinger gave between 1992 and 2005 while he was still prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Benedict commented again on the spiritual malaise afflicting Western societies during his vacation last month in northern Italy.
“The mainline churches appear to be dying,” he said during a meeting with the bishop and priests of the diocese of Aosta, the Internet news service www.chiesa.com reported. “This is true above all in Australia and also in Europe, but not so much in the United States.”
In a speech delivered in Subiaco, the birthplace of the Benedictine Order, the day before Pope John Paul II died, then-Cardinal Ratzinger spoke extensively about Europe's “crisis of culture.” Much of that speech is incorporated in the new book, which cites some of the problems that have resulted from the cultural crisis, including threats to internal security, the dangers of genetic engineering, growing poverty and a decline in “moral energy.”
Europe's Christian roots and identity have been replaced by “modern Enlightenment philosophies,” the Holy Father wrote in The Europe of Benedict. Such philosophies recognize only what can be mathematically or scientifically proven and deny any metaphysical reality, he noted.
Freedom Undermined
Unable to recognize God's existence or objective truth, morality is consequently reduced to a relative concept, leading to a “confused ideology of freedom that leads to dogmatism” and ultimately “to the self-destruction of freedom,” Benedict said.
The Pope cited the growing intolerance of criticism of homosexuality as an example of this phenomenon.
“The concept of discrimination is ever more extended,” he wrote, “and so the prohibition of discrimination can be increasingly transformed into a limitation of the freedom of opinion and religious liberty. Very soon it will not be possible to state that homosexuality, as the Catholic Church teaches, is an objective disorder in the structuring of human existence.”
Rocco Buttiglione, Italy's minister for culture and a philosophy professor, encountered this first-hand last October when the European Parliament rejected his nomination for a seat on the European Commission because of his Christian beliefs — particularly his Catholic views on homosexuality.
Buttiglione blames his rejection on a “nihilistic secularism” that now pervades Europe. And like the Holy Father, Buttiglione regards St. Benedict's legacy as one component of an effective antidote to the injuries that relativism and secularism are inflicting in Europe and in other Western countries.
“What Europe needs most is not so much politics, but the spiritual strength that encourages young people to get married, to find a job, to have children, that helps people to stay together, to forgive each other,” said Buttiglione.
During the Middle Ages, Benedictine monasteries made a similar reconciliation possible after Europe suffered a period of lawlessness and violent conflicts following the disintegration of classical civilization, Buttiglione added.
“[Europeans] came to monasteries to live under the law of St. Benedict, and this meant that it was more human, there was something more of the natural law,” he said. “Our children could marry one another; new nations were formed through baptism and forgiveness.”
Benedictine Father Christopher Jamison, Abbot of Worth Abbey in England, believes the monastic tradition can again help foster the spiritual strength needed to renew Europe by providing a “sanctuary” where people seeking a better way of living can find space for silence and prayer away from today's hectic lifestyles.
“The invitation to listen to God, to other people, and to yourself, lies at the heart of the Benedictine vocation,” explained Father Jamison. “And it's that profound listening that St. Benedict offers Europe because Europe has become a noisy place where people are not attentive — they fill up every waking moment with noise so that when there is a moment of silence they have to have background music.”
Father Jamison acknowledged that the monastic tradition can't revolutionize European attitudes all by itself. But, he said, it can serve as an important “stepping stone” by which the continent's masses of non-believers and “un-Churched” Catholics can rediscover the spiritual, moral and cultural heritage bequeathed to them by Catholicism.
“They might step back into their own context and begin exploring joining the Church,” he said. In this way, the monasteries could again be invaluable for “saving the soul of Europe.”
Reality Check
Powerful support for Father Jamison's perspective came from an unexpected quarter this spring. His abbey was the subject of a surprisingly popular BBC reality show broadcast in May, in which a group of men with little or no knowledge of Catholicism spent six weeks living as monks.
“What the program offered was a picture of five very modern men, stepping back from [modern life] to live in a sanctuary that had been created by the Rule of Benedict and which they were then invited to internalize,” the abbot said. “When they internalized this sanctuary, enormous changes began to occur in their lives.”
“[The public] loved the programs,” Father Jamison added. “They wrote to us, they came to visit us on our retreat program and the comments they've made about how they had touched their lives in a profound way, which has changed their whole approach to life, have been very, very striking.”
Edward Pentin writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Edward Pentin ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Paradise of the Popes DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:Both Pope Ben-e-dict XVI and Pope John Paul II before him have vacationed in Les Combes, a small alpine region in Valle d'Aosta, northwest Italy. Yet few know exactly why.
To be sure, the location provides a welcome retreat from the noise and pollution of Rome, and the beautiful alpine scenery is in keeping with the love of both popes for the mountains. But look beyond the sights and into history, and you'll soon discover another, less obvious attraction: The region has been a fulcrum of European history and, more specifically, the continent's Christian heritage.
Via Francigena, the historic pilgrims’ way that leads from Canterbury to Rome, cuts right through the middle of the region, entering it from the St. Bernard Pass and leaving it — and the Alps — to the south and towards the province of Turin. The area is littered with ancient churches, hermitages, shrines and sanctuaries, thanks mainly to two 11th-century saints born nearby. The house of St. Anselm, who later became archbishop of Canterbury, remains in the high street of Aosta to this day, while St. Bernard's legacy is preserved in hospices that welcomed pilgrims passing through the once semi-autonomous state.
The Via Francigena trail, unchanged since ancient times and followed by, among thousands of others, emperor Henry IV, Pope Innocent II and Frederick Barbarossa, weaves its way through the splendid mountain scenery. It takes its direction from nature and a Roman consular road and passes through Aosta, a picturesque and rather chic alpine town that is also the capital of the region and nearest urban center to the Pope's retreat.
Aosta itself is rich in Christian heritage, its most significant treasure being Sant'Orso, an 11th-century church in which pilgrims have worshipped for centuries. Inside are frescoes depicting the life of Christ and stories of the Apostles dating back to the early Middle Ages, as well as a small, captivating medieval cloister and elegant bell tower.
So it is that the valley of Aosta, and Aosta itself, provide a fitting location for a spiritual retreat.
Mountain View
Aosta is also a popular region in which to go hiking in the summer or enjoy excellent skiing in the winter. Then, too, there is plenty to please history lovers and archaeologists.
The foundation of the Augusta Praetoria marked the start of the Roman colonization of the region and, after the fall of the Roman Empire, the valley passed into the hands of the Burgundian kings and the Carolingians. From the 11th until 20th century, the Savoy family, who later were to rule over a united Italy, dominated the affairs of the region. Many castles from these eras remain.
Les Combes, where the Pope's chalet is situated, is a picturesque hamlet 4,500 feet above sea level, about a 20-minute drive from Aosta. From there, you can enjoy breathtaking views of the Aosta valley, including fine vantage points for admiring snow-capped Mont Blanc, Europe's highest peak.
Easily accessible by car in the warmer months, this can act as a base for numerous mountain hikes. One particularly pleasant trail connects the hamlet to the lower town of Introd, which boasts an impressive gorge. It also has one well-placed restaurant, La Veilla, which specializes in local dishes — tasty steaks, fondues and, of course, polenta.
For pilgrims, an interesting outing is to the village's small museum, built in 1996, in honor of John Paul II. Mostly consisting of photographs, the charming, chalet-like museum also has on display some of John Paul's personal effects, including his staff, ski jacket and walking shoes. The museum costs just 2 Euros and is open every day but Monday. Adjacent to it is a small church where both Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict have prayed.
John Paul first visited this area in 1986 when the local people were celebrating the 200th anniversary of the conquest of Mont Blanc.
The locals immediately took to him and, likewise, Pope Benedict, who won the Aostans over with his use of the regional dialect and his appeal for a satisfactory resolution to a regional employment dispute.
But in their easygoing, understated manner, the local folk here tend to downplay the significance of hosting such an important person.
“It's good for promoting the area, but it doesn't actually have any noticeable impact on tourism,” says Sebastian Urso, an adviser at the local tourist office. Most hoteliers and shop owners agree, but do not seem unduly concerned. The area is, after all, one of the most prosperous in Italy.
“Having the Pope here a good thing,” says Mauro Fogliazza, an employee of a local electrician's union. “It's not yet good for tourism, but I hope it will be, and that Pope Benedict carries on in the same mold as John Paul.”
Bordering southern France, the region has a distinctly Gallic flavor. Its people possess an easy-going manner and, although Italian is the lingua franca, French is often spoken. Even when it's not, the occasional “oui,” “ici” or “voila” will find its way into the patois. There is also a spirited folk tradition and quite a lively music scene with varied classical, jazz and rock music concerts performed regularly.
Aosta, which has a pleasant ambience and enchanting Romanesque architecture, has a good number of taverns, including The Old Distillery, a Scottish pub serving lager, stout and, of course, some good malts.
Bartender Tom Durham from Fife, Scotland, says most of the tourists are French and Italian in the summer months.
“Lots of other nationalities come in the winter for the skiing,” he says. “The people here are very welcoming. Their attitude is: This is our life, the world is going on out there, and we just get on with it.”
There is, therefore, an enticing combination of European culture, history, natural beauty and easygoing daily life that makes Aosta and its environs an especially pleasant vacation destination. And you don't even have to be a successor of St. Peter to make a prayer journey of it.
Edward Pentin writes from Rome.
Planning Your Visit
Daily Mass is celebrated at Sant'Orso, a charming church that has been attracting pilgrims for nearly 1,000 years, at 6:30 p.m. Sunday Mass is celebrated at 9 a.m., 11 a.m. and 6:30 p.m.
Getting There
The nearest airports to the Aosta Valley are at Geneva and Turin. The latter offers a shuttle bus in the morning direct to Aosta, but there are also many trains with a journey time of about two hours. To reach Les Combes, a car is necessary or you can take a bus to Introd and hike two hours to the site. Rental cars are available at the railway station, as are taxis costing about $100 for a round trip.
----- EXCERPT: Les Combes, Aosta, Italy ----- EXTENDED BODY: Edwin Pentin ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Prolife Victories DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:The Point of Pre-born Pain Treatment
Supporters say they hope the legislation raises awareness of the humanity of the unborn child much the way partial-birth-abortion bans have done.
They said it also strengthens Minnesota's Woman's Right to Know bill, which requires that women be given accurate information about abortion and fetal development before abortion.
Pride Parades Fall from Favor
SSONET.COM, July 21 — The homosexually oriented website reported on opposition to a “gay pride” parade in Latvia's capital city of Riga as one in a series of “recent bans” on such events in a number of countries.
While the Riga event did go off on an informal basis, support for it was withdrawn by the city council. Meanwhile it was denounced by Latvian Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis, who described plans to hold the parade near the 13th-century cathedral as a sacrilege.
In June, the mayors of Warsaw, Poland, and Jerusalem banned similar marches in their cities.
Acknowledging Abstinence
In a story headlined, “Abortion: Just the Data,” the reliably “pro-choice” Post was careful to cite a variety of factors for the decade-long drop while carefully maintaining that “scientists say it is difficult to determine why.”
In the year 2002, about 1.29 million women in the United States had abortions, according to statistics recently announced. In 1990, that number was 1.61 million.
In a sign that such programs can no longer be dismissed, the Post quoted experts who said abstinence-education programs and lower rates of sexual activity by young people are possible causes for the abortion decline.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Have Shoes, Will Travel DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:PROLIFE PROFILE
A display is worth a thousand statistics.
Rosemary O'Connor and Ron Van Tassel, both of Kankakee, Ill., know it. Their “Little Soles” exhibit is proof positive that a something as simple as a display of baby shoes can make an impact on people's attitudes about abortion.
In 2001, they took their first steps toward collecting 4,000 pairs of baby shoes and displaying them in churches, schools and secular venues. Their display aims to give people a visual idea of the numbers of “little souls” lost to abortion in America each day.
As fellow parishioners of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Kankakee, O'Connor and Van Tassel got the idea at a retreat where they saw a powerful display with 1,800 pairs of shoes from Iowa.
Putting their display together wasn't a snap.
“We thought we'd go out and collect 4,000 pairs of baby shoes and that would be it,” says Van Tassel. But for their first exhibit in June 2001 at the Kankakee Country Fair, next to Birthright's booth, the directors had managed to collect only 100 pairs. They ended up borrowing Iowa's shoes.
Since then, Little Soles has grown to a stack filling a 4-foot-high, open-sided box constructed to make the shoes visible from every angle.
“What makes it more powerful is the shoes go over the box and spill on the sides,” says Van Tassel.
“It's mind-boggling to see,” says O'Connor.
“We hear statistics constantly, so many people tend to ignore them,” adds Van Tassel, a convert to the Catholic faith four years ago, who's also a founding member of St. Rose's adult-formation committee. “We're trying to take that statistic and make it something tangible. When it's turned into the tangible, it becomes personal.
“The Holy Spirit is using this,” he continues. “We don't have to have the 4,000 pairs to make the impact.”
Making a Connection
O'Connor has been especially amazed by the reaction of teenagers.
“You wouldn't think a high-school boy would be looking at the shoes,” she says, “but one surprising thing is, even the boys are picking up the shoes. It strikes them how each pair represents a child who was lost. It makes the connection for them.”
At Providence Catholic High School in New Lenox, Ill., students couldn't ignore the display in the cafeteria.
“This pile of shoes opened up a lot of conversations,” explains English teacher Nell Andrzejewski. “For some of them, this was the first conversation they've had about abortion on a large scale but also abortion personally — how does this affect me and my world?
“They realize the shoes are representing a child who has died because the mother has made that choice,” she says, “and that child will never be in this cafeteria.”
Since Little Soles was there during parent-teacher conferences, parents got a look, too.
“To have this displayed at this point was critical to family conversations,” says Andrzejewski.
Displays at churches have proven similarly arresting. Father James Dvorscak, pastor of St. Mary Catholic Church in Mokena, Ill., found the Little Soles display so moving he had it relocated from the parish hall to the narthex of the church, right at the entryway.
“Sometimes when you do the in-your-face, [post-abortive] photo approach, people tag you for being tasteless and they attack the messenger,” the pastor explains. “This Little Soles is a real zinger that flies under the radar of people and their self-protection from horrendous images.
“Even children understood immediately the impact: There's no baby wearing those shoes,” the priest continues. “I think it's a marvelous approach.”
Some people even went out and bought shoes for the display. In fact, folks often step up to help the directors climb toward 4,000 pairs.
One lady and her daughters have donated 45 pairs by going to garage sales, and teachers have assigned it as a class project.
“When people go to garage sales, it gives them a chance to talk about the abortion issue,” notes O'Connor. “When they explain what they're going to use them for, sometimes they even get the shoes donated. There've been a lot of things positive about this.”
Van Tassel points to some very special pairs.
“One grandmother, whose daughter had an abortion, and wasn't sure whether the child was a boy or girl, donated two pairs — a little boy's and little girl's,” he says. “She placed the names the daughter had picked inside the shoes.”
In another case, a young pregnant women being treated for cancer was told by her doctor to have an abortion or stop the treatments. She chose the baby, not the abortion. The baby lived, but she died.
“The grandmother actually donated the child's shoes,” O'Connor says. “At our home parish we got one antique shoe with a note that said, even if we are poor we don't want to harm God's little ones.”
According to Van Tassel, little feet have worn the vast majority of the shoes. They've got scuffs and are all colors and styles, from little moccasins to patent leathers.
“You realize that all the children who wore them are unique personalities,” he says. “You realize the potential of what was lost when you realize what they represent.”
O'Connor and Van Tassel's goal now is to keep Little Soles traveling all the time, to as many places and events as possible. The display also presents information about post-abortion healing through Return Ministry and Rachel's Vineyard, says O'Connor, because those seeing it might have had an abortion or know someone who has.
Everywhere, Little Soles walks softly but carries a big stick. “Some people are shocked — not with disgust, but at the reality at what abortion does,” says Father Dvorscak. “It leaves empty baby shoes. That's where the power is.”
Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.
Information
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----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Standing Up Down Under DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:The United States isn't the only country in which Catholic institutions of higher learning are being squeezed to conform to the educational culture at large.
Australia's only Catholic medical school has come under fire from an association of secular bioethicists. The group claims the school's Catholic ethos could threaten academic freedom and reduce patients’ options.
The school, Notre Dame Medical School in Fremantle, Western Australia, and local Church leaders have dismissed the accusations, which were made in the Medical Journal of Australia in July by academics from the Center for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine, a secular research organization based at the University of Sydney.
The authors are concerned that Notre Dame students won't receive “appropriate education” in areas such as abortion, contraception, assisted reproduction and end-of-life care.
“[D]espite the evident commitment to care by many Catholic institutions and clinicians, it remains the case that there is a problematic tension between the teachings of the Church and the services and information provided by medical institutions and practitioners,” they wrote. “Physicians may limit the health care options available to their patients … especially in rural and remote areas, where choice of medical practitioner is extremely limited.”
Degrees in education and nursing are well established within Australia's Catholic universities, but it wasn't until this year that Notre Dame Fremantle opened the country's first Church-affiliated medical school.
The university is named after its founding partner in the United States, and expects its first doctors to graduate at the end of 2008.
On the other side of the country, plans are underway for medical degrees to be offered at Notre Dame's Sydney campus from 2007.
While all secular medical schools in Australia include some form of ethical studies in their curricula, Notre Dame's course includes compulsory theology and philosophy subjects.
The principal author of the Medical Journal article, Ian Kerridge, told the Register he sees “terrible” problems with the compulsory theology component.
“It's a problem to insist on any particular value set … regardless of whether it's secular or religious,” he said. “Let's say I'm a really devout Muslim. There are some passages [in the Koran] that are very strong about not even tolerating other religious beliefs.”
“It's hard for me to think,” he continued, “that it would be necessarily tolerant of a medical school to say, ‘Now you have to do Catholic ethics, and you have to pass it and you have no option.'”
Catholic Core Values
Notre Dame Fremantle had already addressed these concerns when it applied for teaching accreditation through the Australian Medical Council.
The council itself sought to clarify questions “about the explicit association of a medical school with a set of religious values,” particularly the “potential discrimination” of students who didn't adhere to Catholic beliefs.
However, it commended the proposed philosophy and ethics units within the course, as well as Notre Dame's clear commitment to emphasize the “psychosocial dimension” of health care.
Satisfied that Notre Dame had significant support from the medical and allied health professions, accreditation was granted in 2004.
Notre Dame's dean of health studies, Mark McKenna, said the university rejected claims that Church-affiliated medical schools lack professional competence or oblige students to accept Catholic beliefs.
“We do not consider that the Catholic nature of the Catholic hospitals servicing the Australian population lessens the care provided by them,” McKenna said. “Students are exposed to all aspects of medical care, and are encouraged to explore their motivations and beliefs and the effect of that on provision of care.
“All aspects of medical care means all aspects, including care of a woman presenting and considering abortion,” added McKenna. “It is worth noting that it is the clinical presentation, diagnosis and management of medical issues, and not how to perform the operative procedure, that is the focus of undergraduate education at all medical schools in Australia.”
McKenna also pointed out that students are not expected to have or to develop any particular set of values — “but, like all teachers, we do hope that some of our hopes, beliefs and aspirations are expressed by our students.”
Service of Truth
At last year's announcement of Note Dame's decision to open a Sydney campus, Cardinal George Pell, archbishop of Sydney, commented: “Law and medicine are vitally important professions, and like all professions they need to be taught well and guided by sound values.”
“There is nothing unusual about the Church's interest in tertiary education. The university is a Christian invention, born as Pope John Paul II has said from the heart of the Church in the 13th century,” the cardinal added. “The Church is dedicated, like the university, to the service of truth.”
In an interview with the Register, Cardinal Pell said that, while Catholic values would be proposed to all Notre Dame Sydney students, none would be prevented from graduating if they disagree with Church teaching in any given area.
“In contrast, there have been cases in Canada and other places where otherwise qualified students who are pro-life have not been permitted to graduate from medical school because they dissent from secular dogma in favor of abortion and related matters,” he said.
“It would be most regrettable if this were to happen in Australia,” added the cardinal. “The establishment of Catholic medical schools will help to ensure that it doesn't.”
The Catholic ethos of Notre Dame will extend to marginalized communities: The Sydney school hopes to offer specialist courses in indigenous health and encourage students to practice in less populated areas.
The health of Aboriginal Australians has been described as “third world.” Average life expectancy is 17 years below the rest of the population, and indigenous health is, on average, three times worse than other Australians'.
While a small number of the secular medical fraternity may be concerned about Notre Dame, there is significant support from Catholic doctors.
Dr. Amanda Lamont, president of Western Australia's Catholic Doctor's Association, said Notre Dame students learn the facts about contraceptives, abortion and other procedures, but would also cover ethical questions — material many medical schools neglect.
In her own secular medical training, for example, the pill was seen to be a medical panacea — yet students were never told it was an abortifacient, and ethical issues surrounding it were never discussed.
“What Notre Dame is doing,” said Lamont, “is encouraging students to think, to consider some of the values of Catholicism.”
Under standard practice, the Australian Medical Council will undertake periodic reviews of Notre Dame Fremantle, and the university said it has been and will continue to be judged by that process.
The council is currently assessing Notre Dame Sydney's application for accreditation.
McKenna, Notre Dame's health dean, is hopeful about the outcome.
“There is academic freedom in Catholic universities,” he said. “With their long tradition of inquiry, they have contributed to the development of the Western intellectual tradition for hundreds of years, and continue to include in their ranks some of the first-class medical schools in the world.”
Helen Ransom writes from Melbourne, Australia.
----- EXCERPT: Catholic medical school resists secular pressures ----- EXTENDED BODY: Helen Ransom ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Will Roberts Judge Amorally? DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:The more we read, the more we know.
The unfolding disclosure of John Roberts’ writings reveals a judicial philosophy similar to that of his mentor, Chief Justice Rehnquist. It is judging without morality.
Rehnquist and Roberts surely have the highest character. But Rehnquist avoids moral determinations by deferring to the states and other branches of government, and Roberts has copied this approach.
Often that deference yields a moral result, but increasingly it disappoints by failing to persuade fellow justices and the public. President Bush abandoned the bully pulpit of the Supreme Court by choosing Roberts rather than someone like Justices Scalia and Thomas, as Bush had promised.
Roberts’ AWOL approach to morality explains why Bush's opponents cheered this nomination with such gusto. Liberals know Roberts will be at most one weak vote out of nine, in contrast to other contenders who could have persuaded colleagues and the public on moral grounds.
Roberts may imitate Rehnquist on the partial-birth abortion issue. In Carhart v. Stenberg (2000), Rehnquist voted against the heinous procedure by citing precedent rather than moral outrage. Rehnquist could muster only three sentences, paling in comparison to Justice Kennedy's moral outrage, and Rehnquist even refused to join Scalia's statement that the Court's decision in favor of the procedure would one day be overruled.
Bush supporters who think Roberts will emerge from 15 years of silence by suddenly speaking out need to read his mentor's opinions more carefully. Rehnquist's agreement with the moral side is often only by chance, and would fail on key issues like embryo experimentation, “right to die,” illegal immigration, same-sex “marriage” and restrictions on speech.
Roberts can be expected to defer unthinkingly to the states and other branches of government on these issues, as dictated by federalism and separation of powers. Roberts’ nomination could prove not only to be a disappointment, but actually a step backwards.
While Roberts may vote to narrow Roe v. Wade, his legal philosophy does not support overruling precedents. Rehnquist himself declined to overturn the Miranda warning protecting people against self-recrimination, despite criticizing it for years.
Roberts’ approach is also ill-equipped for future controversies. Embryo experimentation by a state would presumably be allowed by his deference to state power, and congressional regulation or prohibition of it might even be invalidated by a Roberts Court.
After all, Rehnquist's approach proved ineffective in addressing the “right-to-die” issue, which was first presented to the Court in Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dep't of Health (1990). Nancy Cruzan was in a “persistent vegetative state,” and her own parents wanted to cut off life support.
Rehnquist, true to form, deferred entirely to the State of Missouri in a decision that appeared to save Nancy Cruzan's life. But subsequent events illustrated how worthless that approach was.
Within months, a Missouri court authorized the termination of Nancy's life, and a few years later Nancy Cruzan's father then took his own life, too.
By deferring to state courts, Rehnquist's federalism left federal courts helpless to save the healthy Terri Schiavo from a court-ordered termination of her life despite her parents’ attempts to save it. Not even a special Act of Congress could compel the courts to bring justice, under Rehnquist's approach, to a woman who had been denied therapy for years.
Judicial deference to states makes even less sense for illegal immigration, as one state's permissiveness opens the door for illegals to enter every other state. Rehnquist deferred to the Executive Department in agreeing in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004) that Hamdi, an enemy combatant captured in Afghanistan, had a right to American citizenship simply by having been born on American soil.
Traditionally, mere birth of an individual on American soil has not alone conferred citizenship, just as it does not for the offspring of foreign diplomats stationed here. Millions of descendants of illegal aliens could insist on citizenship as “anchor babies” if birthplace alone sufficed, and thereby encourage more illegal entries.
But Rehnquist allowed Hamdi to assert citizenship because he was “[b]orn an American citizen in Louisiana in 1980” to Saudi Arabian parents who subsequently returned to their homeland. Dissenting, Justice Scalia accurately called Hamdi a “presumed citizen” rather than an actual one.
Free political speech, including the Internet, is another issue of growing significance that also fares badly under the Rehnquist-Roberts view. Rehnquist supports congressional restrictions on campaign speech and donations, citing his mentor Justice Jackson and the ultimate icon against morality in law, Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Justice Holmes, like Roberts, was Harvard-educated and idealistic in his youth. But Holmes went down the dead-end road of judging without morality, leading him to affirm the forced sterilization by Virginia of a woman because she had an IQ lower than average.
“Three generations of imbeciles are enough,” Holmes bellowed in triumph of his amoral form of justice, Buck v. Bell (1927).
It is not a call for judicial activism to recognize that morality is an essential element of law and necessary both to persuade and to stop inevitable transgressions. America can ill afford to be led down the road of amoral judging as we confront the future “Buck v. Bell” issues of embryo manipulation, “right to die,” and same-sex “marriage.”
As Bob Dylan famously sung, “The times they are a-changing.” Since Roberts is at best a throwback to Rehnquist's and Holmes’ approach of judging without morality, Roberts could become an obstacle rather than an ally to pro-family causes in the future.
Andy Schlafly is general counsel to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, founded in 1943.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Andy Schlafly ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: New Life Out of Tragedy DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:ARLINGTON, Va. — Susan Torres is dead after cancer left her unable to stay alive without the help of machines — but her newborn baby daughter is alive and thriving.
Her final months, played out on a national stage, were a testament to her and her husband Jason's openness to life, said an activist whose foundation supported Jason Torres during the ordeal.
“I think this has been a tremendous example of fidelity in marriage, both to their marriage vows and to their commitment to openness to life, and to Susan's very evident, utterly unambiguous commitment to the sanctity of life,” said Paul Schenk, executive director of the National Pro-Life Action Center.
The Center assisted in administering the Susan M. Torres Fund, which is collecting money to pay medical expenses for the family.
This was “an ordinary family, doing extraordinary things,” Schenk said.
Susan was a convert to Catholicism whose relationship with her husband Jason from the beginning was grounded in her faith. Her life support was removed Aug. 3, after doctors delivered her daughter Susan Anne Catherine, by Caesarean section Aug. 2 at 8:18 p.m. at the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church neatly sums up the difference between a case like Susan's and that of Terri Schiavo, who lived for weeks until she finally starved to death after her feeding tube was removed by court order.
“Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of ‘over-zealous’ treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one's inability to impede it is merely accepted. The decisions should be made by the patient if he is competent and able or, if not, by those legally entitled to act for the patient, whose reasonable will and legitimate interests must always be respected” (No. 2278).
The baby was premature at 27 weeks and weighed just 1 pound, 13 ounces, but “came out kicking and screaming” with a healthy head of dark, curly hair, said Torres family spokeswoman Merci Schlapp.
“Doctors are very optimistic — she's breathing on her own,” Schlapp told the Register. The baby will remain in the neonatal unit at the hospital until her original due date of October, hospital officials said.
Torres, a former researcher at the National Institutes of Health, lost consciousness from a stroke May 7 after aggressive melanoma spread to her brain. Jason Torres said doctors told him his wife's brain functions had stopped. He was at her side, having brought her breakfast in bed, when she collapsed and administered CPR in an effort to save her.
With Susan just 15 weeks pregnant, Jason chose to keep his wife alive for the baby she was so happy to be carrying. The couple's first child, Peter, is 2, and he has stayed with his grandparents during the ordeal.
Jason quit his job and slept by Susan's side in a reclining chair for the past three months.
In the first days of August, doctors determined Susan's cancer had spread too far and the baby was in danger.
“Her blood pressure started to become irregular as well as her heart rate,” Schlapp said.
After doctors delivered Susan Anne Catherine, her mother, Susan, was given the sacrament of the sick, and then her life support was turned off.
“After a brief goodbye with her husband, parents and family members, and after receiving the last sacraments of the Catholic Church, Susan Michelle Rollin Torres passed away,” said Susan's brother-in-law, Justin Torres at an Aug. 3 press conference at the hospital.
“Her passing is testament to the truth that human life is a gift from God and that children are always to be fought for, even if life requires — as it did of Susan — their last measure of devotion,” Justin Torres said.
“We rejoice at news of Susan Anne Catherine Torres,” said Arlington Bishop Paul Loverde in a statement. “I am deeply moved by the extraordinary witness to the sacredness of life from its very beginning, which the Torres family has given to our society. We now mourn the loss of Susan, and bring her and her entire family before the Lord in prayer.”
Life of Faith
Susan had been diagnosed with melanoma at age 17 but since then had been told she was cancer-free. Several weeks before she lost consciousness, she complained of not feeling well, but doctors could not find anything wrong with her.
The baby has a less than 25% risk of developing her mother's melanoma, the Los Angeles Times reported. Dr. Christopher McManus, who coordinated care for Susan Torres, said 19 women who had the same aggressive form of melanoma have given birth and five of their babies contracted the disease.
English-language literature contains at least 11 cases since 1979 of irreversibly brain-damaged women whose lives were sustained for the unborn child to develop, the Times reported.
The Torres family's insurance only covered about two-thirds of the hospital costs, with about $2,500 a day in daily hospital expenses accumulating plus other daily expenses for the family, Schenk said. A special fund has been set up for those who want to help the family.
Susan Torres met her husband, Jason, at the University of Dallas after she had converted from a Protestant denomination, and their entire life was grounded in faith, Schenk said.
“It really was a tremendous parable,” Schenk said, noting thousands of people all over the world responded with prayers and donations. “In that way, Susan was a missionary and an extraordinary one. She gave little baby Susan Anne Catherine life. Jesus was there as the Protector through the whole drama.”
Valerie Schmalz is based in San Francisco, California.
Catholic News Service contributed to this story.
Information
Contributions to help with the family's expenses may be sent to Susan M. Torres Fund c/o Faith and Action P.O. Box 34105 Washington, DC 20043
www.susantorresfund.org
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Valerie Schmalz ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Catholic Justice Faces Confirmation DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:Judge Roberts should take a middle ground on the Catholic issue.
After being nominated on July 19 to the Supreme Court, Judge John G. Roberts Jr. made the customary round of visits to the U.S. Senate, whose members are likely to vote on his nomination.
At the Capitol, Roberts was quizzed about many subjects, not the least of which was his faith as a Roman Catholic. Reportedly, Democratic Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois asked what Roberts would do if the law required a decision that conflicted with his religion, while Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma asked about how Catholicism affects his decisions.
According to those media accounts, Roberts expressed surprise about Durbin's question, saying he would have to recuse himself in such an event, and gave an uncharacteristically muted answer to Coburn's. At the time Roberts’ unease about the queries was understandable; he had just been nominated. But by early September it no longer will be. His confirmation hearing, which is scheduled tentatively for four days in early September, will be televised live nationally.
How should Roberts answer those religious questions?
Instead of deferring to the left or right, he ought to cite the founding documents of this country. To Durbin, he should invoke Article VI of the Constitution: “No religious test shall ever be required as qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” To Coburn, he ought to read aloud the famous second sentence of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equally, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
In other words, Roberts should steer a middle course on the eternal debate between, to quote — from Bob Dylan's “Maggie's Farm,” — “man and God and law.”
Roberts should walk away from the path advocated by Durbin: that his judicial philosophy ought to serve only man. And he ought to shun the road implied by Coburn: that his rulings should serve only God.
As much as possible, Roberts must serve God and man.
Spiritually, if Roberts cites the second sentence in the Declaration, he does not deny his faith in God. He affirms the unity between his personal and public lives. He declares himself to be a Catholic privately and professionally. In so doing, Roberts avoids a major trap: leaving the impression that his religious faith has not been privatized, as if it was akin to the cafeteria at the local courthouse. Instead, he confesses that his faith animates his soul.
The Middle Way
Steering a middle path is also politically prudent. It might annoy conservatives and liberals; many will claim Roberts is “deliberately withholding information about his views.” But surely this will not cause most to oppose his nomination. After all, members of Congress swear to an oath to uphold the Constitution.
Although many act as if they swore only to get re-elected, the vast majority try to adhere to the founding documents of the union.
What's more, the Church teaches that prudence is one of the four cardinal virtues. According to the Catechism, prudence is “not be confused with timidity or fear, nor with duplicity or dissimulation.” Rather, it states, prudence “disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it.”
Taking the middle path also honors and complies with the Constitution. In our form of government, the chain of command is clear: Citizens elect representatives. The representatives make laws. And the judges interpret whether the laws adhere to the Constitution.
Although that principle sounds elementary, it is violated routinely. Take the Supreme Court's twin 1973 decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the rulings that established a uniform “right” to human abortion. In those cases, seven justices junked the Constitution altogether. Instead of acting as judges, they acted as legislators.
Their mindset was captured in The Brethren, an unparalleled 1979 book by reporters Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong of The Washington Post.
“If there was no way to find an answer in the Constitution,” they wrote of Justice Lewis Powell, he “felt he would have just have to vote his ‘gut.’ He had been critical of justices for doing exactly that; but in abortion, there seemed no choice.”
Thurgood Marshall was described as primarily concerned about how their decision might help the rural poor. Potter Stewart “felt that ‘substantive due process’ [a legal concept first applied in the court's infamous 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford] was the real basis for the Blackmun opinion.”
In arguing for a middle ground on the religious issue, I realize that my position is inconsistent with the natural law argument. Charles Rice, an emeritus professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, has pointed out that our constitutional model of legal reasoning is positivist — that is, legislators, rather than God, determines what is right and wrong. Moreover, Rice argues, even if Roe and Doe were overturned, the unborn would still be non-persons under the law.
“If your life is subject to extinction at the discretion of a legislative body or of somebody else,” he concluded, “you are a nonperson.”
Which is true, but Rice's argument finds no basis in the Constitution. Granted, the divine law supersedes man-made law. Yet his reasoning is awfully imprudent when applied to Roberts’ testimony before the Senate. It requires Americans to scrap their system of government and replace it. It is fair to conclude that Americans will not be doing so anytime soon.
Roberts therefore should not make a theological case for his Catholicism. Yet neither should he make a secular one. And there are reasons to think he may do so.
His friend Shannen Coffin has said, “John is like a lot of Catholics. He is very private about his relationship to God.” Later, Coffin said Roberts “separate[s] personal philosophy and legal philosophy. Being Catholic, I don't think, affects him any more than if he's Hindu.”
It's doubtful Roberts actually does privatize his Catholicism. Granted, Justice Anthony Kennedy, who voted in 1992 to uphold Roe, belongs to the John Carroll Society, a D.C. organization of professional lay Catholics. Yet Roberts seems different, not least because he surrounds himself with ardent pro-lifers.
His wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts was, in 1998 and 1999, the executive director of Feminists for Life. Coffin himself writes frequently about pro-life topics for national publications. In addition, Roberts clerked for Justice William Rehnquist, an opponent of Roe.
Even so, if Roberts does contend at his confirmation hearings that he separates his personal and legal philosophies, his statement could scandalize the faithful. He would be implying that his legal decisions take no account of God or Church teaching.
Of course, Roberts might believe personally that God comes before man and professionally that he can serve both. But it's fair to conclude that he will leave the impression that he considers only man.
Such an impression might be good for the pro-life movement. I suspect Roberts would vote to overturn Roe and Doe. But he would be the opposite of St. Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor of England who in the 1530s rejected the request of King Henry VIII to condone the divorce of his wife. On the scaffold, More's famous last words were, “The King's good servant, but God's first.”
If he refused to say the same, Roberts would save his neck but lose his soul.
Mark Stricherz, a writer living in Washington, D.C., is working on a book about how secular, educated elites took over the Democratic Party from Catholics and working-class whites.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mark Stricherz ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Weekly TV Picks DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:SUNDAY, AUG. 14
Spy on the Wild
Animal Planet, 8 p.m.
Scientists use technology to study animals in their habitats.
MON.-FRI., AUG. 15-19
Taking a Stand
EWTN, 4:30 a.m., 6:30 p.m.
In this five-part series of half-hour episodes, Mary Beth Bonacci and Dr. Tom Curran explain God's plan for chastity and marital love. They also urge Catholics to take a stand for truth and against the world's lies about life and love.
MONDAY, AUG. 15
A Man Who Became Pope
Hallmark Channel, 8 p.m.
Pope John Paul II was said to be “very impressed” with this four-hour dramatized “biopic” of himself, and Pope Benedict XVI lauded its portrayal of young Karol Wojtyla's bravery against Nazis and communists. Re-airs Sunday, Aug. 21, at 9 a.m. Advisory: TV-PG; Catholic News Service says it's “best for older adolescents and up” because of “wartime violence, including firing-squad executions, and scenes of dead and wounded, partial prison nudity, some unsavory verbal imagery, some crude language and brutal beatings.”
TUESDAY, AUG. 16
Civil War Journal
History Channel, 7 a.m.
This episode, “Yank vs. Reb: The Foot Soldier's Life,” mines a new trove of Civil War photos of the suffering in soldiers’ daily life, but also their diversions, including baseball.
WEDNESDAY, AUG. 17
Millau Viaduct
Discovery Channel, 8 p.m.
The beautiful Millau Viaduct, built 2001-2004, spans the valley of the Tarn River in Languedoc and bypasses a traffic bottleneck on the road from Paris to southern France.
THU.-SAT., AUG. 18-20
World Youth Day 2005, Cologne
EWTN
Pope Benedict XVI's exact arrival time in Cologne on Thursday wasn't announced as of our deadline, but EWTN will air a 31/2-hour welcoming ceremony live that day at 10 a.m. A 9:30 p.m. re-air of that ceremony follows an 8 p.m. live edition of Life on the Rock direct from Cologne. A Way of the Cross airs live at 10 a.m. on Friday, with a re-air at 9 p.m. A special vigil is live at 11 a.m. on Saturday, with a re-air at 8 p.m.
FRIDAY, AUG. 19
Homes Across America
Home & Garden TV, 10:30 a.m., 5:30 p.m.
This episode's dwellings are a Texas farm house, a Puerto Rican plantation-style house and a Louisiana plantation bought by a couple whose ancestors were slaves there.
SATURDAY, AUG. 20
Everyday Italian
Food Network, 12 noon
Hostess Giada De Laurentiis throws a party with all sorts of her pizzas and calzones.
Dan Engler writes from Santa Barbara, California.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dan Engler ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Why We Quit Contracepting DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:Having married in 1985 when both were medical students, Ann and Michael Moell had their life together planned out.
Once they established medical practices and had a big house with a sprawling back yard, they would begin to have children. Until then, Ann would take the birth-control pill.
Although both had grown up in large Catholic families in Ohio, neither was well versed or much interested in the Church's teaching on birth regulation.
“While we were in medical school and residency, we didn't think we had time for a child,” Ann says. “We had the American dream in mind, not just for ourselves but for the children we would have.”
Their plans began to unravel four years into the marriage, when Ann stopped taking the pill because of persistent headaches.
“Here we were, both studying medicine, and neither of us knew anything about the pill and its side effects,” she recalls. “It just isn't a topic in medical school because the pill is assumed to be a good thing.”
They used periodic abstinence, condoms and other barrier methods but, within a year Ann became pregnant. They welcomed the child into their lives, yet continued to contracept.
After their third child arrived, Ann says, “That was it. We were still young, with three children and growing medical practices. We thought we had to do something foolproof that would keep us from having more children.”
They discussed the possibility of a vasectomy for Michael.
“We thought it would be the best thing for our family,” Michael explains.
Something happened, though, in the Moells’ pursuit of the American dream. Ann began to pray. The couple had begun attending Mass again with the birth and baptism of their first child, but they were “just doing the Catholic thing,” Michael says. “We didn't know anything about contraception being sinful or that Jesus is present in the Eucharist. We were missing so much.”
“To actually ask God to give us an answer was something new,” Ann admits. “I was praying at Mass, ‘God, show us what to do about this issue.’ A month later, I was pregnant. It was God's answer. It was so immediate, so direct, and I was elated. It changed our whole attitude about who was in charge of our lives and our marriage.”
They began using natural family planning, and have welcomed two more children into their lives.
But God was not finished with them yet. Ann was a family-practice physician who prescribed the pill. Michael was a pediatrician who was prescribing the pill for young girls. Someone gave them the videotape “Contraception: Why Not?” by Janet Smith. “It changed the whole direction of our practices,” Ann says. “We started looking into the side effects of the pill and I knew I had to stop prescribing.”
Now Dr. Ann Moell is a stay-at-home mother who volunteers as a prenatal-care physician at a pro-life pregnancy center in Dayton, Ohio. Michael left a pediatric partnership to open Holy Family Pediatrics, in the same building as the pregnancy center. About half his patients are pregnant teens referred by his wife. They recommend abstinence before marriage and NFP in marriage to their young patients. Many Catholic parents travel long distances to bring their children for routine care to Holy Family Pediatrics.
“This has been a huge spiritual journey as well as a growth and learning experience in proper health care,” says Ann.
“It was a huge financial leap and leap of faith, to give up the partnership and open my own medical practice,” Michael adds. “Four months after I opened the door, our fourth child was born. I was questioning God the whole way. But it's worked out better than I could have dreamed.”
Life-Changing Encounter
Conversion is a word Penny and John Harrison use often to describe their experience with birth control. They were married in 1983 in Penny's Protestant church; a Catholic priest witnessed the ceremony for John, who was raised in a Catholic family.
They used various forms of contraception for the first 10 years of marriage and had two children “pre-conversion,” as John describes it.
A Catholic Marriage Encounter weekend opened Penny's heart to the Church, and, when she decided to become a Catholic, all the assumptions of their lives were uprooted. While she was going through a parish RCIA program in their hometown of Kansas City, Mo., John began looking at his own faith and asking questions. He had no problems with the sacraments or the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, but his vague knowledge of the Church's teaching on contraception nagged at him.
When he and Penny asked a priest about the issue, “we got some confusing and unspecific answers,” John recalls. “We ultimately were told to ‘follow our conscience.’ Unfortunately, that's the answer too many Catholic couples get today, and they're not being told the full beauty of the truth.”
Penny entered the Church at the Easter Vigil in 1993 and shortly thereafter she and her husband went on a 10th-anniversary vacation without their two children.
“We were both very uncomfortable using contraception on that trip,” John said. “We came back and just stopped using contraception of any kind, and prayed and hoped for another child.”
Key to their decision was hearing a talk by Catholic evangelist Scott Hahn, a former Protestant minister, and reading Rome Sweet Home, in which Hahn and his wife, Kimberly, defend the Church's teaching on contraception.
“We date our deeper conversion to the heart of the Church primarily from the fervor we took from listening to Scott Hahn's talks,” John says.
Since their conversion, the Harrisons have had three more children, including twins in 1999.
“I come from a Protestant background where it is considered irresponsible not to practice contraception, so I've come a long way,” Penny says. “The problem was that when I was preparing to enter the Church, we knew what Catholics were supposed to believe but we couldn't find any Catholics who actually lived the teaching on contraception.”
It's About Respect
As teachers with the Couple to Couple League, which promotes NFP, John and Penny are seeing “more and more couples open to the gift of life,” she says. “I tell them that, in the Nicene Creed, we call the Holy Spirit ‘Lord and Giver of Life.’ If we take that title seriously, we cannot shut the Holy Spirit out of our marriages.”
John says he tells couples who are not particularly religious that contraception is “disrespectful to your wife's body. You expect a woman to take these hormones that make her body think she's pregnant just so she can be available to you sexually all the time. And it goes the other way too. Your wife expects you to put on a special device. That's not very respectful of the man, either.”
“Love means giving your whole self to your spouse,” adds Penny. “And that's the great gift of NFP.”
Stephen Vincent writes from Wallingford, Connecticut.
Information
Couple to Couple League
ccli.org
One More Soul
omsoul.com
----- EXCERPT: Two couples tell their 'conversion' stories ----- EXTENDED BODY: Stephen Vincent ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: God Protects Us in Difficult Times DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:Register Summary
Upon returning from his vacation, Pope Benedict XVI met with 6,000 pilgrims in the Paul VI Hall for his Aug. 3 general audience. He continued his teachings on the psalms and canticles from the Liturgy of the Hours, focusing on Psalm 125.
Psalm 125, he pointed out, is one of the “Songs of Ascent” that the Jewish people traditionally recited during their pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It proclaims that all who put their trust in the Lord stand solid and unshakeable.
As Jerusalem is protected from its enemies by the mountains that surround her, so the Lord's faithful are protected from all danger by his presence.
“Even when the believer feels isolated and surrounded by peril and hostility, his faith must remain calm and serene,” Pope Benedict XVI said.
The Holy Father pointed out that Psalm 125 is especially relevant today.
“The psalm instills a deep trust within the soul,” he noted. “It is a powerful aid in confronting those difficult situations where believers experience external crises, such as isolation, irony and disdain, and the internal crises that are associated with them that are a result of discouragement, mediocrity and fatigue.” The Lord, he said, gives us confidence and encouragement.
Departing from his prepared text, Pope Benedict XVI noted: “We are familiar with such situations, but the psalm tells us: “The Lord is with you, trust. I am stronger than all these evils.”
As with the psalmist who contemplates the city of Jerusalem, the symbol of God's peace, we trust in our loving Father who leads us to that peace promised in Christ to God's faithful people.
“The psalm ends with the traditional greeting of shalom,” he said. “This greeting is transformed into a wish filled with hope. We can explain it using the words of St. Paul: ‘Peace and mercy be to all who follow this rule and to the Israel of God.'”
During our meeting, we will continue the journey we have been making through the Liturgy of the Hours’ evening prayer. We will focus on Psalm 125, which is part of a powerful and thought-provoking collection of psalms called the “Songs of Ascent” that functioned as a little prayer book for a pilgrimage to Zion to encounter the Lord in his Temple (see Psalms 120-134).
The psalm upon which we will now be briefly meditating is a wisdom psalm that kindles trust in the Lord and that contains a short prayer (see Psalm 125:4). Its first sentence proclaims the steadfastness of those “who trust in the Lord,” comparing their steadfastness to Mount Zion's secure and unshakeable stability, which is obviously due to the presence of God, who is, as another psalm affirms, a “rock of refuge, a shield, a saving horn, a stronghold” (see Psalm 18:3). Even when the believer feels isolated and surrounded by peril and hostility, his faith must remain calm and serene.
Even the prophet Isaiah attests to having heard the following words from God's mouth regarding those who are faithful to him: “See, I am laying a stone in Zion, a stone that has been tested, a precious cornerstone as a sure foundation; he who puts his faith in it will not be shaken” (Isaiah 28:16).
But, as the psalmist goes on to say, the trust of the faithful has an even greater source of support: the Lord is, in a sense, encamped around his people to protect them, just like the mountains that encircle Jerusalem, whose natural bulwark make it a fortified city (see Psalm 125:2). In a prophecy from Zechariah, God spoke the following words about Jerusalem: “I will be for her an encircling wall of fire and I will be the glory in her midst” (Zechariah 2:9).
God Protects Us
In this radical atmosphere of trust, the psalmist reassures “the just.” In itself, their situation might be a cause for worry given the arrogance of the wicked who want to impose their dominion over them. There is also the temptation for the just to become accomplices with evil in order to avoid any serious discomfort, but the Lord protects them from any oppression: “The scepter of the wicked will not prevail in the land given to the just” (see verse 3). At the same time, he preserves them from any temptation to “turn their hands to evil” (see verse 3).
The psalm instills a deep trust within the soul. It is a powerful aid in confronting those difficult situations where believers experience external crises, such as isolation, irony and disdain, and the internal crises that are associated with them that are a result of discouragement, mediocrity and fatigue.
The psalm's conclusion contains a plea that is directed to the Lord on behalf of “the good” and “upright of heart” (see verse 4), as well as a proclamation of the misfortune that awaits those “who turn aside to crooked ways” (see verse 5). On one hand, the psalmist asks the Lord to manifest himself as a loving father to the just and the faithful who uphold the shining torch of a good conscience and of righteousness in life. On the other hand, he expects the Lord to reveal himself as a just judge to those who have walked the crooked path of evil, whose final outcome is death.
The Desire for Peace
The psalm ends with the traditional greeting of shalom, (peace upon Israel), a rhythmic greeting that assonates with Jerushalayim with Jerusalem (see verse 2), the symbolic city of peace and holiness. This greeting is transformed into a wish filled with hope. We can explain it using the words of St. Paul: “Peace and mercy be to all who follow this rule and to the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16).
In his commentary on this psalm, St. Augustine makes a contrast between “those who walk along crooked paths” and “those who are upright of heart and who do not turn away from God.” If the former people find themselves about to be united with the “fate that awaits the wicked,” what is the fate of the “upright of heart?”
In the hope that he himself along with his listeners will be among those who share in the happy fate that awaits the upright of heart, the bishop of Hippo poses the following question: “What shall we possess? What will our heritage be? Where is our homeland? What name shall we bear?”
He himself is the one who answers, indicating the name: “Peace. I greet you with a wish for peace. I proclaim peace to you. The mountains will welcome peace, while justice will spread on the hillsides (see Psalm 72:3). Christ is now our peace: ‘For he is our peace’ (Ephesians 2:14)” (Esposizioni sui Salmi, IV, Nuova Biblioteca Agostiniana, XXVIII, Rome 1977, p. 105).
St. Augustine concludes with an exhortation that is, at the same time, a wish: “Let us be God's Israel and let us stand upright in peace, because Jerusalem signifies a vision for peace and we are Israel — the Israel upon whom is peace” Esposizioni, p. 107).
(Register translation)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: God and Matter: The Evolution of the Evolution Debate DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna Christoph Schönborn has stepped into the confused controversies surrounding evolution, and added some much needed clarity.
Just enough clarity, mind you. Not too much. Not too little.
In a recent op-ed for The New York Times, “Finding Design in Nature,” Cardinal Schönborn issued a crystal-clear warning to proponents of Darwinism: Stop misusing Pope John Paul II's words as blanket support for neo-Darwinian beliefs that go directly against Church teaching.
In 1996, John Paul stated that evolution was “more than a hypothesis.” But that was not all that he said, by any means. As Cardinal Schönborn stated, that string of four words — taken out of the context of his entire speech, and worse, of his many other statements about evolution — has been taken up by proponents of Darwinism as a ready-made, unambiguous stamp of approval by the Catholic Church of evolutionary theory.
Enough is enough. Neither John Paul II nor the Catholic Church ever gave unambiguous assent to the entire doctrine of neo-Darwinism precisely because, even while it has uncovered some important truths, its fundamental assumptions are in direct contradiction to the fundamental assumptions of faith. Witness Cardinal Schönborn's wise words:
“The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things. Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense — an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection — is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.”
Now witness John Paul II's other words, words conveniently left unquoted by proponents of neo-Darwinism: “It is clear that the truth of faith about creation is radically opposed to the theories of materialistic philosophy. These view the cosmos as the result of an evolution of matter reducible to pure chance and necessity.”
At its heart, neo-Darwinism is materialistic, and affirms evolution guided only by mere chance and necessity. God is entirely unnecessary. That is why Richard Dawkins, chief spokesman of today's evolutionists, states smugly that “although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”
The Cardinal had become increasingly angry because evolutionists, including Dawkins, argued that evolution proves that God doesn't exist, and no one should fear teaching evolution as a fact because the Roman Catholic Church affirms it as “more than a hypothesis.”
See the problem? Atheists who believe the world is the product of mere chance and material necessity are using the late Pope's words against him to eliminate belief in a divine Creator.
Well, the Cardinal had finally had enough when, this last May, physicist and avid atheist Laurence Kraus lashed out at those who dare question evolutionary theory, and whipped out the “more-than-a-hypothesis” snippet for support.
Cardinal Schönborn's Times op-ed directly challenges such twisting of words in the service of atheism—not just in the name of faith, but in the name of human reason and science.
He quotes, against such misquotes, not only John Paul II's other words, but the Catechism of the Catholic Church itself.
“Human intelligence is surely already capable of finding a response to the question of origins. The existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light of human reason.” It adds: “We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom. It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance.”
Contrary to the fundamental beliefs of neo-Darwinists like Dawkins, Kraus, et al, God can be known through his works, not as a matter of faith, but through reason, through scientific inquiry. Therefore, scientific-design arguments are not only permissible but demanded by the evidence, and scientific criticism of neo-Darwinism should be welcome.
Neo-Darwinists have often used John Paul II's words as a shield to ward off any and all criticisms of evolutionary theory, even and especially those that come from science itself. They wish to brush off all such criticisms as coming from know-nothing, religious fundamentalists.
Oh really? Listen to the words of Robert Laughlin, professor of physics at Stanford University, and sharer in a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the fractional quantum Hall effect:
“A key symptom of ideological thinking is the explanation that has no implications and cannot be tested. I call such logical dead ends antitheories because they have exactly the opposite effect of real theories: They stop thinking rather than stimulate it. Evolution by natural selection, for instance, which Charles Darwin originally conceived as a great theory, has lately come to function more as an antitheory, called upon to cover up embarrassing experimental shortcomings and legitimize findings that are at best questionable and at worst not even wrong.”
Laughlin is by no means alone. The number of scientific dissenters from Darwinism is growing because, as scientists, they realize that evolutionary theory is functioning like an ideology, a theoretical dogma that is being held onto with a kind of blind patriotism.
But such blind acceptance is no better than blind rejection. We can say that evolution is “more than a hypothesis,” that is, that it has uncovered some truths about microevolution.
As John Paul II made clear in his other words, that does not mean that we affirm evolutionists’ every assumption and conclusion, either those that go against the faith, or those that go against science and human reason itself.
Benjamin Wiker is a Senior Fellow with the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology and a Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Benjamin Wiker ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: World Media Watch DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:Documentary ‘Will Foster Inter-Christian Dialogue'
RIA NOVOSTI, Aug. 1 — Pilgrimage to the Eternal City, an Orthodox-Catholic film production about early Christians in ancient Rome, will help bring the two churches closer together, a spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church told the Russian news agency Novosti.
“Culture, education and the promotion of a religious worldview — these are spheres that will be of primary interest to different denominations and will stimulate their cooperation,” Moscow Patriarchy Press Officer Vladimir Vigilyansky said. “There aren't, and cannot be, any obstacles [to such cooperation].”
The documentary is being made at the suggestion of the Moscow Patriarchy's Orthodox Encyclopedia scholarly center. Its head, Sergei Kravets, quoted Patriarch Alexy II as saying that the film was intended as a joint creative response to the European Union authorities’ decision not to mention the Christian roots of European civilization in the European Union's Constitution.
The film is comprised of five parts, according to the report. The first three parts have already been filmed and are now being edited while the two concluding parts will be filmed in September and October, Kravets said. The release of the documentary is set for early 2006.
Church in Iraq Does Not Give in to Terrorism
ASIANEWS, Aug. 1 — Mosul's Chaldean community commemorated the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks that struck four churches in Baghdad and one in this northern Iraqi city, AsiaNews reported.
Chaldean Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho of Mosul celebrated Mass Aug.1 in the Church of St Paul — the church that was hit that day. A year ago to the day, the terrorists blew up a car full of explosive that killed two people at its entrance.
Archbishop Rahho proclaimed that every year on Aug. 1, the Parish of St Paul's Day, a memorial Mass will be celebrated to commemorate the attacks.
“The Church is much better today than before the attack,” the archbishop said in his homily. “That violence tested our faith, and in a year we have learned to put into practice values like forgiveness and love, even for those who persecute us.”
Minister Plans Rebate to Cut Abortion Rate
The federal president of the Australian Medical Association, Mukesh Haikerwal, said the AMA did not object to a rebate, as long as it was voluntary. “We want nothing forced upon people, but we can see the benefits of general counseling.”
“A situation where women are culturally conditioned to do one thing or another is not a real choice,” Abbott, a Catholic, said Aug. 2. “The fact that we have near enough to 100,000 abortions a year is a tragedy. I don't think anyone, whether they are pro-choice or pro-life, is happy about the vast number of abortions that currently take place in Australia and I think, as a society, it ought be possible to do better.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Holy Souls Need You DATE: 08/14/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 14-20, 2005 ----- BODY:THE WAY OF THE CROSS FOR THE HOLY SOULS IN PURGATORY
by Susan Tassone
OSV, 2005
66 pages, $6.95
To order: (800) 348-2440
or osv.com
Last Lent is now well behind us, and the next one is half a year ahead, but who ever said the Stations of the Cross were reserved for any part of the liturgical calendar? Surely not Susan Tassone, who here continues her tireless work on behalf of the Church Suffering.
As in her previous publications, Tassone offers a brief history of whatever devotion she focuses on. I, for one, had no idea the practice of going through the Stations may have begun with the Blessed Mother herself.
“St. John brought the Blessed Mother to Ephesus after Jesus’ death,” writes Tassone. “Here Our Lady would spend the last nine years of her earthly life. Her home was rediscovered in 1891 through the study of the revelations of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), stigmatist, visionary and prophet, who was born in Westphalia, Germany.”
Tassone then goes on to quote Emmerich's Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary: “Behind the house, at a little distance up the hill, the Blessed Virgin had a kind of Way of the Cross. When she was living in Jerusalem, she never failed ever since Our Lord's death, to follow his path to Calvary with tears and compassion.”
Tassone explains how this practice must have helped the Blessed Mother cope with the loss of her Son. I thought: Anyone who's grieving the loss of a loved one — or living with the sense of loss presented by a serious health problem, as I am personally experiencing with spastic cerebral palsy — could benefit by these insights.
Meanwhile, dedicating the Stations of the Cross for the holy souls in purgatory can help us connect with our ancestors. The practice can also help us grow in our understanding of the Communion of Saints, and in learning how to keep in mind those who have died but not yet reached a state of final purification. For most of us, this purgation is, of course, necessary before we are able to live in God's close presence forever.
The meditations at each station are set up by a simple but penetrating prayer. For example, in preparing us to contemplate the First Station, Jesus is Condemned to Death, she writes:
“O my innocent Jesus, to free me from eternal death, you allowed yourself to be condemned by a pagan judge to the death of the cross. Give me a hatred for sin and the grace to live that I may one day obtain from you a merciful sentence. The poor souls in purgatory have already been judged. Through your mercy, they have escaped hell; yet on account of their sins, your justice has caused them to suffer the pains of purgatory. O merciful Jesus, have pity on them. Revoke the sentence of their exile and open to them the gates of heaven.”
These original prayer helps are framed by traditional prayers. Each Station begins with the leader saying, “We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you.” Those in attendance respond: “Because by your holy cross, you have redeemed the world.” And each ends with an Our Father, a Hail Mary and a Glory Be.
Lovely artwork, along with additional prayers for the faithful departed, round out this book's timeless guidance.
The Way of the Cross should be a part of every Catholic's regular prayer repertoire. Tassone's book can help — before, during and after Lent.
Bill Zalot writes from Levittown, Pennsylvania.
----- EXCERPT: Weekly Book Pick ----- EXTENDED BODY: Bill Zalot ----- KEYWORDS: Education --------